Sogemedia : the personalized newspaper made viable thanks to Melody

Case Study

The tailor-made newspaper that adapts to readers' uses is a dream for the press in full digital transformation... Sogemedia, a local press group made up of 19 editions, has made no mistake in taking this new step and has chosen Melody, a content management solution.

Sogemedia invests in the personalized newspaper

December 2015: Sogemedia inaugurates the first digital press in Europe. The project of Jean-Pierre de Kerraoul, president of the group, is to adapt the printed product to the uses of digital. His ambition is to offer his readers a personalized edition of contents, an edition that adapts to the reader's expectations.

To meet this challenge, the printing tool is not enough! First of all, it is necessary to give the editorial staff of the 19 editions of the Weekly Press group the possibility to produce content adapted to the personalization strategy. Then, this technical solution must be accessible at a reasonable cost to make this strategic vision economically viable for regional weekly press organizations.

It is in this context that the flexibility and automation capacity of Melody convinced the press owner after a two-month pilot phase. A phase that allowed to test Melody's assets in real conditions... and that proved to be decisive!

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The challenge: Sogemedia wants to move to "on demand" newspapers

Melody has a great experience of the problems of the regional weekly press, in particular those of the bimedia, when the same content is used for the web and the print. Sogemedia's project is even more ambitious as it requires multiple, even "infinite", use of the same content, and this, with layouts that can vary.

To achieve this, an agile solution like Melodyis needed, capable of juggling different ways of communication and various layouts.

Moreover, the construction of the different editions must be done in a very fast way, in order to create a personalized copy on demand. In this respect, the possibility of re-using pages and contents between editions, via the inheritance function, allowed Sogemedia's collaborators to operate with fluidity and without heavy constraints.

Solution: Melody knows how to make content infinitely reusable

One of Melody's great skills is to separate the content from the form in a media. This asset provides a particularly effective response to the need for "infinite" re-use of content. The articles are thus designed and calibrated according to their angle and use. From this first version perfectly calibrated for a first diffusion, Melody will automatically manage "daughter" versions whose calibration and interest remain, but whose formatting can be adapted to the target readers. Moreover, the automatic realization of this multiplication of page formats does not require more time from the journalists, even if the editorial staff remains able to adjust each version at any time if it wishes and considers it useful.

Finally, the assembly of pages and the inheritance from one edition to another, of all or part of the pages already produced, is a totally automated operation. It is enough to concentrate on the realization of the "classic" edition of the title to realize as many versions as there are reader profiles.

Result: more than 50 customized editions without increasing the number of employees

The automation of page creation is the key feature of Melody in this project. It offers the journalist the possibility of being concerned primarily with the hierarchy and value of his content. Secondly, the interactive calibration aid takes care of the most suitable graphic adjustment to the page. On the other hand, the whole technique of creating the paper format is completely transparent. It is a constraint that disappears for the editor.

In this project, the most remarkable thing is perhaps Melody's ability to integrate a resolutely industrial project. The production line of the ever-increasing number of Sogemedia's editions has, in fact, proved to be perfectly stable... Without any break in production, in a just-in-time flow that had to be respected if we wanted to optimize the distribution of personalized editions to readers.

  • Since the end of 2017, the 19 titles of the newspaper publish more than 50 editions each week and convey to their readers this value of hyper proximity.

  • This result was achieved without increasing the number of employees, solely by exploiting the industrial potential of Melody.

  • Over time, the project has also opened up to digital and, every week, other digital editions are added to this paper collection.