Client: Media General

Industry: Business to Consumer (B2C)

Challenge:  As an independent, publicly owned communications company, Media General is a leading provider of newspaper, television and interactive media in 25 markets, primarily in the Southeast. Locally, the Tampa Tribune, WLFA-TV and TBO.com offer Bay Area residents high quality news, information and entertainment.

For the past 25 years, Media General has needed various degrees of strategic planning and consultative support to assist their newspapers as well as the broadcast, Internet and publishing properties owned by the parent company. This need would guide their development of new products, analysis of existing products and measurement of market potential for the company.

There have been several instrumental projects through which Media General and HCP have collaborated in the campaign, new product and publishing categories.

Solution: HCP has been an active participant in the development of many of the campaigns used by Media General’s Tampa newspaper, the Tampa Tribune. Two of these campaigns include the very successful Making a Difference in Our Community, and Life Printed Daily.  Through the campaign work, HCP worked with the Tribune to identify and subsequently specifically target their prime audience. In the Making a Difference in Our Community campaign, the target was the general newspaper reader, but as time progressed and the audience changed, the subsequent Life Printed Daily campaign began to target their strongest audience—the affluent adult between the ages of 25 and 54.

Media General is on a constant search for new products to support, as well as new products to create in-house, to keep the appeal fresh and to reach out to various niche segments. With the growth in the Hispanic segment, HCP encouraged and eventually took full control of the development of a concept to address the Hispanic marketplace, leading ultimately to the launch of CENTRO, a free Hispanic publication. HCP not only developed the concept, but named the product, built the product line and even hired the personnel to run it. The product has been very successful among its target and continues to increase its circulation among this powerful niche. The target reader represented a demographic within the market that was growing faster than the general population. The realization that this growing demographic was not being “spoken to” through print made the product that much more valuable.

Most recently, HCP was instrumental in the development and product mix launch of Rain Publishing, the parent publishing company for several joint ventures between Media General and Fourth Door Creative. In response to the presence of affluent individuals in the Tampa Bay Area, HCP has supported Rain’s development of a variety of publications to speak to them. The publications are filled with advertisers who know and understand the affluent subset, and accordingly, offer appropriate products and services.

Several of the Rain publications produced include New Heights Magazine, South Tampa Magazine, BLU, VUE and Brandon Digest.  The latter three publications have been created and launched under the consultation of HCP. As newspaper readership loses ground among certain demographics, niche publications such as those produced under the Rain brand targeting the upper income and affluent households appear to be more appealing to readers.