By
Matt Erickson
Assistant Sports Editor/Design
The Times of Northwest Indiana
"No freakin' way"
In Munster, we're famous for our zoning in different communities.
We're also famous for our intense coverage of high school sports.
My idea was to do our annual prep football preview section, but
instead of doing one section for the masses, I wanted to deliver
a section to EACH HIGH SCHOOL in our coverage area tailored specifically
to that high school. In other words, the Munster students would
get a preview section, and wrapped around it would be the "Munster
Mustangs Special Campus Edition" of The Times Prep Football
Preview section. The Crown Point kids would get their own wraparound,
and so on and so forth. But on the COVER of each of these individual
schools' sections would be that school's star player or players.
I wanted to essentially do one of the most intense local zoning
efforts in the history of newspapers.
After lots of early "No freakin' way"-type comments,
I finally was able to illustrate just how profitable this project
could be for every department involved ... and profitable for our
readers. In April, I had the official buy-in and support I needed
to get started on the project.
I narrowed the number of schools down to 29 ... 23 in our Indiana
coverage area and 6 in our Illinois coverage area. I formulated
the plan of attack ... we'd do a black-and-white portrait on the
cover, in magazine-style. We'd sell the back page of the wraparound
for most of the financial backing. And on the inside doubletruck,
we'd have a team photo, a roster and a season schedule, all surrounded
by team-specific zoned advertising. For every school.
Marketing strategies
I then got Marketing, Advertising and Circulation involved in the
project. I gave Advertising my list of research I had done for potential
advertisers for these types of "Go Joe" ads ... a list
600 advertisers long, all of which had purchased similar ads in
local publications in the past. With Circulation, we figured out
how to get paid/sponsored copies out the door to the students in
order to count toward our circulation. Everything was rolling.
29 teams, 29 sections
In early July, we started shooting the cover portraits. Evan E.
Parker was my man on those portraits, and he did a great job working
with the players. And I have to give a shout-out to sports writer
Brian Waddle, who gave big-time assists with helping coordinate
the photo shoots for all these players and making sure they came
in.
Once practice started on Aug. 2, I had the unenviable task of trying
to make sure we got 29 different team photos ... keeping in mind
that there's nothing football coaches hate more than stopping practice
to get their kids all lined up on the bleachers for a team photo.
By this time, I had already finished the design of all 29 covers
and was busy preparing our regular 16-page sections for both Indiana
and Illinois. Somehow, I managed to get all the team photos, including
one at the 11th hour that I had to drive 55 miles round-trip to
pick up myself.
Last Thursday at 4 a.m., we had the press run for our 23 Indiana
editions. That's 23 starts and stops on the press. We printed one
copy for each student enrolled at the school. The numbers ranged
from 250 for tiny Whiting High to 2,600 for the massive Lake Central.
Let me tell ya ... with 4-page sections on the press, they start
saving papers and they stop that sucker about 15 seconds later when
you're only printing 250! With 2,600, you get to almost take a bathroom
break!
And on Friday morning, the Circulation department began delivering
the complete package to the area high schools ... a complete Friday
Times, including our inserted prep football preview, with the "Special
Campus Edition" wrapped around the paper. Featuring that school's
star on the cover. I'll tell ya ... if these football stars weren't
already the BMOC with egos, we just created a bunch of new ones!
Final numbers
1) Last year, our football previews made $1,300 in ad revenue. That's
three previews (prep, college, pro). This year, from this zone-intensive
project alone, they brought in $33,000 ... but the potential was
six-figures.
2) Our circulation numbers will go up by 200 or so per day over
a 6-month period, a number that would supposedly cost about $35,000
to reach using traditional methods. (hey, ABC people, don't quote
me on that ... that's pending official confirmation from our circ
director!).
3) The Times wants to continually brand itself in Northwest Indiana
as "The Community Champion." Well, when almost every high
school student in our coverage area gets a complimentary edition
of the paper ... with a wraparound section produced EXCLUSIVELY
for their school ... we continued to set ourselves apart as the
true community champion. There are branding and marketing advances
in this project that we'll never be able to truly measure. I mean,
when Joey takes the football preview home to mom and dad and says,
"Guys, look at what THE TIMES did JUST FOR MY SCHOOL!,"
I mean, you don't get much better branding and marketing than that.
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