Other news media companies are angry about RNZ’s new ads and claims made in the slogans. It's prompted calls to pull the campaign but RNZ says the ads aimed at broadening the audience for the state-owned broadcaster's services will continue.
One of the sponsored ads circulating on social media. Photo: screenshot
RNZ has rolled out its biggest ad campaign in years with roadside billboards, ads on the backs of buses and even pitchside banners during upcoming Super Rugby clashes - mostly in and around Auckland.
Digital ads are appearing online and even in listeners’ podcasts.
Sponsored ads are also going out online on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram and some of the slogans immediately alarmed some journalists when they first appeared on Monday.
Interesting ad from RNZ especially in light of Mediaworks’ arguments against TVNZ.
— Thomas Coughlan (@coughlthom) March 2, 2020
Government agency now throwing ad money to Facebook to attack the paywall of one of our biggest news providers.
Also... come to stuff, it’s free as well. pic.twitter.com/ttdcrhf51j
“Media is an ecosystem and the state broadcaster should probably act responsibly in that ecosystem. Chucking money to Facebook to troll an effort by private media to survive isn't responsible,” Stuff's political reporter Thomas Coughlan said on Twitter.
The reference to premium content was seen as a swipe at the New Zealand Herald whose owner NZME invested a lot in last year’s launch of paid digital subscriptions for news after years of giving it away for free online.
The New Zealand Herald's Simon Wilson reminded RNZ that “all news is paid for.”
“By advertising, by the cost of the paper at the newsagent, by subscription, by sponsors or, ahem, by taxes. We pay for every second of your news, and for your advertising promotions," he said on Twitter.
Meanwhile the National Business Review, which depends upon subscriber revenue and runs its own online paywall, also saw the campaign as an attack.
“The campaign (is) seen by some as rubbing salt in the wound of declining commercial journalism models,” said the NBR's Dita Di Boni under the headline RNZ launches anti-paywall offensive with public purse.
“It is not so much the cost of the ads but the fact they are being used by publicly-funded RNZ to undermine a paywall for premium content among its commercial competitors that has attracted some ire,” she wrote.
Other slogans on the RNZ ads include: “If you think that quality journalism has disappeared, we have news for you” - and: “If you can’t seem to avoid ads online, we have news for you.”
Stuff’s chief executive Sinead Boucher told the NBR the tone of the campaign was: “appalling – to not just promote RNZ’s own work but instead to actively undermine other news organisations, who are not state-funded and who slog it out every day.”
To add insult to injury (or the other way round?) the RNZ ads were displaying in the building of Stuff's Wellington HQ.
Does RNZ regret the evident opposition to the campaign among media - and some of the spiky slogans?
"In the past RNZ has only made modest efforts to communicate with the members of the public who may have no or little understanding of what we have to offer them - so in that context it’s understandable that some in media might not support RNZ wanting to grow its relationship with more New Zealanders," RNZ's head of audience engagement Stephen Smith told Mediawatch.
"In addition to making great content we have an obligation to let the public know of its availability, where to access it on digital platforms and that it has benefits we believe that the public value such as strong and in-depth journalism, no advertising or advertorial content and no requirement to pay a subscription to gain access and use," he said.
"Some of the slogans used in the campaign communicate those benefits," he said.
Commercial media companies are battling the ongoing bleeding of their ad revenue to Facebook and Google. RNZ using public funds to place and boost ads on the likes of Facebook and Instagram has further inflamed them.
“Using taxpayer funding to advertise on Facebook is wrong-headed and counter to supporting that plurality of media voices . . . especially when the domestic media here would have provided them greater reach than they’re paying a global platform with a questionable moral compass for,” Stuff’s editorial director Mark Stevens told The Spinoff.
In a statement RNZ said: "RNZ has a small budget for marketing its services in order to reach as many New Zealanders as possible. And, along with most other NZ media, RNZ uses Facebook to maximise reach to target audiences."
Ally or enemy?
One of the sponsored ads circulating on social media. Photo: screenshot
One reason why the ads are so jarring is RNZ’s current policy of “radical sharing” - making its content available to all bona-fide news media outlets in New Zealand.
The idea is to become part of the wider New Zealand media ecosystem and cross-fertilise commercial media.
"I think the better metaphor is to think of ourselves as yeast – we kind of make the whole loaf rise, but we don’t have to do it all, we’re just a really good ingredient," RNZ CEO Paul Thompson told the Spinoff back in 2015.
“Public service media have a unique responsibility to help their commercial counterparts survive. Gone are the days when publicly-funded media were obliged to compete for market share,“ Paul Thompson said in 2018 in his capacity as chair of the Public Media Alliance, an international umbrella group representing public broadcasters.
Commercial media companies were already disappointed by government plans to build and fund a new public media entity to replace RNZ and TVNZ from 2023 while there’s no sign of any intervention to ease their financial problems or enhance their sustainability.
The tone and approach of this ad campaign has aggravated them further.
They're probably not thinking of RNZ as "yeast" right now.
This marketing campaign is about reaching people RNZ doesn’t currently connect with in pursuit of its current mission “to grow both the size and diversity of its audiences . . . to 1-in-2 New Zealanders a week.”
RNZ is entitled to promote its services just like other media do. NZME's Newstalk ZB frequently claims to be "New Zealand's number one radio network" even when surveys show RNZ National has more listeners.
"This advertising campaign is just plain wrong. Someone at RNZ should have the decency to pull it.," said former political editor Brent Edwards, who is now at the NBR.
NZME's head of business Fran O'Sullivan called on RNZ's board to "axe your vicious campaign against media who are fighting to grow paywall revenue.
But RNZ has no plans to change the campaign in response to the criticism. "Campaign slogans including those that seem to have caused the greatest concern with some in the media are . . . rotated in and out over the campaign period," RNZ's head of audience engagement Stephen Smith told Mediawatch.
"We don’t anticipate making further changes to our plan," he said.
