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Free is key to targeting communities in London for evolving media company

A community media group has re-thought its offering for London weekly papers both on the streets and behind the scenes to meet the needs of its target audience.

After three years of integration, Archant London now delivers repositioned and reshaped products to match London’s ever-evolving communities.

The development of The Docklands weekly newspaper, launched in 2006, was the business’s first completely free launch, delivered to specific addresses with an AB1 profile.

The paper is delivered on a Monday rather than the traditional Friday because the target audience tends to leave London at the weekends. The content is also different to that of most Archant London titles.

Archant London MD Enzo Testa said: “The readers are not that interested in the local community, they are interested in lifestyle, what is happening to the Docklands Light Railway, what planning permissions are being given in an area with the huge Thames Gateway development and preparations for the Olympics, for example.

“And people’s habits have changed. If, 25 years ago, you got a newspaper for nothing, you felt it wasn’t worth reading.

“Today people are used to receiving free newspapers and magazines. People will always value newspapers. The challenge is to reach these people.”

Four methods are used to maximise the reach: the sale of papers through newsagents; handing out newspapers to supplement and promote sales; distribution to addresses or via dispensing bins; and on-line, where the web points people to the products and then the products point people to the web.

Yet Archant is not standing still in this area – it anticipates the Docklands will develop as more people live there seven days a week as the proportion of housing to business developments increases.

Enzo said: “In the long term, housing will bring families, and that will mean schools; you can’t attract CEOs into the area if you don’t put in the infrastructure for their families.”

Taking the successful ‘free’ formula of The Docklands, the Wood & Vale was relaunched as a second completely free paper in the Maida Vale and St John’s Wood area.

To support local papers in other areas where significant numbers continue to sell, Archant London has been handing out free copies and using every possible local event as a sampling opportunity.

“I believe it will become increasingly more difficult to sell our newspapers, so we must develop our distribution strategies to ensure our products get out to their intended audiences,” said Enzo.