What Irish newspapers did to encourage creative print advertising, and how they proved that newspapers can effectively build brand recognition for their advertisers, will be examined at the World Newspaper Advertising Conference & Expo, to be held in Zurich, Switzerland, on 22 and 23 February next.
There is still time to register; full conference details, including the programme and a list of participants, can be found at www.wan-press.org/zurich2007.
"We needed to get agencies to start talking and thinking more positively about newspapers," said Frank Cullen, Director of National Newspapers, who will be presenting in Zurich. "That was the first step, creating a feelgood factor around press. We then wanted to back that up with facts, concrete proof of the effectiveness of our medium."
The two-pronged Irish campaign began with a creative challenge to agency copywriters and art directors entitled ’What’s so powerful about press ads?’. Every leading agency in Ireland entered the competition, submitting more than 180 individual ads that expressed the power of newspaper advertising.
Cash prizes were awarded to the winners, but the real carrot was the enormous publicity involved: the winning campaigns were published across the NNI range of newspapers, generating huge exposure and making the overall winner - Chemistry’s ’Various Sizes’ - the most talked-about press campaign in years. (’Various Sizes’ went on to win a gold Lion at last year’s Cannes festival.)
The second part was even more ambitious - pairing 22 small indigenous food and drinks companies with 22 ad agencies, and challenging the agencies to create a brand-driven campaign that would "revolutionise the fortunes" of their client. Three winners were selected, with each company receiving a substantial press budget in order to publish their campaigns throughout the 18 NNI titles.
A research company was then commissioned to track each company’s brand awareness during the period of the advertising in a bid to demonstrate the effectiveness of the medium. The research is now almost complete and initial results are apparently very positive. In the meantime, NNI has launched a new creative challenge called ’The essential pleasure of my newspaper’.
Other conference speakers include:
 Graham Warsop, the founder of The Jupiter Drawing Room & The Dukes of Urbino.com in South Africa, who has won more international advertising creativity awards than anyone in the business. He will make a keynote presentation on advertising creativity and how it can be used to improve response, encourage repeat business and gain more revenue.
Martha Stone, Special Projects Manager for the Shaping the Future of the Newspaper project of the World Association of Newspapers, who will present the latest SFN reports on Advertising Best Practices and Benchmarking New Digital Revenues.
In a session on "now search engines want to sell newspaper ads," a report from the USA on the evolving role of search engines in traditional print revenues, by a representative of Google.
Mark Cross, Commercial Director of the London-based Institute of Practioners in Advertising, who will discuss the Touchpoints survey of media usage, which provides new readership metrics that are enormously aiding portfolio and multi-media sales.
Blanche Sainsbury, Commercial Director of the Bristol United Press, and Peter de Souza, Managing Director of City Xpress in the United Kingdom, on how on-line auctions can be used to finance advertising expenditures.
Gitte Vase, Key Business Development Manager for Nordjskye Media in Denmark, who will share some of the company’s solutions for new revenue generation.
Altug Acar, Advertising Coordinator for Turkey’s biggest newspaper, Hurriyet, who will present the company’s successful experiences in cross-selling advertising across multiple platforms.
Marek Tretyn, Head of Sales, and Tomasz Jozefacki, Head of Internet Division, for Poland’s Gaezeta Wyborcza, who will speak about the benefits of print and online cooperation in a highly competitive market.
Ricardo Pombo, New Media & Classified Advertising Director for El Tiempo in Colombia, who will speak about the "reverse sell" -- web to print advertising. The session will also feature a report from the United States on the benefits and drawbacks of search engines selling newspaper advertising.
Bela Papp, Managing Director of Ringier Publishing in Hungary, and Kornel Muller, Consumer Markets Insight Director for Unilever Europe, who will provide insights into fast moving consumer goods advertising and what newspapers can do to win some of it.
And many others. Please consult www.wan-press.org/zurich2007 for the evolving conference programme, registration and other information.
The conference will include a gala dinner and entertainment sponsored by PubliGroupe, Edipresse, Swiss Post, Tamedia AG and Ferag AG.
The Paris-based WAN, the global organisation for the newspaper industry, represents 18,000 newspapers; its membership includes 76 national newspaper associations, newspaper companies and individual newspaper executives in 102 countries, 12 news agencies and 10 regional and world-wide press groups.
Inquiries to: Larry Kilman, Director of Communications, WAN, 7 rue Geoffroy St Hilaire, 75005 Paris France. Tel: +33 1 47 42 85 00. Fax: +33 1 47 42 49 48. Mobile: +33 6 10 28 97 36. E-mail: lkilman@wan.asso.fr. |
