You can run, but you can’t hide from colour separations
Firstly, apologies from me for going slightly AWOL. I’ve been sitting on this blog topic for a few weeks and made about as much progress as England did in their first game in South Africa (last mention of football, promise).
I’d seen a brief mention of colour separations / editorial charges / product panels (whatever name they go by at the moment – those paid for spaces, usually 100 words and an image for £100) followed by the usual tirade of moans on Twitter a few weeks ago and thought I’d offer my thoughts on the subject. First of all, I’ll make it clear that personally, I don’t like colour separations. The concept of paying for editorial space quite frankly goes against everything I believe PR to be in terms of generating coverage. And no, I don’t believe that achieving colour separation coverage is ‘PR’ either, but at the end of the day supplying material to the press is part of it and if colour separations have to be the end result, then hey ho.
The majority of my clients are building product and materials manufacturers. Naturally, they want to promote their products and the projects they are involved in. I think that’s fair enough, so what’s the problem? Well, this is obviously a bit tricky when you speak to editors and journalists who say “we don’t cover products, but you can book a product panel for £100″. And colour separations aren’t just for the lower end of the market either. Flick through any of the magazines which charge colour separations and you’ll see some of the biggest brand names and manufacturers in the industry, not just two blokes working out of a shed.
There are ways around this, photo captions etc but they don’t tell the full story, so companies have to pay colour separation charges to see their stories covered with photography (and what’s the point of trying to generate coverage for a product if you can’t see it?). Now I’m not slating the media for this, dwindling ad revenues, dog-eat-dog competition and budget-shifting have all made magazines more commercially aware (maybe than some would care to admit) so they need to source the cash from somewhere and let’s face it, there’s not a shortage of companies wanting coverage. If you don’t pay for that space out of principle, someone else will. Obviously it would be an ideal world if material could be supplied to journalists who then make the call about what goes into the magazine based on what is relevant and interesting to the readership. Unfortunately, this is not an ideal world.
Colour separations are here, and they’re staying put (at least for the time being).
My advice if you’re a building product manufacturer or materials supplier who wants to generate coverage and promote your wares in the market is figure out which media who do charge for colour separations are going to be the best ones to spend your money with – an easier option is to get an experienced agency or PR person who knows the media to handle this for you. I’m not saying you need to like paying colour separation charges, just live with them for a little while. Social media and digital content may take over in the future, but until this becomes the majority rather than the minority, you’re going to have to go with it.
Another option is to secure feature articles and comment pieces on industry trends and drivers (legislation is a good one as there’s no shortage of that in construction) but there are some fundamentals to remember here. 1. Be interesting. 2. Don’t expect it to be an 800 word opportunity for you to go on the hard sell. 3. These opportunities are less frequent than ‘colour sep’d’ project stories. 4. Build a relationship with the media so you can take advantage of these opportunities (see my earlier post on the importance of media visits).
The media that serves the construction industry is impressively diverse. From the main weekly publications such as Construction News, New Civil Engineer and Building – who have a lovely new website (plus the likes of AJ and BD) to the ‘monthlies’ (too many to mention here I think). For an industry with so many areas of niche interest there needs to be a diverse media that provides for that interest. Many of the magazines don’t charge a subscription (simply because people won’t pay it, but that doesn’t mean they don’t want to read it or have access to the content), so how else do they make their business model work? In a way, colour separations enable that great bastion of media markets to be achieved, variety. Yes, they also encourage crap titles, but if you can’t tell the difference between a good and bad publication, find someone who does. Without the income publications would close, guaranteed. And whilst we might be left with the ‘better’ magazines, it doesn’t mean we’ll have access to better content.
Fair play if you think that colour separations only ransack budgets, to some extent I agree. But if you had a product to promote and a limited way of being able to do it, would you do any different?
Good blog post Neil. My beef with colour seps is that:
- Too many of our peers use this approach as a lazy way to boost the cuttings file and bill their clients after explaining there’s no alternative (or worse, use the PR budget on colour seps and don’t explain this to their clients at all). I have lost track of the number of clients who are shocked and amazed when I explain there are other ways to get coverage. I hate the way so many building industry CEOs and even informed marketing directors just assume this is “PR”.
- Too many publications pass off colour seps as a PR tool, instead of being honest and upfront about these product panel opportunities as part of a range of commercial advertising options.
- Unlike ‘true’ advertising, you have no control over which page, position on page etc. that your product appears. Many of these colour sep pages don’t have even a Readerlink enquiry service to capture potential sales leads so, IMHO, it’s as good as throwing your photos/artwork plus 100 quid at a publication and saying “use it as you wish, anywhere in the book, and it doesn’t matter if I don’t hear anything back.”
So yes, I think there is often a need for product advertising as part of the marketing mix.
Yes, I think there is scope for creative and impactful use of very small ads in product panel sections in reputable journals read by your target market (product specifiers/buyers).
But no, I don’t think these things should be part of your PR activities or budget. Even at £100 a pop, it’s advertising. It should be planned, creatively executed and evaluated in the same way as all your other ads.
Colour seps: a total depressing con.
I once spent a week selling colour seps when I was 20 and living in Bristol. Job was advertised as “media sales”. Hilarious.
Good post. I thought I’d respond from the client’s point of view.
You are both absolutely on the money, although I’ll have to take your word for it about the ‘shabby’ practices of some of your peers who use the PR budget for the purchase of panels and claim the column inches as I’ve no experience of this. All the agencies I have used over the past twenty years (I had to double check the maths on that one!) have obviously been of the good kind.
As someone who is responsible for a marketing budget I know that the ‘colour sep’ charge is a throwback to a bygone age where, I’m told, you did contribute towards the cost of the colour separation print process.
I also know that the request for colour separation fees falls into two camps, the first being the panel as found in the back of AJ or Building for example. The other is for less structured panels (for want of a better description) and these typically appear in product selector type publications that half-heartedly masquerade themselves as more newsy.
Personally I allocate a portion of my marketing budget for ‘colour seps’ for the product selector type publications and this is controlled by the PR agency. They are told at the start of the year that the pot is X amount and once it’s gone, it’s gone. I also allow for these when reviewing the performance of the agency.
As part of the advertising budget will be a fund for the panel type and as part of the advertising schedule for the year a number of these might be included. There are two reasons for the inclusion of these, the first is brand awareness and the second is lead generation. Both of these can and should be measured to gauge the return on investment. So the debate becomes full page ad at a cost of say £2k or twenty panels spread over the year – which offers you best value based on your objectives?
I wonder if the readership of the publications view these as editorially independent or supplied by the companies. I have to admit to being in this game for far too long and with that comes a hefty dose of cynicism – I believe very little of what I read or hear in the media. What I can say is that when I’ve placed panels in the likes of AJ, Building & BD the lead generation has always been acceptable.
I don’t think there is a right or wrong approach, if it works for you as part of your marketing communications mix then do it. What should be clear is that it’s not a ‘colour sep’ charge because in this digital age the colour separation process is almost non-existent. So what should we call it?
From a journalist’s point of view, I don’t think the vast majority would have them in the magazine if they had a choice either. I certainly didn’t sign up for it. It was a real shock to me when I moved into trade journalism and suddenly had this obsolete target to meet. There’s no justification for it in this day and age.
For my part, I try to be as honest as possible about it. I don’t call it editorial. If anything, it’s more like a mini advertorial. I definitely believe it should be kept separate from the editorial process. It just muddies things. Unfortunately I can’t to much to change it.
Perhaps the web will eventually kill it off. Fingers crossed.