Death of thelondonpaper

The writing was on the wall for thelondonpaper as soon as Rupert Murdoch started talking about charging for all News Corporation’s online content. The wind has changed dramatically in the three years since News International launched its evening freesheet and was immediately challenged by Associated’s ’spoiler’ in the form of London Lite. Then, this exciting battle to dominate  the streets and rail stations of London with better free content felt like a zeitgeist. This ‘turf war’, as it was painted in the media, was going to revolutionise more traditional newspapers – would the Evening Standard go free we all asked? Would The Sun or The Guardian follow?

No. All that happened over three very expensive years for both is that the most recent idea in town has been proved right: that is, that if you’re going to provide all your content for free, it probably isn’t going to be any good. Who ever thought thelondonpaper would work as a business model? The answer is all of us. Now, thelondonpaper, and what followed from Associated looks like a depressing collective failure of logic on the part of the entire industry, one that lasted three years, until now. Yes, free newspapers can work. Metro International, the newspaper that publishes in more than 21 million readers in 100 cities around the world, is a serious player with decent editorial and a compelling commercial offer for advertisers. But Rupert Murdoch, whose personal earnings are reported to have dropped from $27.5m to $19.9m in the year to June, could no longer stomach the £1m-per-month losses suffered by News International’s young freesheet.

What is the difference between the two? The answer is thelondonpaper never took itself seriously enough. It never established a reason for consumers needing to read it. Yes, you might grab one from the vendor if you didn’t have the heart to brush his offer of a free newspaper off while walking to Oxford Circus on a Friday evening. But even as you took it, you knew it wouldn’t be long before you binned it or left it on a train. It always felt disposable.

It tried to cover everything but wasn’t very good at anything in particular. There wasn’t any depth in any one area, news, sport or business, so that a reader might go seeking it out. I remember when it was launched. I was a reporter at Marketing Week. It felt like an odd idea then. I remember discussing the idea with Ian Clark at News international who eventually became thelondonpaper’s managing director. Asking him, before the launch, about what sort of things it might cover, I remember thinking to myself that his description of celebrity and light international stories might not wash with Londoners who could easily access that content done better elsewhere. ‘Yes, you can get it elsewhere but this is free’ seemed to go the argument at the time. Well, we’ve come full circle. It seems to be the growing belief of the industry that if content is good, consumers will not mind paying for it. By the same token though, if content is rubbish, it won’t get read even if it comes free.

And, (here’s where the feeling of liberation and freedom attached to having a a blog kicks in), thelondonpaper is just that – rubbish. It’s froth, fluff, and not even the good kind. One could pick it up, flick through looking for something to engage with and find oneself at the back page within thirty seconds. My words? Nope. They are the recent words of an exec at News International. It covered nothing very well and subsequently, nobody cared much for it. Sports was covered badly, news was scant and business news almost non-existent. Celebrity news was ok if you wanted to know which bar Peaches staggered out of the night before but when did thelondonpaper ever rival Heat, Hello, or even the red tops for the lovely trashy news that makes the commute home go quicker? The same can be said of London Lite which will surely close as soon as it can.

A quick straw poll of my colleagues reveals that not everybody shares my view. Some people liked thelondonpaper’s fluff. One colleague often looked for herself being mentioned by a perfect stranger in the Lovestruck column. Others liked some of the columnists, (for me, City Boy ceased being interesting the moment he revealed his identity and went in search of media fame as the ‘moral conscience’ of the banker boys). Regardless, I stand by the notion that quality editorial and content has to be paid for. Everybody will understand that concept in the new world. The ‘freeconomy’ (see Ruth Mortimer’s blog on this very subject) is the stuff of dreams. If you are hoping you can make your living out of giving your product away free, then you don’t have a product worth offering. If it is of value, then put a value on it. News International is right to “concentrate on core products”. It needs to happen and will happen elsewhere. Far better newspaper titles than thelondonpaper will be shut down and lost before we find out what the future of the newspaper industry looks like. All we can say at this point is that one question has been answered.

A cigarette launch in bleak times for tobacco brands

Cigarette advertising of old

I found it really interesting to learn that Philip Morris, the manufacturer of Marlboro cigarettes, is launching a new premium cigarette brand next Thursday. I’m told the brand name will be revealed then and only then so I’m not sure whether it is a new brand or an extension of the Marlboro brand. Either way, I thought the last new premium cigarette brand had been launched a long time ago and that growth strategy for the big tobacco companies would come, in future, from a blend of innovation and consolidation in the market to create cost savings.

