A little bad marketing goes a long way

From Salon... funny stuff.
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Tuesday, March 3, 2009
The death throes of my newspaper
Nancy Mitchell

A couple of years ago, back when those of us who worked at the Rocky Mountain News still thought a redesign would save us, management asked some focus groups to "brand" the newspaper for marketing purposes. For reasons that are still unclear, they came back with automobile metaphors:

The Rocky is a Ford. Dependable, solid. The working man's vehicle. The words "blue collar" may have been used. Our arch rival, the Denver Post, was deemed a Buick or a Cadillac, something more refined, more expensive. Sleeker.

Great, I thought, sitting in an auditorium of equally confused journalists who wanted nothing more than to get back to the newsroom. So are we an Escort or an Explorer?

The "brand" results were turned into a campaign in which the Rocky was described as a "Power Tool" for our readers. It was plastered across the sides of a newly acquired black Hummer that occasionally drove around Denver but mostly sat in our parking lot.

Friday, the Rocky, with a daily circulation of 210,000 and 457,000 on Saturdays, became the nation's largest newspaper to cease publication in an economic recession that already has sent the Chicago Tribune and both of Philadelphia's daily papers running for bankruptcy cover, among others, and put a For Sale sign on the Miami Herald. If we were a Ford, we ran out of gas 55 days before our 150th anniversary.

The rest is here.