While mobile and TV may feature strongly in the future of Post Publishing, print is the medium which has accounted for most of its recent dramatic growth.
Thai business and commuter newspapers – as well as upmarket consumer magazines – are central to a transformation beyond niche to mass-market publisher.
Once solely focussed on the English-language daily Bangkok Post, the company has grown from annual turnover of 800 million baht ($27.4 million) to being one of the country’s largest publishing businesses.
Print has driven that growth: “Over the past five to ten years we have looked at markets where we thought we could compete, and had the resources to do so,” says president and chief operating officer Supakorn Vejjajiva.
Resources are key, and following the construction of a new printing plant in 2007, Post has been able to absorb press and prepress production of its biggest new title with only adjustments in the work schedules of existing staff.
Established in 1946, Post is marching ahead in what Vejjajiva says is a “very vibrant” advertising market. His arrival at the company as marketing and circulation director 11 years ago – from roles with financial services company Lehman Bros and his own web business portal venture – coincides with a growth spurt which began with the launch of Thai-language business daily Post Today. He was made deputy chief operating officer in 2006, and took on his current role three years later.
The 400,000 circulation free M2F and a magazine division which recently added Forbes to a stable already including Elle, Elle Decoration, Marie Claire, Martha Stewart Living, Science Illustrated and – through a joint venture – Australia’s Cleo magazine, are the most visible fruits of this new era.
English and Thai-language websites have been part of the Post story for some years, but Vejjajiva says that while online has grown, penetration is still relatively small in Thailand and likely to be overtaken by mobile. “I’m not frightened to say that so far we haven’t been really successful online, and rather than develop our own product, we have looked at acquisition.”
There’s certainly an expectation that the digital space will grow – Thailand is a very political and social society and people get into social media very quickly. “But we had to look at it as a business and the dollars weren’t there,” he says. And while advertising agencies talk about wanting a digital product, “they go back to advertising on TV”.
Growth has however, been strong in print… and in breaking out of the company’s English-language heritage. In 2002, the Bangkok Post was a market leader in its segment but readership was limited by a relatively little-used language.
“After Post Today and expansion into magazines with foreign-owned titles published under licence, we looked at the growth in the mass transit system, and came up with the idea of a free paper.”
Launched two years ago, M2F has become one of the country’s biggest newspapers.
Despite growth with the Thai language Post Today in 2002, radio and then TV, there was a realisation that most young professionals were still sourcing their news elsewhere. An estimated two million office workers – half of whom did not buy newspapers – were seen as a desirable target group for advertisers.
Swift growth of the city’s mass transit system – with more rail extensions planned – was bringing some 700,000 Skytrain and 250,000 subway passengers a day into the city, in addition to a further million arriving by cars and buses.
“They’re young, well educated, but don’t speak English well,” Post editor-in-chief Pichai Chuensuksawadi explained in a presentation last year. Most listen to TV before leaving for work, and want to be updated quickly when the arrive; they want to be entertained, with no heavy news. “For the rest of the day, they update themselves via TV, mobile phone and the internet.”
Research put the Bangkok Post at 85 per cent of the existing 1.8 million baht English daily newspaper advertising market, with Nation controlling the remainder. Post Today had 35 per cent of business advertising with Krungthep Turakji (50 per cent) and Manager (15 per cent) accounting for the rest.
In the much more fragmented mass market, Thairath had 46 per cent, Daily News and Kom Chad Luek 16 per cent each, with the remainder shared between five titles.
Post created focus groups and did research, learning that a lighter style was needed, with discount offers and coupons in the mix. A 25-person editorial team – headed by a 50-year-old editor who “had never worn a suit before” – was set up with access to all Post Group content and “does a lot of rewriting”.
The decision to go for a 24-page tabloid was a relatively easy one, and after agonising over circulation, the company opted for a launch at 400,000 copies and a willingness to go higher… something which is currently under consideration.
Unlike Hong Kong, Australian or European markets, distribution had to be adapted to local circumstances. One problem was that if copies were left in unmanned bins, they might be taken in bulk and sold for waste paper. “Eventually people line up,” Chuensuksawadi says.
Between 7-9 am, about 270 ‘handlers’ have been supervising distribution of the paper at 125 buildings, five expressway entrances, ten BTS stations, six MRT stations and six commuter van hubs. The paper’s launch on October 11, 2011 came as floods were approaching the city, but despite the variety of hardships, AC Nielsen research the following April found M2F ranked second (to Thairath) in reader awareness.
The last months of 2011 saw revenue at 50 per cent of target levels, and a surge through 75 per cent in advertising revenue for M2F in March enabled M2F to be profitable this year and a resounding success story for the company.
