One day. Twelve (same) first pages.

Newspapers in Poland did not show too much of creativity this Monday. Here are first pages of twelve Polish newspapers (4 national, and 8 regional). Note the picture on the covers. This proves how much Poland is hungry for good efforts at the olympic games in Beijing. And no, rowing is not our national sport.

National newspapers:


Regional newspapers:

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The doom of press in a marketing campaign

Being tired with all the discussion about the future of press, and all the predictions about its soon death I usually try not to focus on these theories. This time I had to stop for a while, as lately one of the Polish interactive agencies, Artegence, used these theories in its marketing campaign.

One of the services that Artegence has in offer are web content management tools for different companies and organizations. This time the agency decided to address its offer to the Polish publishers. And how to do it better than bringing up the worst possible vision of them all?



The sentence on the grave states “R.I.P. printed press”. The first date is the year that print was invented by Guthenberg. Why did the agency choose 2012 as the year of the funeral? – We just wanted to surprise the market – says Andrzej Szewczyk, Senior Innovative Manager at Artegence – most of the publishers feel the urge to introduce changes in their business models. Artegence shows the publishers the time for change is now.

Maciej Hoffman, the director of the Polish Press Publishers Chamber says he will be the first one to compare this advertisement with the code of ethics. He will also publicly ask the Union of Associations Advertising Council to give the official statement concerning the controversial advertisement.

It seems that publishers in Poland are scared and aware of the threat to their businesses. Unfortunately, they don’t understand one simple rule: the more you speak about something, the more people you may interest in it. And more people may be easily convinced that press is already passé.

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Polskapresse’s flawed strategy for dealing with the falling circulation

It’s been 6 months since the innovative step a Polish publishing company Polskapresse took. Former publisher of 6 regional dailies in different parts of Poland, decided to publish them under one brand “Polska”. Now is a good time for an early evaluation of this project.

Considering media ownership, Polish regional press market is divided in two. Half of it belongs to the company Media Regionalne (part of David Montgomery’s Mecom) which publishes 9 regional dailies, the other half belongs to Polskapresse (part of German Verlagsgruppe Passau). The press market was divided in the way that no regional newspaper published by both publishers would compete directly on the same regional market.
At the time of the falling newspaper circulation all over the world, the Board of Polskapresse came up with an idea. Knowing that something had to be done to stop this falling trend, the publisher decided to compete with other newspapers on the national level. The idea sounded pretty easy at first – to create a national newspaper, built on the brands and journalists from regional newspapers. The project was to include the titles from both companies: Polskapresse and Media Regionalne. When combined, the sales level of 16 regional newspapers was higher than of any newspaper in Poland (695,000 copies in January 2007 compared to 512,000 copies of “Fakt” and 482,500 copies of “Gazeta Wyborcza” – two largest national papers in Poland).
The plan was innovative but…
Before the project was finalized, many rumours about it could be heard. The goal was to achieve the planned circulation of 1,000,000 copies. The project was difficult: a new central editorial office was created in Warsaw. All work of 6 different editorial offices had to be coordinated and focused on new product. Theoretically thanks to the innovative Millenium platform, 750 journalists from different parts of the country could simultaneously work on one newspaper. Many well known Polish journalists were hired to attract new readers. Finally, two design gurus from the UK participated in the creation of the layout: Matt Brown and Neville Brody.
Before the project was finished, the second publisher, Media Regionalne, backed away from it. And how could a paper become national when it was based only on regional newspapers published in half of the country only? The solution was found quickly: Polskapresse decided to publish new titles under the brand “Polska” in regions, where it had not existed before, at the same time building new regional communities of readers there. From that time on, the project became even more difficult: the new newspaper would have to compete on national level with big, well-known newspapers, and in new regions with already existing titles published by Media Regionalne. After that, the planned circulation of “Polska” was set at the level of something between 700,000 and 800,000 copies. First month after the launch “Polska” was bought by almost 400,000 readers.
The last news before the launch of the project was that Polskapresse entered into a deal with “The Times of London” that suggested “editorial cooperation and the use of the British newspaper's brand”.
Problems, problems, problems
Whatever the outcome would be like, it’s a known fact that publishers do not profit from the number of readers who buy their titles but from advertisers. What attracts the advertisers is… the number of readers who will see the advert. Unfortunately, for the described project, Polish Audit Bureau of Circulation (ZKDP) forbid Polskapresse to show the combined data. The problem the bureau noticed was that “Polska The Times” was not a 100% national newspaper but a hybrid of regional newspapers, with their former names still existing in the titles. What’s more, another regional newspaper, published by a small publisher, entered the project “Polska”. In that case, a project followed by two different publishers could not, according to ZKDP, be called a national newspaper. With that decision, Polskapresse was no more allowed to publish combined circulation data as one circulation level of “Polska The Times” in comparison with other national newspapers.
Numbers
The analysis of impact of the new project on Polskapresse titles’ sales level is very hard. In order to grade the scale of success (or loss) of the project, some data is necessary. Below are the levels of sales of every regional newspaper in “Polska The Times”. Those are all January data, as this year’s February wasn’t typical (5 Fridays in February 2008 meant 1 magazine edition more than in the same period of 2007):

The above chart shows that the drop in sales in case of Polskapresse titles could not be stopped. What’s more, the impact of the project (titles in new regions) did not strengthen this position too much. The older titles lost more of their readers than the new project attracted.
An interesting example here is the last regional title - “Express Ilustrowany”. This title was not included in the project and it seems it loses readers much slower than the other papers from Polskapresse group.
What next?
Those readers who are tightly connected to their regions felt they lost their regional paper and received a national one instead. The regions in Poland vary, from traditions to the form and topics of articles.
But “Polska The Times” is a live newspaper responding to demands of the market. A careful reader could already have noticed more regional news and pictures of regional events on the front page. But this, again, would mean going back to the regional model. Finding out what reader wants and responding to those demands should be a key strategy now. But will it be possible to attract the lost readers again?

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