Media Forum: Is regional creativity on the up?

Are agencies learning to exploit the strengths of regional press, Alasdair Reid asks.

'All you need is local,' a rather fun recent Newspaper Society ad said It featured an exuberantly multicoloured hearts-and-flowers arrangement (like a transfer or a tattoo), executed in a garishness that offers more than a passing nod in the direction of Sergeant Pepper's-era kitsch.

If the regional press doesn't watch out, it's going to acquire a reputation for being all creative and trendy. But, fair's fair, it will not be for want of trying. For the past few years, regional newspapers have been trying to project a new image to national advertisers and their (largely) London-based creative and media agencies. The ultimate prize will be more revenue if more big advertisers can be persuaded to run nationwide campaigns on a multi-local basis.

The rational argument for using regional and local papers has been well rehearsed down the years - these are titles that boast an intimate connection with readers on the issues that really matter to people in their own back-yards. But agencies sometimes worry about the sorts of traditional regional advertisers they'll be forced to rub along with - in the past, formulaic car dealership and estate agency stuff tended to be as good as it got.

And the medium's broader image deficit has proved hard to shift - it's still possible to find influential people in the advertising industry who believe that regional papers are basically dull products run by stodgy management with parochial business horizons.

But the medium's representative body, the Newspaper Society, continues to chip away at these perceptions, most notably through its creative awards schemes - for instance, the Creative Juice awards for young creatives, which was won two weeks ago by teams from Euro RSCG London (Dave Prater and Imran Patel) and Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe/Y&R (Phil Kitching and Deen Iqbal).

It also has a new marketing director in the shape of Robert Ray. He states: 'We're continuing to get across the message that regional press is a challenging choice, but if you use it well the rewards are disproportionate. To use it well, you have to understand that this is not just a medium like any other, that just happens to be distributed on a regional basis. You have to understand just why it is that people - and there are 40 million of them - buy into this medium every week. The medium offers an unrivalled opportunity for national brands to tap into local issues.'