Discussions about innovation inRichmond are often focused on busi-ness startups, particularly in the tech-nology sector.

And while new businesses, alongwith groups that provide funding,office space and mentorship, haveproliferated in the area during recentyears, the culture of innovation runsfar beyond the startup scene. In busi-ness, sports, music and food, newproducts and new ideas are changingthe way people live and work.

One source of food innovation isGrowRVA, which operates farmersmarkets throughout central Virginia.The company’s flagship South of theJames market opened in Forest HillPark in 2008 with about 30 vendors.When the summer market seasonbegins May 3, more than 100 vendorswill be on site. Thousands of custom-

ers will visit on each Saturday.GrowRVA also operates a smaller

winter market at Forest Hill Park, andthis summer it will offer weekly mar-kets at Short Pump Towne Center,Chimborazo Park, the Millworks De-velopment in Midlothian and West-bury Pharmacy.

In many ways, the markets are anew twist on a very old idea — thatpeople like to eat food grown or madeby local producers. The expandingmarkets have also developed a pool ofcraft vendors who sell handmadeitems to the customers who are drawnby the vegetables and friendly atmo-sphere.

Agriculture and food production,Virginia’s largest industry, has alsoreceived a jolt in recent years fromSabra, the hummus maker that is ajoint venture between PepsiCo andIsraeli manufacturer Strauss Group.

A year ago, the company an-

DANIEL SANGJIB MIN/TIMES-DISPATCH

A view of East Jackson Street shows Altria (left) and Health Diagnostic Laboratory (right), two of several companies in Richmond developing ideas and products.

CHANGING HOWWE LIVE, WORK

Richmond drives advances in business, sports, music, foodBY JACOB GEIGERWork It, Richmond

TIMES-DISPATCH

Hummus maker Sabra, a venture of PepsiCo and Israeli company Strauss Group, isworking to see if local farmers can grow chickpeas, the key ingredient in hummus. INNOVATION, Page E2

What do fighting crime on thestreets of Richmond and selling luxu-ry cars to twentysomethings have incommon?

VCU Brandcenter students havehad a hand in finding creative andinnovative ways to do both of thosethings, and much more.

Students at the Brandcenter, rec-ognized as a top graduate advertisingprogram in the nation, have tackledprojects in recent years ranging fromdeveloping the “RVA” brand to help-ing law enforcement agencies createmore effective crime-fighting mes-sages.

When the Boys Home of Virginia inCovington sought last year to reinvig-orate its marketing to reach a wideraudience of potential donors, it gothelp from the Brandcenter. Eighteen

students volunteered to take a bus tothe home’s campus in Covington.

“A large group of them came on aSaturday and spent about six hourson campus, touring and meeting ourresidents,” said Donnie Wheatley,executive director of the Boys Home.

The Brandcenter students helpeddevelop a campaign for the BoysHome, including a website, logo andbrochures. It centered on the mes-

sage: “A successfulman has to start some-where.”

“It has already suc-ceeded in generatinggreat response fromdonors and support-ers,” said KellyO’Keefe, the professorat the VCU Brand-

center who teaches the class on in-novation.

“The Boys Home is a great ex-ample of our students and their com-mitment to the community.”

Students also routinely take onclassroom projects that have applica-tions in commerce.

In 2010, when automobile maker

MEDIA

BRANDINGBENEFITS

VCU students’work helps sell

things and moreBY JOHN REID BLACKWELL

Richmond Times-Dispatch

BRANDING, Page E2

O’Keefe

People tend to think of innovationas being all about inventing some-thing entirely new.

Creating a new product “is awe-some, and it happens now and then,”said Kelly O’Keefe, nationally knownbranding expert and a professor ofcreative brand management at Vir-ginia Commonwealth University’sBrandcenter.

“But much more frequently, in-novation is taking something thatexists that may be a little bit matureand may not have changed enoughfor a while and bringing new life toit,” said O’Keefe, who also is chiefcreative officer at PadillaCRT.

“That is an important thing be-cause right now in America, 80 per-cent of our industries are matureindustries.”

