Education and training have been a particular feature of ACE’s activities for the past few years, through initiatives such as the Ashridge Executive Development and Circulation Development Programmes (CDP).
CDP+ is the latest ACE programme. The course was designed, said ACE’s Chris Collins, “to show delegates the reality of the industry, through site visits” and was supported by a broad range of industry players. The site visits, said ACE Chair Sharon Douglas, were intended “to provide a strategic but practical view of the complete supply chain.” So visits were arranged to a newspaper publisher (Telegraph), a magazine publisher (NatMag), a retail branch (NFRN and Tesco), a retail head office (Tesco), a distributor (COMAG), two wholesalers (Smith News and Menzies) and, last but not least, a visit to News International’s print site.
In addition to the site visits, the delegates were split into four syndicates and tasked with preparing a three year circulation marketing business plan for a live title. Each syndicate would be mentored by a senior member of that title’s circulation team.
The titles put under the microscope were a well-established weekly suffering from a long term decline in sales (Woman’s Own, mentor: Adrian Hughes), a 34,000 circulation niche title looking to make inroads into the approximate six million audience of its sister TV programme (BBC Countryfile, mentor: Martin Hoskins), a heavyweight Sunday newspaper slowly losing sales in a declining market but looking to take market share from its rivals as well as attract more of the readers of its daily stablemate to take the Sunday too – currently only 55% do (Mail on Sunday, mentor: Tracey Hart) and a woman’s glossy monthly with slowly declining sales, looking to keep its head above the all important 400k threshold (Cosmopolitan, mentor: Sharon Douglas).
The teams came up with detailed forty odd page plans which they had to condense into fifteen minute presentations to the assembled gathering of senior industry bods.
Well, how did they do? Somewhat to everyone’s relief, admitted COMAG’s Mike Mirams, they didn’t find any silver bullets, but they did come up with coherent plans, even if some of their more spirited suggestions were shot down, in the nicest possible way, by the battle hardened execs in the room. The setting up of a Mail subscriber club, for instance, would cost Associated £55m in lost revenue; the cleaning up, or at least toning down, of the Cosmo front cover would inevitably lead to a significant circulation hit; a £60k budget to increase newsstand listings wouldn’t go very far and using niche distribution (through Primark) was unlikely to deliver the required large circulation rises.
But the point of the open discussion was not to score points, but to extend the delegates’ understanding of the publishing process and that is the yardstick by which the event should be judged.
Wessenden Marketing’s Jim Bilton, who organised and ran the programme on behalf of ACE, summed up the course: “The CDP+ programme broke new ground in giving delegates a unique end-to-end view of the supply chain. The on-site visits provided the practical basis for understanding what each link in the chain actually does and how they interface with each other – or not, sometimes! The syndicate work was based on producing a detailed marketing plan for a live title and pulled all the delegates’ learnings into a more rounded view of what makes the supply chain tick and what needs to be done to ensure that it is fit-for-purpose for the future.”
Undoubtedly, being given access to live sales figures, being mentored by seasoned pros, and having the benefit of an industry-wide overview of the supply chain will stand the delegates in good stead for the future. Fast forward ten or fifteen years, and expect to see some of the following calling the circulation shots: Paul Leicester (COMAG), Aykan Tahir (News International), Rajinder Kharaud (Telegraph Media Group), Mei Wong (Menzies Distribution), Kate McElroy (PPA), Don Williamson (Archant), Jo Argyle (Mail Newspapers), Dana Cripps (News International), James Hill (COMAG), Lauren Bale (NatMag), Ken Ingham (Smiths News), Zoe Jobson (NatMag), Phil Sait (Seymour Distribution), Lia Loftus (The Guardian), Matt Bullard (Mail Newspapers), Rachael Stewart (Smiths News), Richard Henwood (CDS Global), Natasha Ramkissoon (Marketforce), Kate Dickenson (Newtrade Publishing), Luke O'Shea (Telegraph Media Group).
