Hyperlocal Print Media (Sept 2016)

14 PRINTACTION · September 2016 PRINTACTION.COM
Metroland Media details the
ins and outs of manufacturing
community newspapers and
distributing flyers in Ontario,
using a range of tools to
measure its market
penetration
By Victoria Gaitskell
P
robably Metroland
Media, owned byTorstar
Corporation, which also
owns Canada’s largest
daily print newspaper,
the Toronto Star, is best
known for publishing
over 100 community
newspapers. Geographic-
ally the circulations of these papers span
the province of Ontario, from London in
the west to Parry Sound in the north to
Ottawa in the east, with predictably the
densest concentration in the Greater To-
ronto Area. Most of Metroland’s news-
papers are distributed weekly, some twice
a week, and two – the Hamilton Spectator
and Waterloo Region Record – are dailies.
Annually, the company also distributes
four billion advertising flyers – partly
printed by themselves but mostly printed
by others – door to door to households in
its newspaper-circulation areas.
This year, in partnership with Brand-
SparkInternational,Metrolandcompleted
a study of its community news readership,
comprising over 13,000 online and tele-
phone surveys of adults in Metroland’s
circulation areas.The study shows that 90
percent of respondents use either Metro-
land’s printed community newspapers or
flyers for local news or shopping informa-
tion. Recently, I asked Michelle Digulla,
Vice President, Marketing, Metroland
Media, and Dean Zavarise, Executive VP
and General Manager, Torstar Printing
Group,who oversees Metroland’s printing
activities, for details on how Metroland
maintains this high degree of market pene-
tration in Canada’s most populous prov-
ince. Digulla and Zavarise also discuss the
future of Metroland’s community news-
paper and flyer businesses, and how these
fit with corporate strategy.
HYPERLOCAL
PRINT MEDIA
DISTRIBUTION
Metroland’s
massive KBA
Colora web press is
located in Torstar’s
second-largest and
most modern plant,
located on Tempo
Avenue in Toronto.

