1.

What opportunities in the marketing environment did Gannett seize in launching USA
Today? How did the company learn about and respond to these opportunities?

Gannett noticed two trends or opportunities in the reading public and took advantage of

those trends. The first one is the increasingly short attention span among a generation nurtured

on television, the second is the growing hunger for more information. The newspaper’s primary

mission was to provide more news to their readers in less time. They targeted the young and

well-educated because he noticed that they were busy and care about the news (they targeted non

traditional newspaper readers) unlike their competitors. Typical readers turned out to be

professionals, usually managers, about 40 years old, well educated, with an income of about

$60,000 a year. USA Today capitalized its market opportunities by listening to their readers. They

provided personal level communication, provided news in a clear, upbeat, positive way. They

were also the first color newspaper and captured readers using a TV set like distribution box.

They were very unique and out of the box. In addition to this, Gannett’s research had shown that

readers get most of their information from such snippets and they were also interested in sports,

movie reviews, and health information so he didn’t just limit it to traditional news, he added

diverse news about several topics like sports. I believe that the company knew about

opportunities by closely communicating with their customers and conducting research and

responding to their consumer’s needs by continuously re innovating and adding values to fit the

reader’s lifestyle and interests. For instance, when they knew that a lot of their readers are not

only interested in traditional news, but they are also sports junkie they added more subjects like

sports, lifestyle, and events. They also changed the width, made the paper slimmer and easier to

handle to fit in airplanes and tight spaces. When US Today at their beginning found the traveling

business people a potential target segment they targeted them by selling to airlines.Then they
also started selling to hotels, and they also started bulk selling (incorporated the blue chip

circulation strategy), on the road in the US, on the road internationally as well.

2. How has a continuous strategy of marketing innovation proved successful for USA Today
and USA Today.com? Do you believe that USA Today is well positioned for the future?
Explain
 While the USA Today has long been critiqued as a journalism lightweight, it has a history

of innovation in adapting to changing audience tastes. Many publishing veterans sniffed at USA

Today in the early days, believing its formula of short stories without jumps, large infographics

and generous use of color represented a dumbing down of news. It was derided for its

shallowness and labeled “McPaper”. A few years later, nearly all of them had adapted the same

style. Ever since, USA Today has solidly established itself as a national institution with a

readership of more than 1.8 million. It was a pioneer in adopting short, choppy articles, get to the

point, casual writing style which the readers admired, and this style was later mimicked by its

competitors. Their main successful innovative strategy here was creating a “national newspaper

written in shorter pieces than the traditional paper and sprinkled with eye-catching, colorful

photos, graphs, and charts. Designed to address the needs of a sound-byte generation”

During its early growth, the paper didn’t recognize the potential “business travelers”

segment who were interested in news from back home as well as sports news, so when they

rushed and targeted airlines, the competitors felt threatened and became aware of the changing

reader needs and they started re innovating or benchmarking with US Today by adding colors,

shortening stories, and adding new sections.

USA Today being innovative as usual responded to these competitor’s upgrades in its own

distinctive way. In terms of product innovation, It has been able to reengineer itself

journalistically by shifting the paper to more serious news oriented product to stay ahead of the

imitative competition, while maintaining its culture of innovation. They also added unique value

added features like the customer hotlines where they could call to get expert information on

financial planning. Not only this, they also initiated a high school “Academic All star program”
that was later expanded to include colleges and universities. With the increasing ubiquity of the

internet, they altered the money section by focusing more on technology issues and look at

business from an e-commerce perspective. In 200o, US Today was redesigned to make the paper

easier to read and cleaner in design and to fit in tight spaces. As for the promotional innovation

they undertook a “bus capade” promotional tour in the U.S. and a “jet capade” promotional tour

in 30 countries. Both were very successful and led to publication of US Today International.

Garnnett’s first strategy to attract or enroll advertisers was a partnership plan, “which provided

six month of free space to those who purchased six months of paid advertising” of course that

was a very smart and appealing offer to many advertisers, they were also flexible with the

categories of the advertisements. The company accepts a variety of regional advertising as late as

6:00 pm the day before publication. As mentioned earlier the paper incorporated “blue chip

circulation”, bulk selling to hotels and restaurants. They also deviated from the traditional norm

and started offering advertising space on the front page which generated a lot of money and

further success to the company. When it comes to the distribution innovation, US Today’s main

strategy was to deliver fast news. That’s why they added print sites around the world to speed up

distribution. They also added an innovative readership program that allowed US Today to be

brought to more than 160 college campuses. With the technological advances, the paper became

easily digitally produced and that gave readers earlier delivery times.

3. What are the SWOT implications for USA Today as it looks toward its future? What

strengths and opportunities can USA leverage as it looks for a competitive advantage in the

distribution of news and information?

Strengths

1. USA Today is the second largest- selling daily newspaper in the United States. It circulation

had rapidly grew from 350,000 in 1982 to approximately 2.3 million today.

