Society unveils planning site

The Newspaper Society has launched a planning internet portal to

make it easier for agencies to construct regional press campaigns.

PlanRegionalPress.co.uk is the second web solution to be delivered by

the society as part of its Creating New Perspectives campaign. The first

solution was AdFast, a net-based artwork delivery system launched in

May.

Creating New Perspectives is based on a consultation exercise conducted

last year with 10,000 agency contacts and their clients. Around 37 per

cent of those people said an online planning system was a priority if

they were to increase their use of the regional press.

’Unsurprisingly almost all the planners said it was their first

priority,’ said Charles Ross, marketing consultant for the Newspaper

Society.

Marketing director Chris Stanley said: ’The variety of local newspapers

is a strength but until now this same diversity had made it a hard,

time-consuming process to gather all the data necessary to plan a

campaign.’

The site is not yet an integrated planning system. ’At this stage you

can’t just punch in your brief and have all the work done for you,’ said

Ross. But the portal brings together a range of planning information in

one place.

The portal offers access to the Reaching the Regions, Jicreg and

Newspaper Society databases, which enable the user to search by area for

demographic, circulation or rate data. There are also contact details

for key people at each of the regional press sales houses and a

catalogue of industry research. There is a downloadable PowerPoint

presentation, which introduces the medium, and a digital reference

library of client case studies.

Media data, such as cover prices, circulation and average time spent

reading, is also available for each specific title or group of

titles.

Cathy Richards, regional media group director at Zenith, has tested the

site, and welcomed it as ’an excellent resource for time-poor media

planners. I was impressed by the easy-to-digest research summaries and

the depth of information in the planning section.’

It is hoped the portal will eventually become an online booking and

voucher delivery system, allowing agencies to buy their regional press

on the internet.

This article was first published on Campaign