Growth in terms of newly-launched brands has, in recent years, come at the value end of the market, (think Imperial Tobacco’s Windsor Blue and Gallaher’s Sterling brands) where brand-building is minimal and low price is the draw.

Cigarette manufacturers are fighting a losing battle when it comes to marketing. Cigarette brands used to be a badge which smokers would associate with as indelibly as they did their jeans or car brand. That brand identity is rapidly diminishing. Why? Well, for a combination of reasons. A delayed health bill that will see the ban of all tobacco displays in any retail outlets will probably pass when it returns at the end of the summer. Such a result will see the UK following the Republic of Ireland, already a month into such a ban. Add to that ongoing process the smoking ban that has been in place for two years and you suddenly have an environment where non-smokers never see a tobacco brand.

In the past, smokers would sit in pubs and put their fresh pack of cigarettes on the table in front of them as part of their ‘drinking kit’. Now they can only smoke outside, the cigarettes invariably stay in a smoker’s pocket or bag until he or she is forced to go outdoors into the wind and rain. Packs of cigarettes on the pub table have now been replaced by mobile phones. If nobody can see what you smoke in a pub, why bother paying a premium for an aspirational  brand?

I might be wrong on all this as I gave up smoking about two years ago but at the time I knew which of my mates were Marlboro Lights smokers, which were Lucky Strike smokers, and who was on the Benson & Hedges. Now I have no idea what brands my friends or colleagues smoke. I never see their cigarette packets because we’re never stood together when they light up. That must be a huge loss of peer-to-peer exposure for some of these brands. When retailers are forced to put tobacco products under the counter, cigarette brands, which aren’t allowed to advertise, will all but disappear from view.

Some old friends and the old topic of ‘marketing DNA’

Recently, Marketing Week columnist Andrew Harrison wrote a great cover story for us asking whether great marketing DNA comes naturally to individuals and teams, or whether it can be created and nurtured within marketing departments. Using the examples of marketers that have emerged from some of the greatest marketing academies of the past 20 years (Asda, Dixons, P&G and so on), Andrew asked where tomorrows great marketers will come from – and whether they exist in clusters in certain companies right now. At the time he suggested that some of the digital companies and mobile phone businesses might produce our next super-cluster of marketers.

Well, two conversations I’ve had this week reminded me of that feature and got me thinking about other companies that have the qualities to produce the management talent of the future. Both people I spoke to worked together within the same entrepreneurial, enterprising and fast moving working culture. Both are now pitting their wits and skills against a tough market with confidence and flair. Jamie Mitchell, formerly marketing director and UK managing director of Innocent Drinks, phoned up during the week. It was lovely to hear from him as I’ve only caught up with him once and that was soon after he left the smoothie company. This week he was actually returning a call that I put into him after he sent Marketing Week’s very first letter of complaint about one of our articles (well, the first one since the new team came in last January anyway!) He made some fair points which I’ll detail here when I have the time to do so properly but more to the point, he told me that he was doing some consultancy work for Pret A Manger and also for PR firm Freud Communications.

Jamie is looking for his next big project to get a hold of and in the meantime, there is no doubt he will  benefit these two operations with his considerable expertise. I know he is in talks with various VCs and investors so that when the right thing comes along, (possibly in the food and drink or maybe in the digital space according to the man himself), he’ll be ready. Jamie, a former McKinsey graduate, has always been a CEO in the making – clever, experienced, driven and personable.

Another inspiring story from Innocent Drinks is in fact Story, a small (for now) PR  firm in the food and drink world run by Ailana Kamelmacher. Ailana was Innocent employee number 20 and stayed there for six years, so was witness to one of the entrepreneurial growth stories of the past 20 years. I met up with her for a drink today, the first time I’d seen her in ages, so was keen to hear her news.

Ailana always wanted to run her own business, and after trying out various ideas such as a business making high-fashion ethical trainers and another idea for an English seasonal flower brand, she started up Story PR. She has some great brands on her client list and is on the hunt for more. I reckon Story will be a success, if only because Ailana lived and breathed Innocent Drinks for all those years. When she joined, there was no way that business could carry passengers. It was too small. She was a central character in the story and came away with a hell of a lot of  experience of what does and doesn’t work in business, experience that she could mesh with her natural creativity.

