That precious hour-and-a-half

The top of the corporate tree is full of time-broke alpha suits who make decisions that marketers love, big and expensive ones; but how do you make sure you are in their face when they make those decisions? You have about 90 minutes. How do business media in Malaysia deliver up affluent and influential clients when they are in this very precious me time? Llew-Ann Phang looks at some of the options.

Business media is big business. Some of the most powerful names in publishing were made through business media vehicles, including the likes of Turner and Forbes. Why? Because business media consumers control the economy and some very big purchasing decisions, both related to their companies and personal ones. Marketers want this powerful demographic and they want them bad, and they know they are unlikely to effectively reach them through mass market buys. It's all about getting a little face time and getting a foot in the door of their world.

In Malaysia the business media landscape is somewhat diverse and more agile than in other parts of Asia where, rather than being driven only by large multinational media houses, much of the more interesting media that covers and commentates on business is in independent hands. This includes daily business newspapers with weekly brand extensions, a brand new business radio network as well as an active mainstream media which produces business media offerings.

The Edge has very much defined the business media landscape in Malaysia, after launch more than 14 years ago, when it had just two sections, corporate and capital and just 32 pages of content, according to Edward Stanislaus, director, advertising and marketing for the title.

"Today we have grown to be a newspaper with an average of 128 pages with many new sections - City and Country, Net Value and we introduced our lifestyle section in the newspaper which is called Options. The staple-bound section was brought in and worked as part of our strategy of being the weekend read for the C-suite and decision makers in corporate Malaysia," he says.

The paper and its brand extensions have chased readers into every corner through diverse offerings and therefore allowed advertisers to do the same, however the focus on business, doing well and the pleasures that brings, is always top of mind.

Lifestyle advertising, predominantly from the luxury watch brands are faithful advertisers with the Edge alongside the other big brands in telecommunications and the banking industry and the title has sought to grow it's market share with innovations in both the sales and editorial offerings, which not only include the eight year old Options section but also the more ambitious monthly magazine Off the Edge and a daily business newspaper with two-page coverage on political and national issues called the The Edge Financial Daily.

Stanislaus says CEOs showed interest in advertising in the Corporate section of the title, but the content was not there to attract readers to those products.

"We could not reciprocate their support with stories on lifestyle brands in a corporate environment but Options dutifully achieved the need to provide the element, to feature these companies," Stanislaus said, also adding the opportunity to reach female readers was also a priority.

"In Asia, when you talk corporate, banks, broking houses, fund management houses, and if you look at it, the CEOs are predominantly male but the deputies are usually and mostly women who may largely be trained abroad and may not be comfortable reading lifestyle magazines of the local quality because they would prefer reading their Cosmopolitan and Women's Weekly international publications," he says.

The Edge wanted to be able to offer up these sophisticated connected women to advertisers and "we wanted to appeal to them further so they would have more reason to pick up The Edge," Stanislaus says and cites clients like Tiffany and Co, Patek Phillipe and Rolex as some of the clients who believed they could reach this desirable set of men and women.

The Edge has an audited circulation of 25,041 to June 2008, according to the latest Audit Bureau of Circulations report released this month. This represents an increase of 1000 over the last audit period and The Edge claims their key readership is among readers top to middle level management individuals, attracted to a diet of in-depth analysis and insight of the news of the week, and with whom The Edge says it offers "an exclusive hour and a half with high-level managers at home".

"Not many business publications in the country favour the idea of auditing its circulations. Instead, they would rather conduct their own readership surveys, go down to the ground and speak to the newsstand owners to find out how many issues were sold this month as well besides tracking down the readers themselves," Stanislaus says.

The Edge is among the few which favours the art of auditing and is a strong believer that marketers should be supporters of transparent publications and should insist on readership rates to obtain effective and efficient targets, especially during hard times.

Stanislaus thinks, despite global trends sending of shrinking print readerships he says print media is still the preferred choice for its credibility. However The Edge also wants to be able to offer marketers other mediums and other media to follow their consumers where they want to be and there will be an increased focus on TV, online and radio.

The airwaves, often considered a little old fashioned as a media, but very effective in reaching certain audiences and therefore consumers, is a recent and interesting addition to Malaysia's media landscape has popped up, in BFM or BusinessFM.
The station has been doing plenty of its own marketing to spread the word on it's offering and many KL motorists would now be used to seeing the BFM taxi back outdoor executions featuring plays on the station's acronym.

