Fairfax Media Strategic Report: Analysis, SWOT & Internal Forces

This report provides an overview of Fairfax Media's past strategies, including its focus on expanding its print business and adapting to digital platforms. It highlights the company's CSR initiatives and value creation strategies, particularly after the Australian government passed new media ownership laws. A SWOT analysis assesses Fairfax's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, while an internal assessment examines the company's structure, culture, reward systems, and leadership styles, noting its diplomatic leadership style and functional organizational structure. The report references Fairfax Media's portfolio and other sources to provide a comprehensive strategic overview.

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Strategic Management - Fairfax Media
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An overview of Fairfax’s past strategies and various strategies available.
Over the years, Fairfax has continuously examined its medium-term growth strategy to
ensure it expands and grows its print side of the business as well as other areas. Competition
from digital platforms forced Fairfax in the inclusion of other traditional media companies to
initiate its digital growth plans. For instance, in 2010, The Age and Sydney Morning suffered
from falling circulation hence losing classified revenues to online portals such as Carsales.com,
and employment website seek (Day and Chessell, 2010).
Fairfax has also integrated CSR strategies and objectives into its business operations and
processes. Fairfax is focused on making a positive contribution in communities since the
interests of communities, environment, shareholders, employees, and customers are considered
crucial (Fairfax media, 2019). The company operates a decentralized CSR program so that it
maximizes the benefit to staff, customers, and local communities. The company has empowered
everyone in the company to bring to life CSR through the actions they take and also through
their work. In addition, in achieving CSR, Fairfax is committed to transparency in disclosing
major performance indicators, including social, financial, and environmental indicators.
In 2017, Fairfax unveiled its new commercial strategy majorly for its metro publications.
This new strategy was set to improve technology, integration capabilities, design, and allow
people to understand premium publishers (Samios, 2017). The new capabilities would allow the
company to solve challenges as well as capitalize on brand opportunities. In addition, to ensure
publisher capabilities are expanded, Fairfax also brought together a commercial innovation team
who would double the strategic capability of the company. Fairfax was also set to move away
from Facebook since as a social media platform, Facebook was not capable of working as a

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publisher. Therefore, Fairfax would market its products after they are launched hence
distributing its content professionally (Samios, 2017).
Lastly, we have the value creation strategy. Fairfax has been able to deliver on this
strategy by delivering to Fairfax shareholders an amount of $1.6 billion in value (Mason, 2018).
This demonstrates that the company is thriving. Since the Australian government passed new
media ownership laws, Fairfax positioned itself to take advantage of opportunities hence making
decisions that are in the shareholders’ best interests. For instance, Fairfax has taken decisions to
create businesses such as Stan and Domain as it continues to focus on organic value creation
opportunities that maximize the organization's core assets. These changes have saved the
company about $500 million annual cost savings.
The impact of internal forces (SWOT analysis).
SWOT analysis.
Strengths.
• Strong brand portfolio.
• High skilled workforce.
• Good returns on investment.
Weaknesses.
• Limited success outside the core business.
• Low successful rates at integrating various workforce cultures.
Opportunities.
• New consumer trends and behavior.

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• Presence of new technology.
Threats.
• Intense competition.
• Raising pay in labor may pressure the company’s profitability.
An assessment of structure, culture, reward systems and leadership styles.
Fairfax media has managed to maintain a prominent position in the market majorly due to
the analysis of its internal forces. The analysis includes an assessment of the structure, culture,
reward systems, and leadership styles in Fairfax media. Beginning with culture, Fairfax has a
strong culture among its dealers and distributors. Therefore, the dealers invest more in training
their sales team as well as promoting Fairfax products in order to explain to customers how to
benefit more out of the products (Myllylahti, 2014, pg. 181). In addition, the company has
established a skilled workforce through successful learning and training programs.
Secondly, on leadership styles, Fairfax media follows a diplomatic leadership style. In
this leadership style, employees are involved in decision making since its more participative.
Since Fairfax has high-skilled and experienced employees, this leadership style works well for
the company. Employees are also able to work towards the development of the organization and
can learn much (Myllylahti, 2014, pg. 186). Thirdly on structure, Fairfax media employs the
functional organizational structure. This structure has allowed the organization to create a high
degree of specialization hence scaling both the employees and the organization. Fourthly, on
rewards, Fairfax uses bonuses to reward its employees since the company recognizes both group
and individual accomplishments.

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References
Day, M. and Chessell, J. (2010). Fairfax shift on website control. [online] Theaustralian.com.au.
Available at: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/media/fairfax-media-shifts-on-website-
control/news-story/0b23865b607658a24a575374db7ee8a2 [Accessed 28 May 2019].
Fairfax media. (2019). Corporate Responsibility - Fairfax Media Limited. [online] Available at:
https://www.fairfaxmedia.com.au/Company/corporate-responsibility [Accessed 28 May 2019].
Mason, M. (2018). Fairfax Media chief executive Greg Hywood says strategy has been
vindicated. [online] Australian Financial Review. Available at:
https://www.afr.com/business/media-and-marketing/publishing/fairfax-media-chief-executive-
greg-hywood-says-strategy-has-been-vindicated-20180502-h0ziqe [Accessed 28 May 2019].
Myllylahti, M., 2014. Newspaper paywalls—the hype and the reality: A study of how paid news
content impacts on media corporation revenues. Digital journalism, 2(2), pp.179-194.
Samios, Z. (2017). 'Rip it up and start again': Fairfax unveils new commercial strategy, moves
away from Facebook - Mumbrella. [online]. Available at: https://mumbrella.com.au/rip-start-
fairfax-unveils-new-commercial-strategy-moves-away-facebook-465353 [Accessed 28 May
2019].