Best of luck to both of them. Companies such as Innocent and the other entrepreneurial start-up brands that have made such impact on our shopping habits such as Tyrell’s, Burts, Dorset Cereals, Yeo Valley and so on, these are going to be the businesses that produce a lot of tomorrow’s best business people.

The art of storytelling

Every brand has its own story. Marketers don’t always need to tell it in order to communicate their messages, but doing so can be the difference between adding depth to your brand’s relationship with its customers and not having a relationship at all. Michael Mendenhall knew this when he left Walt Disney to become senior vice-president and chief marketing officer at Hewlett-Packard at the tail end of  2007.

On arrival, Mendenhall saw a global marketing budget of $624m being spent in a way that made no sense to him at all. In this week’s cover story, Joe Fernandez not only profiles Mendenhall but gets under the skin of how the world’s largest technology company revamped its entire marketing strategy by bringing some of Disney’s storytelling magic to it. You only have to read the endorsements of the likes of Samsung Electronics UK marketing director Mikah Martin-Cruz and former Lenovo and IBM executive Brian Bell to grasp that there are good lessons in there for other marketing professionals.

Elsewhere this week we have some really meaty content for you to get through. TNS has outlined the results of some research that is exclusive to Marketing Week regarding your recession strategy. A good read of that should see you steer well clear of any attempt to try and make your brand more appealing through offering a cut-price proposition.

Our columnists this week tackle some big issues; Raymond Snoddy looks at the potential trouble the media industry could find itself if (when) David Cameron’s Conservative Party forms the next government, and Stuart Smith takes us on a one-page round-the-world trip to describe how multinational brand-owners are going to survive and grow while still retaining a ‘local’ feel for consumers.

Online at marketingweek.co.uk, Stuart’s latest blog offers the definitive insider view on the Publicis $530m deal to take US digital giant Razorfish. If Stuart is right, WPP might not have been outbid after all. Sir Martin Sorrell may just have been a mite more circumspect about seller Microsoft’s conditions and what Publicis now has to commit to in terms of clients’ digital spend in the next five years.

As I write this, Ruth Mortimer is bashing out her latest blog on the Government’s advice to supermarkets regarding BOGOFs. And Jo Roberts has written her considered response to a letter that you will find on the Debate page this week, written by television evangelist Tess Alps, chief executive of Thinkbox.

A quick travel tip

I’ll post something more substantial later when I get into the office but before I forget, my favourite travel journalist Benji Lanyado has made another one of his short videos forThe Guardian. The latest instalment is about a small beach town in southern Turkey that has cleverly avoided being spoilt by large scale development. How? By banning concrete 20 years ago of course…

Wouldn’t it be lovely…

…to feature the Beatles on your website every day? Will this tie-up work for the Ben Sherman brand? I’m not sure. I love the era that Ben Sherman seeks to identify with but never felt sure about that brand. As a teenager I went through the same obsession with mod culture that most blokes did at that age. I bought all the (still) tremendous music, watched the right films, read the right books and wished every day that I looked as good in a two piece button down suit and desert boots as Phil Daniels did in Quadrophenia. And I know plenty of guys who took it all a lot more seriously than I did that dressed even for the most casual occasion in button down collar Ben Sherman Oxford shirts. But for me, the Ben Sherman brand went through the same problems Burberry experienced when quite simply the ‘wrong’ sort of people started wearing it (I have no excuse for how snobby this sounds except for the fact that I was aged in my mid-to-late teens when this view was formed).  Am I wrong? Is my opinion outdated? Maybe. But when Oasis and the like first started wearing the brand, it went mainstream and ‘mainstream’ was everything the mods weren’t. It’s that whole thing that your brand does not belong to you and can’t be controlled once it’s out there for public consumption. Good luck to Ben Sherman though. I think it’s a clever idea whether it works or not.

Banks retain our loyalty thanks to our fear of new entrants

I recently deserted the high street bank that held my current account for 15 years and switched my custom to another brand. My new bank had flirted with me for some time and in the end, a seemingly generous offer tempted me to make the change.

That was a month ago and I’m already in a row with the new bank over £70 worth of, in my opinion, unwarranted charges. The row means that the offer my new bank made that originally appealed so much has removed any sparkle the bank’s brand originally had. What’s left is a nagging feeling of regret that I didn’t just retain the easy status quo. That and the frustration that always accompanies the advice given by a telephone operative that the best thing to do would be to “write a letter to our head office”.

