Weekly Industry Update
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May 28th, 2013 MARKETING NEWS 7 in 10 Adults access content from newspaper media each week .................................. 2 Consumers of all ages are scanning QR codes ............................................................ 3 Direct mail: Not dead yet ........................................................................................ 4 Metro makes print pages interactive with augmented reality ........................................ 6 PUBLISHING NEWS Magazines are more popular than ever among college students, says Shweiki Media ...... 7 Bonnier Corp. builds on dominance in men’s market. .................................................. 8 Hearst Corporation announces new leadership team at the San Francisco Chronicle ........ 9 Rodale launches standalone e-commerce site, Rodale's ............................................. 11 POSTAL NEWS USPS offers discount on samples ............................................................................ 12 RETAIL NEWS Retailer L.L. Bean keeping it in the family as new chairman steps in ........................... 13 Bon Ton boosts net sales, lowers net loss ................................................................ 13 Kohl's names Starbucks' exec chief customer officer ................................................. 14 ECONOMIC UPDATE GDP: 1st quarter 2013: 2.5 percent, 4th quarter 2012: 0.4 percent. Unemployment Rate: the unemployment rate was little changed at 7.5 percent in April. Consumer Confidence: which had improved in April, increased again in May. The Index now stands at 76.2 (1985=100), up from 69.0 in April. 1 MARKETING NEWS 7 in 10 Adults access content from newspaper media each week Staff , Print In The Mix . 5/23/2013 According to the NAA's SenseMaker Report, a majority of U.S. adults, 164 million (69%), read newspaper media content in print or online in a typical week, or access it on mobile devices in a typical month. Additional findings from the report commissioned by the Newspaper Association of America, and conducted by Scarborough Research, which surveyed 206,000 U.S. adults and assessed the latest data on news media consumption across platforms: MILLENIALS READ NEWSPAPER MEDIA CONTENT • Six out of 10 (59%) young adults, ages 18-24, read newspaper media content in print, online or via mobile in a typical week, or access it on mobile devices in a typical month. ACCESS TO NEWSPAPER CONTENT VIA MOBILE IS ON THE RISE • One in 5 U.S. adults (34 million) accessed content from newspaper sources on tablets and smartphones in a typical month, an increase in mobile audience of 58% from the same period a year earlier. • Almost half (47%) of the newspaper "mobile only" audience is age 18-34. • When it comes to device ownership, mobile newspaper users look like the mobile population. More than a third of smartphone newspaper users own iPhones and Android phone technology is the most popular of the non-Apple platforms. • Among those who read newspaper content on tablets, the Apple iPad is the most popular platform by far. NEWSPAPER CONTNET READERSHIP BY AGE GROUP • The median age of print newspaper readers is 54. • The median age of the online newspaper media audience is 43 years old. • The median age of those who have used a mobile device to access newspaper content in a typical month is 37. • Those who have accessed newspapers only on mobile devices are a median age of 33. TOTAL NEWSPAPER MEDIA AUDIENCE DIPPED 1% IN 2012 • Overall, the total newspaper media audience in a typical week (excluding mobile) dipped 2% in 2012 from 2011, a change in line with television media and less than radio. When the mobile audience is included, the decline in total newspaper audience is cut by less than 1%. • Note: These data points do not reflect the spike in sales for mobile devices in the past six months. It is likely that when new Scarborough data become available later in the year, the mobile component of the newspaper media audience will show continued growth. 2 About: Scarborough sampled 206,000 U.S. adults for this NAA sponsored study. Data is weighted and projected to adults age 18+ in each local market. Balancing variables include geography, age within gender, household size, education, race, Hispanic ethnicity (where applicable), Spanish language dominant (where applicable), and cable penetration. More on their methodology. Consumers of all ages are scanning QR codes Staff , Print In The Mix . 