Everyone – and I mean absolutely everyone – I know has been to Buenos Aires in the past year. Forget Mauritius or Australia. Forget Bali or Europe. Just open any newspaper and you’ll see the Buenos Aires specials – “Seven nights, including flights, transfers, breakfasts, hotel accommodation, tango show and half-day city tour for R5,561”. It’s a destination that’s gone from zero to hero in less than a year.
Virtually every South African magazine and newspaper has published glowing editorials on the city – “Welcome to Buenos Aires, Mr Editor. We’ve upgraded your room so feel free to help yourself to the bar fridge, with our complimentos. We trust you will provide a favourable impression of our city?” Instant “in” spot – just add media.
Dave Marsh, publisher of the trade journal, Travel News Weekly, says we can expect even more South Africans to travel, but cautions South Africa is a tough market for consumer travel titles. “It’s very difficult to publish a specialist consumer magazine here,” he says. “Getaway has done well. We used to publish a consumer magazine in the 1950s called Let’s Go. It had a paid circulation of around 12,000 and, in those days, our readers probably constituted half of SA’s travelling market. Back then, South Africans travelled by sea, but with the advent of jet travel, or mass travel, we moved into trade publishing.”
Marsh is referring to the historic May 1952 De Havilland Comet flight between London and Johannesburg, the world’s first intercontinental commercial jet flight and scheduled route. The BOAC flight gave birth to the phrase “jet set”, as passengers could be in drizzly London on one day, and sunny Johannesburg the next.
“Of course,” cautions Marsh, “things are still changing. The trend is that distribution channels are changing, as people are going online for domestic bookings, not so much internationally yet. And, from May, SAA is no longer paying commission to agents, so one could expect another shake-out in the industry. However, what is certain is that more and more people will travel.”
How do advertisers reach SA’s travellers? For fast moving retail ads, the big winners are newspapers. And it essentially comes down to two or four players, depending on how one defines it – the Sunday Times and The Star, Sunday Tribune and Cape Argus (which could collectively be seen as Independent Newspapers). Each of the publications has its loyal following, and many of the advertisers use both, or all four. The fast-moving retail nature of the ads is vital, so magazines generally lose out.
Danielle de Grooth, art works manager at Flight Centre, is fairly typical of advertisers: “We like the Sunday Times because it’s national,” she says, “but we also use The Star, Tribune and Argus to target specific cities. We do a mix. Our products are hot-off-the press schedules, so our adspend goes into TV and newspapers, and it runs into the millions. Magazines aren’t conducive to that, as much as we like them.”
Errol Matodes, marketing manager, central purchase and products, South African Travel Centre, which is the country’s second-largest travel consortium, adds Rapport to his two-fold mix: “The Sunday Times and Rapport, because they give us the return on our investment.”
Ania Ewan, acting marketing services manager, Thompsons Tours, is a bit more democratic with her adspend: “The publications we regularly advertise in include Saturday Star Travel, Sunday Times Travel & Food, Sunday Tribune and the Weekend Argus. We’ve found this combination works to promote our last-minutes specials and our latest price offerings. They also reach our target audience, LSMs 8 to 10, who are people wanting, interested and able to travel. We’ve tried other mediums, like the Sunday Independent, which didn’t work for us. We’ve also used The Sowetan for specialised tours like bus tours to Durban. We don’t advertise in mags, as they’re published on a monthly basis, and are far too expensive, although we always consider doing barter deals with magazines.”
Rob Crankshaw, divisional director of Durban-based Pentravel, says: “We’ve been in the game for 20 years and advertise in eight different papers every week in two languages. Our total adspend is around R3-million a year. We tend to advertise over weekends, using the Tribune, The Herald, Argus, Saturday Star Travel, Sunday Times Travel & Food, the Weekend Witness, Beeld and Die Burger. Oh, and we occasionally use the Cape Times and Mail & Guardian on a Friday. I must say it’s quite frustrating to deal with Independent Newspapers. Although the different papers are individually efficient, they don’t seem to have a group policy to standardise their advertising and layout – each publication has its own thing going, so you can’t run a campaign or competition nationally unless you format for each region. One will give you the centre spread, another can’t and the third won’t do the competition unless it’s regional. Each has a different policy on advertorials and each prices differently. So, they’re losing a lot of business to the Sunday Times. The Sunday Times is great for Gauteng, but you don’t get the same depth of regional penetration on the coast.”
