If you publish anything in print, and you generate revenue from that publication, you may be on constant prowl for ways to add digital delivery to your arsenal – and likely more so – a business model which supports your web/mobile/eReader strategy.

A colleague, Jeremy Kuzub at Jufa Intermedia, recently sent me this video featuring the Wired creative director espousing the virtues of new digital delivery platforms and Wired’s approach to these.
http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1813626064?bctid=66775419001

As summarized by Jeremy when he sent me the video “Wired’s approach is not optimal. In the video you’d think they were enamoured by the iPad/Pod touch-style interface and navigation. However, the main point holds true: people expect their content should to be available to them anywhere in the best possible format for that time and place. This content is no longer static, either; the concept of a monthly magazine that stays the same after it is printed simply does not hold true when distribution is digital and people expect social interaction with their content and their community. Wired also cites “new-to-print” features which have been a core-part of web sites for 5-10 years.”

Jeremy is spot on. Sure the experience on new touch-type devices is more tangible and feels closer to print (touch and flip) then a keyboard-mouse interface, but all the “new” features of having video, social media sharing capability, rich interfaces, etc. have all been standard on the web for years. It’s a slicker interface, sure, but is that enough?

One interesting comment made in the video is by the Editor in Chief (Anderson), “we can reset the economics. If people value the experience enough, they may be willing to pay for it”. Well I’m not sure I get that statement, since ads fund magazines generally, not subscriptions or cover sales.

The problem with the economics of web content publishing is 10-15 years ago the print publications gave away their digital real estate to advertisers FOR FREE. They basically pushed the web to consumers to get eyeballs, then they turned around and told advertisers “pay for our print ad, and you get X web impressions for free!”. They basically shot themselves in the foot right from the beginning.

Is a new interface or consumer “experience” enough to compel a consumer to pay for the content through a subscription? Will the perceived value of ad space escalate x100 fold because of you’ve changed the interface?

Now let me add my experience to this mix. I happen to have had a few clients with the print-to-web problems. What “problems” do I speak of? Well, the transition of eyeballs from print to web translates into a loss of 100:1 in revenue (every dollar earned for a print eyeball, is worth 1 penny on the web). That’s the biggest challenge, of course there are a myriad of others I’ll get to.

What was the solution?  I pitch several – including diversification of revenue sources from pure ad-sales to include other forms – a sort of “Parthenon” monetization principle – meaning that you want to support your organization with multiple revenue-generating pillars. Imagine holding up a ceiling with 1 pillar, it would have to be huge. But 4 smaller pillars can do the same job, and losing one of those doesn’t necessitate immediate collapse of your roof!

Unfortunately I have had very few clients actually implement any of my proposed solutions. Why? 3 main reasons…

1. The new business model is more complex than the simple ad sponsored content model of the past.
2. It requires a significant up-front capital investment to deploy new collaborative focused infrastructure (half the budget usually devoted to strategy to figure out exactly what to do and the other half to execution).
3. To maintain and support the new models (both content and revenue generation) requires new skill sets and new ways of thinking about the business – its actually a whole new business. As Jack Welch once said “it’s not enough to have the right bus going in the right direction, but you need the right people on the bus..”

I attended a conference in Toronto about a year ago that was focused on the publication industry (magazines and newspapers). The main speaker was showcasing The Economist and its approach to the digital divide. Great lessons to be learned from that case study. However, I toured the room and spoke to a dozen different types of publication owners in the room and they were much more scared then excited. They understood, intellectually, the issues, but none of them had the emotional capacity to carry out the changes they needed. They knew they were dying a slow death and effectively didn’t have the capacity, skills, or courage to do something. They were all working on an “approach” that was effectively tip toeing into a tidal wave. They knew it wouldn’t work, but they were all hoping it would. It was a very very sad room.

The web is a total disruption – a cataclysmic “E.L.E.” type event. Its one of the few times you can use the term “paradigm shift” and not sound like a hack.

Digital media doesn’t change the old ways, it ignores every aspect of them – from revenue models to skill sets, to approach – publishers find themselves on a bus where the paved road they’ve known for years has turned to gravel and full of bumps they don’t know how to deal with. They don’t just need to reshuffle the bus, or change the tires, but completely abandon the bus, buy some hummers, split into smaller teams, learn how to drive in the new terrain, and then punch the gas and go. To bury a hatchet in this analogy – it’s the difference between rally racing (new) and nascar (old). The rules have changed dramatically.

My final point is this — print is not dead.  Print is just one medium beside many others.