Metroland’s portfolio
Digulla says,that besides their community
newspapers and flyers, Metroland Media
is one ofthe largest direct-mail distributors
in Ontario,tothetune of four billion pieces
a year that reach about 84 percent of On-
tario households each week.In addition to
the digital assets associated with its com-
munity newspapers, Metroland also
operates other major online community
news sites that Digulla says are one of its
fastest growing businesses, currently ex-
periencing double-digit growth.
The company also publishes printed
magazines and organizes experiential
consumer marketing shows in such cat-
egories as bridal,food and wine,travel and
most recently a video-gaming show called
EGLX, by far its largest expo, that pre-
miered inToronto in April.
Digulla explains: “Our biggest assets
are WagJag.com, a group-purchase Web-
site where Canadian consumers can buy
discounted products and services, and
Save.ca, the largest digital flyer and cou-
pon company in Canada. We dabble in
otherinterests,buttheonesI’vementioned
are the biggest buckets.”
Hyperlocal media
Digulla says one of the main reasons be-
hind Metroland’s strength in community
newspapers isthe company’s longstanding
connections to the communities it serves:
“Hyperlocal content really matters to the
members of a community. Two-thirds of
our online traffic comes from search and
social media, where we find many people
sharing our local content because of its
uniqueness. They can’t find it anywhere
else.
“Our staff who produce the community
newspapers live in those communities, so
we knowthe people intimately,whattopics
interest them, what causes a stir, and
whom to call for the inside story. These
relationships give us the right balance be-
tween the ability to act locally and be part
of the community versus the large scale of
a big company that enables us to do our
job efficiently.”
Zavarise explains: “To maximize effi-
ciencies across our entire platform,Torstar
Printing Group operates as a network of
printing plants and has downsized or
consolidated plants as needed. In the last
threeyearswe have closed three plants.”In
July 2016, this included Metroland’s
Vaughan plant with printing of the Toronto
Star outsourced toTCTranscontinental.
Zavarise lists the six plants Torstar
Printing Group currently operates across
Ontario, all with mainly cold-set web
newspaper-printing capabilities: Ranked
by number of staff, the largest is the Ham-
ilton Spectator plant (in Hamilton), where
they print Metroland’s two dailies on three
large double-width Goss presses and per-
form offline packaging work for the Toron-
to Star. Besides printing and distributing
its own properties,Torstar also prints and/
or distributes newspapers published by
competitors; for example, just recently it
signed a contract to print Postmedia’s
London Free Press (published six days a
week) in Hamilton starting in October.
Torstar’s second-largest and most mod-
ern plant, located on Tempo Avenue in
Toronto, is equipped with a KBA Colora
press and two lines of community-style
single-width presses. Largely the Tempo
plantprintsbiggercommunitynewspapers,
and also MetroToronto,the free daily owned
by Metroland’s sister corporation Star
Media Group, also a subsidiary ofTorstar.
Zavarise says the Tempo plant’s produc-
tion consists of about 85 percent work for
their own or affiliated companies and 15
percent general commercial work for third
parties.
“AtTempo we are just starting up a new,
relatively small heat-set single web instal-
lation – our first foray into this type of
equipment after many years.Its purpose is
to print smallto medium runs of flyers and
other marketing materials,whichwe see as
an opportunity to grow our already strong
relationships with many flyer advertisers
by offering them more services,” explains
Zavarise.
A third plant, Central Ontario Web in
Barrie, with two community newspaper
press lines, is used to print Metroland’s
assets including its many newspapers cir-
culated in northern communities like
Barrie and Muskoka. At a fourth facility,
HamiltonWeb Printing in Stoney Creek,a
single line community press prints news-
papers and third-party commercial work.
Thuroweb Printing, a small fifth facility in
Durham, near Owen Sound, produces
newspapers for southwestern Ontario
communities such as Fergus, Mount For-
est and Elmira.
Zavarise says Torstar’s sixth facility,
Performance Printing in Smith Falls, a
suburb of Ottawa, is the company’s most
commercial-style plant, providing both
newspaper printing (including Metro Ot-
tawa) and full-service printing capabilities
fortheOttawaarea.Itsequipmentincludes
two cold-set community press lines (one
tower with UV), sheetfed presses, bindery,
an inserting facility,and a digital lettershop
operation for direct mail.
Commercial third-party printing
Zavarise explains:“Our jobs for Metroland
and Torstar are a captive business. Gener-
ally they are fairly routine and fall into the
same slots each week.But our commercial
printing is more opportunistic, and we’re
always glad to take on more commercial
work.” He adds that the schedule at each
ofTorstar’s six plants is overseen internally
by each location’s operations manager,but
when major changes are requested by
publishers and third-party commercial
customers,a central planning team figures
out where they can best schedule the work
to ensure efficiencies and that customer
requirements can be consistently met.
Since the busiest production days tend
to beTuesdays,Wednesday andThursdays
for community newspapers and Mondays
and Fridays for flyers, he says commercial
work is often scheduled in between these
crunch times to maximize use of resources.
“And if necessary, we also maintain rela-
Torstar has a
network of six
printing plants,
including its
second-largest and
most-modern
located on Tempo
Avenue in Toronto.
Dean Zavarise,
Executive VP and
General Manager,
Torstar Printing
Group.
Percentage of people
within Metroland’s
entire footprint read
at least one of the last
four Metroland
community
newspapers.
Readership is
particularly strong in
the GTA(including
Durham, Halton, Peel,
and York) with 84%
readership.
73%

