2006 May

2005 General Excellence Winners

2005 BNC Winners

Our newest UPA Board member is one of our newest UPA members

Turn your briefcase into a sample case

By John Foust, Raleigh, NC

“In my years of experience with classified and retail accounts, I thought I had seen it all,” Tricia told me. “But then something happened that changed my whole approach to selling.”

What happened?

“I was working with a client who owned a jewelry store. He was nice, but he had a stubborn streak,” she said with a laugh. “We’d come up with a good, clean layout – and he’d junk it up. Once he made up his mind, there was no way to talk him out of it.

“One time when we were brainstorming on possible ideas, he showed me a wedding invitation that he and his wife had just received. The type was a fancy schmancy script, and he told me that he wanted to use that kind of font in his new ad. He claimed that it looked classy, but all I could think about was how hard it would be to read in an ad. From past experience, I knew it would be a mistake to tell him it was a bad idea, so I held my tongue. With his stubbornness, he would have dug in and been even more determined to use it.”

As the ad was being prepared, Tricia got an idea of her own. “I knew that he admired the DeBeers diamond company. So I found a couple of DeBeers magazine ads and decided to use them as examples of clean typography. Our production department helped by putting together two versions of the ad – one with the script type and one with a font similar to the one in the DeBeers ads.

“When I made the presentation, I started by showing him the DeBeers ads. I agreed with his opinion that they projected a sophisticated image – and obviously, I mentioned typography’s role in that image. Then I put the wedding invitation on the desk, so he could make a side-by-side comparison. Finally – and I was determined to wait until the time was right – I showed him the two versions of his ad. Without hesitation, he picked the good one.”

Tricia said that presentation changed her perception of selling. “I realized that I could use national ads – and examples from other markets – to explain principles of advertising. That takes the emotion out of it, because the discussion is not about the client’s own ads or the ads of anyone they’re likely to know.”

Tricia keeps several folders in her briefcase, including:

1. Headlines: To explain reader-centered copy...line breaks...and the value of clearly stated benefits.

2. Clutter vs. white space: To illustrate that crowded ads project a low-end image...and that white space invites readership.

3. Typography: To explain why some fonts are more legible than others...the differences between serif and sans serif styles...and the fact that upper and lower case is easier to read at a glance than all caps.

4. Graphic techniques: To show advertisers how illustrations and photographs can be cropped...and how to use enlarged images as visual hooks.

(c) Copyright 2006 by John Foust. All rights reserved.

John Foust conducts on-site and video training for newspaper advertising departments. His three new video programs are designed to help ad managers conduct in-house training for their sales teams. For information, contact: John Foust, PO Box 97606, Raleigh, NC 27624 USA, E-mail: jfoust@mindspring.com, Phone 919-848-2401.

El Estandar Now Utah’s Largest Spanish-Language Weekly Newspaper

Contact:
Craig Bielik
El Estandar
801-625-4558
cbielik@standard.net

With weekly circulation now exceeding 17,000 copies, El Estandar has become Utah’s most popular Spanish-Language newspaper. The free publication can be found at more than 300 locations from Provo through Logan starting on Wednesday of each week.

El Estandar was launched just over a year ago to help serve the growing Spanish-Speaking population along the Wasatch Front. “We are both pleased and surprised with El Estandar’s rapid growth” said General Manager George Mesa. “The response from readers and advertisers has been very good. I’m amazed at how quickly this paper has become known and accepted. We have exceeded our distribution goals every month from day one, and reader response through letters and calls has also increased every week. El Estandar has really tapped into the grass-roots. It is starting to show as we are now becoming the voice for this community.”

The 24-page El Estandar features local and world news targeted to Latino readers. Wasatch Front and state-wide news is written by staff and contributors who are active in their communities and able to find the stories that are important to this market. Sports coverage, with a particular emphasis on futbol (soccer), also includes local; national and world teams. The newspaper also has its own classified advertising section published in Spanish; retail advertising support comes from both Latino-owned and non-Latino businesses. News from Mexico and other Latin American countries rounds out El Estandar’s pages.


El Estandar is published by Ogden Publishing Corporation in Ogden, Utah.

Wal-Mart: Local Ads Not Worth the Expense

By Marcus Kabel, AP Business Writer

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has decided against buying more advertisements in local newspapers after a test in two states showed the expense is not justified, the world's largest retailer said Wednesday.

Wal-Mart's test run in Midwestern papers had been closely watched by publishers who complained publicly last year that Wal-Mart sought free publicity from their newspapers but refused to buy ads - all while driving out local businesses that had been mainstays.

In a bid to improve community relations, Wal-Mart agreed to run a test in the holiday shopping season. It placed a full-page color ad for its electronics department in 336 smaller papers in Missouri and Oklahoma between Nov. 30 and Dec. 6.

"Our test showed that it did increase product sales but our margins are so thin that we didn't even come close to offsetting the cost of the ads," Wal-Mart spokeswoman Mona Williams told The Associated Press Wednesday.

Mike Buffington, a Georgia publisher who has been the point man in talks with Wal-Mart by the National Newspaper Association, said Wal-Mart told him last week the company's return wasn't high enough. At the Newspaper Association of America meeting at Chicago on Tuesday, Wal-Mart Chief Executive Lee Scott said newspaper advertising "didn't give us a return," but didn't offer specifics about the tests.

Buffington, past president of the NNA and co-publisher of MainStreet Newspapers Inc. in Jefferson, Ga., said not all publishers would agree that a company could reach a decision on costs versus benefits after a single ad.

"Our view is that a one-time test is probably not a true way to evaluate community newspapers. In fact we understand they had quite a bump in sales. But the advertising itself, the full-page color ads, were expensive and they were advertising loss-leader type items," he said.

