It’s a Tuesday night at Graeme’s. I’ve got a glass of warm beefy red in one hand. It’s my second. Next to me is Nancy, who’s about 93 but could still pack a good punch and is sharper mentally than an artists scalpel. Next to her is the woman from the corner who I’ve never met before, but she’s very well-spoken and her husband is a Judge, I think. The next couple are a real couple – finish each other’s sentences, nod as the other talks etc. My eyes go on around the room. All of them are wearing slightly shabby, casual clothes, all of them extremely friendly – hell-bent on bonding – coming together for the common good. Ie. Ours.
This is Hawthorn, it’s 8.25 pm at night and we’re just getting into the decision making part of the little drinks session called to halt a development in our street. The blood is boiling. The argument heats. We need to up the ante against the developers. We need to scare them into thinking we’ll go all the way (with a Judge or two in the street, I assume that means the Federal Court – I’m wondering how much my family would have to contribute if it got that far – do Judges get discounts?). The meeting of neighbours collectively decides it would be worthwhile if we could interest the media in our plight.
Suddenly, all eyes turn to me. I’m in that terrible predicament where you know you should have heard the last sentence and have a snappy answer, but you’ve been staring out the windows cause it’s such a lovely day and now the teacher is about to throw something at you and you don’t know what to say. The same dry throat and skin-prickling sensation hits me like it used to so often at school – moments before the duster slammed into my head.
I swallow a mouthful of wine, knowing that it would slow down my expected rate of reply a touch (not thinking it probably confirmed my status as the street’s worst drunk) while I struggle for an answer. I leap in the deep—end. ‘Of course’. I say as if I knew the question.
“So you’ll tell us when we need to be somewhere for the photographer?’ I nod again. I now know what they want me to do. To speak to one of the local paper’s journalists and see if I can wrangle a story.
Nothing better to scare off the developers than an all-out brawl in the local paper. One of the other blokes reckons he knows a Councillor, so if we can get an interview with them as well, they could comment on the situation from a Council perspective. In a few more minutes we’ve got a workable angle – and I’m ready to make the call the next day. ‘Oh goodo’ I can hear someone say as we all clink drinkies at the decision. ‘Oh, whacko’, I’m off again, I think to no-one in particular…
What is this? A lefty political stance in Marketing Magazine? We’re on the side of developers and capitalism in Marketing land. “Don’t you go getting all hippy-trippy on us Geoffrey. Give us useful tit-bits on how to manage marketing issues or go back to your bean soup and bong party” more than one of you are thinking, as you read this.
Yes, I do get involved in political things when it looks like they’ll impact on my hip-pocket. So would you. If they put up a three-unit development on the land opposite my place they’ll de-value the street by about 10%. With some 30 families all holding properties worth about a million, that’s us, the street, losing 3 million. The developer’s might make about $300,000 profit. Which they’ll take somewhere else and spend. The Council’s understand this – they make their money from charging rates based on house value. They can charge less in developed streets. So everyone gets interested.
And the main vehicle to have this argument? The main media? The local free into home paper. The last media left for communities that can be relied upon to support the common good. Local papers are one of my favourite media. Not because they can be influenced by some un-known bloke calling up the journalist with a decent story, but because you as a marketer can stand out.
You can dominate a local for not a lot of money – a couple of thousand for a full page in one of the big ones. A few hundred for smaller spaces in big papers or big spaces in smaller papers. You can build a brand effectively in a local. You can use one of the oldest and most reliable vehicles – simple basic print, to hit almost every home in Australia if you need to, and you can do it one suburb at a time, which means you don’t need a huge budget to slowly take over any market in Australia. You only need two things – reasonable creative and a bit patience.
Cause if you’re dealing with local paper reps, you’ll need patience. And plenty of it.
A few days later I’m on the phone negotiating page rates for a newish client who does developments out on the edge of Melbourne – (God I love being in Advertising, people are never surprised by my blatant hypocrisy) you know those suburbs that pop up between the weekend you visited Aunty Audry’s place and the week-end later you returned to pick up the kids swimmers and your wife’s sunglasses? In that week they’ve built another 2,000 homes and flogged them off to struggling young families and golden oldies escaping from the inner suburbs and pocketing $500,000 to retire on in the change over.
Anyway, I’m on the phone to the local paper rep and she stops me in sentence two. “Oh, it’s real estate. You can’t put it in EGN (Early General News – the first 30 or so pages are declared EGN’ to justify 20% extra on the rate card) it’s Real Estate. It has to go in the Real Estate section.” “But we don’t want to put it in the Real Estate Section – we want it in the EGN – we know our targets are people who aren’t actively looking for a house – this is virgin land. We’re happy to pay a reasonable loading but the client has specifically demanded EGN.” “No. If I let you put anything in EGN all the developers would want to put things in EGN and we’d have no Real Estate Section’. She replies so sweetly, with a voice like a truck driver taking oestrogen. “We used to do lots of work for local papers – you charge a very low rate in your Real Estate Section and a premium, in EGN. It’s a very good thing to get big advertisers to take ads out in the EGN – it’s hugely more profitable for your owners.” I try, as humbly as I can, to explain. It’s like talking to cold porridge.