5/22/2013 According to the latest quarterly report from ScanLife, a global provider of mobile barcode solutions, the total number of scans processed by the company in the month of March 2013 alone hit a new high of 6.7 million (ScanLife processed over 18 million scans in Q1 2013). Q1 2013 Mobile Barcode Scanning Demographics: GENDER • Males outpace females 2 to 1 in the scanning of mobile barcodes (65% v. 35%). AGE • Nearly six in 10 (57%) of mobile barcode scanners were age 35 and older in Q1 2013, up from 41% a year prior. DEVICES • Android users account for 57% of 2D scans; Apple users, 41%; Other, 2%. TOP CONTENT • The most scanned QR Code campaigns are connecting users to product info followed by social media, mobile commerce, video, and digital coupons. TOP INDUSTRIES 3 • The top industries, in terms of scanning activity: retail, food and beverage, wireless, print, and toy. About: ScanLife analyzed data from the ScanLife Reporting Platform, which represents a broad look at the entire market for this report. It represents traffic from both 2D (QR) Codes and UPC barcodes. The 2D barcodes may have been generated on the ScanLife Platform, or from 3rd party generators. The 2D barcode scanning traffic may come from either the ScanLife app or 3rd party apps. Direct mail: Not dead yet Guest , PODi Insights . 5/24/2013 Direct Mail: Rumors of my Demise are Greatly Exaggerated. “I’m not supposed to tell you this,” warns the CEO of a fast-growing NYC startup pitching my firm. “I was coached that Venture Capital won’t like this answer. But since you asked, our best performing channel is direct mail.” Conventional wisdom really has it in for direct mail. The channel is shrinking. The post office is scrapping Saturday delivery. The cost of a stamp is rising. My personal favorite: Do people even check their mail anymore? Sample Size of One One of our CEOs – a brilliant direct marketer – seemed uncharacteristically resistant to test direct mail. This is a fellow who put himself through college with his direct marketing business and prides himself on test-and-learn. Our conversation went something like this: Caribou: Search engine marketing works for you. Email works for you. Maybe next you should do a $30k test of direct mail. CEO: Direct mail? Why would I want to do that? It won’t work. Caribou: I don’t know for certain that it will work. I’ve seen it bomb, and I’ve seen it perform brilliantly. Why are you so confident it will fail? CEO: I never check my mailbox. No one opens their mail anymore, so how could it work? Caribou: What about bills? What about letters from the IRS? CEO: I just wait until I see an alert on my iPhone, telling me that I’ve been charged a late payment. Then I know to go online and pay. Caribou: You win $40 Billion Can’t Be Wrong 4 I have a passion for channel strategy. (I don’t know why. I don’t know why anyone would have a passion for channel strategy, but I do.) Every market channel has its strengths and weaknesses. Let me sing the praises of mail. • Response. Sending out a piece of mail may cost $0.50, but response rates can run well north of 1%. If a customer is worth $100 or more, the ROI is excellent. • Accountability. Direct mail doesn’t pretend to build brand. Either it pays for itself, or it doesn’t. It’s a channel that both the CMO and the CFO can love. • Big Data. Much as the terminology bothers me, direct mail used big data before big data was cool. There’s a robust ecosystem of targeting data available, many with no equivalent online. • Scalability. I counsel our CEO’s to focus their efforts on marketing channels, which – if the unit economics work – can scale massively. Cracking the code on a niche channel won’t deliver VC-level returns. When a company cracks the code on direct mail, it can fuel years of hypergrowth. To reiterate on scalability: direct mail is not a niche channel. According to Winterberry Group, U.S. marketers spent over $45 billion on direct mail in 2012. That’s bigger than search, online video, online rich media, online banner ads, and traditional magazine advertising…combined! But Isn’t Mail on the Decline? Direct mail has natural buffers to remain an effective advertising channel. As total volume of mail declines, marketers who stick with it gain “share of mailbox” and higher response rates as a result. In most media the CPM’s plummet as impressions (or ratings points, or circulation numbers) drop, but the value of a direct mail piece actually rises as total volume goes down. Meanwhile, the technology supporting direct mail has marched forward. The data infrastructure is ever more robust. And innovations like full-color variable inkjet printing today enable a degree of dynamic creative that digital marketers can only envy. What’s Next for Mail The world of direct mail is evolving faster than you might expect. As an investor in ad-tech with a soft spot for direct mail, I see three trends: 1.Offline data comes online. Emerging companies such as AudiencePartners can deliver online media targeted to a marketer’s offline mailing list. This approach holds great promise to extend existing direct mail strategies into digital, multi-channel campaigns. 2.Web technology reinvents the workflow. Next generation workflow companies are enabling greater collaboration and more complex targeting – and promise less effort and error. Once a marketer uses a web-based platform to manage their direct mail content and targeting in this way, it becomes easy to then scale and extend to other channels.