Charles Apple

Now, here’s something interesting: It’s one of the more innovative ways I’ve seen that newspapers in South Africa are meeting the needs — and catering to the interests — of World Cup visitors.

It’s by the Mercury of Durban, the home of one of the stadiums hosting Cup matches this month. It’s on the eastern coast of South Africa:

And here is the front page of today’s Mercury (click on any image today for a larger view):

That large hedder pays tribute to the two teams playing in Durban Saturday: Japan and the Netherlands. More importantly, however, the Mercury has “twinned” with a major paper in each country. Inside — on facing pages two and three — the Mercury ran large reproductions of those papers’ front pages. Click either of these for a larger view:

Cool, huh?

Angela Quintal, who became editor of the Mercury this past February, took time this week to tell us how this came about:

I thought it best to explain the background, so that you could see that the twinning project was part of a holistic strategy for our World Cup coverage. I wanted to ensure that The Mercury used  the World Cup to show Durban, South Africa and the world, that things could be done differently and creatively.

Every Monday during the 100 day countdown to the kick-off we focused on one of the countries that was going to be based in KwaZulu-Natal (the province in which we live) or playing matches at Moses Mabhida Stadium in Durban. This focus involved a special masthead for the country we decided to  focus on that week, as well as a special country page inside The Mercury with facts and figures.

These page hedders started out as relatively modest skybox-type promos, as you can see from this example from March 15:

By April 5, the hedders had taken over the entire top of page one:

By April 19, the Mercury had settled on a reversed nameplate and a motif involving an illustration of a face painted like that nation’s flag:

Here is the May 7 hedder:

The May 10 hedder:

The May 17 hedder:

…and the May 31 hedder:

Angela says the hedders were all designed by front-page subeditor and designer Greg Hutson.

She continues:

These were hugely popular with children, especially those who needed the information for school assignments or projects .
We did this every Monday for 14 weeks.

On the other days during the countdown we ensured that “The Mercury Man” in our masthead was dressed in the Bafana Bafana (the nickname of our national football team) strip and we included a simple message stating “Support Bafana Bafana”.

Our special masthead campaign came to a head on Friday, June 11, the day of the opening game between Bafana Bafana and Mexico in Johannesburg. We ran teaser ads in our newspaper for a week titled “Nail your colours” and directed readers to buy The Mercury on the Friday.

On Friday. we hit the streets with a specially designed masthead focusing on South Africa in which we had a line that said:

We’ve nailed our colours to the mast — go Bafana.

Back to Angela:

On the bottom of our front page was a strip ad in which a major retailer in the country — Checkers — said:

We’ve joined The Mercury in nailing our colours to the mast, what about you?

Our readers were then directed to a special anthem supplement inside the newspaper and a South African flag sticker so that they, too, could nail their colours.

The Mercury street bills also made the most of the campaign stating:

Nail your Colours Today

The supplement  cover was also different, in that it featured the special mast heads of the preceding weeks in which we focused on the various countries.

Having successfully completed phase one,we were able to turn to phase two of our coverage and that was our “twinning project” during the World Cup matches itself.

We knew we would be hosts to thousands of  fans and supporters of the various teams playing in Durban and we wanted to show them that our city is indeed “the warmest place to be.” It was our way of welcoming visitors to the city and giving then an inexpensive souvenir, as well as offering them news from home in print.

We, therefore, made contact with newspapers, targeting those in the capitals of the countries scheduled to play matches in Durban. We asked whether they would agree to us publishing their front page in The Mercury on the day that the teams of their respective countries were playing matches.

It was a massive task in trying to coordinate and ensure that we were able to pull it off. We had to take into consideration that there were time differences which could impact on deadlines.
For example, our first twinning project was for the Australia/Germany match [last Sunday].

Given that Australia is a couple of hours ahead of us, they went to print first with their Monday edition, before the match was actually played. This was why the Brisbane-based Courier Mail had no mention of the match on their front page, while Berlin’s Bild — which is in the same time zone as Durban — was able to give us a front page with the latest results and the fact that their team had won.

Here’s Monday’s front page with the hedder:

And here are inside pages two and three:

Before you click on the German page — on the right — be advised there is an image there that some of your supervisors might not appreciate seeing blown up on your monitor. If you’re reading at work tonight, tread carefully.

Angela, again:

Our masthead made clear that we were twinning with both newspapers by using their logos. We also published their front pages on pages two and three of The Mercury.

We requested guest editorials  of 250 words which we published on our leader page, in the language of  choice. We also increased our coverage of world news about the countries concerned, so readers were given a package across the newspaper.

There were also issues of size that we needed to grapple with.  We had to ensure that we could print the pages — Bild, for example, is a tabloid rather than a broadsheet, so we had to enlarge their page to fit our page.

We made several dry runs to ensure it would work.

Our regular Mercury street bills, also included foreign language posters, so our visitors would realize something was afoot and, hopefully, buy the newspaper.