I’m writing about this because I’m still quite surprised at the research YouGov did for Marketing Week to inform our cover feature this week. It would appear that all the non-banking brands that are making inroads into the financial services sector in search of growth, the latest of which is Phones 4U, are wasting their time. Almost two thirds of people aren’t prepared to try any kind of new financial product with any brand that isn’t a traditional bank.

My first thought was this: Banks are nobody’s favourite institutions right now. The lack of anything like good, competent and strong financial management over recent years has bred an awful lot of anger and mistrust. But if, even now, customers are not only willing to stay but unwilling to go, then what does that mean for the role of the banking marketer?  In an era when most marketers are more focused on loyalty and customer retention than acquisition, the banking marketer’s job must look like a dream ticket.

Uncertain times

Clearly that isn’t the case. As I wrote in my Leader column in this week’s magazine I’m being a touch facetious. But what are banking marketers focusing on right now, in this almost unprecedented climate? How do they view the threat from brands knocking on the door to the financial services sector. I asked a few of them. Below are some of their comments which register a range of differing viewpoints. Sadly none of them wanted to be identified but they make for interesting reading.

1. “I believe the research you’ve got. But it doesn’t tell the full story. People might be worried now about the idea of banking with Tesco because they assume, probably rightly, that Tesco doesn’t have a big enough or skilled enough back operation to cope. But I think we could see customers slowly shift over time until it hits a tipping point. It could be years from now but if Tesco wants it enough then why not?”

2. “Even if nobody was to switch away from traditional banks, there are still notable swings between the big four or five banks. Customers do switch banks as you’ve recently learned Mark. It might only be 1% of customers but that 1% could be worth half a billion quid and is worth fighting for, so of course marketers have a role to play. At banks, marketers aim to increase the number of products used by each customer. So a bank might see that its customers average 1.2 products each and aim to increase that to 1.6 products. We know more about our customers than perhaps anyone in marketing so we are able to target them when their household insurance, car insurance or holiday insurance comes up for renewal. We know when they’re going to be needing a loan or a new mortgage.”

3. “It’s not a six month job for even a great brand like Tesco to succeed in banking enough to the point where consumers are convinced. It needs to happen over several years. To overcome the natural inertia of consumers, what these brands need to do is remove all the fear and all the hassle from the process. They need to be able to contact the customer’s employers, sort out all the direct debits, provide financial incentives and so on. There’s way too much hassle involved with changing bank. They would need to spend years recruiting the best people, establishing a smooth and secure operation and then combining all the necessary marketing channels, business strategies and data understanding to make it work.”

4.”Right now being a marketing banker is all about deepening relationships with our customers. You do get churn in the marketplace and we’ve all been hammered by recent events. We need dialogue with our customers and we have to demonstrate to them that our expertise, advice and personal guidance is unrivalled. Brands like Tesco may have the trust of consumers but you need far more than that to retain a base of of consumer current accounts. They are there on the horizon but I don’t feel too worried.”

Hilarious for the weekend…

Hoorah! The Oxo family is coming back via a new X-Factor style competition!

And if you’re after something cheery to read before the weekend, I love what is going on over at Ruth’s blog. Yes, it’s true –  ’DanBrown-gate’ is still rumbling onwards. The latest? Author of Deadline Simon Kernick has weighed into the debate. If you don’t know what I’m on about read this. Or just go to brandstrategy.wordpress.com. I particularly liked the first comment posted on the story on the ‘quill and quire’ blog. All very funny.

To all those that are enraged with Ruth for being ‘a lazy journalist’ (I love the fact that one blogger referred to her as “Ruth someone” –  the irony made me chortle) or equally outraged at the book publishing industry for its insidious marketing techniques, have a good weekend.

Brands without frontiers

While contemplating what I was going to say to an audience of marketing managers at an event put on by The Marketers’ Forum last night I got thinking about an idea. The night was labelled ‘New Frontiers’ and I started to think about the idea of brands that don’t have frontiers. Brands without frontiers are those that are thriving in a world where consumers don’t have frontiers. In the old world, brands would sit in their own sectors, concerned with bringing customers to them as they sought to grow market share in whatever pig-pen they occupied. Now, consumers need to be engaged where they are and there is no room for fences, barriers, boundaries or indeed, frontiers.

It can’t have come as much of a surprise to anyone this week to read that the two front runners for the chief executive role at ITV are Simon Fox of HMV and Pascal Cagni, one of Apple’s most senior European executives.

