The night before I meet Mail on Sunday managing director Marcus Rich to discuss his first year in Derry Street, the paper's You magazine picked up Supplement of the Year at the British Press Awards for the third year in a row - a welcome endorsement for the Mail on Sunday's weekly package, not least coming as it does within days of confirmation that sales for February 2010 fell below 2m. But, as Rich explains, the dip is a by-product of a new content and marketing strategy that is now starting to - quite literally - pay its way.
They say timing is everything and for Marcus Rich - who previously ran Bauer Lifestyle Magazines and Bauer Advertising at Bauer Consumer Media, owner of Heat, Grazia, FHM and Q - this meant moving into national newspapers at the start of 2009, a year dominated by recession.
Over-reliance on covermounts
"The Mail on Sunday at that time was down 24% year on year in ad revenue, which threw up a few immediate challenges," he admits with a wry smile. "The priority was to look at the cost base and improve performance without compromising the end product. The first step was to stabilise the business model. The second was to address the heavy reliance on covermount CDs - the paper was running two or three of these a month, but I felt there was a need to review this and explore other more strategic ways of marketing. Finally, there was a need to improve the overall Sunday package in a way that made it more efficient without compromising the end product."
Rich's response took some months to hone, but by the autumn of last year, he and Mail on Sunday editor Peter Wright were working hand in glove on a plan to refresh parts of the editorial package in a way that would provide new focus for a more content-driven approach to consumer marketing moving forward.
Covermounts can be cost effective - the Mail on Sunday's giveaway of Prince album Planet Earth in 2007 added 600,000 sales - and CDs and DVDs are still a strong component of our marketing activity because they do encourage new people to trial, Rich explains: "But we felt, following the arrival of Roland Agambar (the Sun and News of the World marketing director who jumped ship to Associated Newspapers from News International in early 2009), there was an opportunity to broaden our marketing activities in content marketing and home delivery."
Editorial tidy-up
A package of subtle yet strategic tweaks to the editorial package were introduced in response to this in early January 2010 following close analysis of both reader wants and advertiser needs. While there were no significant changes to the front of the main newspaper or the popular You supplement, the male-focused Live supplement moved to premium matt paper stock and increased its page size. The travel section was moved back into the main paper from the Mail on Sunday 2 section, leaving MoS2 squarely arts and criticism-focused. The football pull-out, meanwhile, became a broader sports pull-out.
Though known for being a female stronghold, the Mail on Sunday's readership has a fairly even male:female split. The aim, then, was to introduce improvements that would benefit each. Male readers aren't just football fans, and by creating an all-sports pull-out, male and female readers within the same household can now read different sections of the same paper at the same time, Rich explains. Making travel more prominent is a timely change as it is an area of interest more pertinent than ever in times of recession when consumers dream of escape. Upgrading the look of Live, meanwhile, strengthens the supplement's role for an important part of the paper's readership whose current interests are under-served by traditional publishers of men's magazines.
"I acquired For Him Magazine for Emap many years ago and have observed significant changes in men's magazines since the birth of the lads’ mag," he comments. "While today's 16 to 24s are migrating to digital, it's important to remember that the first generation of lads mag readers who are now in their 40s are very different. There is clear demand today for a grown-up men's magazine that keeps forty and fifty something men ahead in the world, and Live is a product that is unique in the newspaper arena and serves a need not fully satisfied elsewhere."
Ad performance
A number of gauges set to measure the success of all this have already shown positive results. "Ad performance improved year on year, especially in Live," Rich stresses. "In terms of circulation, I was most interested in underlying market share based on non-promoted UK sales - and this too is improving. It's important to remember than when we dipped below 2m in February 2010 this wasn't the first time - it also happened in March 2009, but the difference is we are now investing more in marketing for the future. This February, just 2% of sales were linked to CDs while last year the proportion was 6%. We're investing less in covermounts, more in content - and base sales are up as a result year on year."
As a result of all this, Rich's outlook for the year ahead and beyond is positive on the eve of the end of 2010's first quarter. "There are opportunities for growth in markets not necessarily growing fast in terms of top line through consolidation and investment in product that, in turn, can create market share growth," he claims. And here, too, the Mail on Sunday is well-positioned, Rich believes, thanks to the timely merger of the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday sales operations over a year before Rich's arrival.
The ad sales challenge
"The merged sales operation was a very big thing, in my view - not least as I did exactly the same thing at Emap," he explains. "In the current climate and at a time when we are seeing huge consolidation in buying points and amongst clients, it is a far better approach to have a single sales point selling you as one. They've done a brilliant job: Mail on Sunday share of display advertising is now 17.4% which makes it number one. But it's not just about scale. The key word in sales - especially in the current marketplace - is flexibility. Every client has different issues, and the starting point has to be understanding this. You just can't get away with a one size fits all approach. You must sell by brand, by platform and cross-platform without the structure of your own organisation acting against your need to bring together the right solution for each client."
This also requires commitment to constant innovation and great teamwork - both of which, Rich believes, are an integral part of Mail Newspapers' DNA. "Agencies by nature always demand on behalf of their clients great value and innovation and this has not changed, and they demand absolute clarity about what makes you unique and how you are investing to remain so to retain and build the quality audiences they want not just now but over time," he says. "Mail Newspapers has an overwhelming belief in content. It believes that the best product will out. And it is investing in content at a time when most companies are stepping back - we are producing more pages year on year, not less. The power of the brand and its positioning around Middle England is unique, and there is a long term commitment to sustaining and building that."
Even against a stark, 21st century backdrop of declining hard copy sales? Absolutely, he replies. "As an old boss of mine once said: No medium has ever died, it's just had to evolve and change. Coming out of recession, there will be periods of further consolidation, undoubtedly, and we will see strong brands enjoying great opportunities to grow as weak brands decline. But while business models may be changing because of new technology, there is no evidence of any less of a thirst amongst consumers for content. If anything, demand for content is increasing - to succeed, however, that content must be unique and well-edited."
Unwilling to be drawn into the online content paywall debate, Rich will say that future success will depend on so-called traditional media companies' ability to capitalise on their unique strength as content creators. "All new platforms - eReaders, iPads and more - are an opportunity for a media organisation to help their existing single platform content users to become multi-platform, and to evolve their own emerging, multi-platform business models," he claims. And here again, he believes, with a shift in strategy designed to consolidate and build its loyal, Middle England readership, the paper is well-positioned - both to capitalise on this trend, and make its mark.
Key challenges for the Mail on Sunday - as for all titles - moving forward are to keep close both to readers and advertisers to ensure the product evolves in step with the changing priorities of each.
"In many respects, the newspapers business is not much different to the magazines business - other than the intensity of the production process and the obvious requirement to publish every day. And the Sundays market in particular is very similar with its emphasis on magazine content," Rich adds. "Moving forward, we must reaffirm how clearly the Sunday and Monday-to-Saturday markets differ - Sundays being the time when families come together, net usage peaks, and big decisions like where to go on holiday are made. We must continue to emphasise this, as we must also keep fresh an argument around the changing face of the male reading audience. It's not revolutionary, but it's what it will take as we move out of recession into whatever happens next to continue growing our market share."
