The St. Louis Post-Dispatch has begun a freestanding insert and shared direct mail program to promote local businesses in its trading area.
Local Values goes out each week to about 850,000 households in the St. Louis metropolitan area. Initial advertisers include local grocery chains Schnuck Markets Inc., Shop ‘n Save Warehouse Foods Inc. and other retailers, says Matthew Kraner, the daily newspaper’s general manager.
At press time, the Post-Dispatch had signed on “a major optical wear franchise” to piggyback on the Local Values packages. Kraner makes no projections about how the program might perform.
“We’re doing this to grow market share,” he says, while adding that two of the larger grocery chains in the area were supportive of the venture reportedly because they were unhappy with Advo Inc., Local Values’ major competitor here.
Kraner declines to reveal how much Post-Dispatch publisher Pulitzer Inc. invested in Local Values.
Newspaper subscribers will get FSIs in their Monday papers and non-subscribers will receive them in the mail. About three-quarters of Local Values recipients aren’t subscribers, Kraner says.
He concedes that the Local Values program wouldn’t have been possible if Pulitzer hadn’t bought out local newspaper delivery companies, a process begun a few years ago that he says is continuing. Pulitzer now owns nearly 75% of its home and newsstand delivery companies.
Along with the delivery services comes those firms’ billing operations, which have records of subscribers’ names, addresses and phone numbers, says Kraner.
The publisher has no plans at present to expand this program beyond St. Louis, even though it owns 12 newspapers in other markets, including the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson.
Pulitzer has noted that it faces challenges in meeting its profit forecast for 2004. It cited unexpected softness from major retail advertisers, particularly in the key St. Louis market, and costs associated with the Local Values rollout.
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