These are two classic ‘brands without frontiers’. They are both extremely good at breaking down barriers in order to compete in new sectors or new ways. HMV, literally a business on its knees up until two or three years ago as it’s reliance on selling CDs and DVDs was so cruelly exposed (ironically by Apple among others), has since reinvented itself. HMV is now an all singing, all dancing yet credible entertainment brand with live music venues and cinema as much a part of its business plan as anything else. Its loyalty cards that enable users to qualify for all sorts of attractive live content and experiences are helping revolutionise operations. Its stores have gone from looking tired and outdated, to fantastic experiences where shoppers can download all sorts of information such as track listings onto their mobiles as they browse.

Apple is another brand without frontiers. I’m not talking about its sexy brand or its understanding of how to sustain loyalty in its customers. I’m talking about its imagination. Its sense of verve. It dominates several different product sectors and interlinks them so that one customer can feel more benefit from the company, the more it engages with the brand.

Other brands without frontiers? Monocle, the magazine brand, now has a shop (online and offline) that sells all the stuff you see in the magazine. O2 has reinvented itself as more than just a telecoms brand with probably the single most successful sponsorship deal in recent years – that of the O2 Arena, (anyone want to argue?) Now O2 has linked up with Natwest to go into banking as well. This story and this analysis written by our feature writer Jo Roberts takes a look at how successful the brand might be in the financial services arena. Successful or not, what is impressive is the vision at O2 and the will to go and look for growth in new sectors with integrity.

So what about brands without frontiers? Take a look at this story about British Airways reporting some shocking results today and specifically the tone and wording of the comment left at the bottom of the story by one gent. “…I should be grateful but its left me depressed by BA management’s hari kari killing of their once iconic brand,” he concludes after cancelled flights meant he could rebook for a fraction of the price. Think about everything you’ve read about BA in recent months. Any positives? Any innovation? Not really. Not unless you see ditching the serving of sandwiches for some flyers innovation. Not unless you see asking staff to work for free as a move forward. Once one of the UK’s most powerful brands, BA now looks like a dinosaur of a brand hit by all sorts of problems that it was too slow to ever see coming.

It was ‘The World’s Favourite Airline’. It never needed to do anything else, so why should it bother being flexible? Well, the current malaise is its answer. With more strike problems probably on the way for the beleaguered but ever-stoic Willie Walsh, this is not a brand that currently has the resources or the spirit to do anything but find huge costs to cut in order to reduce outgoings and sort its pension deficit problems. One newspaper writer asked this week what separates BA from the likes of easyJet or Ryanair these days. It’s a tough question to answer.

The print media industry is another one where some of the cleverest executives in the country have been shocked, stunned and incapacitated by the progress of technology and changing consumer behaviour. Tie those factors in with the worsening of the economy and we’ve all found ourselves in a bucketful of trouble. Some of the great traditional newspaper brands simply aren’t going to make it. I’ve already written about the advent and challenges of charging for online content elsewhere so won’t go into it again but it’s clear that while newspapers like The Guardian, The Times, The Telegraph and The Sun have some of the best websites around, they’re all going to have to work very hard to identify which content they can charge for.

At Marketing Week we see ourselves as a brand without frontiers. Six months ago it was probably fair to say Marketing Week was a weekly magazine (albeit a much respected one in its field) with a rather static website to support the mag as much as possible. We’re very much enjoying the rate of progress we’ve made since and from the feedback I got at the Marketers’ Forum event last night, a good amount of you are too. But really, a brand without frontiers? A true brand without frontiers would be pushing it further than just blogs, a decent website, a magazine and some compelling shows and conferences. Well, stick with us as we see what we can do to fulfil the ‘brands without frontiers’ dream over the next couple of years. I’m predicting podcasts, radio, television, books and whatever else we can stretch to. Somebody last night on hearing my vision suggested we don’t have the budget. That is a problem for later on. To start with what you need is the imagination and the will.

Just a quickie…but an absolute MUST!

If you want to read the most authoritative take on the Microsoft and Yahoo! deal written anywhere, read this piece on our website by feature writer (and digital know-it-all) Joe Fernandez. He not only gives a very different view to the one presented here by Warren Cowan yesterday, he looks at the long term impact on the digital market.

Trust me, if you read nothing else on the subject read this, it will give you the ‘impress-your-peers’ knowledge that you need…