NARROWING THE WINDOW
FROM IDEA TO INK

Carolyn Vesper Bivens kicked off the SuperConference Press & Materials segment by stating a simple goal -- to give her advertisers the flexibility to “change an ad on the newsstand.”

On the newsstand?

“Not quite,” USA Today’s associate publisher and senior vice president for advertising admitted during her Thursday keynote speech. “But that’s a goal.... and the time between idea and ink is narrowing.”

Bivens outlined the technological strides the Arlington, Va.-based publisher has taken to help narrow that window. But she stressed that USA Today has also taken great pains to avoid using technology for technology’s sake. “Some [organizations] are merely finding ways to do the things they’re doing faster,” she said. “That’s a mistake.”

Instead, USA Today staffers “focus on client needs,” namely understanding advertisers’ goals. Then the paper “turns to our bag of technical applications” to do things “their way.”

Consider:

o To help advertisers connect television campaigns with print ads, USA Today can scan one frame of film from a TV ad and use it to create an print ad using the same creative elements, seamlessly extending the campaign’s reach.

o Staffers have worked to accept more kinds of input media closer to deadline. “It can be crayon... we’ll find a way to turn it into a newspaper ad,” Bivens quipped.

o To slash deadlines, USA Today now moves to computer-to-plate production (see "One Foot in the Digital Divide," TechNews, November/December 1999). Doing so will allow the entire newspaper to be transmitted to print sites in the last few hours before a press start, meaning that ad changes could be made minutes before presses start rolling -- “in theory,” Bivens qualified, suggesting the flexibility would work wonders for advertisers such as airlines engaged in fare wars.

o USA Today also is adding digital-proofing technology at its print sites, allowing advertisers to see proofs on newsprint matching all of its presses. As prices of proofers continue falling, Bivens predicted that ad agencies will buy proofers of their own, allowing them to use USA Today’s printing specs to generate accurate proofs in-house.

o The paper has increasingly used both proprietary networks and the Internet to receive ad materials, as well as to send annotated proofs back to advertisers.

All these changes came from asking a few basic questions: Can deadlines be moved? Can copy be transmitted later? How can we cut the time between deadline and presstime?

Bivens noted that advertisers can now run congratulatory ads for athletes they sponsor in the next day’s paper. But that’s not good enough for the avid golfer: “The ultimate goal is handing the winner a copy of USA Today when they walk off the green,” she said. “We’re racing, all media, for advertising dollars. It’s up to us to get their advertising to our customers with as short a lead time as possible.”

-Mark Toner