Home Depot Gets Local

What does Springtime mean to The Home Depot? For the last three decades, it meant gardening supplies, sprinklers, and lawn products. However, this year, it means something different depending on where you live.

Trish Mueller, Senior VP-Chief Marketing Officer for the big box, said that their marketing programs can be adusted within a two-week window. This means that people in North Carolina, where temps are already hitting the 80s, will get a different homepage and email blast than those in the Northeast, where every night of April still seems to be threatening us with a frost.

If you're in the Midwest, where tornadoes touched down and ripped trees out of the ground, you'll be treated to promotions of chainsaws. Those promos will be flanked by blogs about proper techniques for cutting said trees free from your garage roof. 

Hope Depot even teamed up with the Weather Channel to provide localized lawn and garden tips, including a segmet on The Weather Channel that features a weather report tied into an appearance by a garden specialist, concluding with a Home Depot tip.

Home Depot is getting more involved with listening to consumers and having an active dialogue with them, than they ever have in the past.

Publishers need to band together to see how they can help big retailers like The Home Depot get their messages out, via print and digital means, on a local level. Sounds like the perfect opportunity for regional publishing assocoations!

Time Spent on Mobile = Newspapers & Magazines combined

As discovered on a TechCrunch piece, adults in the U.S. are spending as much time on their mobile devices as they are with newspapers and magazines combined. People are spending 155 minutes per day using the Internet (up 9 minutes from last year), 50 minutes per day using mobile (up 11 minutes), and 50 minutes per day newspapers & magazines (down 5 minutes). Besides newspapers & magazines, radio and TV have also dropped.

So what does this say about the print industry? Well, for one, if you haven't already, get your publication online, and make sure it's mobile-friendly (like with a JB Page-Flip Digital Edition). The thing that publishers tend to look past is that a majority of what people are doing on mobile and the Internet is READING…which is exactly what they do with your product. Just because they're spending time with a different medium doesn't mean they don't like your content, it may simply mean they prefer a different way to consume content.

You also have to realize that every year a study like this is taken, it's another year of the iPod Generation being taken into account. This year's study of "adults" technically included more of who were last year considered "kids," who did not qualify for this study because of age. They may have never read your publication to begin with, and perhaps are yet to find your content relevant, especially in the discussion of local newspapers and shopper guides. I'm not sure about you, but I don't know any 21 year-olds who have any interest in what the Pennysaver has to offer. They will, though, when they have a serious career, kids, and a mortgage!

Remember, if it's true for your publication that fewer people are reading in print, it doesn't mean they're not interested in your content. You just have to make sure you're delivering it in the mediums that they spend the most time with. Do this within reason, though. You don't want to spend $100k on a TV show version of your newspaper, but some Google AdWords, web site optimization, and a way-cool Digital Edition could help you promote your content on multiple mediums in a cost-efficient way.

- Justin Gerena

Paper Thrives as a Mobile Medium

By: Davis Brewer, ClickZ, Nov 12, 2009

Mobile couponing can be likened to the white whale of the mobile advertising industry. Over the last few years, I've heard about a number of tests of mobile coupon delivery — particularly for consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies. However, much of this talk reminds me of something Malcolm Gladwell said a few years ago at a Slate.com symposium on online media and the future of journalism:

Suppose we reversed things and all we had were computers and iPods and we didn't have paper and I came along and I said, "I've got this really great idea, which is, we're going to print this stuff on this thing called 'paper,' and you've never heard about it, but it has some real advantages. It's incredibly cheap, it's really light, you can stick it in your bag, you can take it with you, it doesn't need any electricity, it's pretty permanent, you can manipulate it, it's tactile, you can fold it, you can do all these amazing things.
What would people say? They would say, "Oh my goodness, what an extraordinary breakthrough."…Masses of funding [would come] from venture capitalists…who were suddenly enthused with this extraordinary thing called paper, and we realized, you know what, oh my goodness, we can send it through the mail really quickly and cheaply. It doesn't cost that much…

Mr. Gladwell was talking about newspapers, which are in rapid decline, but he could also be talking about coupons. The latest figure reported by the Audit Bureau of Circulations shows newspaper readership in October was down 10.6 percent from a year ago and is now at its lowest level since 1941. Just 40 million Americans receive the Sunday paper. Yet, people still love their old-fashioned paper coupons. According to an April 2009 comScore report on the state of the U.S. online retail economy, the most common way that consumers get coupons is still by clipping them from newspapers. Forty-seven percent of consumers still get coupons this way. This comScore report didn't track mobile couponing specifically, but the majority of ways that people used coupons involved paper — clipping from flyers, direct mail, coupons on receipts, and coupons on packaging, were all used by more than 30 percent of consumers. By contrast, a report from Scarborough Research showed that only 8 percent of U.S. consumers used mobile coupons. That's fewer than comScore reported as using entertainment booklets.

It's great to hear about the number of ways that advertisers can benefit from mobile coupons: cost savings from digital distribution, possibility of an ongoing one-on-one relationship between marketer and consumer, and more personalization. They can also be tied to other media by adding a scannable code to a print ad or a text message address to a TV spot or billboard. But, while these advertiser benefits are great, we need to think about the consumer. And consumers seem to prefer paper by a large margin. Paper coupons have many advantages. They're light, fold up, and you can carry them in your purse or wallet. Paper coupons operate without a battery or Internet connection, and the consumer can use them no matter what model, operating system, or data plan they have. Old-fashioned coupons also are pretty good for marketers, because they can carry barcodes (trackable!) and they can be easily delivered through the mail or handed out in a store (they're location aware). Also, paper doesn't require large technology upgrades at the checkout counter. The checkout process is fraught enough without adding a layer for store and shopper.