Every semester, O’Keefe assigns hisBrandcenter graduate students aproject to introduce innovation to abusiness or product.

This spring, he gave his group ofsecond-year graduate students aparticularly challenging assignment.They had to come up with ways toinnovate a mature product that has

been upended by the digital mediarevolution: newspapers.

Specifically, the students took onthe task of doing hypothetical rede-signs of the print version of the Rich-mond Times-Dispatch.

Not surprisingly, given that somany consumers have turned awayfrom print media to computers, tab-lets and smartphones to get theirnews these days, O’Keefe said thestudents were dubious.

“We were skeptical about whetherthe paper copy has a future, and if itdoes, what role will it play in people’slives?” said graduate student MarisaPerazzelli.

Like many of the students, shewants to work as a planner at anadvertising firm, doing the kind ofstrategic thinking that gets peopleinterested in products, services orphilanthropic causes.

The students were given fourweeks to do research and come upwith a revamp of the print edition.

Making it tougher, they had totackle a problem that the print mediaindustry itself has struggled with foryears: How do you rework a printproduct in a way that will appeal toconsumers who are mainly using

TEAMS TAKE ONT-D REDESIGN

BY JOHN REID BLACKWELLRichmond Times-Dispatch

TEAMS, Page E3

INNOVATIONIN RICHMONDInsightE

SATURDAYApril 26, 2014

TimesDispatch.comu u u

Richmond Times-Dispatch u Editor Daniel Finnegan u (804) 649-6427 u dfinnegan@timesdispatch.com

COMING SUNDAY

THE NEXTGENERATIONOF CARS

RICHMOND TIMES-DISPATCH u u u SATURDAY, APRIL 26, 2014 E3

I N N O V A T I O N I N R I C H M O N D

CONCLUSIONS♦ Digital news sources compete with oneanother by carving out distinct points of viewsand personalities♦ Because readers are often aware of thebasic details of the story by the time theyreach the paper, The Times-Dispatch needs toprovide a fresh perspective on national andworld news♦ Journalists need to change from“gatekeepers” to conversationalistsDigital publications have had more freedom toexperiment with layouts and UX(user experience), and have innovated as aresult

STRATEGIES♦ Wherever possible, veer toward “lowbrow” or “highbrow” content and awayfrom the middle (fewer Associated Press articles)♦ Use cheat sheets that make national/world news easier to take in♦ Use more analytical opinion pieces, profiles or investigative journalism♦ Add a “Local Box” to national and international stories with commentaryand analysis from area residents♦ Move the Metro section to the front section — this is where readers can getnews that they may not have read about online yet♦ Make the change from rigid print mindset to social mindset where thejournalist is leading the conversation♦ Pick the most emotional and high-quality stories — five to seven per week— to push out on Facebook.♦ Let the text and pictures of big stories breathe so people want to spend timewith them♦ Change nameplate to go with a more modern RTD instead of Richmond

Times-Dispatch, and add art to the nameplate to bring more personality

TEAM THREE: SLOW

Beckman

Schaefer West

Khan

electronic devices nowwithout also alienatingthe customers who stillprefer to have a printnewspaper delivered totheir door every morn-ing?

“It was difficult be-cause this is not just aRichmond Times-Dis-patch problem,” stu-dent Haik Petrosiansaid. “It is an industryproblem.”

v v v

The 16 grad students,working in four teamsof four people each, setout to do what researchthey could in the shorttime they had. Theydrew from existingconsumer surveys andalso conducted surveysof their own.

They spoke withindustry experts, andthey visited the New-seum in Washington.They also visited TheTimes-Dispatch news-room and interviewedreporters, editors andothers at the newspa-per.

The solutions theycame up with werevaried, but could bedivided into two broadcategories: slow andspeed.

The “speed” solu-tions emphasized of-fering readers a printversion that looks a lotlike the short and snap-py bits of news andinformation peopletypically consume usingdigital media.

