Can Media Brands Survive Without Positioning?
By Desmond Ekeh and James Inem
The dynamics of media enterprise is one area of cultural production that is hardly understood by the public. Perhaps, according to some people, the creation, development and marketing of media products should rather be left with media professionals to manage. In Nigeria's 49 years of existence as a sovereign entity, countless newspapers and magazines have hit the newsstand, even with seemingly very promising future - only to fizzle out or disappear into oblivion after a few editions. In the past, some are known to have made efforts to postpone the doom's day by 'wobbling and fumbling' or is it lingering and kicking for months or even years only to succumb after gulping millions of naira. Some others emerge and move up as brand leaders only to stumble at the sentinel of brand paradise. The list is endless: National Concord, Daily Times, The Diet, New Age, Post Express, The Examiner, The Monitor, Hallmark, NewBreed, The Source, The Insider, The Democrat, The Reporter, Prime People and many others.
Although, there are some extraneous factors that have affected 'news papering' in recent times - like the global cut in ad spend because of the recession, poor reading culture of Nigerians as well as the continuous downward slide of the naira (that has dramatically increased the cost of managing newspapers or magazines) - it has been discovered that the greatest influence on the survival and performance of any media brand is the art of positioning.
To put it succinctly, positioning in brand building is the way a product is ranked in the consumer's mind. This to a very large extent approximates to the paper's key value offerings, including its profile classification or unique differentiation curve from competition, or by its relationship to certain target markets. Positioning is not just relevant in the manufacturing, banking, telecom or even oil sectors, it is a sine qua non for success in every business segment including media and not-for-profit organizations.
Positioning, occasioned by unique value propositions (including brand architectural profiling) is what guides innovative newspapers, such that they are able to survive the prevalent economic crisis as it would determine what constitutes that "relevant content" which today is a key criterion stated by the Advertisers Association of Nigeria (ADVAN) as condition for placing ads.
Apart from relevant content, positioning will enhance data transparency and improved execution of quality, which are the major expectations from advertisers according to the President of ADVAN, Idorenyen Enang.
Data transparency, Enang noted, will aid media choice, rate justifications and negotiations as advertisers will like to know the standard for viewership; for reach, for circulation, readership, reading habits, viewing/ listening habits and audience segmentation.
According to a researcher, Emma Young, "a media organization can thus deliberately position itself as a brand for a particular segment like the youth or business class and make intensive research on how to create content that will make it the leader in their segment of choice within a particular time. Also, despite higher population, circulation is said to be declining, so for media brands to survive and do well, they must embrace this new era dominated by niche markets and changing readership. We are in a consumer economy where information is available online almost immediately. So, in this new age, content based on simple data or information will not make a paper excel. A good option would be convergence journalism that would allow a reporter to serve his readers the same report through different media portals and platforms, probably with Internet version breaking it while the print can concentrate on details behind the broken news.
The need for a niche medium to equally embrace convergence journalism is necessitated by the changing lifestyles of consumers and their expectations that news must be made available in a variety of forms to suit these changes.
Jumbo Etta, a media-buying specialist explains that "Internet addiction, especially among youths - that has been a problem in Europe and Asia - is growing in Africa. Within five years and with the availability of cheap broadband, most young people will be reading their first news of the day online. It is not by accident that media brands with vision are positioning themselves strongly today to gain from the boom in the near future."
Roland Egarevba, a direct Marketing consultant, also believes convergence journalism would shape the growth of tomorrow's media. He believes that, in the future, the Nigerian market would depend primarily on the mobile technology.
"We have about 50 million cell phones in use in the country and it is growing. Mobile devices are expected to become major media distribution channels for news in the next few years. Since news is now "medium -specific", people would be getting specific personalized information services and entertainment- Weather, traffic, sports results, stock reports, details of cultural events, local news etc. Imagine a medium that can position itself to get 10% of cell phone users with its product; they would be smiling daily to the bank."
Even with quality content served effectively on various effective platforms, no proper positioning would be achieved by any media organization without quality control. Just like every serious manufacturing outfit would establish quality control departments in recognition of quality as the hallmark of success, and the key to their remaining in business, media enterprises must follow this path if they desire to be positioned for success.
In journalism, the quality control department certainly is the sub-desk, and the managers working in that department are also called the gatekeepers of the media house. In fact, it is the heartbeat of the publication. As such, this desk at all times strives to achieve consistency and clear communication for the medium.
Usually, in the media, stories are written in a hurry, to quickly put ideas on paper and when this is done, mistakes abound: words are misspelled, there are errors in construction, and there is disregard for conciseness and a lot of verbosity. So, the sub-desk is needed to help keep copies clean, to build and maintain a coherent identity for the newspaper - by cross-checking facts, checking errors, re-casting headlines, apostrophes, semi-colon and other punctuations, putting tacky grammar and sloppy syntax in their proper perspective, eliminating noise in a copy and yet highly conscious of words that could result to libelous imputations.
Interestingly, in spite of the tremendous input and time devoted to getting "error free copies as against error filled copies:' sub-editing can sometimes be a thankless job especially when an error is spotted in the paper.
Emma Ojo, media relations consultant with a manufacturing outfit sumarises it fully: "Media operation is a business with stiffer competition; therefore, there is need for such quality to be ensured. Besides, no media house can excel consistently without a strong sub desk. Indeed products from that organization would be like a great meal, produced by the best 'Calabar cook', using the best ingredients, but at the end each mouthful comes with pebbles."
To this end, media enterprises are reminded to wake up to the realities of contemporary business world, which depends so much on the contents of marketing principles. Right now, most media organizations do not understand the use of public relations in business management; talk more of branding and positioning. This, however, is the need of the hour and they must embrace it, if they want to remain in the market - because competition will soon seize the market even as we brace up to enter into a new year.
