Gannett tabloid begins effort to woo advertisers

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Gannett Co. Inc.’s Rochester Democrat and Chronicle in two weeks is slated to launch its new free weekly tabloid targeted at young adults. But some media buyers plan to adopt a wait-and-see approach toward Insider.
“We are definitely interested in it, but we want to see a couple of issues come out, to get a feeling for how the market responds to it,” said Caroline Riby, media director at Roberts Communications Inc.
Andrea Burke, executive director of media service at Dixon Schwabl Advertising Inc. added: “I would like to wait and watch. If it picks up, I am always happy to find another outlet for reaching that market.”
A prototype of the free publication, with a rate card in tow, a few weeks ago reached media buyers and potential advertisers.
“I don’t think the average client knows about this much. It seems like they are pitching it to the agencies,” said Susan Cregan, senior planner at Jay Advertising Inc.
She has begun to recommend the Insider to some clients.
“I think there is going to be some interest in the launch issue,” she said. “Maybe beyond that I might have a harder sell.”
Insider-aimed at 25- to 35-year-olds-will hit 700 to 800 locations, including bars, restaurants, health clubs, pizzerias, dry cleaners and movie theaters, on Feb. 27, officials said.
“The main reason for doing this is to let people know what a great place Roch-ester is,” said Michael Johansson, Insider’s editor.
He declined to provide the number of copies that will be available. Gannett prints 50,000 copies of Velocity-Insider’s counterpart in Louisville, Ky.
He also did not disclose a page count.
“(The page count) depends on how well the advertising staff does,” Johansson said. “We envision that 56 pages will be as small as it ever is; we hope obviously it is bigger.”
Insider is expected to be a full-color lifestyle publication. The publication prototype says each issue will contain two expanded feature stories, how-to sections, photo pages, regular columns and news briefs. It also will carry movie listings, a 10-day event calendar, puzzles, comics and a horoscope column.
“Essentially it is a mix of things to do, entertainment and lifestyle stories,” Johansson said. “The important thing for us is to take a different approach than any other publication to covering these things. We may cover news events, but we will put our own spin on them, to try and sort of connect to this age group.”

A separate staff

Johansson heads the eight-person news staff. It also has two salespeople.
“I think we will just have to determine (additional staffing) as we go,” Johansson said.
The plan to use a separate staff for Insider has met with a positive response among media planners.
“What makes this a little more appealing to me is that they are going with a whole different set of editors; they are not using the standard Democrat and Chronicle editors,” Roberts Communications’ Riby said. “They have their own team set up, so that the focus of that team will be to this audience.”
Johansson expects the Insider to serve as an additional vehicle for the Democrat and Chronicle advertisers.
“(I think) they will see it as an additional way to get to that audience,” he said. “With our main product they are already reaching a good chunk of that audience.”
The weekly tabloid is expected to compete against 30-year-old City Newspaper, a weekly tabloid published by WMP Publications Inc., and biweekly publication Freetime Magazine.
“The reason we are doing this is because I don’t think anyone is serving this market,” Johansson said. “I don’t think we as a company jump into things where we don’t see an opportunity and I think we have seen a clear opportunity. No one is really serving the under-35 age group very well in this market.”
City Newspaper officials do not view Insider as an editorial threat and expect to maintain their share of the market.
“It is not fair to judge the Insider before we see it. But we have seen the Gannett free, youth-oriented weeklies from other cities and they are simply fluff,” said Bill Towler, sales manager and co-publisher. “There are people who want that kind of publication. But City is in the journalism business. We are not writing for people who simply want to read fluff.”
Responded Insider’s Johansson: “In other markets … I would argue that those products are serving a need; that is why they continue to flourish. I think anybody would be foolish to say that they are just putting out fluff, because call it what you will, it is what people want.”
The new local publication’s ad rates are reasonable, media planners say.
“At least it is low enough that you can take a chance and put some ads there,” Jay Advertising’s Cregan said. “The regular D&C can be so expensive.”
A full-page ad in the Insider will cost $1,175 for a onetime placement, the rate card shows. Dixon Schwabl Advertising’s Burke called the rates comparable to Freetime.
“If I was going to spend the same money, I would put the money into Freetime at this point, because it is more established,” she said. “It is nice to have many options in this market, but I would hate to see anybody lose because of this venture by Gannett.”
Regular Democrat and Chronicle advertisers are expected to receive ad dis-
counts-which could prove a tough hurdle for Insider’s competitors.
“A lot of people are reporting offers of drastically reduced prices. Other publishers have said that they have gone as low as $200 a page, particularly for nightclubs and restaurants and that sort of thing,” said Thomas Cannon, publisher and editor of Freetime. “We are expecting a lot of that. There is no doubt that the general strategy is to get out there and dump the product for as cheap as they can do it.”
Johansson, however, does not view Insider’s ad rates as undercutting competition.
“If we were to go out in the market with a ridiculously low ad rate, the only people we would be hurting would be ourselves,” he said. “We are already the biggest print media in this age group; why would we want to undercut ourselves?”

The youth market

Competition aside, Insider’s challenge lies in grabbing the attention of Rochester’s young audience. A recent U.S. Census report shows people in the 25-to-44 age group make up 28 percent of the population here and 8 percent are in the 18-to-24 demographic.
“A large part of this age group tends to be an age group that doesn’t pick up a print publication,” Johansson said. “So that is one of the biggest challenges for us, to get them in the habit of picking up a print publication.
The publication will have its own Web site since young adults are heavy Internet users.
“It will be interesting to watch the progress of this publication,” City’s Towler said. “In other Gannett launches that we have studied, the ratio of advertising to editorial content has been extremely low.
“That would indicate that at least in the beginning they are losing money. And Gannett is not a corporation that likes to lose money, or see its stock price fall.”
Insider is a fledgling member of Gannett’s family of new weeklies. The company has launched free entertainment and lifestyle newspapers in other markets, including Velocity in Louisville; Thr!ve in Boise, Idaho; and CiN Weekly in Cincinnati.
These publications are part of Gannett’s non-daily segment, whose current annual revenue run-rate exceeds $350 million. Insider’s success in Rochester is going to be closely watched by media buyers and its competitors.
“We have been pretty busy trying to gather our support and making sure all our sales staff have confidence in our product and what we do,” Cannon said. “There is a real question if (Insider) is a genuine attempt to create a profitable product or whether (it) is designed to do pretty much the opposite-to interfere with independents and smaller companies, who can’t afford to go into a contest with a global media corporation like Gannett.”
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02/13/04 (C) Rochester Business Journal