This month’s World Newspaper Congress – of which Post Publishing was a major supporter – is the third occasion on which the German-headquartered WAN-Ifra has brought its newspaper events to Bangkok.
There’s a theme here: The Germans were also in town in 2002… not just Ifra – holding its second Asia conference and the first under the Publish Asia title – but also Heidelberg chief executive Bernhard Schreier, among those who had got wind that Post Publishing might be in the market for a new press.
Interestingly, Victor Visot, regional chief executive of Elle publisher Hachette Fillipacchi was also a speaker at that conference, as was Steve Forbes, president of the magazine company which bears his family name. Both companies have since signed deals with Post.
The world’s biggest printing press manufacturer was in the middle of a flirtation with the newspaper market following its acquisition of Harris Web, subsequently sold to Goss International. Talking up its plans for global market domination, the maker had shown at DRUPA a couple of years earlier, the fruits of two ideas it had found in the R&D cupboard at Harris… the pinless, gapless Sunday heatset press, and an innovative 4x1 newspaper press, the Mainstream 80.
Just the thing to replace the 57 units of elderly Goss Community on which the 57,000-copy run of the Bangkok Post was being produced, they thought.
Heidelberg didn’t get the order, but the 4x1 concept of a high-productivity press which still had the flexibility to increase pagination by four-page units took hold, and it was this configuration that another German maker, KBA was to install at a new print and distribution centre in Samut Prakarn.
The four-tower, all-colour press took over production in 2007, and has been a key enabler for the group’s print-based growth since.
With four newspaper titles in two languages – the other is Student Weekly, launched in 1960 – plus magazines, online and mobile, radio and the possibility of deeper involvement in TV to cater for, thoughts have also turned to business systems, editorial and advertising workflow.
IT consultant Tony Arundell says a strategy which began five years ago with back office, applications and infrastructure upgrade will be fulfilled later this year with a switch to new editorial workflow and asset management systems.
Although the major publications and magazine division currently operate separately, they will use a common database so that resources can be shared as required: “The technology needs to be agile, so that the business can change quickly and we can change with it,” says Arundell.
It will replace the Bangkok Post’s elderly 200-seat Cybergraphic system – with its fast, but proprietary layout application – and the separate Atex Prestige systems added for the Thai-language title Post Today. In addition, Atex Enterprise and PC Architect handled advertising planning and booking.
Now an integrated system is being installed using the media-neutral Content-X editorial solution jointly developed by ppi Media and Digital Collections, two German companies represented in southeast Asia by Reiner Ebenhoch’s Singapore-based Medialive.
The system will enable all content – including text, photos and videos – to be managed in a single database, enabling it to be reused and processed for different channels with minimum effort (web, print, mobile, social media, TV and radio). However, it is likely that separate workflows for digital and print will be maintained for the time being.
Layout is on Adobe’s InDesign which, although slower than Cyber, is much more widely used locally – expanding the pool of available users – and since CS6, caters for Thai.
ppi’s AdX is to follow for cross-media ad booking across print, online and mobile.
Commissioning later this year will bring a five-year IT programme to a close… with the next stage being to look and refine. “The journey never ends for business process and incorporating new technology” says Arundell. “In hindsight we have done some things well, and some we need to improve… but we’ll be looking at them and making the necessary adjustments in the coming phase.”
One thing he is absolutely positive about is the company’s decision more than four years ago to outsource IT, reducing costs and numbers: From an IT staff of 35, Post now has just three focussed on strategy, security, infastructure and corporate reporting, with Post Digital looking after web design and apps. The operations is outsourced to a third party IT vendor.
Arundell praises managing editor Chiratas (Jim) Nivatpumin, a member of the original working group set up by Chuensuksawadi and a “rare example” of a journalist who is enthusiastic and knowledgeable about IT. “These are editorial-driven decisions, and it has been easier to find editorial people who can handle systems than IT guys who understand newspapers” he says.
With Post still very much still a newspaper company – “most of our revenue is from newspapers,” says Supakorn Vejjajiva – the new systems will provide separate newsrooms for the newspapers, magazines and TV, recognising that “each audience and product is different and this is required for serving them”.
Television, he says, could be the new frontier for Post Publishing: “All the talk is about the new era of TV, with the government opening the market with 24 new digital licences. For the past 30 years, we have had five stations. Now Thailand is going to have 24 next year and 24 public broadcasters.”
And Post hopes to be in the action, leveraging its experience as a news gatherer and broadcaster in support of its TV licence application. “We have been doing eight hours of news programming every day for a TV station for the last three years, and so are looking to bid for a license for our own station”.
“We try to go where the money is, where the audience is. It’s all about how we can use our brand to expand into other markets.”