The second match in Durban, involved Spain and Switzerland,  so we twinned with Madrid’s El Pais and Fribourg’s La Liberte.  [Find El Pais' story here about the Mercury’s twinning project]

Here is Wednesday’s front page:

And here are inside pages two and three:

Angela again:

I am told that La Liberte was also going to publish our front page, although I have not had a chance to check.

Today, we did the same with Japan’s Mainishi Shimbun and another De Telegraaf from the Netherlands.

Which, of course, I showed you up at the top of this post.

We will do the same when South Korea plays Nigeria on June 22.

For the Portuguese vs. Brazil game on June 25, we have opted for a totally different package, because it is the most over-subscribed game in Durban and we know there will be thousands of fans in town. We’ve been working on a special four-page Portuguese-language wrap that will wow the socks off fans, so watch out for that.

And, by the way, both countries speak Portuguese. Angela knows this, of course, but your average American might not. That’s why Angela’s project makes a lot of business sense.

Naturally, I’ll try to get PDFs to post here. Of course.

Angela continues, referring to the “Round of 16″ — the part of the World Cup where the top two teams in each “group” are seeded into brackets:

Given that we do not know who will be playing in the quarterfinals and the semifinals in Durban, we will have to move quickly to pull off the twinning agreements  nearer to the time. (We hope it may involve some of the teams that have already played here, as it will be easier to pull off.)

I must say, the entire project — from the special mastheads, the Nail your Colours to the Mast campaign and the twinning project — has certainly increased our profile as a newspaper, both in the province, the country and the world.

At this point, Angela asked me if I was aware of any other project like this. I have to admit, I do not. However, if it’s been done before, one of you would know. So please sound off.

Angela continues:

We’ve also used social networking to show the world that Durban is not some backwater in Africa, but that we are doing things differently and creatively.

In fact, I first heard about this project from a South African person via Twitter.

Finally, we’ve been very aware that not all of our readers want wall-to-wall coverage of football, so we’re offering a package the goes beyond just soccer both in our sports, entertainment and news coverage.

We’ve  tried to be different in our soccer coverage — for example, we have our football equivalent of “Joe the Plumber,” called “John the Cobbler” — a Mercury reader who gives us the man-on-the-street perspective. He is the owner of a heel-and-key bar at a local shopping mall.

We have a host of expert columnists, but also our own rating panel, while in our news pages, we also cater for those who think that soccer is “a whole lot of balls.” We have a popular South African satirist, Pieter-Dirk Uys, writing from his home town of Darling’s so-called No Soccer Zone. We also have five local entertainment personalities who have been briefed to offer a humorous or irreverent column.

Then there’s the closest thing we have to a “WAG”  in South Africa, the wife of footballer Matthew Booth. Sonia Booth’s column is called “The Reluctant Wag,” and she gives us an inside account of what is going on and off the field.

I asked her about reaction. Angela writes:

In terms of feedback, we’ve received a lot of positive comments from readers, advertisers, competitors and colleagues. There has been quite a bit of praise on social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook, as well as emails and telephone calls.

Only one reader was negative. An expatriate German in Durban took exception to us “twinning” with Bild, which he said was a tabloid rag. He hoped we weren’t going to lower our standards!

We haven’t received circulation figures for our twinning editions this week, but I’m not expecting a boost. It was never intended to drive circulation, but was an attempt to raise The Mercury’s profile and show that things were happening in this part of South Africa.

Broadcasters, online and print media have focused on The Mercury initiative, and it has generated good publicity for us. I had an interview with ADvantage magazine this week, our pages were featured on local TV with a sports channel interviewing our circulation manager as I was tied up interviews. A Brazilian broadcaster also filmed in our newsroom. We also had write-ups in Johannesburg and Cape Town-based newspapers.

I’m told the Mainichi Shimbun has asked its correspondent to write something about it as well.

And that’s what they’re doing in the port city of Durban for the Cup. Impressive, isn’t it?

Find a story about Durban’s twinning project by the South African media news site BizCommunity.

Thanks to Simone Puterman, managing editor of BizCommunity for tipping me off about this. Like I said, via Twitter.

—

Are you doing anything interesting for the World Cup? Send me PDFs, please.

Previous World Cup coverage, here in the blog:

• Sunday, June 6: Preparing readers for the World’s Cup
• Monday, June 7: Monday’s World Cup pages
• Wednesday, June 8: World Cup pages from South Africa
• Thursday, June 9: Talking soccer graphics with Konstantinos Antonopoulos
• Thursday, June 9: Tooting horns for the World Cup
• Friday, June 10: Opening day pages
• Saturday, June 11: The front page of Saturday’s Johannesburg paper.
• Saturday, June 11: The most fun I’ve seen yet on a World Cup page.
• Sunday, June 12: U.S. Cup fronts after the tie with England weren’t so gracious.
• Wednesday, June 16: More Cup pages from South Africa and around the world.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 18th, 2010 at 5:18 pm and is filed under Innovative ideas, International newspapers, News design, Sports design, World Cup. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.