Philly.com at NAA conference in Orlando
February 26th, 2008
I attended a session at the NAA conference this week in Orlando hosted by Brian Tierney, the man behind The Philadelphia Inquirer, Daily News and Philly.com Newspaper group. He spoke about Innovations in newspapers and did a masterful job of showing that if you focus on the opportunity and not on the decline, you can make a difference.
The Inquirer and the Daily News have grown circulation for the first time in 5 years and 9 years respectively since he and his management group bought the company. Pretty impressive considering the state of the industry.
Brian talked about the work they are doing with Avenue A and “other consultants” to redesign the user experience of Philly.com. He spoke of a complete redesign coming in a few months, but he also spoke of an interim design that was done by one of the “other consultants” to get something up and running quickly while they continued to work on the major redesign.
The interim design launched and they have seen page view grow from 20 million to over 40 million.
Unfortunately, he did not mention the name of the “Other Consultant” but I will let you in on the secret. It was Indigio.
We have been working with Eric Grilly, the president of Philly.com, and his team on providing site design, analytics and search engine marketing services for over six months and are proud to share in their success.
I found the other topics Brian spoke about equally as fascinating. He spoke of newspapers having to create unique and compelling content. They have hired some of the top columnist to write exclusively for them. This is important because other newspapers are cutting editorial and not realizing that content is what drives readership. If the paper is filled with AP, then why read it? You can get the same information at CNN.com.
He spoke of how newspapers need to be media consultants for their Advertisers and not just order takers. If they can help make their customer’s ad be more compelling, they may get more advertising. Lastly, he spoke of newspapers having fun. It seems to be a serious industry that needs to lighten up a bit. When they delivered on increased circulation, they ran a “Pigs Fly” campaign to celebrate. It was clever and showed that having fun can be good business.
One Response to “Philly.com at NAA conference in Orlando”
By Paul on May 17, 2008 | Reply
Are you sure one of the consultants Tierney used wasn’t a legally blind 14-year-old with a MySpace account? Because that seems to be the design direction the new site has taken.