Friend is the advertising person at the advertising supplement.  The supplement was used for football and other community activities.  This sparked the idea to use the supplement for the Blueprint Project.  The insert in the middle has the special events calendar and on the back the sports calendar. 

Go to the Exponent newspaper, and say this is what St. Albans did and would you be willing to do a supplement and show the example.  Two options:  one the newspaper would get 60% of the copy space and you would get 40% (low risk, newspaper would sell 60% of the ad copy), The other option is you sell the whole thing and you pay them x number of dollars to put it into the newspaper.  Good thing is if you sell 10,000 worth of ad and it cost 4,000 to put the supplement in then you make 6K, but if you only sell 3,000 worth of ads and it cost 4,000 then you have to come up with the rest of the cost.  St. Albans chose to do the 60%/40% option.

You can do a short version or a long version.  You can do it monthly or quarterly or whatever meets your needs.

You have to ask, will this be in four color or black and white?  That may be determined by the types of ads that are sold.

St. Albans wanted to go to the entire Kanawha Valley (was distributed to four counties) to encourage outsiders to come to St. Albans for economic development.

This process has brought the community to the “Same Page”.  This activity has really brought people together and have given the community a common starting place.

They Mayor writes a column every month about Blueprint to keep this project fresh in their minds.

Someone needs to take on the responsibility to take on the supplement.  Once the list was compiled (of all activates to be offered in October)and contact names, then the person responsible goes to each contact person and talks about the free advertising for their activities (got articles and pictures).  You will need to edit the articles for space purposes.  It may be difficult to get information from some.  Most will be easy to get the articles and pictures from them.  Then you sit down with someone from the newspaper and it takes about an hour and a half to put the supplement together.  DO NOT LET them decide what will go on the first page, you decide what goes on the front page.  You can submit the articles and pictures to the newspapers via email.  Let the paper know up front that you want some say on the design. 

The next time St. Albans wants to make sure the names and dates for the articles are in an “at-a-glance” format.  The calendar section was in the middle so people could just pull it out and put it on the fridge.  Never put anything on the second page (like a coupon) because people like to save the front page (pictures of family or other important stuff).

Mullens wants to do this with the paper that targets Beckley (20 minutes away from Mullens).  This calendar helps organizations from booking on top of each other, or to partner with another event in order to increase attendance (such as pancake breakfast before Founder’s Day parade).  St. Albans found that people were not planning ahead far enough, and this meeting for the calendar brought people together and brought together collaboration and forced people to plan ahead and take outside influences into consideration (such as Marshal or WVU football games) before planning events.

Anstead asked if St. Albans made any money on the supplement.  St. Albans said no, but it did not cost them either.  Make friends with the ad person at the newspaper or supplement to make sure it is financial beneficial.  Ask them if they would let you use the supplement as a fund raiser.  Make sure you sign a contract with them.  St. Albans reiterated that the newspaper sold all the ads, and gave Blueprint 40% of the newspaper space.  St. Albans thinks that every group in Blueprint did this activity they would increase attendance to the Blueprint meeting by 10%.  St. Albans is trying to track if this supplement increased attendance at the events in the calendar.

Why did you not put Blueprint above the fold on the supplement.  The answer for St. Albans, to make sure they did not offend another group doing some similar work.  So Blueprint went below the fold to keep peace and build partnership.  Other communities may choose to put Blueprint above the fold, or not.  Also, many people do not know about Blueprint and this is a great way to educate them.

Bring this coupon in and get a dollar off the event may be a good way to see how many people are reading the supplement.  Maybe a coupon for pumpkin, if you are going to do coupons don’t go to the advertiser and ask them to put it in, because if they do, and only get one coupon back that may discourage them, and if they do don’t make a big deal out of it.  This could back fire.

If you sell the ads yourself, 680 for three column inches by four column inches.  The newspaper will give you a guideline on how to sell the ads and a per column inch price.  The newspaper does not write the articles.  Again, it pays to be friends or have good working relations with the ad person from the newspaper.  It really is important.

Closing Questions:  The group feels that many of these questions are answered within the body of the conversation.  St. Albans said that this success (the supplement) would not have been possible without the Blueprint community meetings, if they would not have had great participation at those meetings, the supplement would not have been successful.  Many of the people that were at the meeting were so excited they bought ads.  They had one key person mailed invitations to the meeting to everyone that was named during a brainstorming session that brought up names to who should be at the meeting.  They contacted over 60 people, they baked for everyone (have food), and this approach (individual invitations) see Renaissance Group helped with addresses.  At the end of each meeting each person is instructed to bring a friend to the next meeting.  Mullens said they have pot luck dinners to bring people to the meetings.  They said this strategy was extremely successful. 

Tasters Tea – everyone gets to taste dishes others make, and this year there is a youth corner (youth yummies) and then the recipes for the dishes are bound and sold as a cookbook.  This has been a successful fundraiser and community event.  This could be good to put this information into the supplement.

People are very proud of their heritage and this is a great way to raise money and save the heritage.  People to not read much copy.  Keep copy to a minimum, and use lots of pictures.  Use large copy (large font).  Mullens said this supplement is really what their community needs.  This would be good to advertise performances and open mike nights.

Who sets Halloween dates in your community?  As a result of the supplement in St. Albans is starting to set the date for Halloween in August now instead of three weeks before the announcement because of the Blueprint communities meetings. 

Key issue, you have to decide what you will put into the calendar and what will not.  If the event was not open to the public then it did not make it into the calendar.  This was the deciding factor on what would be included in the calendar and you cannot put everything into the calendar.