Thinking Of Brand Management Of The Mainland Metro

With the informatization which has swept across the globe, traditional newspapers have been stuck in a big trouble. In this situation, the appearance of free newspapers brought new color and life to traditional newspapers, and many newspaper groups established their metro targeting at the subway family on the basic of solid economic strength. They hope to open up their market by seizing young readers about 20-35 years old who have been running away from traditional newspapers. Under this market position, metro in Chinese mainland uses the advantage of their group brands to manage their own brand, which brings them adequate funds and people as well as lower cost in print and transportation. Simultaneously, monopolizing subway station to distribute papers, metro supplies practical information and convenient newspaper shelves to attract the attention of subway family whose reading time are limited and forge a new brand inside newspapering.Of course, nothing could always smooth sailing. Metro, in the worldwide, has appeared for only 15 years. In Chinese mainland, metro emerged in 2003 and is still in the infant stage. In particular newspapering environment, metro in Chinese mainland could not straightly copy the overseas model. They need to explore and summarize according to their particular circumstances. According to the current situation, though metro in mainland has a great development potential as subways in many cities are being extended or established, there are still several problems in their brand management. The most important one is the contradiction between brand position and marketing channels.This article is written within the theoretic framework of media operation and management. Firstly, it analyses the environment of metro brand building in Chinese mainland using the model of PESE and SWOT; secondly, taking the case of "Guangzhou Metro Daily", the article minutely analyses the characteristics of metro brand position and brand marketing in mainland; finally, it summarizes the opportunity and troubles that metro in mainland would be faced with, and forecasts the prospect of mainland metro on the basic of operation experiments of metro in other places.In the first part, the article introduces the basic theory of media brand management and the current station of metro in mainland. It elaborates the current station of this issue and clarifies why "Guangzhou Metro Daily" is selected as the primary case.In the second part, in order to grasp the situation of metro brand management in mainland meticulously and comprehensively, taking "Guangzhou Metro Daily" for the primary example, the article analyzes characteristics of brand position and brand marketing (content, cost, advertisement and distribution) and elaborates the macro-environment and micro-environment of metro brand construction.In the third part, on the basic of previous analysis, the article summarizes the superiority of metro brand management in mainland and points that:on the one hand, metro in mainland is facing a good opportunity——development of subway construction in cities, which will bring a great potential for metro; on the other hand, there is a serious trouble——co-existence of ground distribution and underground distribution, the contradiction between audience objectives and issue market.In the last part, the article forecasts the future of metro brand management in mainland: as the upgrade of market segmentation, metro brand management in mainland will develop in the following direction——content should be aimed at fewer people, issue channel should be only one and the brand construction is supposed to be in the form of alliance.