In the Know: Q&A with Mei-Mei Chan

March 2003

By Jeanne Fox-Alston

Earlier this year Mei-Mei Chan, vice president of circulation for the Seattle Times Company, was named the circulation sales executive for 2003 for large newspapers by the Newspaper Association of America. The award, which recognizes achievement in circulation sales innovation, cited Chan’s role in implementing a plan that focuses on increasing subscriber retention. These include sending a welcome letter to new subscribers, including thank-you messages in renewal bills, and enclosing discount coupons in all subscriber communications.

Chan is responsible for circulation operations for both the Seattle Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which is owned by the Hearst Corp. The two papers have a joint-operating agreement (JOA) in which the Seattle Times Company handles circulation, advertising, promotion and production for both newspapers. The circulation department is the company’s largest, with about 700 employees and 2,000 independent contractors.

Chan’s background is on the news side of the industry. Before joining the Seattle Times in 1997, as manager of strategic initiatives, she was executive editor of the Post Register in Idaho Falls, ID, a 30,000-circulation daily. Previously, she was an editor and reporter at the Chicago Sun-Times, USA Weekend magazine, USA Today and the Commercial News in Danville, IL. Born in Canton, China, Chan grew up in Chicago. She is a NAMME board member and a national advisory board member for the Poynter Institute.

Q: You’re a former news executive. How did you become a vice president of circulation?

A: Serendipity, creativity and intuition. I was looking for the next challenge after Idaho and Times Publisher Frank Blethen said, let’s figure something out. I seized the opportunity and came as manager of strategic initiatives in 1997. Five months later, my (circulation) predecessor left. They said, do you want to try circulation? Not knowing any better, I said OK.

Q: What was the transition like?

A: I always tell everyone that I have never worked my brain so hard in my life. When you’re in the newsroom, you’re creating stories and producing content that you feel good about. In circulation, you hear from all the people who don’t think it’s good enough, who are either not interested in trying the paper or are stopping it because they don’t have the time (to read it) or (don’t) find the relevance. So trying to figure out how to marry the great content one produces with the marketplace and customer perceptions is tremendously challenging and educational and grueling all at the same time.

Q: What are some of the challenges you’ve faced?

A: Talk about learning by fire…We converted The Seattle Times from afternoon to morning publication in 2000, probably the largest paper in the country (to do so) with the most successful results ever in transitioning existing customers over. Eight months later, we had a 49-day strike, in which we were also very successful, producing and delivering a paper every day. We had an economic downturn, 9/11, Boeing woes, an earthquake. All these things happened while I was trying to learn a whole new discipline, build a team, raise standards and performance and aspirations and then achieve them.

Q: What successes are you proudest of?

A: The team we’ve built. We’ve been through the fire together and have been successful because we are a team, focused on a unified mission. That has resulted in marvelous achievements almost on a daily basis. After nearly six years, what we call BHAGs (big hairy audacious goals, from “Built to Last” by Jim Collins & Jerry Porras) have become almost common occurrences. It’s pretty amazing: whether it’s the service levels in home delivery and how they’ve improved, and how fabulous they are when compared to industry benchmarks, to sales results, to our circulation results for The Seattle Times, to the kind of innovation going on across the department, to the synergy with other departments, whether it’s advertising, marketing, operations or news.

Q: What have been some of the keys to achieving those results?

A: There are many factors that all work together: people, communications, joint vision and teamwork being the most important in my mind. My approach is intense collaboration: capitalizing on all our smart people and asking a million questions. Together you figure out how to do things better, what things to focus on, and then go do it!

We have the largest department in the company; it’s really nine sub departments including distribution, sales, marketing and customer service, working 24/7. Like a strategic military campaign, you want to have all the divisions working together for the greatest impact. It was important for us as a team to decide what we want to achieve together, to agree on a mission statement for the circulation department and the leadership competencies for circulation managers. Communication is critical, to ensure those messages cascade down. Everyone needs to understand what your division or department is trying to do and your role within the bigger picture. If you don’t have people on same page, you won’t get optimal results.