The very traffic snarls that drive many Malaysians to distraction, particularly in the capital, are being offered up as an opportunity to marketers by BFM to get some of the 90 minutes with executive decision makers.

Timing is everything as BFM's strategy is to get exclusive time with its target market which needs some form of time-filler while fighting traffic congestion on the way to work.

Malek Ali, managing director, describes this exclusive time as great opportunity for the station and clients.

"Most business executives take the car to work, either chauffeur driven or being behind the wheel themselves, so the radio is the medium which is said to have about an hour and a half of professionals and the executives' time.
This is our rationale for our business and the other factor is that people sometimes do not read publications either newspapers or magazines, and there is fragmenting even in television watching," he says.

Radio, Malek says, is seen as a complementing media that persuades consumers to a call to action after the education campaign may have started in say print.
Malek adds that it's a big plus when there is nothing distracting the listeners who are seated in their car and have nothing but the radio on and its a position Malaysian marketers appear to be willing to sign up to.

"We've not had to do any soliciting but still have had a good number of inbound queries so there's been a level of acceptance to our product and many of those who call are immediately willing to go the next step," he said, as he wonders why no one has looked at the strictly business radio concept for Malaysia before -  as English radio stations in Malaysia are largely entertainment driven with little spotlight on business except select stations wihich feature a couple of minutes dedicated to business in the top-of-the-hour news segment.

A creeping global trend across all media is to target smaller sectors of the market, what you might call "niche-ism", where a media owner can offer a client a far more specific audience which is more likely to be interested in that marketer's product or services. Slicing up the business media market into smaller niches of more specialised audiences helps marketers faced with belt tightening in 2009 to spend their budgets more wisely.

While small to medium enterprises could hardly be labeled as niche in Malaysia - according to the national Small and Medium Industry Development Corporation (SMIDEC) SMEs account for the largest percentage of businesses in Malaysia (99.2%) and contributes 32% of the country's gross domestic products - Malaysia's SME and Entrepreneurship magazine nonetheless caters to a segment of the business market rather than the whole business spectrum and therefore offers a more targeted buy for marketers.

William Ng, editor-in-chief and publisher, Advanced Integrated Communications (AIC) Sdn Bhd, which owns the title, tells A+M that despite not offering discounts, like other business publications in the country, marketers have been supportive of the title, since it launched in May 2007.

"We're more protective of our rates (RM5,000 for a full page advertisement) but if our clients take up 12 insertions (monthly advertisements) we give a maximum discount of 15%, Ng said, who adds eight of the country's major banks are on his books as clients. He also counts IT and office equipment clients like Acer and HP as relatively new sign ons, along with Fuji Xerox, banks like CIMB and Standard Chartered and even pest control firms. Some of these aren't the sort of clients you aren't likely to see in regional and global titles like The Economist. The title is a play for marketers trying to reach the CEO but, it certainly doesn't hurt if the chief procurement officer picks up the title.

While Ng claims an audience of 90,000 readers targets those aged between 25 and 45 however the title is not audited so this can not be independently verified and within that segment he is eyeing off the lucrative luxury and affluence sector which many perceive to be relatively recession proof.

"The perception toward SME and Entrepreneurship has always been that it would not cater to the affluent crowd and AIC has been working hard to correct this view," he says, and taking a swipe at his competitors claims they are read by a lower level audience than his.

"Our weekly business newspaper competitor may contain big names like Rolex but who reads them? The general managers and bankers who draw monthly salaries of RM10,000 and RM15,000 but what the companies really want is to target the business owners who earn more."

The nation's biggest provider of broadcasting content, Astro All Asia Networks plc, also dices it's audience up and claims it can offer up some of the executive's critical time either through business programming provided by the likes of CNN, CNBC and two-year-old business and premium news channel Astro Awani.

"We can and we have the resources to offer the advertising and marketing community and we are always open to those who want to sit down and talk about what kind of solutions Astro can develop for them," says Henry Tan, chief operations officer, Astro. He says by segmenting the audience, of which it has an estimated 2.27 viewers in Malaysia and Brunei, the network can do meaningful profiling and targeting for marketers.
"we are always open to those who want to sit down and talk about what kind of solutions Astro can develop for them," Tan says.

