One of them is the Telegraph's former marketing director, and more recently managing director of Hollinger Telegraph New Media, incoming managing director Hugo Drayton. He is unique among his broadsheet newspaper peers, who all have ad sales backgrounds. His appointment reflects the unique role that the marketing department has played within the newspaper, a role carved out by Stephen Grabiner, a former marketing director who also progressed to the top Telegraph job, before moving on to launch ITV Digital.
Under Grabiner, the marketing function became not just the master of the brands, but the conduit that connected all the newspapers' departments, giving the marketing director an unrivalled perspective across the whole paper.This was fortuitous for Drayton, who found himself responsible for developing the Telegraph's internet strategy at a time when the dotcom boom had placed the web high on newspapers' agenda. This led to his promotion to managing director of Hollinger Telegraph New Media, and an opportunity to impress group chief executive Dan Colson.
But the first person Drayton impressed was the man who hired him - Grabiner's successor as marketing director, David Pugh, now managing director of Maiden Outdoor. Pugh's recollection of Drayton is as a renaissance man, very cultured and an independent thinker. "He's also socially at ease with people from all levels, which is vital in newspapers when you have to communicate with printers right through to the editor."
Drayton's recent experiences managing new media are likely to drive much of the thinking he will bring to managing the newspapers. The ease of measuring ad effectiveness on new media compared with the press is an issue that he is keen to rectify. As for future strategy, Drayton is convinced that it should focus on the Telegraph as a brand, rather than a pair of newspapers: "The papers are the embodiment of the brand and provide the content, but our distribution of that content needs to be more agnostic."
It makes sense. Declining readership trends make it unlikely that the Telegraph in print format will bring in many new customers. An £8m branding campaign to support a redesign of The Daily Telegraph in March has so far failed to make any impact, while the latest National Readership Survey figures vividly illustrate the paper's failure to address its ageing readership problem - 70% of readers are aged 45-plus.
The redesign, despite being backed by heavy promotion, has seen sales of The Daily Telegraph increase by less than 8000 copies a day. But Drayton denies that the campaign has been a failure. "The 'Read a bestseller every day' campaign has been brilliant," he says, pointing out that, as a branding campaign, it wasn't expected to translate into immediate sales gains.
Next year will see the campaign adapted for use as a promotional tool.
But, no matter how slick the campaign, the core problem for the Telegraph is its brand image - still perceived by too many as the crusty old Torygraph, read by Colonel Blimps, dowager aunts and the odd young fogey. The image is unfair - with sales just under a million, The Daily Telegraph is easily the most popular daily broadsheet - but Drayton concedes that dispelling the image is a constant frustration. "Because we have strong editorial opinions on some issues, which young people may not be sympathetic to, we are an easy target. But who knows, that may change with the change of editor," he says.
But editorial views are not the whole story. The Daily Mail, arguably more reactionary in its views than the Telegraph, does not have quite the same image problem. The Telegraph's trouble is the perception of the whole package. This brings us to the size of the paper. The Daily Telegraph has always straddled the broadsheet and mid-market sectors. So if any broadsheet were to downsize to tabloid, it would seem to make more sense for the Telegraph than the Independent.
Drayton reveals that a prototype tabloid is being researched through focus groups. "There is no doubt that among our target audience, particularly mid-market readers, commuters and women, the tabloid size is very attractive," he says. "But it does pose huge questions about the perceived value and integrity of the brand, and there is a danger of being a me-too."
As the guardian of that most British of brands, Drayton, 43, is something of an oddity. No little Englander, he is multi-lingual, spent all his career prior to joining the Telegraph Group overseas, has a Spanish wife, a love of Latin American culture and describes himself as a Francophile. Does he recognise the incongruity of his situation? "Of course - how I got to the Telegraph is a mystery, even to me."
BIOGRAPHY
1991-1994: International director, Reed Telemedia (Reed Elsevier)
1994-2000: Marketing manager to marketing and promotions director,
Telegraph Group
2000-2003: Managing director, Hollinger Telegraph New Media
2003-present: Managing director, Telegraph Group
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