Guy LeCharles Gonzalez

Can the $99 iPhone save newspapers?

Post author:Guy LeCharles Gonzalez
Post published:June 9, 2009
Post category:Media
Post comments:3 Comments

I am not a card-carrying member of the Steve Jobs Cult by any means, but the smug “Mac vs. PC” commercials aside, when it comes to innovation and marketing savvy, I bow before Apple’s altar.

Yesterday’s announcement of the “new” iPhone 3G S wasn’t greeted very warmly by some of its hardcore fan base (“Apple took a card out of the automobile manufacturer promo catalog… Say it’s new for 2009 by providing a minor feature upgrade!” — Geoff Livingston) but what caught my attention was that, effective yesterday, the standard iPhone 3G that everyone raves about is now only $99.

That’s huge on a number of levels, as many of the hardcore early adopters will bite the bullet and upgrade to the 3G S, but more importantly, there will likely be a flood of new customers jumping on the now very affordable 3G bandwagon. Despite being a loyal Verizon Wireless customer and Blackberry fan, I’m even considering it myself!

Particularly interesting to me, though, was the potential affect this could have on newspapers, print and digital, as Nieman Labs’ intentionally provocative tweet highlighted: “The race between e-readers and smartphones is over.”

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How Much is a Magazine’s Content Worth? Part III

Post author:Guy LeCharles Gonzalez
Post published:June 8, 2009
Post category:Media
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There will always be gatekeepers of one form or another, whether traditional publishers or the crowd-sourced variety. In both cases, the crowds are usually led by a few vocal minorities, and both have a history of chasing trends while ignoring new voices and ideas, so what's old is basically new again. The true value of content is more measurable than it's ever been, so publishers' primary focus should be on curating great content that people are willing to pay for, and to organize and nurture a community around that content and the authors who create it. That community will exist in multiple places and spaces, and vary wildly in size; in some cases, they won't be the least bit interested in having advertising invade their space, overtly or covertly.

Beware the Social Media Kool-Aid

Post author:Guy LeCharles Gonzalez
Post published:June 7, 2009
Post category:Media
Post comments:6 Comments

“Be a little cautious of the social media kool-aid… It does work slowly over time, but if you need to get attention now, you still need to use traditional methods, too. Social media is not a replacement for anything; it’s an add-on, it’s another way of communicating. But don’t leave the other stuff behind, especially if the other stuff works for you still; don’t drop it just because there’s a shiny new object.”

–Christopher Penn, Marketing Over Coffee

Rational, hype-free discussions about social media are difficult to come by, so I was thrilled to discover the Marketing Over Coffee podcast last week, the best of the bunch from the handful I’ve sampled so far, via Lee Oden’s list of Best Podcasts on Social Media. Hosted by John Wall and Christopher Penn, the episodes I’ve listened to so far have been meaty, informative and thought-provoking, and I’ve found myself going through their archives today while doing laundry, as inspired as I was coming out of last week’s Conversational Marketing Summit.

Wall and Penn keep things in perspective by focusing on “both classic and new marketing,” avoiding the social MEdia tendencies of self-promotional, agenda-driven circle jerks that pass for social media “expertise” on blogs, podcasts and Twitter. I’d name names, but it’s easier and far more productive to call out those doing it right.

Among my current favorites for thoughtful marketing insights and commentary are Seth Godin, Geoff Livingston, Jane Friedman, Amanda Chapel and Patrick Boegel. A few others I don’t always agree with but often spark interesting discussions and are willing to engage include Mack Collier, Lauren Fernandez and Olivier Blanchard.

Who are some of your favorites?

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In a time of crisitunity, you gotta have soul!

Post author:Guy LeCharles Gonzalez
Post published:June 5, 2009
Post category:Media
Post comments:0 Comments

“Ad networks have scale and data, but they lack soul. Customers don’t join ad networks.”
—John Battelle, Founder & CEO, Federated Media

Federated Media’s Conversational Marketing Summit earlier this week was an unconditional success by any measure, particularly with regards to acheiving their goal of presenting insightful and instructive case studies of conversational marketing programs that worked. I say that as someone who attended for my own personal edification, not representing any company and paying my own way as a result.

