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Usa Today: Innovation in an Evolving Industry

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Submitted By elektre09
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Richard Godfrey
BMKT 6311
USA Today Case Study The newspaper publishing industry is one of the most rapidly evolving industries in the world today. Changing due to economic climate shift, consumer needs evolving, enhanced technology, and continuous competition; USA Today has been able to succeed. The publication raises the bar through innovation and value-added content to bolster their standing in the publishing world as “The Nation’s Newspaper” in hopes of staying continually relevant and standing out amongst the competition, ensuring the future of the USA Today brand.
1) When Gannett first debuted USA Today in 1982, the corporation took advantage of a multitude of opportunities in the marketing environment and secured a strong foothold in a market that already had several major players. The most impactful opportunity, in my opinion, is its format. In an attempt to stand out from the competition, USA Today developed a unique format of shorter pieces with photos, graphs, charts in order to address the needs of an audience other publications seemingly ignored. By creating a product high in form utility, the publication was able to distinguish itself and cater to an evolving market. Gannett also cited watching trends and evolution of news readers as part of the success. As society shifted to having typically shorter attention spans, yet still having a hunger for knowledge, Gannett capitalized on these trends with the updated format of USA Today targeted towards the evolved reader with catchy headlines and succinct, casual writing in order to convey more information in less page space. By doing so, they could fit more stories in the paper delivering more knowledge and snappier stories that were quick reads for the readers with shorter attention spans. One method Gannett used to test this new layout and formulate to best possible layout and content, the company

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