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Planning Activity In Full Swing
We’ve
been working with a number of agencies to develop community newspaper plans
over the course of the last month, with a few of them already having evolved
into large campaigns. This activity
suggests that community newspapers continue to be viewed as vital cogs for
large advertisers.
A
lot of the current activity relates specifically to accounts in the
agricultural sector. While it’s hard to
say at this point whether or not that can be attributed to the purchase/release
of the Ipsos Agriculture Communications Review, what we do know for sure is
that our website analytics confirm a high traffic flow to the Ipsos data on our
website.
We
are also in the midst of ‘renegotiating’ volume contracts with our key clients
in our automotive and federal gov’t sectors.
Our goal at this point with the automotive accounts is to preserve our
2012 rates as best we can. Indications
are, the automotive accounts have been successful in achieving significant rate
decreases from our colleagues on the corporate side which makes our job that
much more challenging. We have also had
discussions and made a proposal to Cossette Media for their client PWGSC
(Federal Gov’t). The current agreement
expires March 31, 2013 and sees volume discounts of 18% honoured in AB and SK
and 12% in MB. These levels are down
from the 22%, 20% and 14% VIP levels in 2011, which, in combination with annual
rate increases saw the Federal Gov’t account rates increase by 7-10% in our
current agreement. The new proposal is
based on further scaling back decreases to 15%, 15% and 8% to better align with
volumes. Factor in the 2013 rate
increases and we’re essentially proposing absolute rate increases of between
10-12% with our 2013 contract. Recent meetings with PWGSC and their agency during a trip to eastern Canada show all signs point to them agreeing to our proposal.
2013 Marketing Plan and Objectives
AdWest staff met at the beginning of the year to discuss AdWest’s 2013
objectives and to develop the overall support strategy that will ensure that we
meet and exceed those objectives.
Objectives with the Executive Committee in late January and the
AdWest Board at the beginning of April were reviewed.
In establishing these goals and objectives the primary focus has once
again revolved around ensuring that in times of fluidity in the media
landscape, our core products, services and resources are aligned to both the
needs of the marketplace and the interests of member newspapers. Our 2013 objectives include the launch of
CoopTracker, a tool that will aid in the facilitation of ‘top-down’ co-op
advertising initiatives; the addition of a new client-focused staff resource
and the deployment of an electronic communications strategy that targets both
clients and newspapers on a more regular basis.
AdWest Client Services Manager
Since
January of 2012 AdWest has operated without the services of an Advertising
Coordinator, whose role within the organization is to manage the day-to-day
interactions with clients and partner associations. Those responsibilities had to, in turn, be
managed within the existing staffing model, which ultimately had an impact on
our outbound efforts.
The
2013 AdWest budget included the re-introduction of the Advertising Coordinator
role in the 2nd quarter of the year and we are very pleased to
announce that Greg Foster will be joining AdWest at some point early this
summer.
I
personally, am excited about the advantages that Greg in this role create for
AdWest and our partner associations/members.
Greg’s sales background combined with his intimate knowledge of the
inner workings of the advertising industry will effectively give us three staff
members whose focus will be on direct client interaction and the creation of revenue opportunities for member newspapers.
Meetings with Public Works and Government Services Canada and Agencies with Standing Offers
At
the beginning of May I spent a week in Ottawa, Quebec City and Montreal giving
presentations that targeted the various custodians of the Federal Governments
advertising budget. As part of this tour
I was extremely fortunate to be able to spend 2 hours meeting with Louise de
Jourdan and Denis Tessier with Public Works.
Ms. de Jourdan in fact is the senior bureaucrat within the department
answering directly to the PMO and government caucus. It was a productive meeting that provided
some valuable insights into the governments advertising strategy and some of
the challenges that community newspapers represent for them. Ms. de Jourdan did however provide some clear
direction on the types of things that we’ll need to do in order to make the
case for our media moving forward. They
can be summarized in four key points:
- We need to take seriously her suggestion that we ‘de-link’ from the daily newspapers industry, at
least as far as the marketing effort is concerned.
- We need to continue to try
and find harmony and consistency throughout the industry in the development and
use of tools, research and applications, while at the same time continuing to pursue our AdWest-first approach.
- We must treat the federal
government advertising account like we would any corporate advertiser as far as
rates and opportunities are concerned.
We need to understand that the focus currently is almost exclusively on
the branding of the Economic Action Plan, building reach through frequency of
messaging. At $1 million per single
insertion, community newspapers are currently not seen as a viable option for
building frequency.
- We MUST develop a new
source of data to support how regional and market nuances impact media
consumption. We need to be able to qualify the case against one-size fits all
campaigns. It’s of paramount importance with this account and will likely
become a key piece of research with other accounts in the future. To simply say, ‘We’re different..’ without
providing evidence to support the claim is virtually meaningless.
The
meetings I had with the Government’s advertising agencies essentially echoed
the comments I heard at the Public Works meeting. For as long as the strategy revolves around
branding the Economic Action Plan, the focus will be on using television to
drive people to the Action Plan website.
That
said, as mentioned in a recent AdWest blog post, I was asked in all 6 meetings –including
Public Works- when the tools and services offered by AdWest will be rolled out
nationally and for the entire media. I
believe this to be both a solid affirmation for the direction we’ve been taking
AdWest and an insight into what the next phase of evolution should be.
-Jeff Beardsworth, Advertising Director
AdWest.ca May Traffic Report
Visits: 1,021
Unique Visits: 606
Pageviews: 2,727
New Visitors: 541
Returning Visitors: 480
Top 10 visited areas:
1. Homepage - 919 pageviews
2. Advertising Rates - 226 pageviews
3. Market Coverage Maps Search - 167 pageviews
4. Market Coverage Maps - 155 pageviews
5. Advertising Rates Search - 124 pageviews
6. Interactive Mapper - 81 pageviews
7. AdWest Members - 64 pageviews
8. Find Your Newspapers - 49 pageviews
9. Mechanical Specifications - 48 pageviews
10. Mechanical Specifications Search - 48 pageviews
Please Let Us Help You
With many of our tools and resources being marketed as
‘Advertising Opportunities' OnDemand and updated in RealTime it is
critically important that you help us keep our Special Supplements, Regular
Features and Special Products information current for your publication. Please
review the information that is appearing on our site under Planning Essentials and
make changes as required. This can be done either by accessing the DB Update Portal directly or emailing your updates to: updates@adwest.ca. For
instructions on how to use the Update Portal, click here.
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