Standout presentations from Proctor & Gamble, Lenovo, Intel, American Express, RIM, and (by proxy) Microsoft and Federated Media highlighted two days of pure marketing nirvana that gave me a new identity — marketing technopologist — and offered some clear navigational guidelines for brands and publishers to successfully engage with consumers in an increasingly noisy world.

Battelle’s opening remarks set the right tone, and his identifying the need for “soul” struck an especially warm chord with me as it’s something many “old media” brands already possess but haven’t always successfully leveraged online. That slow response left a huge opening for personal brands to evolve exponentially, gain precious mindshare and become competitive with the established brands that once nurtured them (or their progenitors, at least); it also allowed savvy brand marketers to connect directly with consumers instead of having to go through traditional intermediaries.

The first day was arguably a bit stronger than the second, at least based on my notes and #cmsummit tweets, but excepting an oddly defensive Pepsi/YouTube presentation by Google’s Eileen Naughton, and an awkward interview with former Bush press secretary Dana Perino, it was all good and well worth the two vacation days I used to attend.

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Publishers should be idea advocates

Post author:Guy LeCharles Gonzalez
Post published:June 3, 2009
Post category:Media
Post comments:5 Comments

rain ruined by (Tres) descamarado — rain ruined by (Tres) "descamarado"

I attended my second BookExpo America last Friday — walking the main floor, talking to several exhibitors and attendees, checking out a couple of panels, hanging out at the #beattweetup later that night — and came away with an odd sense of deja vu. It reminded me a bit of the last National Poetry Slam I attended as more than a spectator, in Seattle back in 2001, which had literally been hit by an earthquake a few months prior, and although the show went on, the metaphorical fault lines that run through the slam community, locally and nationally, were on the verge of erupting.

(NOTE: Do fault lines erupt or emerge?)

While the overall energy on the floor seemed positive, and most of the people I spoke with were upbeat, I wonder how much of that was an effect of shellshock and/or lowered expectations? Sort of like when Sarah Palin didn’t pull out a rifle and shoot Joe Biden during the Vice-Presidential debate, it was a declared a victory for her.

Having had a few days to digest things, and filtered somewhat through the broader lens of the Conversational Marketing Summit I attended earlier this week (thoughts on that to come soon here), here are my five key takeaways from #BEA09:
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Conversational Marketing Summit: NY 2009

Post author:Guy LeCharles Gonzalez
Post published:June 1, 2009
Post category:Media
Post comments:0 Comments

I’ll be attending Federated Media’s Conversational Marketing Summit the next two days — “an exclusive two-day event that brings together executives in social media and conversational marketing for a frank, real-world discussion around pressing issues, beckoning opportunities, and lessons learned.”

While I hate the term “social media“, I like FM’s “Conversational Marketing” approach and think they’re headed in the right direction with their recent decision to shift their focus from online advertising to developing custom and strategic marketing programs.

It’s a necessary shift that all publishers are going to need to make to stay relevant (not to mention solvent), but online players like FM are much better positioned to make that shift quicker than their print-centric competitors who are buried deeply under inefficient infrastructures and are carrying loads of debt from the go-go days of highly leveraged, ill-conceived mergers and acquisitions.

One of the things that really stood out for me in the new media vs. traditional publishing dustup at SXSW earlier this year was the apparent lack of participation by traditional media types at these kinds of foward-thinking conferences. Meanwhile, the level of cluelessness and/or self-serving hype about new media on display at the more traditional conferences is astounding.

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How Much is a Magazine’s Content Worth? Part II

Post author:Guy LeCharles Gonzalez
Post published:May 27, 2009
Post category:Media
Post comments:3 Comments

With advertising revenue less reliable than ever—overall ad spending declined another 15.1 percent in Q1 2009 (Bernstein’s Research)—this prolonged and brutal economic downturn will claim even more magazines before the year is over, requiring the rapid development of alternative revenue streams and pitting those still standing in an intriguing, high-stakes game of "Outwit, Outplay, Outlast". One of the seemingly obvious steps to take would be to raise the deeply discounted subscription rates that were formerly subsidized by advertising, sending a clear message to readers (and advertisers) about the true value of the content being published. While most magazines would undoubtedly lose subscribers, the ones they retained would be more profitable, more engaged, and more responsive to relevant advertising and direct-to-consumer offerings.