Strategy: Launch of Echo Outdoor, a division that will sell ads on taxi cabs and around in-cab TV programming in Liverpool
Verdict: 2 out of 5
Trinity Mirror's North West & North Wales office definitely gets a slap on the back for effort with its plan to sell space on in-taxi TV screens and the exterior of cabs.
It's fine to diversify, as long as it doesn't forget about the papers.
However, surely the clients who want to advertise in cabs are different to the clients it is losing from its classified sections. Shouldn't they be the people that it looks to gain back through diversification? Otherwise, it is just letting a big market get away and the potential for taxi advertising can't be anywhere near as big.
Trinity needs a proper long-term strategy to turn around the paper's fortunes, like the Manchester Evening News' drastic, but apparently effective, change to part paid/part free. Small changes to editorial or cover price are just short-term solutions.
Ad spots on taxi screens aren't going to be an easy sell for a lot of reasons.
A lack of TV copy would be the first - no one wants to see fading stills of the local Ford dealer. Then there's the minimal audience research and the question of whether people really watch it or, like me, whether they just stare out of the window.
I'm all for buying a new horse for the stable, as long as you don't let your biggest and strongest horse bolt.
Like other regional publishers, Trinity is working hard on its local newspaper websites, but there is a huge amount of re-educating to do.
You have got people with years and years of regional press experience trying to sell what to them is a new medium. The agency buyers and clients they deal with are also in the same boat.
Using the taxi media to sell more copies of the Echo will only work if there is a drastic change in the product first. If it's just a case of saying "buy the Echo for your local news", everyone knows it already.
I can't see other publishers following this strategy, because I just can't see advertisers flocking to use this medium.
- Matt Merrett, regional press director, OMD UK.
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