UK Metro Free Newspaper

Introduction
Metro is a worldwide newspaper published in over 100 major cities in 20 countries with 18 million daily readers (Metro international website). Free daily newspaper first introduced in Sweden in 1995. By 2002, 80 free daily newspapers were introduced in 26 countries, 60 of them still exist (Bakker, 2002). Metro in UK was lunched in 1999 as a free newspaper for morning commuters. Initially it was only published in London but now commutes in 16 major cities in UK. Everyday over 1.3 million copies across the UK picked up by people who travel to work in the morning. Associated Newspaper Limited (ANL) is managing and publishing UK Metro together with Daily mail, The mail on Sunday, Evening Standard, Irish on Sunday and the advertising publication Loot (ANL website). ANL is a branch of DGMT (Daily Mail and General Trust plc). Metro is the only urban national newspaper of UK. It is designed to be read in about 20 minutes which is average travel time with public transport (ANL website). It contains news about national and international news, local information, entertainment, weather and travel. Metro's news is so tightly written that the reader can get the key facts quickly. Metro doesnt have any political direction unless it gives modern workers the news that matters to them. Metro readers are aged 18-44 (called urbanites) who they go to work in the morning daily. They are time-starved individuals with little time to use traditional media.

Financial and market situation

Metros revenue is from more than 40 advertisers (Auckland, 2008). Metro has a whole range of ideas to create impact and help communication creatively. In addition to traditional displays there are many other forms of advertisements in Metro. For example sponsors advertise themselves by sponsoring pages in the paper that is not carrying any advertisement (UK Metro website). Average age of metro reader is 36 which are youngest reader within other newspapers in UK ( Chart1). Number of graduated (first degree) readers is 430,000 for metro which is the biggest in the national papers (Chart 2) (Auckland, 2008). The success of the UK Metro is the result of its cost efficient structure and its ability to attract the new and relatively young readers (urbanites) (Bakker, 2002). Urbanites are the target customers of many companies. Metro fills the 20 minutes time (as an average) that urbanites expend every morning to reach their working place. The advantage of metro is that it can attract this group in the morning. The Idea is that morning brain is fresh after night sleep which enhances attention of the people to the advertisements (Auckland, 2008). This is great

opportunity for advertisers to put their product in the hands of their target audience first thing in the morning. Research shows that Metro readers enjoy active social lives, including visiting pubs, restaurants and the cinema. Many of Metro's valued audience never read nor were lapsed readers of national newspapers, making them highly sought after by advertisers (UK metro website).In order to attract young audience Metro has a simple equation: Right product+ Right Place +Right time (Auckland, 2008). ANL total print advertising revenues in year 2007 were up 3% to 447 million. Metro and the Daily Mail had excellent growth, achieving 9% and 8% growth respectively, with The Mail on Sunday up to 3%. The Evening Standard was down 24% in a fiercely competitive market with a reduced circulation and readership. Loot was down 29% (DMGT website). Mentioned figures confirm success of metro to attract more audience for advertisers and it confirms fresh brain idea. ANL free newspapers continued to grow significantly in 2007. Metro averaged 1,132,000 copies per morning, up 6% in year 2007 which shows strong distribution growth. With a total of 1.36 million copies daily, Metro UK will be the largest free newspaper in the world (DMGT website).

Market and competition analysis

UK metro has relatively cheap distribution system through the local public transport system. It has a small editorial staff with few journalists. Metro is part of ANL media group which publishes most of the free newspapers in UK. So, there are not major competitors for Metro UK. There is not prevention of another publisher from entering the market but Metro is working on profit itself (Bakker, 2002). ANL is trying to achieve synergy by combining activities in paid and free newspaper. Generally markets in which free newspapers are published are imperfect and failure or success is closely related to the whole newspaper market (Bakker, 2002). Metro UK is one of the successful free papers who were able to attract new and much younger readers than paid newspapers. Almost half of the readers of London Metro are formerly nonreaders (Bakker, 2002). In future other movements of readers are possible, for example moving from free to paid newspaper.

Strategy for international markets

Metro has continued its growth since its lunch in 1999 as free newspaper for Londons commuters. Now it is available in 16 cities around UK to commuters in the public transport. The recent successful expansions (e.g. Dublin, Cardiff and Liverpool) were achieved entirely through existing staff and resources. Metro targeted to continually expand its geographical area by overseas acquisitions and plans to franchise into other areas. Recently it has acquired Catchpole, a Dubai Media Free Zone company. Catchpole provides distribution and management to English language free newspaper in United Arab Emirates. Dubai has a lot of young English

speaking immigrants and workers from India, Pakistan and UK and developing free English newspaper in this environment is surly will be successful business. Metro has many plans for advertisement on the web by providing animated graphics. There is shopping, travel, lifestyle and many other sectors in the website targeted to the urbanites. They send advertisements by SMS and Email to a differentiated group of people.

Design of firms structure

Metro is the first urban national newspaper across the UK. It is worlds largest free newpaper and the 4th biggest newspaper in the UK. It is part of Associated Newspapers who also publish other newspapers. One of the successes of the free papers is the result of their efficient cost structure (Bakker, 2002). Metro initially focused on its process rather than its people. With an employee demographic that is mobile, retaining employees is continues challenge. At early days Metro had very few people and it was difficult holding employees. By high staff turnover and recruitment costs Metro had enormous difficulties. In 2001, each sales person that left was costing Metro an estimated 91,000 in recruitment and training costs and lost sales(Investors in people CHAMPIONS website). Editorial staffs were dissatisfied with their opportunities to growth in the paper. At this stage new managing director Steve Auckland decided to change the direction urgently to address the personnel problems and implement the principles of the standards. By creating effective relationship between staff and management and given clear direction to the paper staff could see clearly their opportunities for their future development. Nowadays Metro invests 1/4 millions in order to adopt the standards and it is proved that this investment return benefits for both employees and business. Now 91 percent of staff are proud to tell people that they work for Metro paper. Implementing this structure had saving of 1 millions each year against recruitment costs (Investors in people CHAMPIONS website).

Chart 1: Average age of readers in the UK (from Auckland, 2008).

Chart 2: Number of graduates(first degree) for each national daily title in the UK ( from Auckland, 2008)