“No.” This goes on for another 2 or 3 minutes. I give up. “How about if we just put a pointer in the EGN to keep the client happy and we point to the big ad that’s in the Real Estate Section?” I try. “Would that be about Real Estate?” she asks. I think we’ll, derr. But I say, quite convincingly “Of course not – it would just say Look at Page 72.” I lie. She buys the argument, we move forward and complete the booking process.
This is what you have to deal with. Someone whose idea of big-time advertising is an eighth of a page with 10 different stars on it and 6 typefaces all screaming for attention. Who last week ran a beauty salon but burnt someone’s hair off, and so is now selling 10 x 2’s in 6 week contracts. Ah, the professionalism.
Why go local?
You are where your customers are
Locals reflect the issues concerning the community they serve. Given that national issues are debated on a national stage – like the GTV 9 News, the locals handle and are relegated to arguments about building regulations, thefts in shopping strips, whether you should be able to turn right at that black spot intersection, local kinders being understaffed. All the stuff that you as a big-wig business professional think you’re above until it’s your kid’s kinder or the intersection on your way to work. Similarly, this deeply imbedded impact on the local people allows you to get your brand into the hands of locals in a much better way than bigger scale media.
You look like you care
Supporting local papers means your retailers and customers think you’re in touch with them. Retailers always want support and like local papers because they do work at a retail level quite effectively and they can put up the ad in their store. If you are a retailer reading this, it’s your local paper, read by your local customers, so get behind it.
Vary the campaign by location
You can, in fact you should, do different campaigns according to localised needs in locals. With a community like Moonee Valley’s which has more than 32 languages spoken, with a large slab of Somalians and people from lots of other African, Asian and South American (read non-English speaking) countries, you could test appeals, and run whole campaigns, that are very different to those you might use in blonde, blue-eyed Brighton.
More size for less money.
Few advertisers can afford big spreads in big circulation magazines or daily press – they are forced to give their ads less size than desirable. In locals, you can be the biggest fish in the pond easily.
If we love them, how do we buy them?
Use as a low-cost tool into selected areas
When you are seeking to hit an area because they have a high level of an attractive demographic – lets say your health department has a responsibility to assist single mums, you might use the Cranbourne (low-priced fringe suburb South East of Melbourne, full of single mums living on the baby pension – God I’m a bitch sometimes) local paper as a stand-alone media, or if needed, to support radio or leaflets or outdoor, depending on what you need to do.
Buy big slabs
You can run big ads. Try a four-page lift-out or wrap-around (additional 4 page large sheet of paper, around the outside of the actual newspaper) if you want to really stun a small paper audience. Or a two-pager. Or, if you’re a small retailer who needs your local customers – go for a ¼ page every second week, followed by a smaller buy. It’s still only $300-400 bucks.
Buy regularly
A regular space, whether it’s on a local billboard, or in this case a local paper, works to ensure faith – if you’re always there, you’re reliable.
Buy at odd times
There’s 52 weeks of the year. There’s lots of weeks when nothing is happening and the paper is thin. That’s the right time to run a big ad and it’s the right time to ask for editorial. Mind you, given they are Real Estate based and the selling season is Spring, don’t expect it to be between September and December.
When in doubt, go twice
Nobody does double ads in locals. Nobody does small ad then big ad. Nobody does consecutive pages (like you see in B&T when some recently formed agency’s art director gets her head. “I know, why don’t we spell ‘creative’ one letter at a time? It will take 8 pages of consecutive right hands”) mainly ‘cause you’ve got to get that past a blindingly dumb art department. Don’t try anything that’s too cute. They contract out most space on most pages, so they have very little flexibility and will often promise a page 15 and you’ll end up on page 35.
Use colour where you can.
While most of the larger groups like Leader or Cumberland Papers now have colour on many of their pages, the smaller groups will often be running B&W and just have a few pages in colour. Colour gets better sales. So if you can’t get full, use spot colour. But be careful with your branding, though. Many companies logos etc. do not work in certain colours – NAB’s warm red isn’t too good reproduced as pale blue.
Go in the wrong spot.
Almost everyone flips through the first 5-7 pages, before they get bored and go into the singles pages or the cars review. Therefore an ad in the early general news will out-score an ad on page 45. And an ad for real estate will invariably stand out better amongst the food section than it will amongst another 400 house ads.
Buy near the singles section
The most read part of a local paper is the ‘Male seeking Female, Female Seeking Male’ bit, I guess cause it’s funny. Buying an ad on the same page or adjacent works better for that reason.
Buy distressed
Be the company they can always rely on to take the big bit they couldn’t sell. Talk your agency into doing a whole series of different sizes and shapes at a bargain price cause they’ll get the media commission one day.
Creative
As few normal advertisers in locals have an agency working with them, and often rely on the ‘creative’ talents of the staff designers (who last week were working for the local printer doing wedding invitations) the quality of ads is often not too good. Therefore, if you do strong creative, you will stand out like dog’s balls.
Buy to theory
Yes, right hand page is better. Yes, white space works. Yes, have the phone number near the logo at the bottom corner. Yes, one or two typefaces out-does more every time. Yes, I’m boring myself.