In a comment, Anonymous@8:58 p.m. yesterday wrote about the latest phase in Gannett's moving advertising production to two new work consolidation centers, in Des Moines and Indianapolis. The following concerns The News Journal at Wilmington, Del.:Ad consolidation started on Friday at Wilmington. Monday will be the "live" day. Cannot report anything until then. It appears there are eight other papers that have gone live, but no news about them. Will report next week to let you know how things go. I imagine it will be quite insane for quite a while. I recommend any paper that is next, to put all your advertisers in a row and offer your services on a freelance basis. From what I have seen, the advertisers will not be happy with this and will want someone who can offer them a personal touch, rather than having their ad put with thousands of others. This is going to be a total failure for Gannett.
[Image: today's Sunday News Journal, Newseum]
It appears those in the corporate ivory towers thought this was a big money saver for Gannett. ”Hey lets put all the designers in one place and make it a cookie cutter environment, great idea! We can save millions” Sad thing is they didn't realize that creative people do not thrive in a constant deadline driven, noncreative sweat shop environment. They didn't even train the advertisers how to up load their ads until the deadline. The high maintenance advertisers will never survive this. It will bring more dollars back to the agencies and to freelancers, because only they can provide the hand holding these advertisers require. On top of this, they have taken very extremely talented artists and made them into customer service reps that have to train the salespeople and the advertisers. Expect high turnover for these individuals. These jobs are just temporary until they can find a rewarding job where their creative skills will be appreciated. Once again, this shows the ignorance of corporate to think that individual design can be created at one location. I have to say this is one of the worst decisions corporate has ever made. Deadlines are tighter, only two corrections per advertiser. All I can see is lost revenue the same way Circulation lost revenue because of the customer service centers centralizing. So I guess page makeup is next along with pagination. It is truly a sad day for advertisers across the country and Gannett has once again reached a new low. Hope you are proud of what you have done to a once thriving company Craig. Enjoy your bonus, but know it has to be bitter sweet because now you have once again taken the local out of what was supposed to be a local newspaper.
ReplyDeletemy paper is supposed to go in June but our supervisors keep telling us not to worry. has there been any news on how the transition is going?
ReplyDeletePensacola News Journal rollout for ad production has been moved from August to September, 2010. This is the fourth scheduled rollout change for this newspaper.
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