MIT Technology Review (one of my favourite tech/science magazines) abandoned its print publication about 2 years ago in favour of a pure digital delivery format. After being a loyal subscriber for 5 years I dropped my subscription. After a year they abandoned their pure digital model and went back to a publication, instead of 6 issues a year, they were now printing 4 thicker ones (though that may have been tuned up since). But they realized, as Jeremy pointed out well above, they needed to deliver on multiple platforms, and that print was a highly prized platform, even by one of the technoratti (me).

So what do you need to do if you are a print publication with an eroding revenue base? /

Hire me and find out.

Bruce

A video by David Ogilvy converging the worlds of direct marketing and advertising = the world of internet advertising. Which side of the “chasm” are you on?

A little case study for you today:

http://theclimateisrightfortrains.com/

I came across this URL on print recruitment campaign targeting university/college students in a magazine a client publishes.

First of all, the site is awesome. I love the design. Unique use of space.

The site takes great advantage of the widescreens. On my 1920×1200 22″ screen the site looks awesome. On my 1280×768 12″ laptop screen it looks great. It reduces well to < 1024 as well. Kudos and high marks for use of screen real estate at the same time as maximizing horizontal space on the new wide format.

Clicking on any one of the menu items brings up some beautiful photography and a little two line pitch. Nicely done. Great copy, pulls well, I was immediately intrigued.

So far so good!

But… here is where the site totally fails.

You click on the link to learn more and it takes you to a page of scrolling text.

First of all I’m not a big fan of internal scroll bars, but in an all Flash site that is well dimensioned, it can work. Second, the page is 2-3 pages of scrolling text. What the hell? I went from beautiful images of trains and a gorgeously designed website, to text. Honestly, you can write the most profound copy that would change my life forever, but no one will read it. You just set yourself up for failure.

But I read it. On my 4th visit to the site and just to write this blog entry, I read it. And you know what? The copy is fregging interesting. It’s snippets of articles and quotes that lead you to original sources flogging trains as green commuters. Great stuff – well it could be great stuff, except it’s badly used.

Honestly, how hard would it have been to put in some <Prev | Next> and made those pages into a slide show with a few lines of text, some great supporting photographs and actually PITCHED the information.

And here’s the clincher. Ok, here’s your scenarios “so I’m a student and I couldn’t care less about trains except to get my home on breaks. I’m an engineering student and i never thought of getting into trains, cause it was a dead technology.. I’m more interested in aerospace and Virgin’s new airline… or hybrid/hydrogen car technology, etc.”

Ok, so now you’ve convinced me trains can be cool and appeal to my youthful idealism…

Where’s your close Bombardier? Where is the “come work for us, cause we’re a great company, we’re green, we’ve been green for a long time cause we build trains. See – trains do rock, and green has been the colour of our blood, our ethos, and we want YOU to drive the next generation of mass transportation vehicles to make this world a better place…”.

You’ve hooked with this website, you’ve then just as completely fallen over. You have to close the loop.

I can totally ignore the buried copy, but seriously where is your close?? “I AM A STUDENT AND I WANT MORE INFORMATION ON WORKING FOR BOMBARDIER’S MASS TRANSIT DIVISION! Oh well. Time to check out the latest YouTube video and see if anyone posted anything new on my Super Wall…”

Lessons for everyone else:

• Great design – use it for inspiration
• Great use of horizontal screen real estate
• Nice use of photography and copy
• Internal scroll bars are ok in this scenario – but are too narrow
• Mouse scroll wheels don’t work on internal scroll bar, this is doable, do it!
• NO CLOSE! You have to close the loop. This is like an e-commerce site that has convinced you to buy but no BUY NOW button. Don’t make the same mistake, think through the whole loop – intrigue, entice, inspire, and CLOSE.

The climate might be right for trains, but it’s not for recruiting using this website. Too bad, it’s a beautiful design…

Ok, most advertising campaigns today are brutally short sighted and missing the big opportunity that technology is enabling. And those that are taking advantage of the tech, are probably not maximizing, or anywhere nearing the potential they can realize…

So what are the approaches that should be used if the spot ad is dead? Here is a list to start with:

Interaction, interdependence, grass roots initiatives, multi-channel interactive media, conversation catalysts, customer driven feedback cycles empowering iterative product development, automated tracking and recursive real-time changes and so on.

Ok, so what does all that stuff mean?

Interaction is the key to engaging customers. It was difficult to do 10 years ago, but we now have the technological capability, via Internet and wireless (and other), to automate interaction with our customers. Better still, it allows us to build a relationship not just between an advertiser and the target audience, but, and this is the most important step – between the target audience members themselves.

