The Yorkshire Post has gone into overdrive by producing three supplements to mark the start of the Tour de France in the county this weekend.
This year’s race begins in Leeds on Saturday and to mark the Post team has put together a series of special souvenir-edition print products.
A 68-page Tour de France-themed Yorkshire Vision glossy magazine highlighting the business opportunities the race will bring to ‘God’s Own County’ hit the streets yesterday.
There will also be a48-page guide to Le Grand Depart published with The Yorkshire Post, Yorkshire Evening Post, The Star in Sheffield and in most weeklies in the Yorkshire Publishing Unit this week.
The Tour de France-themed Yorkshire Vision glossy magazine published on 1 July.
Finally on Saturday as the race gets under way the Johnston Press-owned titles will be publishing a special souvenir edition of The Yorkshire Post Saturday magazine.
As well as features on food, gardening, fashion and interiors, it also contains a guide to Yorkshire’s best cycling routes.
Saturday's souvenir edition of the Yorkshire Post magaziine
Managing editor Nicola Furbisher said: “The entire Yorkshire Publishing Unit together with the Sheffield Star is joining forces and pooling resources, working together in conjunction with one another for the first time to make sure that we make the most of the huge opportunities, both editorially and commercially, offered by the Tour De France.”
A comprehensive social media marketing campaign has already begun to promote all three products, spearheaded by staff using Twitter, Facebook and email alerts.
The guide to Le Grand Depart, being published with The Yorkshire Post and its sister titles this week
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Steve Auckland said in February this year – “There are a lot of people rushing out of print to go online. But I’m quite happy to rush into print because there’s a lot of money to be made out of print, and I’ll take as much as possible. And you know what – the agencies are crying out for that message.” Indeed: look at the supplements, IN PRINT. It remains to be seen how good the advertising within them is, or indeed,how much of it there is. In last week’s magazine, for example, a full page ad for an upmarket retailer (and at one time, regular advertiser) appeared minus the logo and ‘r’ not ‘or’ within a small amount of copy. As for the inappropriate use of Brush Script for this advertiser: words fail me. It struck me that this was maybe an advertorial, hence the lack of logo, and readers were being duped into thinking it was an ad. If so, JP didn’t receive full payment for a full page. Shoddy all round. Having said that, it generated more revenue than an online ad. If JP is really thinking of investing in staff (now that the debt is more manageable), I’d be looking long and hard at the quality of advertisers artwork. Creativity in the print products is vital. At one time the YP and YEP were winning plenty of awards in this area, but those days are gone. Whilst there remains a readership for print, JP should ensure that the core products are maximising their potential.
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Agree wholeheartedly with JP Cost Cut Victim. These look great, and as a former magazine journalist, I’d have trampled people in the rush to help put them together.
They’ll be bought, kept, thumbed through and passed around to family and friends… maybe even taken or posted abroad to keen cycling contacts. This is a big deal for Yorkshire and these JP titles have done the county proud (at first glance of the covers). Well done to all concerned.
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Unfortunately, the Grand Depart supplement is a disaster. No date at all on the cover, so in years to come you may not even remember the year, let a lone the actual date of the event. But worse than that, many of the pages have been cropped incorrectly, resulting in ads running down each side being halved, rendering most pointless. What is missing on the right you have to match up with on the left. In all the years I worked for YPN I never saw spoils as bad as this. Thankfully, I did not pay to see this ‘rag': all those that did should start complaining now. On the plus side, there is no mention that the product is a Yorkshire Post (sorry, The Yorkshire Post) supplement, so some embarrassment avoided. Not so for Yorkshire Building Society.
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