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tionships with other companies who
can do our overflow printing.”
Zavarise continues: “In the last
three months, we started Metroland-
printing.com, a do-it-yourself Web
storefront offering our advertisers
and other clients and the general
public the ability to order a large
gamut of printed products from us
directly online. This portal was the
brainchild of Nathan Matheson
[Director of Business Development
and Administration for Metroland
Media and Torstar Printing Group],
who thought, that instead of just
selling what our plants can do, we
should facilitate all forms of printing
for our customers. This strategy en-
ables us to build on our existing rela-
tionships and make things easier for
our clients by offeringthem one-stop
shopping.” The Website’s current
online offerings include business
cards, stationery, postcards, bro-
chures, door hangers, greeting cards,
tear cards,tent cards,magnets,labels
and large-format signs.
Flyer fine points
Zavarise explains: “Our distribution
business is a very solid, reliable pro-
cess, audited by the Flyer Distribu-
tion Standards Association. It is a
sophisticated operation involving not
a few guys in a back room, but hun-
dreds of people working in massive
facilities of 10,000 to 80,000 square
feet with one to four inserting ma-
chines. Across our footprint, we
operate 14 such large regional distri-
bution centres, most with ma-
chine-inserting capabilities.”
He says all their distribution facili-
ties share a common software
management system to track the
week’s flyer placements and delivery
destinations. This system records
which zones each flyer needsto reach
and downloads the information to
the inserting machines at each fa-
cility. Each facility waits for the
printing plants to deliver the week’s
flyers before they can start building
packages. Typically they start on
Friday for aThursday delivery and
work aroundthe clock andthrough
the weekend, depending on the
size of the packages to be assem-
bled for individual homes.For one
community newspaper, a typical
package can contain 30 or 40 dif-
ferent flyers, says Zavarise. Once
packaging is completed, contract-
ors transport the bundles of flyers
to carriers’ homes along with the
printed newspaper for their com-
munity. Usually a Metroland
newspaper and one or more pack-
ages of flyers are delivered separ-
atelytoeachcarrier,whoassembles
them into a single package and
delivers it door to door.
“Occasionally we use Canada
Post, but in many markets we still
distribute flyers in packages via
youth carriers,each deliveringto as
few as 50 or 60 households,” Za-
varise continues.“That’swherethe
complexity lies. Advertisers can
narrowly target where their flyer
lands.We can helpthem determine
which zones have the right demo-
graphics to match their target
market.”
Digulla comments: “No one
else in Ontario is large enough to
afford or warrant the type of work
we do for major clients in targeting
flyersto specific locations based on
point-of-service customer data
collected by the clients. Our team
includes a specialistwith a Masters
degree in Geographical Informa-
tion Systems who can calculate very
narrowly targeted deliveries to as few
as, say, 60 homes based on factors
such as demographics, income, pur-
chasing behaviour, lifestyle, or
psychological profile.”
Zavarise says that advertisers
often use this targeting service on
simpler terms by choosing to distrib-
ute their flyer to one specific portion
of a community rather than the
communityasawhole:“Forexample,
although a big grocery store chain
might want their flyer to reach every
household, a small laundromat
might only want their flyer to go to
the 1,000 homes located closest to
the laundromat.We have the capab-
ility of doing that.
“And if 20 other types of business-
es are doing the same thing,” adds
Zavarise, “an individual carrier
might end up with a unique set of
flyers that is quite different from the
package delivered by the carrier on
the next block.”
Future Geo-demographics
In the next three to five years, Digul-
la expects to see much more interest
and business activity from clients
based on point-of-service data and
geo-demographics. She also antici-
pates that Metroland will be doing
more to expand and leverage its
growing digital properties.
Both Digulla and Zavarise say,
that although in general the Can-
adian newspaper business is being
severely challenged bythe movement
of advertising dollars from print to
digital media, Metroland’s study
indicates consumers’ receptiveness
to printed community newspapers
and printed flyers delivered door to
door remains high. Consequently,
they feel optimistic about Metro-
land’s ability to continue attracting
advertisers to sustain these business-
es into the future.
Additionally, Zavarise predicts,
that although at present, relatively
speaking, they do not print a lot of
variable data for their flyer advertis-
ers, the demand for this service may
grow in the future. For example,
right now they print and circulate
multiple versions of Niagara This
Week in six different zones. Some
content is common to all six, but
other content is limited to certain
zones. Similarly, Digulla says a gro-
cer who has great take-up on particu-
lar products in a specific area may
customize their flyer for that specific
area and request a special drop.
Inthe future,advertisers may start
exploiting these types of possibilities
more often.“It all depends on them,”
says Zavarise. “We’ll stay open to
whatever they need.”
Readers are
spending an average
of 22 minutes
reading the
newspaper,
according to a
Metroland study,
including over six
minutes reading the
inserted flyers.
22 Min.
We help them determine
which zones have the
right demographics

Hyperlocal Print Media (Sept 2016)

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