Q: You mentioned the circulation reports. What have they shown?

A: In both publisher’s statements last year, the Seattle Times has been up year over year. This March (2003), we expect to be up nearly 4 percent, which is out of this world. As you know, we’re a joint operating agreement (JOA), so we also handle circulation for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. As an agency, we’re watching the Times’ numbers as well as the combined numbers. We have a fighting chance of being even in combined daily circulation even though the P-I has struggled quite a bit in its circulation.

Q: You’re in charge of circulation for two competing newspapers. How does that work?

A: In a very complex way. The two newsrooms are independent, as are the editorial pages. But the newspaper agency manages everything else. Since the JOA started in 1983, my department has been responsible for selling, servicing and delivering both the Times and the P-I. We’ve always fulfilled our obligations under the JOA, keeping the P-I as strong as it has been. But since the Times switched to the morning slot, and began competing head on, we have seen a growing momentum and preference for the Times, with the gap between the two papers growing. That’s particularly clear in the changing trends in single copy sales. Those trends are worrisome because we have to pay attention to each paper as well as their combined circulation.

Q: Why is it important to improve customer service and what have you done?

A: We’re a big believer in several of the themes in the Newspaper Association of America’s readership initiative. Over-the-top service is a critical element, and has been a high priority in this company for many years. That means delivering the daily paper at 5:30 in the morning, which is one of the earliest delivery times in the country. We also put the paper where the customer wants it. As you can imagine, that’s very time consuming and very costly.

The biggest challenge is keeping subscribers, not getting new subscribers. It’s amazing how many people stop (their subscriptions) every year. The industry is putting more emphasis on retention, what I’ve called “keeping customers for life.” Doing what you can to keep a customer makes a lot more sense on many levels than trying to replace a lost customer. That’s why premium service is so important, getting papers to subscribers where they want it, when they want it. We’re also trying to figure out what the right price points are, the right marketing messages, the value added. We want to establish a relationship with customers: Our publisher and editor have more communication with subscribers than in the past through letters and in-paper ads. In our bills, there often are value-added coupons and highlights of news content. All these elements come into play, not to mention quality journalism and relevant content, which is the biggest driver of all.

Q: One hears a lot about readership these days. Are newspapers focusing on readership because circulation numbers have been falling?

A: Both are important. Paid circulation means someone actually put out some money. Paid circulation is a good measure, but doesn’t really tell the whole story. Readership counts how many people actually look at each paper. With home delivery, more than one person probably is reading that paper. If you buy a single copy and leave it in your office or the cafeteria, there’s probably more than one person reading that paper, too. Each of those eyeballs has exposure to content and advertising. With the growing online audiences, readership also better measures our entire reach as a company. The end result is to tell advertisers, look at your reach and the results we get you. Readership also is a closer measurement to our main competitors, television and radio. They go by market share, not what someone paid for this yesterday. So it’s a more equitable way to compare against competitive media.

Q: Your department has a close working relationship with other departments at the newspaper. Has that been difficult to achieve?

A: No. One of the greatest strengths of this company is its openness and desire and belief in close collaboration across departments, and it’s been going on for many, many years. During my tenure, I would say we’ve kicked it up several notches. The strong, respectful relationships are one of the main reasons we’ve been successful. My colleagues support and help us in making decisions, and vice versa, whether it’s budget related or personnel related. Often, it takes much longer time to come to a resolution, but the decision is so much richer.

Q: What are some of the challenges ahead?

A: There’s a number of them. There’s economic uncertainly, which leads to budget constraints, which means you’re not able to do as much as you want to. The marketplace is more stressed, which means circulation sales and retention become ever trickier. There are advertising concerns, as there are with all newspapers, and that causes a ripple effect though whole company. Our systems need attention, to provide more flexibility, responsiveness and knowledge across the company. We have all these aspirations of where we want to be, ways to better measure ourselves, and improve systems and processes, and you’re impatient to make faster progress. We are heavily unionized as a company and have a major contract that is up at the end of this month. Negotiations will start soon.

