Those days are NOVA! Bye Bye NOVA
And here is that information – thanks to BizCommunity for the news and YFM for the scoop. We actually got to really enjoy some aspects of NOVA but found that we could never find it except in some shops… It felt like there needed to be more vendors selling NOVA – particularly if they really were after the targe…
t market they wanted. Buppies and Yuppies drive cars. They don’t have time for shopping. So take it to them during peak hour traffic… anyway… click here for the full article from BizCommunity.
Publication of Nova, the four-and-a-half-month-old experimental daily newspaper based in Johannesburg, will be suspended. Nova was aimed at young, high-income urban professionals and although positive comments were received on its editorial content, sales figures were not up to expectations, said publisher Deon du Plessis.
“In terms of content and style the paper was well received; it was seen as innovative. Research showed that most people in the target market enjoyed it when they got it. Some advertisers were beginning to value the paper. But circulation remained flat.
“As to distribution, we had not yet succeeded in reaching sufficient numbers of people in the niche. Converting our target market of high-income non-newspaper-reading metro people to a regular newspaper-reading habit proved difficult.”
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9 Feb 06
Are the rumours true? Have we lost another newspaper to the land of failed start-ups? Remember This Day? Rumour has it (YFM) that NOVA has officially been closed today… we await more information.
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2005
About two weeks ago we had a whole bunch of buddies over for pizza’s… being the lazy gits we can be on a slow Thursday, we ordered a home-delivery from our favourite monsieur.
The person doing the deliveries must have thought that we were an entire call-centre making the request (little did they know we are a bunch of gluttons) and the pizzas arrived along with ten mysterious white envelopes. Inside the envelopes we discovered ten copies of Joburg’s latest newest sizzling daily tabloid, NOVA, with a note along the lines of “We know you guys are working hard, here’s something to help distract you.”. Nice one.
We tend to judge a book by it’s cover and we can be quite harsh – so we’ll give you our first impressions (which may change as time goes by) – Don’t take it personally!:
1. Nice name. But there’s a magazine in London with the same name (is it still going?)
2. K*k layout. Feels very chipile and low-brow
3. Enticing streetlamp headlines. If you’re in constant lust of wrist-slitting news and human tragedy, this is your panacea.
4. Cheesy print ads – looks like a low-end retail clothing shop trying to sell their very boring last season’s leftovers – you know the cliche – bunch of mixed peeps in their twenties smiling falsely wearing ‘slacks’…
5. Chipile at the price – nice price of R2,50 for the schmucks amongst us
6. Clever co-marketing campaign with Mr Delivery – nice thinking!
7. Juicy stories – yum yum
8. Getting the Scoop – they seem on a mission to print it first
So we’ve taken a few days to check out the content and to be honest, it still hasn’t blown our hair back, but then again we’ve been way too busy for YUPPIE STUFF. Apparently the rag is aiming at ‘yuppies’, wouldn’t any wisened contemporary marketeer in 2005 know that the crowd they should be woo’ing is known as BUPPIES? Or not? Hmmmm…. The layout could really do with some work – it’s just not congruent with the sexy name.
And apparently the brains (well…) behind NOVA belong to none other than Deon Du Plessis he of the delightfully bad taste DAILY SUN newspaper, another spreader of doom and gloom and young innocent girls in compromising poses.
Well, the one thing they definitely have right is pushing people’s gossip and drama buttons. We wish them all the best and watch with interest to see what their star will do…
