NewsBeat

December 2018 NewsBeat 13 advantages of print advertising/preprints? Maybe it's the way we're not selling those advantages to them? A long time ago, I figured out that it's not very productive when you find something that doesn't work but you keep doing it anyway just because everyone else is. My point is we haven't done a thing to change the way we sell preprints. I truly believe we're taking the same approach with preprints that we did with ROP many years ago. We call on customers, national and local to "see what preprints they have for us this week", or we wait for them to call us. Does that all sound familiar? We don't "sell" preprints; we "book" preprints, and there lies the main issue. Before I go any further, I need to digress just a bit. Last month I hit a few nerves with my article on innovation (or the lack of). I received a few comments that indicated I was giving other media fuel to show the ineffectiveness of print. Obviously I don't agree, but nonetheless if we rest on our laurels in any area — or any one area — other media is quick to capitalize on our lack of innovation. Be innovative and they won't have fuel to light the fire. Anytime anyone thinks I'm being critical of our industry, look at it for what it is "a call to arms." I love our industry and believe we should and can do better. I get frustrated when we sit back and let other media minimize the value and audience we offer each and every day. So please understand that I'm not criticizing, but merely trying to wake some of us up and bring some new energy to our challenged industry. Now, back to preprints. Years ago our advertisers got innovative for us. They put their minds to one-upping the competition by using us to get their message out, and we rode the train right to the bank. Preprints were popular and sold themselves. Advertisers put together preprints with scratch-and-sniff perfumes, preprints that smelled like chocolate; they did huge promotions and we inserted car keys on a card for auto dealer promotions into our papers, we inserted dry drink mixes and powders — the sky was the limit. And then it stopped. Ask yourself, when is the last time you've seen one of these promotions? Better yet, ask yourself when is the last time you've thought of a promotion, contacted a specialty printer for pricing, put together a package sale, and presented and sold it to an advertiser. I'm guessing not recently. As we were in the 90s with ROP, we've now become "order takers" for preprints. My "call to arms" is for us to sell some ideas to customers. Fall back on some of what we've done in the past that has worked; develop some new initiatives that we can sell to advertisers; be innovative; be a leader; and generate new ideas for advertisers. One of the advantages I've been fortunate to have in my career is the ability to put myself in the shoes of the customer. If I don't believe in something, I can't give it away, but if I truly believe in a product, there is no stopping me. Advertisers have options, many options. They're not going to just come to us like they used to, so we need to come up with the ideas for them, show them the value in advertising with us, and present a professional, detailed yet succinct and convincing program. I recently heard a very wise statement from someone, "Money flows to ideas." It's a simple yet true statement. So, here are a few thoughts on how the operations team can help "money flow to ideas" once the sale is made. Accurate and Timely Delivery I've certainly presented enough articles on the importance of meeting in-house deadlines and following up with timely delivery to our customers. I can't emphasize enough the importance of processes in production being aligned so that they become predictable and generally effortless. We do the same basic thing every day: running the press, inserting papers and dropping to the carriers. Yes, things may go wrong, such as equipment breaks, people calling in sick and processes falling off track, but for the most part, we have regular systems in place and perform well. It's our job to check these systems frequently to ensure they're running efficiently and being well maintained. I've been witness to advertising pulling out all the stops to sell a Post-It note and production not checking the applicator before the run. The result was missing half of the papers for a sale the next day, not a lot of chance to make up for this error. Just goes to show the importance of the whole team functioning together and not having a weak link in the chain. You're not only letting down your advertising department, making the next sale that much harder, but ultimately letting down the customer and hurting the reputation of your newspaper. Do your job before, during and after the production run. Print and Deliver Programs When advertising sells these programs, they are selling the one-stop-shopping concept and production has to make sure to hold up their end. If you're printing flyers for the customer in-house, make sure they're top quality. If the flyers come from an external printer, check them out when they arrive on (continued on next page)

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