Editors are often aware of advertisers’ problems, but it’s no secret that many of the targets and policies are laid-down by the suits and numbers crunchers. It’s an age-old tension, deliciously brought to light in e.tv’s soapie, Scandal. Publicly, editors and publishers prefer to seek balance.
Carol Lazar, travel editor of The Star and Saturday Star, says her secret is little more than to deliver the goods: “We’re independent, and we take travel very seriously. Our mix is 50 percent local and 50 percent international. We cover most fields of travel, with independent opinions, completely independent of advertisers – no advertorials, so we have strong credibility with readers. If things go badly, we’ll cover it. We have a very varied readership, covering the full spectrum of the SA market. For instance, we can run a Star Travel Club trip to Australia and New Zealand, for around R60,000— I thought it’d never sell, but within hours we had more than 60 bookings. Likewise, we’ve sold out an entire train to Cape Town within an hour. And on a specialised tour of the Antarctic, we got 21 bookings in a half-hour. Editorially, we have no airs and graces, and we try to give our readers a bloody good read.”
Susan Russell, Publisher of , says her publication is a supplement with an independent voice: “We expect our advertisers to understand that our Sunday Times Travel & Foodreaders are intelligent enough to see through shameless advertorial. Our job is to create the right environment for advertisers, not to try and sell their product on unrealistic promises.”
Seems everyone want a piece of the travel pie, in a market that’s worth billions. Added to this petit – but potent – newspaper mix are the glossy magazines, including Sawubona’s mostly captive SAA audience (ABC: combined 96,666, January to June 2004), SA Country Life (ABC: 37 560, January to June 2004), and Getaway and Wegbreek (see below), along with countless dedicated travel pages and sections in most newspapers and magazines. Niched travel guides and publications, like those brought out by Portfolio of Places and Superior Choices, don’t cannibalise readerships as much as they nibble at stretched advertising budgets. It’s competitive out there. As Dave Marsh points out: “Only so many South Africans can travel, and only so often.” Ain’t Buenos Aires lucky to have so many of ’em?”
Title fight
In its recent landmark judgment against Wegbreek, the High Court found the following: “The names Getaway and Wegbreek do not look or sound alike. However, applicant contends that Wegbreek resembles Getaway as it is a translation of Getaway into Afrikaans and conveys the same idea or concept as Getaway which is of considerable significance in a multilingual country such as South Africa when comparing word marks in different languages, one of which may be the translation, or near translation, of the other.” At the time of going to press, Wegbreek’s publishers, Media24, had the option to appeal. Bun Booyens and Stirling Kotze offer their insight into the case:
Bun Booyens, editor, Wegbreek (estimated sales 60,000, July to December 2004). “There’s a limit to what I can say, as we’re still in a position to appeal the case. All I can say is that we’ve sought legal counsel on the case and if it goes to appeal, technically it’s still sub judice. We also have to ascertain exactly what the implications of the court verdict are. For instance, if we have to change the magazine’s title, what other titles would be acceptable? We have to establish what ‘compliant’ means. We’re studying our options…”
Stirling Kotze, Publisher, Getaway (ABC 92,334, January to June 2004). “The High Court decision to order Media24 and New Media to stop using the title Wegbreek (a close translation of Getaway) is a landmark decision impacting on all publishers in South Africa. It’s a message to publishers to respect the intellectual property of its competitors, specifically as it relates to trademark infringement and passing off. The case is very relevant to South Africa’s multilingual publishing industry where translations of titles by competitors could result in confusion and parasitical business practices. Had the decision gone the other way the entire industry would be under threat. We hope this decision will encourage honest competition where publishers will carefully consider trademark rights before launching a competitor to a particular publication.
“We have no objection to bona fide competitors in the travel and outdoor publishing market and we maintain that good competition often grows the market, provided it shows original thinking and does not capitalise on Getaway’s hard-earned editorial formula. We justifiably felt Wegbreek’s content and name were just too close to our winning formula – a point we made to Media24’s senior management before taking legal action. We are understandably grateful the judiciary felt the same way and for the protective legal precedent established by this decision. Finally, Wegbreek’s much-publicised arguments about affordable destinations and market demand are irrelevant to our legal action and to the court’s decision.”