The NAA Board of Directors in 2004 directed NAA to work with ASNE on the development a new initiative that continues the industry’s aggressive focus on growing audience. ASNE agreed to be part of this initiative.

An Audience Development Initiative Steering Committee was formed to deliberate on the mission, scope and action plans for this new initiative. The committee determined that, given the industry’s efforts to build on the core product by aggregating audiences through multiple products and platforms, the new initiative should support these new strategies.

The working title of this new initiative is Growing Audience: A Toolkit for Change. The mission statement: Provide deep understanding of consumer media usage and the marketplace and help executives develop audience-building strategies and execution tactics for both the newspaper and for new print and digital products.

The committee identified three components for this initiative:

  • Understanding the Landscape: Scan and synthesize existing research to better understand consumer behavior, media usage drivers and the competitive environment. Where there are gaps in existing research, conduct new studies. Based on that research, develop actionable audience-development strategy recommendations.
  • Best Practices: Establish criteria for verifiable audience-growing strategies across media platforms (inside and outside the newspaper industry). Also, identify and track innovative new products and strategies designed to grow audiences.
  • Toolkit Development: As a result of consumer media research and best practices, provide meaningful tools to help newspapers identify and act on new audience-growing opportunities.
This multi-year initiative intends to provide ongoing tracking of consumer behavior, formulation of actionable strategies, identification and communication of best practices and development of editorial and business tools.

For more information, contact Randy Bennett, NAA vice president of audience and new business development, at randy.bennett@naa.org.
If you would like an e-mail notification of future Growing Audience updates, please send e-mail to Sally Clarke at sally.clarke@naa.org.