For instance, theteam that includedMarie Adams, CierraDobson, Whitney Kellerand Katie Long con-cluded that the problemwith print newspapersis not the content, butthe format of the news-paper and the time ittakes to read it. Mostpeople simply do nothave the time to con-sume what’s in a dailynewspaper, their re-search showed.

They came up with arevamp of the newspa-per that would have avastly different frontpage than a traditionalone. Instead of a fewmajor stories on thefront, they suggested adesign that would packmore information onthe page in the form ofbrief news headlinesand captions with nu-merous small photo-graphs.

“Our strategy was tooptimize the readingexperience for speed,”said Adams, a formerTimes-Dispatch em-ployee. “In the limitedtime they have, peoplecould skim the frontpage and all the head-lines and get what theywant. Then when theyhave more time, theycould flip the page forthe longer articles.”

The team that in-cluded Haik Petrosian,Brittany Bell, KevinMernin and Marie Ma-tuszewski also opted fora redesign that empha-sized quick, easy read-ing and a wider array ofarticles to attract a di-verse audience.

Their redesign was insome ways a throwbackto the way newspaperslooked decades ago,when readers wouldhave seen dozens ofstories on the frontpage every day.

The team suggestedthat the front pageshould include about 30“entry points” — orshort news stories —every day, with some-thing on the front pagefrom every section ofthe newspaper.

The other teams tookan approach that em-phasized the sense of“slowness” in printmedia versus the speedof its digital competi-tion, suggesting that themeatiness of print me-dia could be an alterna-tive to the cacophony ofinformation in the digi-tal world.

The team of BethBeckman, Bilal Khan,

Rachel West and LiamSchaefer, for example,suggested that thenewspaper should shiftfrom a generalizedfocus on world, nationaland local news, andmove more toward a“hyperfocus” on localnews.

But instead of of-fering shorter, quick-to-read stories, the papershould include longer,more “conversational”articles of local interest.

v v v

The team of MarisaPerazzelli, RoderickKashani, Jeremy Chac-ich and Araba Wilsonalso suggested that thenewspaper should notso much compete withdigital media but offeran entirely differentexperience.

They foresee thefuture of newspapers aspart of the “culture ofslow,” a culture thatalso encompasses finecuisine, local foods andhandmade crafts, ap-pealing to people whodesire the authentic,luxury experiences thata fast-paced, fast-foodand digital media worldcan’t offer.

Instead of short newsarticles, the team sug-gested longer pieces,more like a magazine.The team was thinkingof what a newspaperneeds to offer 20 yearsfrom now, Perazzellisaid.

“It needs to be thislong, in-depth, rich,physical experience,”she said.

v v v

The students pre-sented their proposedchanges to The Times-Dispatch staff April 8,prompting a lengthydiscussion about thefuture of print media.

Having a strategy-minded group of gradu-ate students look at theproduct and suggestchanges was a usefulexperience, Times-Dispatch Editor DannyFinnegan said.

“They gave us a greatsense of what millenni-als are looking for interms of news and in-formation, and howthey experience it,”Finnegan said. “Therewere some ideas thatare worth pursuing.There were some ideasthat we are already inthe midst of doing.”

The newspaper hastried some of the ideasbefore, such as sellingsingle-copy newspaperswith an all-promo front.

“Maybe it is time toexplore some of thoseideas again,” he said.

Finnegan noted thatall four of the studentteams suggestedchanging the newspa-per’s name in someway and changing thenameplate at the top ofthe front page.

One group said itsresearch showed thatthe word “dispatch” isfading from general use,so it suggested dropping“Dispatch” from thename and simply using“The Richmond Times.”

Other groups suggest-ed using the nameplate“RTD,” or “RVA Times-Dispatch.” O’Keefe saidthe current RichmondTimes-Dispatch name-plate font is a very oldprint typeface — datingto the mid-1600s.

O’Keefe joked thatthe students had beenwarned beforehandthat radical changes tothe newspaper don’t sittoo well with somelongtime readers.

“We have been toldthat if you move BeetleBailey (comic strip) bya few inches, you aregoing to hear fromthem,” he said.

