Educational pull-outs to attract young readers, monitoring shifts in purchasing trends, and ongoing marketing promotions are but a few of the strategies of the New Vision group of newspapers in Uganda to win over new readers and nurture existing relationships.

The newspapers in the New Vision group are some of the most profitable in the country. The group publishes the English-language daily, “New Vision”, “Sunday Vision”, as well as four local language publications, “Bukkede”, “Etop”, “Orumuri”, and “Ruping”. The group also has a number of stand-alone monthly and quarterly magazines. RAP 21 spoke to Tom Wasswa, circulation manager for New Vision and architect of many of the winning strategies undertaken by the newspaper group to boost readership and sales.

RAP 21: What have you found to be the greatest circulation driver of all of your strategies?
Tom Wasswa: The best driver of circulation is content. Then of course you add on to that availability and convenience. Wherever someone goes, they can get a copy of one of our newspapers. If you combine both of those elements, you are on the right track.

What we have tried with New Vision papers are to make them interactive. We have an online discussion point on the website where people can send in their opinions. Of course we also have opinion and letters pages. We also cover local news and events to stay close to the community.

RAP 21: What are some of your latest initiatives to boost circulation?
Tom Wasswa: We have started carrying examination pull-outs three times per week to attract young readers. These pull-outs are effectively mock exams. On Tuesday we have something called “0 Levels”, on Wednesday we have “A levels” and Thursdays are “Primary”. The answers appear in the next week’s issue. These have been really successful. On each of those days, sales go up by about 15 percent. Its been a very good content strategy.

We started this initiative in July of last year. (Nation-wide school exams took place in November.) When the exams are over, the pull-outs serve as a general tutoring tool. We are doing this only in New Vision because school examinations are in English.

We are also assessing changing trends in purchasing: habits are changing, and more and more people want to do all of their shopping in one place. This includes buying their newspapers. Therefore we are targeting local shops and garages in addition to our traditional points of sales.

RAP 21: What was your most successful marketing initiative of all time?
Tom Wasswa: The Bingo competition was probably the most popular marketing initiative we’ve ever carried out.

(The game involves matching up a series of numbers published each day in the newspaper with cards that were distributed in the newspaper. Each card included a total of eight games, allowing players eight chances to become a winner. For more see: http://www.rap21.org/article17884.htm).

We carried this out in both New Vision and Bukkede. When you look at it, the concept is simple: It is all about cash. People also felt is was a fair competition - it is purely about luck, not skill or intelligence. We are planning to carry another Bingo competition, but are looking a looking for a co-sponsor because it is very expensive. We are currently in discussions with some companies in the telecommunications market to negotiate a deal where they provide half of the total prize money (10,000USD), in exchange for advertising.

RAP 21: What sort of other marketing do you carry out?
Tom Wasswa: We do direct marketing in the form of printing flyers to advertise when new issues of our magazines are coming out. For example, with one of our magazines, Bride and Groom, we will distribute flyers to wedding receptions halls, churches and bridal shops. We have also been running joint promotions with local shops, for example we will offer a cake as a prize in order to attract readers as well as advertisers from these shops.

For our sports magazine, we have partnered with alcohol and telecommunications companies to give out prizes. Readers can get cases of beer, and telephones are given out for free by the telecommunications companies. Whenever we advertise this, it drives up circulation because they have to cut out the coupon from the newspapers.

RAP 21: What sort of branding initiatives do you carry out?
Tom Wasswa: We have been poor in the past, but we’re starting to do more of this. We are now producing t-shirts and mugs. We also do what we call the “Bill copies”. Every morning we put up the main headlines on telephone polls. We do this for all the newspapers. This is successful in terms of visibility. We also do a lot of publicity at our points of sale: we’ll put up posters in stores and at newsstands. And of course we brand our vehicles.

RAP 21: How much money from your overall budget do you invest in marketing strategies.
Tom Wasswa: Five per cent of our overall budget is dedicated to marketing and promotions. We are now moving away from corporate branding of New Vision to the branding of individual titles. We realised that, as a corporate brand, New Vision was ‘cannibalising’ the other brands. Therefore we’ve recently increased the budget for branding; today 2 percent of the overall budget for marketing and promotions goes for branding of our other titles.

RAP 21: What is the most profitable of all of your newspapers?
Tom Wasswa: Bukkede is the most profitable and sales are increasing. In terms of loyalty, it has a very strong readership base. This is due to its objective reporting and quality, however also because Bukkede is close to the community. People feel like it is their own. It is always there in both celebration and death. Bukkede is there for the community, even though it is a national paper.

New Vision Facts and Figures:
The New Vision group has 17 staff in its circulation department and a 60-person team in advertising. The daily New Vision prints in four colours and has an average of 44 pages. Thirty-seven percent of this is advertising. Fifty-five percent of the newspaper’s revenues come from advertising, 45 comes from cover sales. Sixty percent of revenue from sales comes from the capital of Kampala and forty percent from the outlying regions.

Average circulation for the daily New Vision is 35,000. Circulation for the Sunday Vision is 40,000 and Bukkede, the group’s most popular of the local language publications, has an average circulation of 15,000. The monthly sports magazine Premiership (circulation 15,000); the quarterly Bride and Groom (circulation 8,000); and City Beat, also quarterly, (circulation of 4,000).