Media buyers slam new-look Standard as ‘downmarket’

The London Evening Standard , which relaunched as a full-colour newspaper yesterday, has failed to excite and been slammed by media buyers.

The London Evening Standard , which relaunched as a full-colour newspaper yesterday, has failed to excite and been slammed by media buyers.

The colour-themed sections look “downmarket and provincial”, according to one media buyer. Another says the Associated Newspapers-owned paper needs to be more subtle with its use of colour, adding that there is such a thing as “too much colour on a page”.

The revamp, exclusively revealed in last week’s Marketing Week, is the second change in six months to the look of the newspaper, and is designed to make the product more attractive and easier to navigate for consumers.

But several media buyers say the most recent change may be one too far. One says: “The choice of colours are odd at best. I’m afraid the brown and blue make it look rather downmarket and provincial.”

And despite many of the country’s larger newspapers investing millions of pounds in full-colour presses, another press buyer says: “It is possible to have too much colour on a page – if the ads are all in colour and then the pages are too, it doesn’t always work.”

The media observer says: “Full-colour is fine, but it needs to work with the design of the paper. The Standard’s management needs to have another look and calm down the colour a bit, be a bit cleverer and more subtle with the use of the colour, like The Guardian is.”

But some buyers were positive, believing the new-look Standard to be “cleaner, clearer, stronger and more contemporary”.