Stopping giveaways? But where do you stop…

PANPA (or is that NPA) chief executive Mark Hollands has weighed into the issue of targeted complimentary copies, suggesting that “chasing circulation as if their commercial survival counted on it” … “wasn’t much of a strategy, anyway”, writes Peter Coleman. But doesn’t it? Without circulation, what do the people in advertising have to sell, and while Hollands acknowledges that, “part of the structural challenge for our industry is to deliver audiences valued by the advertiser”, he appears to challenge the logic that sees copies of newspapers placed in locations where they will reach specific demographic groups. • Hotel room copies reach executives travelling on business and, of course, tourists, whose custom is likely to be attractive to advertisers; • Those in chauffer-driven cars, for whatever purpose, have money to spend; • Air travellers – especially those up at the front – are deemed so good a target market that publishers such as Fairfax Media chase them around the world with remote and often expensive digitally-printed copies. After all, they’re something to read other than the (free) inflight magazines with their plethora of upmarket advertising. Elsewhere, commuter newspapers reach a captive audience which probably wouldn’t bother buying one, opting instead to pass their time with their mobile or a paperback. In the competitive UK market, while two afternoon frees (News International’s ‘thelondonpaper’ and ‘London Lite’) have dropped out of the chase, the long-troubled ‘Evening Standard’ has decided that it has a better chance of survival as “the world’s first quality free”. It’s upping distribution – part of which was already discounted or free – to 600,000 giveaway copies from a base paid circulation which was not much more than a quarter of that. There’s nothing wrong with giving newspapers (and magazines) away: It’s a form of push marketing which works for advertisers and the publishers of what Australia likes to call ‘community’ newspapers, commuter titles and of course, trade press publications such as GXpress. And where do you draw the line between free (and discounted) copies, and a weekend wad of newsprint which costs more to print and distribute (alone) than its cover price; or super-glossy supplements such as Fairfax’s ‘[thesydneymagazine]’, given away with the ‘Sydney Morning Herald’? Oh? It’s called marketing… and circulation may not be the be-all and end-all, but it is an essential component. Something of which some US titles may perhaps have lost sight. Everyone would like to be paid more for what they put out – or paid for it at all – and this is at the heart of the Murdoch push on online content. But no audience, no advertising sales. Everyone knows that. Yes, these are times in which we need to reconsider what we’re doing: But supporting justifiable scrutiny of the numbers, costs and demographics of complimentary (and bulk) copies – and perhaps the impact of the way in which they are now audited – is not the same as suggesting giveaways are a waste of money. What's also changed is that it's the chief executive of the publishers' association voicing the message.