By KEVIN ALLEN [email protected]
3:25 p.m. CDT, July 11, 2011
If you are interested in advertising in one of the Schurz Communications newspapers in Kentucky, you’ll probably run into Helen Powers.
Powers has just been appointed regional ad director for Advocate Communications Inc., a division of Schurz that operates The Advocate-Messenger in Danville, The Interior-Journal in Stanford, The Jessamine Journal in Nicholasville and The Winchester Sun.
Powers, 43, spent six years in radio as a sales representative and then 10 years in newspapers working for Community Newspaper Holdings Inc. in the Meadville, Pa., a town of about 13,000 near Erie in the far northeastern part of the state. That background has her well prepared to get right to work in central
“I’m very familiar with the challenges of small businesses in small communities and I have a good understanding of what they need to accomplish,” she said.
During her time with Community Newspaper Holdings, Powers became vice president of sales and marketing, and worked as a corporate trainer for the advertising departments of 13 newspapers.
For Powers, the primary customers are business owners, and the bond between them and the local newspapers should be strong.
“If there is a business owner that has a product or service that they really want to tell everybody about, we have everybody to tell,” Powers said.
Instruction will be the primary tool that Powers uses to promote this bond. Much of her time will be spent teaching business owners how to advertise and sales representatives how to work with businesses’ budgets and how to come up with new ideas to market a product.
Powers said her goal is not just to make money for the newspapers but to help the businesses make money, too. When the community is thriving, everyone is does better.
“It’s a partnership,” Powers said. “It’s not anything else but that.”
Powers, who started her job last week, has rented an apartment in Lexington while she and her husband Dave look for a home in central Kentucky convenient to all four newspapers she will be working with. The couple has a daughter, Katelyn, 20.