Q: As you’ve immersed yourself in circulation issues, what resources—books, people, other papers, organizations—have helped?

A: I look at best practices wherever they’re available, and have relied greatly on many new colleagues in the industry. It hasn’t been until recently that I’ve had the time and fortitude to look outside the industry a little more, as I realized we’re still fairly traditional and not nearly as sophisticated as we would like to be.

Looking back, I spent the first two years immersing myself, doing what I call the biggest investigative project of my life. Then we had one BHAG after another that took up another 2 _ years or so. During times like that, you learn what kind of leader you are, what kind of team you’ve built. We really bonded and strengthened our respect for each other during a tumultuous time that could have gone any number of ways. Now, while there still are some areas requiring revolution, mostly it’s evolution ahead: how to continue to raise the sophistication of our processes and our people.

Q: What other industries are you studying?

A: I’ve just started down this road. There’s a story in Fast Company magazine about pricing and some new software that crunches data with algorithms to create models about what gets the most results. They can measure five different price points at five different stores across the country, seeing the next day what really moves, what’s the best option, so that the pricing can be adjusted. I find that fascinating. Banks have done a great job in terms of customer centric database marketing and database knowledge, and that’s an area we really need to move towards.

Q: Has this position challenged and stretched you more so than previous ones?

A: Totally. Within a news setting, you have similar agendas, similar ways of thinking by and large, and a structured operation. You put out a paper every day and it’s filled with content from the different departments. Now I’m dealing with nine different sub systems, essentially running my own business. I have a distribution arm, a sales arm, a marketing arm, a customer service arm, a retailer arm, and more. Learning about each of them every day, figuring out how each works and how they should work together, and how to keep improving is a tremendous challenge. I’m delighted to be part of this, as well as gratified by the successes that we’ve seen.

Q: What else is important, from a management point of view?

A: Making sure you have the right people in the right jobs. Even though I inherited a lot of these people, there’s been quite a lot of movement in terms of roles and responsibilities. I’m always trying to find out, “What’s this person’s greatest strength? How can that best meet the company’s needs as well as their needs? Can we come to agreement about that role?” That’s a really difficult and challenging process, because it can feel very personal.

Once you get the right people in the right job, have a common vision and mission and communication, then you have figure out how to encourage each person to be all they can be. That’s a dilemma because we’re a 24/7 operation, with about 70 managers and 700 employees. I have to decide how to use my time to be most effective, how to avoid being stuck in my office yet have time to pull back and be strategic, how to support, nurture and challenge without micromanaging. So balancing time and priorities will always be a tricky process.

Here’s a note to aspiring managers: it’s important to brand yourself and learn to effectively manage up so your skills are top of mind. I come in regular contact with, at most, 15 of my 70 managers. If you’re not among the 15, you have to work a little harder to ensure I know what you contribute.

Q: Anything else you’d like to share?

A: Moving from news to the business side was a wonderful opportunity that few people get with as little experience as I had. I have to thank Frank Blethen for following his intuition and taking a calculated risk. Everyone should try to have that type of cross-departmental exposure. It really opens your eyes to the challenges elsewhere and helps you to understand the business; we are pretty insular within our divisions. That broad perspective will make you more effective, whatever role you’re in.

It’s also important to have the patience to work one step at a time toward what you’re trying to achieve. That can be difficult for many of us type As. We want it all yesterday, we want it to be perfect. We may have to “settle” for excellence! I love the books “First, Break All the Rules” (by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman) and “Built to Last.” My objective is to “build a clock,” create a dynamic, effective environment that is organic and flourishes independent of me. I also like to think of myself as an orchestra conductor, setting the stage so that different players on different instruments playing different songs are all making beautiful music together.

Jeanne Fox-Alston is the executive director of NAMME.