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.
“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.”
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.
“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.
I'm no fetishist or luddite, though, and while I tend to favor print, my definition of a magazine is platform neutral. I've worked in magazine publishing for over 15 years now—from audience development to advertising sales, freelance editorial to events planning, corporate to DIY—and stand firmly with the digital generation that's purportedly out mugging elderly newspapers in broad daylight, and striking fear in the hearts of cowardly and superstitious magazines in the middle of the night. Seeing subscription offers like the one above for Fast Company and Inc.—two solid print magazines devaluing their editorial content at only $.75/issue while simultaneously making it all available for free online—I think that the death of the current ad-supported model is inevitable and, arguably, a good thing.
"I have just read the immortal poems of the ages and come away dull. I don't know who's at fault; maybe it's the weather, but I sense a lot of pretense and poesy footwork: I am writing a poem, they seem to say, look at me! Poetry must be forgotten; we must get down to raw paint, splatter." Charles Bukowski Confession: I loathe most formal poetry. Sestinas, sonnets, terza rimas, oh my! While I appreciate the exercise of writing in a particular form, the end result is usually a self-indulgent bit of forgettable wordplay rarely worth reading, never mind hearing…
You're not listening anyway. by MadRussianPhotography
You know the stereotype of the guy on the first date who can’t stop talking about himself, only to wonder why he doesn’t get a kiss at the end of the night, never mind a second date?
That guy is like advertising.
In the latest flare-up of the “print is dead” debate, Michael Josefowicz’ provocative article for MediaShift entitled “The Fallacy of the ‘Print Is Dead’ Meme” has generated some interesting feedback, partly for daring to counter the meme, and partly for clinging to the ad-supported model that has pushed many newspapers and magazines onto the endangered list:
[T]o extrapolate from personal experience to a statement about what is going to happen in the world doesn’t work. But that’s exactly what many of the people foretelling the death of print are doing.
That’s because most of the public discourse tends to be dominated by information junkies and there is little doubt that if you’re an information junkie, the web is the way to go. But the reality is that info-junkies are only a small tribe. They consume the news at a prodigious rate and the web is the fastest way to satisfy their appetite. Thus, they’re also the most vocal tribe — so it’s easy to get the impression that theirs is the most widely held conclusion. But if you listen to some of the discourse, it soon becomes apparent that it’s only one way to look at it…
Because every business understands the value of print advertising, the trick is only to make the buy for a print/web ad combo easy and affordable.
Responding to MediaBistro’s highlighting of the article, I noted: “I agree with Josefowicz that print isn’t dead, but he’s wrong about advertising; that ship has sailed. Interruption IS dead.”
How can u b an expert without legitimate knowledge or legitimate experience Shaq oneal
about 9 hours ago from TwitterBerry
It’s been fascinating watching the odd, mostly one-sided battle going on between so-called social media experts and traditional marketing and PR professionals, as the former continue to pound their virtual drums on a daily basis about how they’re the future and without their expertise, companies are doomed to failure.
DOOMED!
I wrote about the need for some perspective a couple of weeks ago in “Attack of the Social Media Gurus“, and have been tracking the growing backlash there with links to relevant articles as they pop up — including one of my favorites from Ad Age featuring Unilever Chief Marketing Officer Simon Clift’s wise observation: “Social media is not a strategy. You need to understand it, and you’ll need to deploy it as a tactic.” — but a recent comment by social media “rock star” Chris Brogan really rubbed me the wrong way, giving flashbacks to the explosion of the first dot.com bubble, and underscoring one of the main reasons some marketers, and the executives they report to, are reluctant to fully embrace social “media”.
Shaquille O’Neal, of all people, pretty much nailed it last night on Twitter with the aforementioned tweet.
