What really happened that caused traditional media to shrink so much over the past decade – and why are so many still struggling to come back?
That’s the subject of this presentation, which I’ve given several times over the past few years.
Posts Tagged ‘economy’
The Adventure is over
Thursday, December 3rd, 2009
National Geographic Adventure has lost its passport. It’s the latest casualty in the 2009 media meltdown. Staff was told today that the magazine, a 10-year-old extension of National Geographic, would close, according to a report by Folio:.
Seventeen staffers will lose their jobs, the report says. The brand will continue online and with other affiliated products.
The startling drop in audited circulation
Thursday, November 5th, 2009According to AudienceDevelopment.com, audited circulation levels are declining at historic rates.
This actually points to two trends — one economics related, and one customer-induced.
The first is that publishers are cutting circulation in order to reduce cost. AD states that “183 publications decreased circ 5 percent or more compared to 142 a year ago and 101 the year previous. Conversely only 41 publications increased circ five percent or more compared to 76 the year previous.”
OK, so publishers are cutting circulation to reduce printing and postage costs. It happens in every recession, and it won’t come back much, if at all, following this recession because advertisers won’t accept rate hikes in exchange for a larger rate base. There’s simply no money in sending more publications to more people.
But the second trend is bigger and more meaningful to advertisers and publishers – and it could put the auditors out of business. That is that publishers are dropping their audits altogether because the audit process provides decreasing ROI.
AD states: “Departing titles far exceed newly audited titles. A record 69 titles were discontinued or ceased being audited and only 23 titles were added to the audited ranks. The total number of audited “consumer magazines” fell from 545 a year ago to 499.”
More and more advertisers are changing their perspective from wanting to reach a verified audience to wanting to achieve a measurable response from whoever they reach – a painfully fundamental change that I’ve previously addressed, and which most publishers – especially in the glamorous consumer world – are still trying to tiptoe around.
A hundred valid responses from an unaudited audience is worth 10x more than 10 valid responses from an audited audience.
From a publisher’s perspective, if you can deliver the responses, the audit becomes irrelevant.
Based on this, the audit bureaus ought to be frightened.
And while abandoning your audit is still a bold step in the magazine business, I assume that most publishers who do so are reinvesting in products that deliver the kind of results their customers really want.
The parties I’m most concerned about are the publishers who haven’t talked about leaving the audit behind. Because if it hasn’t occurred to you, then you clearly haven’t been listening to what your customers want. And this is one of those watershed times when the only security is to be so close to your customers that you can feel them breathe.
New study says consumers like ads. And it won’t change a thing.
Friday, July 17th, 2009Adweek Magazine and its parent company, Nielsen, have released a study that shows consumers believe in advertising, they accept adve
rtising as a way of subsidizing other content and, in some cases, they actually like it.
They’ll use this to try to change the rush of money out of traditional advertising, and they won’t succeed.
In an article announcing results of the study, Adweek states that: “67 percent of respondents agree …. (including 14 percent agreeing “strongly”) that ‘Advertising funds low-cost and free content on the Internet, TV, newspapers and other media.’ Likewise, 81 percent agreed (22 percent strongly) that ‘Advertising and sponsorship are important to fund sporting events, art exhibitions and cultural events.’ ”
The only thing startling about this is that such a large percentage of people seem to understand the media business model.
Adweek also wrote: “Respondents also acknowledged that advertising is useful to them personally as they navigate the marketplace. For example, 67 percent agreed (14 percent strongly) that ‘By providing me with information, advertising allows me to make better consumer choices.’ Respondents even confessed to enjoying advertising, at least some of the time, with 66 percent agreeing (13 percent strongly) that ‘Advertising often gets my attention and is entertaining.’”
This means two things:
1) Adweek is doing its job; it is, after all, a magazine for the people who produce ads, plan campaigns and buy space for them. This study will be a tool used by readers to convince advertisers to shift money back from the new and social to more traditional ad campaigns.
That’s especially evidenced by this finding in the article: “And there was a lackluster rating for ‘ads served in search-engine results,’ with 4 percent trusting these completely and 37 percent somewhat. Ratings for old media were closely bunched, with TV getting a typical rating for these of 8 percent “trust completely” and 53 percent “trust somewhat.”
In other words, Google’s astoundingly ascendant paid search model — traditional media’s Great Satan — isn’t as effective as many believe. At least, that’s the kernal that media reps are likely to grab onto and use.
Which raises the second meaning of the information:
2) There are lots of highly respected voices in media and advertising who still don’t get it. The epochal media meltdown we’re experiencing has nothing to do with the opinions of consumers.
Advertisers aren’t pulling campaigns because they don’t work; they’re pulling campaigns because they can now do what they’ve always wanted to do: reach consumers directly without an intermediary media.
Back in another era — the Internet bubble of the late 1990s — this was called disintermediation.
Disintermediation is why people book flights directly with airlines rather than through travel agents; it’s why Progressive and Geico have a higher profile than the independent insurance agents who used to do most of the selling in their industry; it’s why people will visit a magazine advertiser’s website instead of filling out a reader-response card in the back of a magazine.
Disintermediation is a simple process of applying new technology to eliminate an old and costly middleman. Heck, media is the root of the word; is it really a surprise that media is now a target?
