Months after word leaked that Gannett plans to consolidate its newspaper advertising design at two new U.S. production centers, basic questions remain unanswered for employees -- and for me.An outside vendor, Outsourcing USA, is expected to get up to one-quarter of GCI's ad production at the two centers, in Des Moines and Indianapolis, trade publication Editor & Publisher said in October. "We will handle any kind of ad -- anything from a grocery circular to a high-end Flash ad" for the Web," Outsourcing executive David Madeira told Editor & Publisher.
But what about the remaining three-quarters of the work? Some of it shifted to Los Angeles-based 2AdPro, which does the work in India; that started about two years ago, when Gannett began its big consolidation push in finance, printing and other operations.My question for any of the presumably hundreds of ad production employees affected: What's happened to that 2AdPro contract?
The other, even more central question: What's the schedule for the shift in work to Des Moines and Indianapolis? Only this morning, Anonymous@11:08 a.m. said in a comment: "Wondering if anyone has received any formal memos about when ad production consolidation will happen at their paper?"
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Anonymous@12:42 p.m. posted the following in today's Real Time Comments, top of this page; I'm cross-posting it below because it's relevant to this post.
ReplyDeleteThe following memo regarding the ad production rollout appeared on Gannettoid in November. There is also a tentative schedule posted after this memo on that site:
From: Stephansky, Cristen On Behalf Of Ryan, J. Austin
Sent: Friday, November 20, 2009 8:54 AM
Subject: Revised GPC Roll Out Schedule
Folks
We continue to learn volumes in Des Monies and as such have revised the previous shared schedule to be more in line with the original business plan. Please review and plan accordingly. Additionally I understand from Roxanne that she has communicated to the Regional HR Director the pay out plan for positions eliminated.
Thought I would additionally share some bullet points on progress in Des Moines:
Des Moines Register is live as of Nov 2nd at the GPC. Week 1, GPC produced 1000 ads for the Des Moines Register and struggled with system and networking challenges. So far in Week 2 things are much quieter with communication (getting/sharing enough information) a challenge, but meeting with DMR daily to work through and develop a plan for future newspapers also many process errors on the sites part and we have reinstated outsourcing.
Prior to conversion, DMR had only been using ATOL (online submission and proofing tool) for about 2 weeks. Struggling with educating sales rep, but arranged a refresher training session with vendor and this was very helpful for them.
38% of all ad materials being submitted by DMR are late against deadlines they had given us.
Continue to struggle with networking issues and are working through with Corp IT.
Developing training materials for future site roll outs, and creating a share-point site for materials and schedules.
Working on best practices as well for future roll outs and also a checklist to use throughout that process
Spent time in UK observing consolidated centers with in-house ad production and out-sourcing will be setting up visits to those sites who have already accomplished some local area consolidations such as Nashville and Wisconsin but also New York Times.
As I had mentioned early on to the Group Presidents this will be challenging but should allow us technology to enhance our relationship with customers as well as free up time for our sales group to grow revenue.
Again if you have thoughts and concerns please let me know,
Thanks for all the support
Austin
From a friend at a southeast paper about 2adpro. They still use it but the quality is so bad that most everything has to be redone if even used at all.
ReplyDelete2adpro is still being used but as stated above, most of the work
ReplyDeletehas to be recreated, which to me, is wasting time and money. Not sure when 2adpro's contract runs out, but thought I had read some where that the other ad consolidation company would be taking most of that work.
Also, in the memo from Austin,not sure if it was the memo posted, it also mentions something about retaining some artists to work on local accounts to increase revenue. Not sure if that was something just being kicked around or if it is actually happening.