Seven West Media to rebrand Community Newspapers as PerthNow Newspapers
Seven West Media is to retire the Community Newspapers free suburban newspaper brand and relaunch leveraging WA’s most popular news website.
From August, SWM will retire the Community Newspaper Group brand and relaunch the products as free suburban PerthNow newspapers.
The new weekly PerthNow newspapers will be split into ten localised editions stretching from Yanchep to Coogee.
West Australian Newspapers Editor in Chief Anthony De Ceglie said the papers will focus on telling local stories in a new and engaging format in an edgier fashion while still continuing Community Newspaper Group’s tradition of award-winning scoops and investigations.
PerthNow is WA’s most popular news website – attracting a unique monthly audience of more than 2.8 million unique browsers. On any given day the website records more than 1 million page impressions.
Community Newspaper Group already transitioned its websites onto PerthNow successfully six months ago.
Residents of Rockingham and Peel will continue to be serviced by the Sound Telegraph and the Mandurah Coastal Times.
Combined with the new PerthNow products, these local free local newspapers will boast a print platform of over 530,000 readers per month.*
De Ceglie, who oversees all of Seven West Media’s mastheads and websites across regional, suburban and metropolitan WA, said the company was proud of its continued investment in newspapers.
“Having achieved strong growth in our metro print products, we are continuing our commitment to print media by investing in a new weekly suburban newspaper to shake up local news,” he said. “It makes sense to leverage more from one of WA’s most loved and recognised brands in PerthNow. PerthNow brings a well-known and vibrant brand, a large social media following and a strong digital platform to the local paper.”
Seven West Media WA Chief Advertising Officer, Nathan Cave, said: “We are really excited to launch our new suburban newspapers under the PerthNow brand. Our commercial partners will now be able to access print and digital hyper local opportunities under one brand. While community newspapers have been closed around the country, we are excited to be able to provide a bold integrated offering which is engaging and exciting for our advertisers with a unique offering in the WA market”.
The launch of the PerthNow Newspaper will be supported by a heavy marketing campaign with a cheeky twist that captures the essence of the PerthNow brand.
The first edition of PerthNow will hit letterboxes, shops and cafes from August 5.
* Source: emmaCMV 12 months ending December 2020 – readers L4W.