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October 2002
Communicate...why?
At Belden Associates, we approach new teammates with this request: "Even though new, your eyes and ears are the most valuable ones we have…at least for a while!"
Most aren’t certain what we’re getting at, but we explain why it’s critical to ask, "Why?" A fresh point of view and different background help everyone - questioning the way and how things are done and bristling at any "we’ve always done it that way" explanation was as important as any statistical or analytical skill.
We’re simply asking everyone to "communicate"…to share in a way that adds value to the organization, and ultimately, to our clients. We strive to be greater than simply the sum of our individuals, no matter how talented. And, you know what? We’re getting there!
Looking at the newspaper industry (about 90% of our partner relationships) it’s beginning to look like the same lesson(s) are beginning to apply? There is some communication – we’d love to see more.
There have been times we’ve delivered findings to a client and the results have remained at the Publisher, General Manager, Editor level and never filtered any further? While working on the design of a recent questionnaire, Belden Associates served as the "go between" for Advertising and Editorial staffs that apparently didn’t talk at all! And, we have many clients who have a wonderful story to tell (at least, at it looks that way) yet, they do very little to share internally, and not too much more to their audience. Does that make any sense?
Study after study – and, reinforced by the Readership Institute efforts – we find that by many objective standards, newspapers are doing a reasonably good job of providing content readers seek.
Yet, we rarely tell anyone about what and where that content is: there’s little promotion and communication with our audience?! And, when there is, the commitment is short term.
Here’s an idea we’ve seen at a couple of papers – when conducting a research project (just about any, but preferably readership or some strategic study) have newspaper employees take the survey too. EVERYONE. And, make sure to view findings separately from the balance of the sample.
Not only does this effectively communicate what you are trying learn, but it internally communicates that everyone is important in getting that message across.
When this has been done, we’ve inevitably seen internal standards and measures are higher. The newspaper team has higher readership, holds the paper more accountable, is more critical of service, has a greater duty to society, than the audience they serve.
If papers can harness this tremendous internal resource to spread their word, the whole industry advances.
From an advertisers standpoint, whenever we ask "what media consumers rely upon when making decisions" inevitably newspapers lead the pack.
Yes, the Internet is making inroads in some categories, most notably, travel. Yet other "traditional" media continue to slip and barely compare.
Speaking of the Internet – our work repeatedly shows that it is an ally, not a threat. Sure, there are some die-hard "early adopters" who have abandoned print for online. We’ve been there before. But, after thousands of interviews, it is certain, the net effect is that newspaper web sites extend the reach of newspapers (in market as well as out) and does so with highly desirable audience segment…from both an advertising and editorial point of view.
Again, more good news!
But, for reasons that make little sense, all this good news isn’t shared across the entire newspaper platform, nor to the audience it serves? Production should be talking with editorial, who in turn, should be listening to advertising, who just might have a thing or two to share with circulation who has got to be closely aligned with marketing and promotion, and they should all be supported by management.
The old clichés DO apply…multiple heads are greater than one – especially when seeing and saying the same thing. Taken in this context, we’d be crazy not to communicate amongst our complete internal audience and sharing the wonderful newspaper story.
This is an especially important notion since we have another competitive advantage vis-à-vis traditional competitors -- infinitely more human resources to collect information and to connect with advertisers. Something on the order of 100,000 reporters and sales reps are on the streets – if they all knew more of our wonderful status and were constantly sharing, we’d be touting our readership and circulation gains, not the reverse.
All the more reason to communicate.
On top of these hopefully compelling reasons to do a better job of communicating – as if better work forces reaching better audiences, that’ll lead to better margins weren’t enough – there’s at least one more reason all of us should be doing a more thorough communications job…
…It’s simply the right thing to do.
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