Box Regional trends: how the big boys vie for crucial face time

Looking at the larger regional picture the closely-watched US presidential election and the global economic crisis have fertilised this healthy business media landscape, providing an abundance of editorial fodder and a growing market of readers with which to lure advertisers. WSJ.com's page views in Asia were up 35% month-on-month in October; CNBC Asia Pacific recorded a 291% spike in viewer numbers in just one week in September. CNN.com enjoyed a 584% surge in traffic from Hong Kong in the week of the US election; and The Economist has credited recent global events with a 4.5% increase in regional newsstand sales.

Advertising revenues are more of a mixed story. For the full year 2007 vs 2006, Forbes Asia led the business media pack with the largest leap in ad sales - up 30.9% - according to CMR International. Asia Money posted an 18.2% increase in ad revenue in the same period, with the Wall Street Journal Asia close behind on an 18% surge. The Financial Times, (up 13.1%), Business Review Weekly (up 9.4%), Business Week China (up 8%) and The Economist (up 7.7%) all posted impressive ad revenue gains in the same period.

Media buyers feel things are "fine" for business media at the moment, but tough times are ahead. "They are faring OK I think, as far as my clients are concerned," James Smyllie, regional account director at Carat Hong Kong, says.

Smyllie believes circulation surges can sometimes provide value not currently accounted for on rate cards - but warns huge jumps in online traffic can have a negative effect on ad bookings. "We buy guaranteed impressions... so if you're a sloppy online buyer, it could mean your campaign only lasts a few days when all the impressions are delivered quickly and unexpectedly."

Jessica Ho, general manager of OMD International, says Asian business media are "fine" at the moment, but thinks launches will be scarce next year. Currently, she says, everyone is worried "because businesses everywhere will inevitably be affected by the current economic climate", even though Asia is a little more resilient.

She believes those with sound business strategy could claim additional share in a recession, as most advertisers will continue to spend. However, Ho says advertisers will: "Probably focus on, say, two media options instead of five. The two best media vehicles that deliver the highest reach, present the most creative ideas and offer the best value will most likely emerge the winners."

What's growing, what's slowing?

As Carat's Smyllie says, when it comes to measuring confidence amongst business media operators "it is a mixed bag". Some are confident, saying they ride out recessions fine, while others are more concerned."

Toby Hayward, CNBC Asia Pacific's senior VP of ad sales, says there have been "no major effects on our advertising revenue over the last few months", and "most of our deals are on a long-term basis".

Hayward admits "there is some concern about the impact of a tightening global advertising market", but says China and India will continue to grow, as will "some of Asia's better-managed economies", and as will government-funded advertising across the region.

Joe Spitzer, director of corporate communications for Dow Jones, publisher of Wall Street Journal Asia, says thus far WSJ Asia's ad sales in the region have been "strong" but "undoubtedly the business environment is going to become considerably tougher for our industry". Spitzer doubts an economic downturn will change the profile of WSJ's advertisers. "We still have many financial advertisers, whose messages may be changing to reflect developments."

The Economist's Au says he has not seen cutbacks in ad revenue recently - in fact, he says, "we continue to see increased advertiser demand". Au says the publication is witnessing growth in advertising from the regional development and FDI sectors, and says "like any business we are concerned as 2009 looks set to be a challenging year, but we remain confident that marketers will still pay a premium to reach an engaged audience, which we have in abundance".

CNN's Hsu says while there has been a general slowdown in the ad market, "my conversations with advertisers indicate that it's more of a precautionary nature than budget cuts".

"We've been through three downturns in the last 15 years and CNN has actually done well in those environments," he says. Hsu adds the luxury market is still booming, "particularly in the timepieces segment, which is very healthy and growing".

Dow Jones' Spitzer says "advertising in a recession actually has positive effects on consumer attitudes, creates loyalty and shows investment in one's brand". While this refrain is to be expected from media reliant on advertising, Spitzer backs it up with a McGraw-Hill study of 600 industrial companies in 1985, showing companies that maintained or increased their ad spend during the recession of 1981-82 showed average sales growth of 275% over the preceding five years. Those that cut their advertising posted average sales growth of just 19%.