PUBLISHING:
Brand Revitalization

Client Situation

After several years of readership and advertising sales growth, our client, a well-known media group that focuses on sports magazines and information, was in the doldrums. Growth at our client and in the sports magazine segment overall was flat, while other formats such as cable TV, sports shows, and Internet sites were experiencing almost explosive growth. What was the problem? Had the client's brand become irrelevant? Why were readers and advertisers going elsewhere and what could be done about it? These were the most important questions asked by the client's CEO, and a Market2Customer^® (M2C^®) team went to work answering them and defining a clear path to sustainable growth for the company's flagship sports magazine.

Results

One year after M2C intervention, our client's short-term advertising sales were up 25% and newsstand readership was up 20%. The client overhauled the magazine's format and re-focused the editorial content to align it with what readers and advertisers required in today's world of information and infinite choice. Our research and analysis also provided insight that helped the client begin the difficult task of rebuilding the brand in the mind of the customer. We developed a crisp and well-articulated positioning for the magazine in the marketplace - ultimately giving the sales force something new and unique to say to advertisers.

The Intervention

How did we do it? M2C worked with this client using two of our proprietary methodologies—the Action Segmentation^® framework and the BrandMonitor^® diagnostic. These methodologies, combined with several pieces of primary market research, helped us identify and tackle four challenging questions:

1. Which segments of users of sports news and information are worth going after?
2. What is the desired experience sought by key reader segments?
3. What is the perception of our client's brand and product among both advertisers and consumers, and
4. Does our client have the ability to change the brand positioning, the product, the sales approach, or all three if that is required?

Early-on, we applied our quantitative Action Segmentation process to provide a deeper understanding of the market, revealing that even in today's high-tech world, there are still large segments of the population willing to pay for good sports news and information in the magazine format. Two segments in particular looked attractive because of their potential value as customers and their desired experiences. However, based on our qualitative research, we saw that what they wanted from a magazine had changed. Readers wanted entertainment and human-interest stories about players, not just the most comprehensive statistics and a recap of last night's game (the client's magazine's main focus). Nowadays, up-to-the-minute statistics can be downloaded in seconds; the readers wanted information and context, not data, and they wanted it packaged in an easy to read, interesting format. They also wanted more football coverage in terms of stories about teams, players, and coaches, and an updated magazine format. Not surprisingly, advertisers' views mirrored the readers'. Our client was surprised to learn that advertisers did not understand the magazine in terms of what it stood for and whom it was for. And like the readers, advertisers disliked the magazine's format, which they considered to be old-fashioned. However, while there seemed to be a lot 'wrong' with our client's product, one thing did stand out as a strategic advantage to be leveraged-readers and advertisers alike praised the quality of writing and overall editorial tone of the magazine.

Much effort went into re-designing the product to better suit the needs and desires of the target segments-more football and more stories in a more compelling format. Midway through the project, the product development process was under way. But what about the brand? What should the brand stand for in the new world? Were the old brand attributes still relevant? BrandMonitor^® diagnostic research helped us to understand what the brand currently stood for. It was considered 'traditional-like a smart librarian with glasses', and provided 'cold, hard information.' It delivered a lot of 'performance' (in the form of facts and information) but had very little personality (would you want to talk sports with a smart librarian?). In order to better meet the needs and expectations of the target customers, the brand had to evolve from an 'information' persona into an 'enthusiastic insights' persona. 'Enthusiastic insights' would leverage the information associations that the current brand had, but do so in a way that was more interesting and relevant. The new brand fed directly into the product development work being done to redesign the format as all stories, photos, and editorial tone had to work together to deliver a consistent and strong message. But could the organization deliver?

Success meant making changes-both in the sales force, and in the management. The sales force had to communicate differently about the product and brand, the messaging around the product and brand, and the overall content and tone of the editorial. We helped our client think through which organizational changes were needed and helped the senior management develop an action plan for implementing these changes.

And it worked-our client saw a 20% increase in newsstand sales and a 25% increase in advertising revenue. In the words of our client: "All the things that you want to be up, are up."

back to top