2. USA Today achieved rapid success due it innovative format: written in shorter pieces, using

colorful photos chart and graphs, practical columns and at-a-glance boxes. The paper

communicates with readers clearly and directly and it also faster to read and easy to handle

thanks to its slimmer pages. Thanks to it late deadlines, the paper delivery more timely news that

other papers.

3. The newspaper has a 1-800 and 1-900 “hot-line” numbers that readers can call for expert

information on financial planning, college admissions, minority business development, taxes and

other subjects.

4. USA Today offers an online version, USAToday.com that is one of the Internet’s top sites for

news and information. It allows readers to receive up-to the moment’s news with colorful

visuals a crisp audio, weather forecasts, travel information and access to the paper archive from

the ‘80s to today information.

5. The paper offers USA Today International, which is available in more than ninety countries in

Western Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia.

6. USA Today is widely distributed via newsstand retailers, large grocery store chains,

bookstores, coin-operated vending machines, and directly to the consumer through home

delivery. Complementary distribution occurs primarily in hotels, airport terminals, and

restaurants and at the college campuses and it’s also available in e-formats from the web page,

mobile phone access and e-mails updates.

7. The company uses innovative promotion activities, like the “BusCapade” promotional tour

and readerships programs for college students. The company accepts a variety of regional

advertising as late as 6:00 pm the day before publication.

8. Another point that is a strength for the business but a weakness for the content is the

emphasis on features, sports and entertainment in news coverage. It is a strength because they are

simple stories journalists can do to keep the newspaper and the websites populated with content,

which means they can produce more stories in less time. However, its a weakness because it

underscores a common complaint that USA Today cheapens news coverage which is negative for

the company’s image.

Weaknesses

1. The economic crisis affected USA Today to a great extent because they reply heavily on the

money that came from advertising. Most of the advertisers were in the housing, retail and

automobile industries and those industries are facing major troubles on their own so they are

cutting costs including advertising costs. Moreover, the travel industry and hotels have been

affected negatively by the economic crisis, which mean emptier hotels where USA Today counts

half of its circulation in door to door deliveries.

2. USA Today has always been battling the fact that many people thought it was cheap

journalism. Although they invested a lot in improving the quality of the content.

Opportunities
1. The reason Washington post had an edge over USA Today in terms of stock prices is mainly

because of Washington Post’s subsidiary Kaplan, which provides mentoring services and

educational services, so may be USA Today should consider diversifying and creating a similar

venture.

2. There’s an opportunity to monetize full event calendar listings that newspapers have not

embraced yet. Taking the phonebook model, publications can list every event for free, but event

promoters can pay more for highlights, icons or extra lines of text.

3. USA Today may have the weight to try something new. If it partners with Amazon.com and

offer to send a free or discounted Kindle to paid subscribers, they could save a large a mount of

printing costs.

Threats

1. The readers’ move to viewing content for free online is hurting the massive print ad revenue of

newspapers. As a newspaper’s target demographic grows older, the youth are not replacing them,

instead choosing to frequent websites like Facebook or MySpace instead. They may get their

news from blogs that are not professionally edited and verified like twitter.

2. Online advertising competitors such as Google will continue to be threats, as will new

technologies that no one has envisioned yet.

3. The environmental movement and recycling culture have discouraged readers to subscribe to

the newsprint editions, because readers will feel the papers are killing trees.

4. The economy is going to be a threat long after it had recovered, because the repercussions of

this downturn will be felt in the financial structure of businesses during recovery
4.Based on USA Today’s Experience with print and online news, evaluate the long term

potential of printed news and the newspaper publishing industry. Do you believe printed

newspapers will continue to survive despite digital competition?

I believe that the trend is moving towards digital and that print is dying due to its high

costs and also the environmental concerns that consumers might have. So I would recommend

shifting the bulk of focus on the digital division because it has many smart companies that has
nothing to do with journalism but have the potential to be solid profit makers with any renewed

focus. The downside is that print is the real income earner in the company in terms of revenue.

But the digital evolution is inevitable and its forcing the advertiser to adjust and become used to

a different format. Print will not be around forever and focusing heavily on digital is risky

but its a needed move.

Since print is by far the biggest profit maker, I think USA Today should find new ways of

adding value to print. They might want to insert coupons, giveaways, valuable inserts such as

CDs, posters, puzzles or anything that could enhance the experience of print. Besides that there is

an opportunity for developing for niche markets, including customized magazines the readers

can create themselves by selecting the kind of content they want. They could also try “reverse

publishing” online content. Each USA Today news website has a social network where users are

allowed to blog and comment They could have editors select of those posts and publish in their

newspaper or into a new niche magazine that can target advertisers looking for a younger

demographic. This gives advertisers exposure they wouldn’t get online, and it’s inexpensive to

implement. The tough times in the journalism industries are inevitable, it becomes difficult to

fund news. Therefore, newspapers and organizations may seek a completely separate

business to generate profits until the economy booms again. The Washington post succeeded

in doing that. US Today entered a few related business other than journalism, but they need to

step outside their comfort zone even further.