In the short term, mobile couponing makes the most sense for certain types of retailers, such as casual dining and quick service restaurants, some clothing and department stores, and retail services, like hair salons. In most of these cases, a simple coupon code can be delivered via text message, much the way these companies already use coupon codes delivered via e-mail or online. These don't require technology upgrades to link back to loyalty cards or consumers to download a special application. These companies should be aggressively testing mobile coupons now, because they control their own checkout lines and the volume in those lanes is going to be relatively low.

It's going to be a longer road for many CPG companies and grocery stores to get this thing figured out. The barriers are high, and right now, mobile coupons just aren't the best delivery mechanism. That crown still belongs to paper. Speaking of, I just got coupons in the mail today. So I'm off to Home Depot to use a 10 percent off coupon, and maybe I'll use that 20 percent off coupon from Bed Bath & Beyond if I have time.

Free Community Papers Survive

Not all the news about papers is bad. Our industry is best positioned to move to the forefront.
By: Dan McDonough Jr. and Alan Bauer – Wed May 6, 2009

Haddonfield, N.J. – It's widely reported – and has become generally accepted – that the newspaper model is either dying or already dead, when, in fact, thousands of newspapers across the country are doing quite well. Thousands of newspapers deliver for their readers and advertisers every day. Thousands of newspapers are positioned to embrace – not be destroyed by – emerging technology.

But we don't get to read much about those newspapers. Sure it's news when giant corporations crash and burn and lives are disrupted. Stories that report on incompetent leaders who, ironically, receive outlandish compensation are widely read. Documenting the downfall of powerful entities, whether they are governments or businesses, is a legitimate pursuit. But, as any respectable journalist knows, when you tell only half the story, the story is incomplete – or just plain wrong.

In this instance, the half that receives little to no attention from big media involves the men and women in the newspaper industry who write the stories, sell the ads, print and deliver the papers and update the websites every day, without fail, for media companies that are far from dead.

The National Newspaper Association (NNA) last month reported on a study that showed community newspapers were far less affected by the challenging economy than the industry in general (or the economy in general, for that matter). The Suburban Newspapers of America and NNA's reporting group showed 2008 fourth-quarter advertising revenue of $428.7 million, only a 6.6 percent decline from the same quarter in 2007. The Glennco Consulting Group estimate was much worse, however, for the overall newspaper industry. There it showed decline in fourth-quarter advertising expenditures of 21 percent, according to the NNA.

So while advertisers cut their spending by 21 percent across the industry, the impact to community newspapers was less than 7 percent.

In addition, 26 percent of the SNA/NNA reporting group launched new products in 2008. Indeed, many community newspaper companies are growing.

The fact is that gains among progressive community newspaper companies are offsetting a large part of the massive losses being suffered by the staid, big newspaper companies.
"Community newspapers certainly are not immune to the economic downturn that is affecting all businesses, but, as the primary and sometimes sole provider of local news in a community, they remain strong and viable," NNA president John Stevenson said in the article.

These "strong and viable" companies recognized and adapted to the changing economy in a way that larger newspapers – for the most part – are not. They adapted to evolving reader habits and emerging business models. They abandoned the traditional, head-in-the-sand mentality of denial and exploited the opportunities presented by their often larger, but undeniably obsolete, brethren.

At Elauwit Media, we learned long ago that people don't want to "pay" for their news anymore.
We know that, for advertising to be effective, people have to actually see the ads. Our business model and philosophy of making sure "Everybody Gets It. Everybody Reads It." pushes us to bring local news not found elsewhere to everybody who has an address in town. It fills a very specific need for our readers and it works so well that, for the past two years, we have been listed among South Jersey's 10 fastest-growing privately held companies. We've gone from a start-up in 2004 with $100,000 in revenue to a thriving company with revenues in excess of $2.4 million in 2008.

That's certainly not the story we're hearing about newspaper companies today. But that's the story of so many of us smaller newspaper companies that have adapted to the changes in the market.

This success is no great mystery – it's the American way. Ingenuity, creativity, and the entrepreneurial spiritalways have been rewarded. The newspaper companies that have altered circulation methods and policies, have focused their content and developed news delivery methods to fit today's audience and advertisers are thriving. They found new streams of revenue and ways to reduce costs that didn't eviscerate their core products.
In other words, they ran their businesses the way businesses ought to be run. For instance, huge regional daily newspapers would do better to stop requiring people to subscribe and instead deliver the paper to everybody in their target demographic (the market that key advertisers want to reach). If big newspapers would charge the advertisers, not the readers, they could still turn things around. That would be a bold way to evolve. It is highly doubtful they'll do that. We did.

So as the giant media conglomerates continue to watch their kingdoms crumble, and the self-styled scribes of truth chronicle their every misstep and blunder, the rest of us will continue to vacuum up their former readers and advertisers. We'll continue to grow. We'll continue to adapt. We'll continue to profit. And we'll do it all while upholding the standards of journalism that make newspapers so important. And therein lies the future of newspapers – one that's not so gloomy for everyone.

Dan McDonough Jr. and Alan Bauer are founders of Elauwit Media, a community newspaper/media company based in Haddonfield, N.J.