Press-ing the flesh and cutting the rope

Greg Grimmer on his grim night at the ANNAs; a far happier print experience with the excellent commercial team from the Guardian; and why there is so much love and affection for the newspaper sector…

Over the last week or so I have had two deep immersions into the modern world of newspapers. Well when I say modern what I really mean is contemporary.

The first was a terrible night at the ANNAs – the Newspaper Marketing Association’s annual bash, celebrating creativity in newspaper advertising.

The ANNAs are famous in the creative agency world for the largesse of their prize fund. £65,000 (Yes – SIXTY FIVE GRAND) is given away to aspiring copy-writers and media planners alike. However, despite this (and the copious amounts of champagne in a salubrious venue) the event this year seemed incredibly low rent.

The comedy highlight wasn’t the expensively hired Alexander Armstrong but was watching the winning creative and media ‘teams’ struggle on to the stage – complete with duffel coats and shopping bags to introduce themselves to each other. (Are there any two individuals less heterogeneous in our disparate industry than a junior copy-writer and press buyer?). At this point they were handed lottery winner-style giant cheques and asked to grin sheepishly at the camera before before disappearing into the night with their ill-gotten gains.

The new CEO of the NMA Rufus Olins had a face like thunder throughout the evening. His mood can only have worsened when the always hard to please Dominic Carter (one of the few senior sales people present) accosted him on the general lacklustre nature of the whole event.

The lack of senior sales people (and agency trading heads) present at their own party tells its own story. Apart from Dominic, I saw the omnipresent Andy Mullins from the Standard – but the lack of attendance from others spoke volumes and was noted by those I spoke with. Altogether a grim evening for Grimmer.

So, onto my second (and far happier) print experience – an enjoyable engrossment with the excellent commercial team from the Guardian and a number of venerable constituents from the higher echelons of the agency trading groups.

It was with this congregation that I starting regaling the tale of the ANNAs and, as I expected, was met with similar tales of both disappointing events and extravagant but misplaced marketing pieces emanating from the NMA over the last decade.

Everyone had a story of something they liked from Thinkbox, a great piece of research done by the RAB, or good words about the general evangelical zeal of the IAB – but no-one seemed to have a defence for the NMA.

But then something unusual (for such a cynical audience) happened… there was an out-pouring of love and affection for the newspaper sector that I haven’t seen since Guy Zitter was last issuing invites to Badrutt’s Palace.

Both print and digital trading heads were in unison that the job of the NMA should in fact be very easy as it represents some of the most powerful and influential media brands on the planet.

I, your correspondent, then reminded the enraptured throng that the Guardian print version at the height of its powers sold under 600,000 copies, whereas the online version of ‘the world’s largest source of liberal news’ reaches over 30 million. Another NMA member (and funder) the Daily Mail recently over took the New York Times to become the biggest newspaper brand on the planet. The Times shattered predictions of financial Armageddon by successfully implementing a strong paywall for their edited content. All fantastic stories that have been told with minimal volume.

The majority of the big newspaper groups have flourishing online / tablet / mobile revenue streams but you would be hard-pushed to find these stories. Free papers are booming and are as reliant on an ad-funded model as Facebook and Google, but this, it appears, isn’t as big a story.

The majority of newspaper groups also contribute to the PWC / IAB advertising forecasts, which are then used by the IAB to talk about internet advertising being bigger than print, television, the GDP of the USA and Mount Everest combined. Surely this is something the groups themselves or the NMA should address.

The Leveson inquiry, which has been covered by far more qualified scribes than myself again, shows the strength of the sector in the national psyche. However, it appears that journalists are seemingly obsessed with biting the hand that feeds them.

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