Wal-Mart declined to say how much it paid for ads used in the tests.

Buffington last year, as president of the NNA, wrote an open letter accusing Wal-Mart of ignoring the association's 2,500 members. Wal-Mart has said it does not advertise as much as other retailers locally because it has strong customer traffic anyway.

Think of Readers When Selecting Coverage

By Randy Hines

After reading about the deadly tornados across the Southeast, more roadside bombings in Iraq, unethical politicians, higher gas prices, global warming, bird flu and another black church burning in the South, I was getting rather depressed from reading the national news in several newspapers in April.

But their local sections were no better. Fires, wrecks, sexual assaults, political bickering and robberies filled those pages.

Are Utah readers as sick as I am about all the bad news?

Apparently they are, according to a survey buried in my files from a few months ago. Conducted by The Segmentation Co., a division of Yankelovich, the national poll of 1,004 adults revealed that a whopping 94 percent want to hear more good news. And 77 percent said the media do not provide them with enough coverage of good news.

Did you notice those percentages, editors? More than nine out of 10 readers want you to provide them more good news and almost eight out of 10 said you do not provide them with enough good news. Maybe you could bring this column into your next staff meeting when you start dishing out story assignments.

It seems the depressing news articles mentioned in the lead paragraphs have an effect on their Utah readers. About half the survey participants admit that learning about bad news makes their day worse. More than three-fourths said that the bad news creates feeling of anxiousness.

“Simply put, good news can uplift the spirits, while bad news can, at times, directly impact our emotions and our outlook on the world around us in a negative way,” said David Bersoff, senior vice president of Monitor, a Yankelovich division.

Complaints often originate when a reporter writes a piece about a University of Utah student picked up for drunken driving on I-15. Perhaps the other 29,010 U of U students were not arrested and charged with any offense. But the one university-related story that gets into the paper the next day is the negative situation involving that one student.

How can you avoid such complaints from your valuable readers? You do have to cover the news. But can you uncover positive stories that don’t make the police blotter?

What about those tireless public school teachers and the many service projects and learning activities that take place on a regular basis? How about the college fraternities and sororities—too often the targets of negative news—that devote thousands of volunteer hours for breast cancer research and Ronald McDonald houses, along with other nonprofit causes, every year?

Despite their yearlong dedication to the unfortunate, churches usually can’t escape from the religion section unless a clergy member is facing charges such as embezzlement. How about the many businesses in your town that adopt a highway and their employees actually go out to clean up the litter on a regular basis?

Positive article possibilities are all around your circulation area. All you need to do is dig a little deeper, ask different questions from sources, and visit sites beyond your usual beat. And maybe the police blotter fluff can fit on your agate page, rather than becoming a Page One story.

Ironically, the study was funded by Bayer Health Care, which probably profits from the bad vibes people feel after getting their daily doses of negativism from reading most Utah daily and nondaily newspapers.


Dr. Randy Hines teaches in the Department of Communications at Susquehanna University. His address is 514 University Ave., Selinsgrove PA 17870. He can be reached at (570) 372-4079 or randyhinesapr@yahoo.com.

A "Bookcase For Every Child" Literacy Project Now On The World Wide Web

By Jim Davidson
1-800-242-2618
jimdavidson@conwaycorp.net

Conway, AR (May 10, 2006)- Some highly creative and industrious people in Conway, Arkansas (Pop. 53,000) have developed a unique literacy project that has never been done in the history of the world. And the entire project is now available on their Web site. This project known as "A Bookcase for Every Child" -- was launched with a group of Volunteers building 50 personalized, oak bookcases, while others were conducting a ‘Gently Used’ book drive that netted over 6,000 volumes. After the books were sorted by reading levels, an awards ceremony, with television news coverage, was held to present the bookcases to children in low-income families. Soon after the ceremony, another group of volunteers began to read to these children, ages three, four and five at the local Head Start Centers each week. They plan to rotate teams of readers and continue the practice from now on, as well as building 50 more bookcases each year, and having an annual awards ceremony with nationally-prominent speakers.

The reason this project is so unique is that it is community wide, involving a broad base of citizens, and not just one or two organizations. What is even more remarkable is that this project is conducted entirely by volunteers and using no tax or government grant money. When you consider the state of illiteracy in America, with 61% of low-income families not owning any books at all and up to 80% of these children being reared in single parent homes, you can easily see that Conway citizens are attacking the root of the problem where the need is the greatest. Most of these children are doomed to repeat the cycle, ending up on the streets, into drugs, gangs, prostitution or worse, that is, unless the volunteers in our country, step in to help them. The best way to improve life in any community, to have better jobs and safer streets, is to improve the quality of education, and this must begin with literacy. If you consider that Japan has a literacy rate of 99% and our country has between 30 and 40 million adults who cannot read at level one, you will see why we must all do our part to help children in low-income families learn to read. Our nation’s future depends on it.

This website contains all the details in beautiful color: the narrative, photos, bookcase plans, front page newspaper articles and a simple and easy way to raise the finances. The seven steps to developing and implementing a “Bookcase for Every Child” project are:

• 1. Project Overview.

• 2. Project Organization.

• 3. Building Bookcases.

• 4. Book Drive.

• 5. Awards Ceremony.

• 6. Reading to Children.

• 7. Project Funding.

For no other reason than having a better, safer, more productive and literate nation, the people of Conway, Arkansas are willing to share this project with any community in America, at no cost. The only requirement is to honor our guiding principles of using only volunteers and no tax or government grant money. This project is the brainchild of nationally syndicated columnist Jim Davidson who is giving 100% of the profits from his book “Learning, Earning & Giving Back,” along with private donations, to fund the project.

We invite you to view this Website at http://www.jimdavidsoncolumn.com/bookcase and then be a part of this project to build a more literate and educated community.