Growing our truly unique readership
City A.M. is based upon the idea that print remains a competitive and efficient medium, even today. While we are planning exciting developments for our digital offering in the months ahead, we believe a great print product remains the fastest and most efficient way of providing readers with a quick and concise overview of all the news and analysis that matters, every morning.
It is much easier to obtain a full yet speedy briefing by reading a copy of City A.M. than it is trying to surf various websites on the train on a Blackberry or iPhone. But all of these advantages of a well-presented, condensed and bang-up-to date newspaper matter only as long as you are – literally – within an arm’s length of the readers. Which is why, starting at four in the morning, our hard-working distributors make sure that we are available at an increasing number of transport hubs, offices and restaurants.
Our ambition is to serve all of London’s business community. At launch, we were only available in the City and Canary Wharf; now, more than half our readers work outside the Square Mile. Since the start of 2009, we have being commissioning YouGov, the pollsters, to conduct some 5,000 interviews to track our readership. The latest numbers, which date from July, reveal that we now have a daily reach of 2.4 per cent of Greater London’s adult population. Even more importantly, in the key 25-44 years demographic, where traditional newspapers have struggled for years, we are now on par with the Daily Telegraph and only trailing the Times by 2 percentage points.
The difference is clearly illustrated by the average age of our readers – 37, much younger than our rivals in the quality press – and the fact that 95 per cent are in full-time work, more than for any other paper. Ours is a very demanding and unique audience; a key group of people that will determine London’s power, success and global influence in the years ahead.
A few months ago, we asked you, our readers, to fill in an online questionnaire to help us better understand your needs. Within a week, we had 2,000 responses. Not only was the feedback overwhelmingly positive, with many excellent suggestions we have taken on board, but that number in itself gives us great confidence that we are on the right track. We look forward to continuing to serve you in the years ahead.
jens.torpe@cityam.com