Look at the success of MySpace. Its success rocketed when it became a venue for like-minded music lovers to find each other and support their favourite indie bands. You had overnight indie band sensations. There are countless stories of 4 guys in a rock band that had been doing evening and weekend gigs while choking down 40 hour a week day jobs for the last 5 years. They had fans, but they were scattered. 20 fans here, 50 there, another few over that other town. Through MySpace they were able to consolidate their fan base, associate themselves with a genre, and the fans spread the word about their music. A month later, all the day jobs were quit and instead of selling 3000 albums a year, they were selling 20,000 self pressed. All of a sudden they could make a decent living off their own music – live their passion.

So what does music bands and MySpace have in common with big brand advertisers?

It is a simple lesson in consolidating your passionate fans in a given market segment and empowering them to tell your story FOR YOU.

This is the TRUE interaction – it’s not about brand-X shoving another message down customer-Y’s throat, it’s about encouraging customer-Y to meet other customer-Y’s so they group together, and in numbers they have a voice, and that voice can be empowered to expand the brand. The collective voice of the brand loyalists turns them into activists – and they voices should be listened to closely.

ASIDE — I love how big brands spend so much money on market research. Wrigley’s did it recently trying to figure out what kids want in a pack of gum. The outcome? That kids tie their identity with the things they have in their pockets, the clothes they wear, the music they listen to, and the activities they engage in. Conclusion – let’s make a cool package for the gum so it looks good when you pull it out of your pocket and put it down next to your cell phone and iPod. Wow, staggering! They should have bought me a cup of coffee and I would have imparted the same wisdom while proving my point with a hundred case studies of other companies that did exactly what they did, but for shoes, shorts, shirts and so on. I’ll be using Wrigly as a case study for my clients when they ask me what kids want. Save them a cool mil or two. Anyway…

Ok, so what does that have to do with the original topic? Well market research is skewed. You’re picking a random assortment of your target audience to get a sense of what your brand should do, say, be. Honestly, how do you get anything but average results from the approach? I can prove it to you statistically if you want. It’s a simple relationships between the larger your human sample size the further your return will approach an average value. What do I mean by average value? I mean you’re going to design a product that is average and entirely forgettable.

Instead look to the LOYALISTS! They are your fan base, your market, they are the early adopters and those who will vocally judge your product. They are the people who others seek advice from when looking at buying your product, cause they know the category so well. They are the ones who will trumpet your cause for you. They will do an infinitely better job at selling it than you can ever do. You just can’t have the same relationship with their peers as they do (friends & family!).

INTERACTION people. It’s not just about you and your audience, but creating a circle of loyalty around your brand, and have them trumpet your greatness!

Next post – a bit more on interdependence…

(Ok, I used the word paradigm.. but at least I didn’t say “paradigm shift”..)

Had a chance this week to hang out with and listen to George Parker of the infamous Adscam. Intriguing, entertaining and always crass, George has unique insight into the ad industry. Listening to his talk and getting the benefit of several hours of conversation have allowed me to focus my ideas on the ad industry and its evolution.. to what end? For how to position our firm when pitching..

The ad agencies of today, especially the 500lbs goliaths in the industry, will have to transform or they will fall.

A combination of technology and consumers over-dosed on ads will bring the nirvana of the last 60 years of advertising to a halt. The days of producing 5 million dollar TV spot are dead. This one-way channel of ‘telling’ a consumer is dead. Big dollar TV media buys are dead.

TV ads are losing their effectiveness, especially among the youth. Usage stats clearly point to reduced watching patterns, digital recorders are programmed to skip commercials, on-demand movies, downloading TV shows, etc. are replacing traditional broadcast advertising driven business models. The networks are moving to change their distribution and funding models, I’m sure they’ll figure it out – they produce the content, and most of that is still being consumed.

So now what about the agencies that produce the ADS!? Big shiny TV ads account for over 75% of revenues at most agencies. If that budget gets cut in half and half again, where does that leave them? Where does the money go?

They have to shift to new models. They need to hire new thinking, new types of marketers. They have to start thinking MARKETING channels, they have to be TECHNOLOGY SAVVY, and they have to think COMMUNICATION strategies rather than just rapid spot advertising.

So what are the alternatives to tv spots? Let’s start instead with the approaches…?

Interaction, interdependence, grass roots initiatives, multi-channel interactive media, tracking, conversations, feedback cycles, iterative product development, and so on.

Ok, I’ll expand on these.. on my next post.

Herein lies conjecture – mine; write me, as I’m always interested in hearing yours.

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