SAN FRANCISCO PAPERS SPONSOR GAY PARADE

By: Joe Nicholson Special Ad Sections Deemed Profitable



For years, San Francisco's daily newspapers watched with growing
frustration as local weeklies and niche publications became bloated
with ads each June in editions geared to the city's annual gay pride
parade.



But this year, frustration became satisfaction as the San Francisco
Chronicle and San Francisco Examiner jumped into the ad
sales pool with profitable 28-page special sections, which were
distributed with regular editions two days before the June 25 parade.
Forty ads were sold, including a full-page color ad for Tower Records.



'I have seen what the other publications have done with the parade, and
I have been very envious,' said Bartley C. Green, senior vice president
of sales and marketing at the San Francisco Newspaper Agency, which
represents both dailies.



This year, the Chronicle also became the nation's first daily to
sponsor a gay parade, and it launched multiple parade-related marketing
efforts designed to boost lagging readership among gays, who make up 7%
to 15% of the regional population, said Debra Hall, the daily's
director of promotion. 'Demographically, [gays look] like they should
be newspaper readers, and we were underperforming,' explained Hall.


The Chronicle placed some 50 pink cardboard racks along the
parade route and in gay bars. Some 100 staffers wearing T-shirts with
the slogan, 'We come out every day,' marched in a Chronicle
contingent behind a pink stretch limo, which bore the name of a gay
car-rental agency, Homo Limo.



Steven B. Falk, president and CEO of the San Francisco Newspaper
Agency, said he encourages staffers 'not [to] be afraid to come up with
ideas that in some people's minds might be risky or controversial' and
called parade efforts 'very successful.'



Police estimated 750,000 people attended the four-hour parade, whose
211 contingents competed with an occasional drag queen as well as at
least two topless women and several naked men.



Spectators reacted to the Chronicle contingent, said Hall, by
exclaiming things like, 'Oh, my God, the Chronicle's here!' She
added, 'That's what we were trying to accomplish.' In addition, two
Chronicle writers were among commentators during a live parade
broadcast on KBWB, a WB network affiliate. At a post-parade
celebration, the Chronicle sold 200 subscriptions, which Hall
called 'a really big sales day for us.'



Several hundred miles south, Joe Frederickson, vice president of
marketing at The Press-Enterprise in Riverside, Calif., said a
newspaper's sponsorship of a local gay parade could be
counterproductive: 'Put the ad revenue aside for a moment and consider
how this would be received by the market as a whole. That will be my
very first consideration. In some markets, it might not get past the
first consideration.'



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Joe Nicholson (jnicholson@editorandpublisher.com is an associate
editor for E&P.











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