A symbolic coming of age of the NMA

Raymond Snoddy, says the appointment of Rachel Bristow and Peter Duffy to the board of the Newspaper Marketing Agency marks a clear (and cunning) message to the newspaper industry…

Sometimes the smallest things can alert you to the fact that significant trends are gathering speed.

Today’s straws in the wind are the fact that Rachel Bristow, marketing communications planning and buying director for Unilever, and Peter Duffy, head of Audi marketing in the UK, are joining the board of the Newspaper Marketing Agency.

Pardon? Big deal. In fact why are you even bothering to tell me such a thing that would normally hardly rate a paragraph in trade press appointment columns?

The announcement marks a symbolic coming of age of the NMA, which can prove that its activities have added real millions to national newspaper advertising coffers since 2003 – something like £400 million in fact.

Retail is one of the areas where the NMA has been particularly successfully according to today’s annual report, which reviews the past seven years.

The nationals took a 25.9% of retail advertising in 2003 but 31.2% in the year to June 2010. That amounts to an extra £89 million in revenue.

Cue Ms Bristow and the obvious hope that she can be a weapon of persuasion in the newspaper industry’s never ending battle against the knee-jerk use of the telly and the harmful stereotype that newspapers can’t do brand advertising.

Unilever is right up there with major players who have more than doubled their spending in the food, drink, cosmetics and toiletries categories, despite traditionally having made little use of newspapers. Overall the categories are up from 2.7% to 4.6%.

The apparently modest growth in percentage points actually translates into £26 million extra money.

The appointment of Mr Duffy is even more cunning. He knows about one of the sectors where newspapers are struggling to make headway – and they get two for the price of one. There is the Duffy who obviously knows about motors but there is also the Duffy who is knowledgeable about financial services as the former director of marketing services for Barclays Bank.

Motors? Down from 20.7% to 20.3% across seven years. Finance? Not so bad given the scale of the financial crisis at least in share terms. Up from 15.1% to 16.4%.

Nice to see such senior marketers crossing the tracks as non-executives to push the process forward.

Overall the NMA numbers, and above all else the levels of proof, are impressive.

The bottom line is that national newspapers took 16.4% of display advertising from the UK top 100 advertisers in the year to June 2010 compared with 13.1% in 2003.

In sectors where the NMA has carried out insight there has been a 13% uplift. Without research? A 23% fall. “This is a stonking performance,” say the understandably partisan Maureen Duffy, chief executive of the NMA.

Ironically, just as the latest advertising numbers are released along comes a major study suggesting that one of the central problems of the newspaper business in the UK and the US is their over-dependence on advertising.

The imaginatively titled:The Changing Business of Journalism has found that newspaper nations, which depend heavily on advertising for their overall revenues, have unsurprisingly been hit hard by both the advertising recession and the growth of the internet. In the US, ads often account for as much as 80%.

The dependence on ads does seen to be implicated by the study, which was commissioned by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, because newspapers seem to be doing just fine in countries such as Germany or Finland even though there is also high internet use in both countries. Ads typically account for only around 50% of revenue there.

It would be facile to rely on two dimensional nostrums – levels of subscription and public subsidy are clearly relevant here as indeed are prevailing cultural attitudes. However, it is useful to have facts from different jurisdictions.

If newspapers can survive and even flourish in some parts of the developed world then the lessons have to be learned on how that is to be achieved elsewhere. Intriguing international comparisons were offered by newspaper consultant Jim Chisholm at the recent Society of Editors conference in Glasgow.

People still buy newspapers – but not frequently enough. So maybe the largely subscription-based German newspaper industry has a few lessons to offer, as has The Times home delivery scheme in the London area.

Chisholm has a range of insights – including the importance of female targeting. Three quarters of the world’s most successful newspapers have a majority of women readers. After all, women are responsible for around 80% of purchasing decisions.

His take on newspapers and politics is even more fun. The Times has lost 6% of share for every year the Tories have been in over the past 30 years, and Conservative power has cost The Sun a similar share.

Naturally, The Guardian does badly under Labour while the Daily Mail has gained one million copies of market share under Labour while losing 500,000 under the Tories.

The message is clear. For most newspapers the aim should be: Try to get as much advertising as you can. Invest in anything that lifts subscription levels and frequency of purchase. Above all take up oppositional political stances. Craven support for the coalition is not good business.