So it doesn’t matter if old advertising works; it ads a layer that is no longer necessary. Just as there are still travel agents and insurance agents, there will still be media — as we recognize it today — far into the future. But it will be smaller than it used to be, and it will find its success by serving niches.
You can download the full Nielsen study here: http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/trustinadvertising0709.pdf
A green GM logo won’t bring in the green
Monday, July 13th, 2009
It’s been reported in several media over the past week or two that GM is considering changing its logo to green to reflect a leaner, more environmentally conscious identity.
I can’t think of anything less meaningful to the company or its customers.
GM’s future has nothing to do with telling the world that it’s lean and green — which is what the new logo color is supposed to represent. The only thing that matters is whether the public comes to perceive that GM and its products reflect the right values.
Honda and Toyota do well in the U.S. (and most places) because, to a vast number of people, their brands have come to represent cars that are among the easiest and most enjoyable to own: affordable, reliable, durable and neither too ugly nor too fancy. People didn’t come to feel that way because Toyota and Honda continually told us that their cars were just right (even though they DO continuously tell us). People came to feel that way because their experience was consistent with all the wonderful things Toyota and Honda always say about themselves.
GM would argue that it’s making cars with these same wonderful attributes. Whether that’s true is irrelevant. What matters is whether people perceive that it’s true.
Further, it’s not enough for people to agree when GM says it. People have to assign these attributes to GM products without any prompting before GM can regain its role as a leader in the global auto industry. That’s what branding is all about. And it takes years — not just years of marketing, but years of consistency in what you promise and what you deliver. Today, GM is still too close to the Hummer for anyone to really believe that it cares a lick about lean and about that kind of green.
GM may engineer a financial recovery over the next couple years, and that will be a great thing. But it’s going to take far longer than that for people to know, in their bones, that GM stands for lean and green — if, in fact, that’s really what GM wants for the long haul.
And I don’t even think that’s the right message. Because in 15 years, green is going to be the price of entry in the car business; if your products aren’t environmentally responsible, then you won’t thrive. So is GM going to rebuild its very identity around meeting the next generation’s minimum standards?
Do Honda and Toyota really get respect for the energy efficiency of their fleets? Or do they get respect for pursuing a mission — building cars that people want to own — with so much focus that energy efficiency naturally became a part of it at the right time? Their fleets were energy efficient before the 2008 run-up in gas prices. The only thing that changed was the advertising.
If the new GM is smarter than the old GM, it will focus on the reasons people really buy cars — the perfect combination of price, style, durability, maintainability and lifetime affordability. Green fits in there for sure. But it won’t always be the headline. And even today, I doubt it’s the reason most people choose which car to buy.
American Pie send-up on media
Friday, June 5th, 2009
Anyone living through the media meltdown will enjoy this clever 9-minute rewrite of the old Don McLean anthem.
10 YOUNG entrepreneurs to watch
Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009
From ContentNext, with link to same
Warning: If you have more than 20 years already invested in your career, this is going to make you very tired and at least a little bit scared. Here, from ContentNext.com are 10 young entrepreneurs to watch. By young, they mean really young — no older than their 20s.
What’s most instructive and startling is the transformational nature of what these kid are doing. Their businesses are, largely, based on ideas that couldn’t even have existed 5 or 10 years ago.
If you have any questions about the power of the Internet to foster change; or if you have any doubt that the next generation does things very differently than you’re used to, then you ought to spend 10 minutes scanning this article. Then resist the temptation to take a nap.
The difference between liberals and conservatives is … genetic?
Friday, May 29th, 2009Nicholas Kristoff writes in the New York Times that your political leaning isn’t your fault.
Liberals and conservatives not only think differently, he writes, they feel differently. Which means that when a person accuses you of a horrible misunderstanding about the way the world works, an argument doesn’t have to ensue.
First, you should know that this poor confrontational soul has been trained from the day he or she was born — and maybe even programmed in the womb — to disagree with you on pretty much anything that matters.
This is important to a whole bunch of folks, like those at Civilpolitics.org who seem to think that we ought to be able to discuss our differences without calling each other idiots and nitwits.
That’s just crazy talk.
We should care precisely because polite dialogue is a waste of time that we don’t have. Anyone who uses this knowledge to increase the amount of talk should be sent to Guantanamo. The rest of us will use this insight can be used to get right to the heart of the matter ASAP. We can finally settle the critical issues of our time: abortion, gay marriage, access to health care and whether the Constitution is a living, breathing document.
What we need to do is conduct more research into the workings of the political mind. This could get costly, so the government might need to subsidize it. But it would be one area of study that we can all agree is worth the price. Am I not right?
Soon we will know with certainty which end of the political spectrum is not a choice, but rather an unfortunate disability. Once we know that, it’s an easy step to an infrastructure of subsidized treatment centers offering therapy, behavior modification, enhanced cognition techniques and, eventually, carefully monitored release of individuals back into society.
Which side would get this assistance and care? Liberals or conservatives?
It’s obvious already. And if you have to ask, fill out the form below; your plastic bracelet will arrive in the mail in a few days.
Can Obama be good for business?
Thursday, May 28th, 2009Conventional wisdom among many of the people I know — regardless of how they feel about President Obama’s social agenda — is that his economic agenda is pretty tough on business.
As reported by Stacy Blackman at bnet.com, Dr. Robert Frank at Cornell University’s Johnson School of Management and a New York Times columnist, feels othewise. I’m especially intrigued by his view on universal health care.