“I can tell you thatthere is nothing youcan do that is going tobring real innovation tothe paper without somedisruption. In order tomake change in anyindustry, you have tohave an open mindtowards some change.”jblackwell@timesdispatch.com(804) 775-8123

TeamsFrom Page E1 RESEARCH

♦ Information still seen as crucial across allage groups♦ News readers are increasingly choosingeither print or digital, but not both♦ More information sources than ever withthe advent of such digital sites as HuffingtonPost, Politico, BuzzFeed, Facebook and Twitter

CONCLUSIONS♦ The format of the newspaper, and the timeit takes to read it, hinders its goal♦ It’s not the message that’s broken; it’s thedelivery method we have to fix♦ If printed newspapers are going to survive,they must steal audience from online/mobile

STRATEGIES♦ Optimize the reading experience for speed, making the print edition atime-efficient, one-stop shop for news♦ Turn the front page into a visual index so readers can get the stories FAST.Page One should be a storefront for the newspaper♦ Give readers a digestible, visual taste of what’s inside by combing aheadline, an image, a short caption and a page number♦ Retain story hierarchy with image size and placement on front page♦ Create “Inside Stories” box to give readers 10 more headline choices♦ Create “Gotta Run?” feature that allows readers to text a photo of aheadline to receive a link to the full story from TimesDispatch.com♦ Interior: Graphics for data and relational information♦ Rundowns to place recent developments in larger context♦ Callouts add dimension, aid scanning

TEAM ONE: SPEED

Adams Dobson

Keller Long

TEAM FOUR: SLOWRESEARCH♦ 72 percent of millennials want to be thesource of information to peers♦ 90 percent of millennials say checking theirphone is an important part of their day♦ 72 percent prefer long narrative TV seriesthat unfold over a season instead episodic TV♦ 55 percent of DIY enthusiasts are youngerthan age 35 (the Etsy factor)

CONCLUSIONS♦ There is a misperception that millennialsdon’t like/enjoy/need news♦ Millennials have a variety of Internet sourcesto choose from for information♦ Online news consumption fits into a lifestyleof convenience and multitasking♦ “Culture of slow” taking hold among millennials as seen by their dining andentertainment choices

STRATEGIES♦ Newspaper is a time to engage — millennials already have their“convenient” news, so be their “luxury” news

♦ Position the physical newspaper as an indulgent experience — the paper suggests leisure♦ Luxury takes more time — it’s well-crafted, a richer experience and a treat that readers will savor♦ Long-form content should average 3,000 words with an emphasis on investigative journalism with pointed writing thatinspires debate♦ Use white space to help tailor the reading experience♦ Drop Dispatch from the name — the word “Dispatch” is in declining circulation as the years go by — “Richmond Times”still conveys the trust the newspaper is known for

Chacich Wilson

Kashani Perazzelli

RESEARCH♦ The average person is exposed to theequivalent of 174 newspapers’ worth ofinformation a day♦ People who value newspapers overindex forcuriosity and value across all five consumergroups♦ None of these consumer groups reads theentire paper, instead choosing certain sectionsor features♦ Readers are interested in all types of news,ranging from “lowbrow” to “highbrow”

CONCLUSIONS♦ In terms of design, Diversity + Quantity =Exposure♦ Readers want a greater variety of content♦ Consumers will seek their news from the sources that provide the bestcombination of low cost, reliability, immediacy, ease of access andcomprehensiveness

STRATEGIES♦ Redesign front page as an index to the rest of the paper♦ Have every section of the paper represented on the front page♦ Play the three most important stories at the top of the front page withlarger photos, followed by a series of smaller photos and text blocksreferencing other stories inside the paper♦ Have at least 30 entry points to the rest of the paper on the front page♦ Introduce new advertising options on the front page♦ Add QR code that will allow readers to obtain a PDF of that day’s frontpage

♦ Use QR codes to enable mobile push notifications for story updates

TEAM TWO: SPEED

Bell Matuszewski

Mernin Petrosian

OnlineSee full-size versions of the groups’ pages at TimesDispatch.com

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