ABC and i

In October last year, my manager reviewed the launch of Britain’s newest quality title, i. The newspaper joined its market only a day before I joined media research; this connection – frail as it is – gives me at least some licence to review how i is performing nearly four months on.

Unfortunately this assessment can’t comment much on content, and it won’t go into anywhere near as much detail as you’ll see in some reviews knocking around the trade press – but I’m a stickler for keeping the purse strings tight, and not even a bargain 20p cover price can budge that.

Instead, I’m sponging off the net, and as such I concentrate on what prompted me to write this post: the latest ABC figures, released last week. In a nutshell, they showed January’s sales outweighing December’s across nearly every (both Daily and Sunday) title – probably the easiest prediction any media planner can make, so long as they know Christmas exists.

Here, though, the greater importance of the latest figures was the debut of i. Before it launched last October, i was up against the sceptics, whose rationale couldn’t stray from logic. As Euan Mackay recognised, there was a feeling back in October that...

Creating a new paid-for print product in an already declining market where revenues and audiences are distracting themselves with ipads, ipods and iphones seems ambitious, if not outright bonkers

But behind this obvious scepticism, there was some faith, and optimists pointed to Lebedev’s past triumphs in innovative projects, or to the low-cost/low-volume premise behind the paper. Regardless of the mood, the initial circulation targets hovered around the 180,000 mark. For those unfamiliar with newspaper sales figures, The Times’ circulation at this point would have been around 500,000. Aiming low, were they?

Well, not quite; because i’s January 2011 circulation? 133,472. When you’ve just read that The Times operates at nearly 500k i now looks pitiful. But as the quote above will tell you, the 180,000 target was made for a reason. Not only that, but the i brand developed in the shadow of its elder sister, The Independent. Yes, i was tipped to be the trendier sibling, but there was never an intention for it to let go of the Indy’s hand.

And in fact, 133,472 is a success. Until very recently the plan was to delay publishing i’s ABC figure until March (which will show figures from February); that they’ve brought their release forward tells you they’ve got something to shout about.

Why they’re so eager is a no-brainer; their TV advertising campaign launched on the 16th January and by the end of January, executives at i were reporting a 15,000 growth in daily sales. The campaign continues into the middle of March, so the immediate path ahead looks secure.

The extension of i’s circulation to Scotland and both parts of Ireland this week will give that path some extra length. And with its big sister (who all but held on to her January 2010 figure) still on hand, i is revelling in media agencies’ attraction to a combined paid-for circulation of 340,000.

“The best content...” and with “...just intelligent stuff I actually wanna read” may be pushing it a little. But a cheap quick-fix it definitely is. Whether this turns out to be the sort of fix that time-poor, quality readers were looking for is still an uncertainty, given that it is not even four months old.

On the back of some slightly favourable ABC figures, Lebedev and co seem convinced; i is. Are you?