This spring, both The Globe and Mail and Toronto Star launched ambitious redesigns aimed at attracting new readers and advertisers. At least, those were the stated goals.
The makeovers also coincided with the physical downsizing of the two broadsheets. The Globe lopped one-and-a-half inches from its pages, while the Star-which has already shrunk the text on its pages in preparation for a size reduction-will slim down by an inch per page sometime in August.
Call it the great Toronto newspaper (shrinkage) war.
In the race to be skinny, the Star will be half an inch slimmer than the newly trimmed Globe. “They are going even smaller than we currently are now,” says Andrew Saunders, the Globe’s vice-president of advertising. “Everybody seems to be redesigning on that basis.”
While providing a good excuse to renovate their papers with new sections, columns and fonts, publishers have other compelling reasons to slim down. The Star forecasts that it will save between three and five million dollars in annual newsprint costs as the result of its reduced size. The Globe’s savings are also estimated to be in the millions. And consumer research consistently finds that readers like smaller, easier-to-handle broadsheets. “Consumers love the smaller formats,” says Len Kubas, president of Toronto consultancy Kubas Consultants. “When consumers are given the same paper in a narrower format, they will invariably prefer it.”
Kubas says a number of newspapers in Canada have transformed themselves from broadsheet to tabloid, a trend he expects to intensify in coming years. Another recent convert is the Quebec daily Le Soleil, which last year became the sixth of seven dailies owned by Gesca Limitée to adopt the compact format.
Kubas says that in addition to cost savings, redesigns of this magnitude typically result in a circulation jump of anywhere from 1% to 3%.
Advertisers, meanwhile, seem to be taking a wait-and-see approach to the Star and Globe redesigns. “It’s probably a little bit too early to get a full impact on the readership,” says Debbie King, executive vice-president and chief operating officer of ZenithOptimedia Canada in Toronto. “I think they are both cleaner looking, they are an easier read, the sections have now kind of gotten in tune with what the consumer is looking for from them.”
The Globe’s redesign made its weekday editions more like its weekend offering, with increased lifestyle content Monday-to-Friday. Traditionally, readership of the weekday Globe skews heavily male, while the weekend paper has a more balanced male-to-female readership. “A big part of the redesign, even though we changed the fonts and the layouts, was content-centric with the new Globe Life section,” says Saunders.
The launch of Globe Life has already paid off by attracting new advertising categories, including automotive, packaged goods and alcohol (new advertisers include Mazda and Becel). “From an advertiser’s perspective, we’ve had great support,” says Saunders. “We have exceeded revenue expectations as it relates to the Globe Life section.”
The Globe also moved “Facts & Arguments”-a longtime fixture on the back page of its “A” section-into Globe Life, opening up the back page to full colour advertising for the first time. Several advertisers have entered into long-term deals for the page, among them electronics companies Samsung and Sony, computer manufacturer Dell and Indigo Books & Music.
The national daily has also introduced non-traditional ad shapes “We have become more flexible on shapes, but clearly there are some things I won’t do if I feel they harm the integrity of the brand,” said Globe publisher and CEO Phillip Crawley earlier this year, pointing to cover wraps employed by rivals the National Post and the Star. “We’ve done cover wraps on certain sections, but I’m not going to do them on the main paper. I’m not covering up my masthead for anybody.”
Both the Globe and Star conducted extensive consumer research before moving on their redesigns. The Star, which arguably made less dramatic changes to its product than the Globe, advertised the upcoming revamp for weeks and explained what would be different and why. As a result, the Star says cancellations have been minimal. “It has only been a few hundred and I’m optimistic of what we have lost we’ll get at least half back,” says Sandy MacLeod, the Star’s vice-president of consumer marketing. (The Globe did not divulge details regarding subscriber impact.)
The Star’s ad department was equally diligent in providing clients with plenty of advance notice. “We were out in front of the majority of big agencies and larger advertisers in advance: ‘Here’s what we are doing, here’s why, here’s what it is going to look like,'” says MacLeod. “I think it is the surprise factor for readers and advertisers that is most disturbing. If there is a single lesson from this most recent experience, it’s get in front of it. [Why] the secrecy?” that traditionally accompanies paper revamps.
With broadsheets increasingly becoming more like tabloids (downsized papers include The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times), there is also a move away from line or agate-based to modular-based pricing for advertising. Media buyers are waiting for information from the Star about how its new modular ad system will impact rates. “They are going to have a significant number of modular rates,” says King. “Some of them will be based upon what people have been running previously, and retail obviously is a big component in there. What we need to ensure is that it doesn’t have impact on production charges. We were just nicely getting to standardized columns and depths-in the major papers anyway-so that we could minimize production costs.”
Experts expect other newspapers in Canada and the U.S. to follow the trend towards downsizing as competition intensifies both in print and with other media for eyeballs and advertisers. “It’s a trend that is going to accelerate because a lot more newspapers are looking at smaller formats,” says Kubas. “Most are sticking with broadsheets, but there are some bold experiments going on in the United States.” The biggest challenge, he notes, is converting the advertising pricing structure to a modular system.
Increased conversion of papers to tabloid formats “is going to happen sooner rather than later,” Kubas predicts. “I would be very much surprised if you would see the broadsheet as a genre in five years time.”
