As the country and the world descends apace into recession, with the bottom not yet in sight, it’s easy for businesses to lose faith, as well as money. Indeed, large firms are shedding jobs like a mutt sheds its winter coat, as evidenced by the likes of Credit Suisse; and small firms are going out of business altogether.
In our industry of printed newspapers, all hell is breaking loose and papers are literally folding. DMGT recently folded 30 regional papers, and it is believed in the industry that one third of the country’s 1,300 regional newspapers and two nationals could go out of business in the next five years making 10,000 people redundant.
We run the Sanctuary student Newspapers, with regional papers at 12 universities, and are bucking the trend by expanding to 30 by late 2009. However, our industry is certainly in trouble. To stave off the inevitable fall in advertising sales, one must do many things: keep close to clients, to be able to respond to their needs, however modest; concentrate on bottom line; work one’s cotton socks off and so on. But the best way to cope or even enjoy a recession, is to innovate.
It needn’t even be an online innovation, so you don’t have to follow all the headless chickens in their pursuit of a pot of e-gold. It just requires something that has a USP relevant to the recession. Developing an efficient service or product that saves your clients money during a period of budget slashing and cold feet.
Our innovation is just such an example. Capitalizing on the success of the Sanctuary Newspapers, this is a new company which specialises in identifying and headhunting high-calibre students for firms recruiting graduates. Sanctuary Search has been formed to develop a parallel approach to advertising by graduate recruiters to students, to provide a more focused service, drawing on the dedication and motivation of the 1000+ students producing the papers. Crucially, it’s a no graduate hired, no fee service, so there is no financial risk to the client. In a recession, a guarantee of no financial risk is, in itself, a USP.
I’m no maverick. In taking this tack, I am far from alone. In March last year, American Express CEO Ken Chenault was quoted in Fortune saying, "A difficult economic environment argues for the need to innovate more, not to pull back." As an entrepreneur you don’t really have a choice. If you don’t rapidly alter course, you might run out of money. Large companies can often curse innovation efforts by being too patient or spending too much money but as a small start up or budding entrepreneur, one can be more agile.
Seize the opportunity!
Tom Freeman is the director of
The Sanctuary Newspapers