Why aren’t media agencies supporting the regional news industry?
Local audiences are too often regarded as peripheral and unimportant to marketing activity, writes Charlie Makin – yet strategic investment in local communication can drive spectacular results
This week the ‘regional news industry’ relaunched and heavily promoted a single source research tool to highlight the power of regional media. They said…
– Regional media on the offensive as research shows it reaches 75% of adults
– New audience figures show local media industry reaches more than 10 million 16 to 34 year olds.
No less than Mediacom’s Stephen Allan applauded this initiative in an op-ed for Mediatel: “While we spend much of our time looking at the global digital platforms, it’s important that advertisers and agencies don’t lose sight of the power that local media holds.”
So far, so good. Mediacom is the biggest contributor to WPP’s GroupM, the UK’s largest media buyer, therefore pretty influential in where big media investment decisions are made, so is their money where Stephen Allan’s mouth is?
GroupM’s UK prediction for 2019 is that advertising spend in regional news brands has been is going to continue to decline by roughly 8% a year. In answer to Stephen Allan’s point, if advertisers and agencies are not losing sight of the power that local media holds, they are certainly pretty myopic about it.
Our agency, Pintarget, deals exclusively in local media. Why? Because it’s a highly effective way of communicating and there are masses of new opportunities to reach local audiences.
We are completely channel neutral; we are as happy to invest in a community radio station as with a local paper (and ideally would use both of them.)
Our issue is that terminology being used in this research is deliberately imprecise, renaming local newspapers as the regional news industry suggests that newspaper have a monopoly on distributing local news, to the exclusion of radio, TV and all other digital channels.
This is obviously untrue, there has been an explosion in local news sources and an individual’s access to local news is incredibly complex. The following chart from OFCOM perhaps gives a more balanced view on how people access news, the important point is that they use multiple channels.
So, what does this mean? People now use a very wide range of sources, because people have a massive variety of different news needs; some are community based (maybe news of their sports team) to life management (local transport news) to opinion and, even, gossip.
No single media adequately covers and delivers all of these. Most news can be accessed through a smartphone and encourages a wide range of sources to be used. If a brand wants to effectively reach local people, they need to use multiple local channels. This isn’t necessarily more expensive, but it’s more complicated and requires expertise and attention to detail.
However, we know (because we researched it a couple of years ago through YouGov,) that established local media news sources (TV, radio and press) are hugely more trusted than social channels as a source of local news. This is fundamentally important, we believe that brands should be support ‘genuine’ news sources, with proper journalists and news values.
An adage is the medium is the message, never more important than now in this era of fake news.
What is the regional news industry?
The regional news industry doesn’t really exist; what they really mean is local ‘papers (whether printed or digital) are a vital component of any local communities’ information network. Growth in local media expenditure will only come through hard evidence of performance and best way of achieving this is combining a variety of local media channels.
Media owners have always sold against each other, it’s time to realise that delivering integrated, local solutions will generate more revenue because they will be more effective.
Speak candidly to anyone involved in selling and buying local newspaper advertising and they’ll tell you it’s difficult and complex. They’re not involved in the sexy world of the digital monopolies, you can’t serve a local press through a trading desk; there are few opportunities of jollies to a campus West Coast of the US or skiing in Colorado – you’re more
likely to go Fleet Street and Canary Wharf.
Local newspapers get little senior management time in media agencies, they aren’t massively profitable, and even the best campaign wins few gongs at Cannes. Consequently, spend is declining. It needs a reboot.
Does this matter?
Local matters. It really matters, for many, many of reasons. People are a more connected to their local communities than any coherent national identity. Highly effective brands need to communicate on every level and that means connecting effectively at a community level.
Most brands don’t focus enough attention on local audiences; it’s often regarded as peripheral and unimportant marketing activity. However, every single purchasing decision in the UK is made locally, whether in-store or online.
Secondly, properly managed, strategic investment in local communication drives spectacular results, driving significant improvements in both attitudes to brands and ultimately, sales.
Recently, the general focus of marketing agencies has been to focus on segmenting audiences, usually irrespective of where they live. The opportunity is to locate real consumers and communicate locally is massive. Properly executed this can drive significant growth.
Finally, technology is enabling the opportunity to serve local messaging, whether addressable TV or digital billboards matched to real-time traffic flows. This means delivering hyper personal media is becoming simpler, cheaper and more accountable.
There is a renaissance in the opportunity in local media. Stephen Allen is right that it requires reconsideration, but I also think looking at the problem differently is important, with new data, resource and new eyes.
Charlie Makin is Managing Director of Pintarget