Author: Mark Fletcher

Just four months after their first sell-out digital magazine conference, the Magazine Publishers of America are hosting a second event: Magazines 24/7: Profiting in the Digital Age. The scheduling of this event so soon after the first demonstrates the importance of a digital strategy for magazine publishers. If I were a publisher I would have been riding the digital wave for some time now since it’s where the growth is – especially in the special interest area.

Here in Australia only a handful of titles are playing actively in the digital space. I expect many more to enter this year. Digital magazines pose a threat to newsagents beyond the loss of sales. In the period of transition, while consumers migrate from over the counter to online, newsagent display of the title helps the publisher. Newsagents cannot cut the titles because of contractual obligations so they have to carry them even if loss making while publishers build new revenue models online.

The fair approach would be to recognise that at the non mainstream end of the marketplace especially titles will migrate online. This should lead to newsagents being paid for providing access to low cost real-estate to maintain presence. The only other option for a newsagent for these bottom end titles is to return them immediately and short pay the distributor account. But that only ends in tears.

MediaWeek this week reports the exceptional success being achieved by the Vogue magazine website. Half the traffic is generated by their forums – the social interaction side of the site. Social networking is a key driver of traffic for MySpace and others. That the publishers of Vogue have achieved extraordinary traffic is a relatively short time will be of interest to other publishers – especially those with readers who are likely to enjoy the social interaction. There will be a tipping point between revenue from the website versus the physical magazine.

Newspapers Next: a project aimed at helping newspaper publishers find disruptive innovation. A project of the American Press Institute this looks like a valuable practical project. Disruption has happened and will continue to happen in publishing. Joining the game in this way helps publishers find a wave to ride. It sure beats publishing stories in your pages that all is well in newspaper land.

Seattlepi.com reports that, Smilebox, an online greetings start-up, has secured US$5 million in funding. The story is three weeks old, sorry. Like any start-up story there is plenty of froth and promise. What makes this interesting is that it’s in the greetings space which hae been largely ignored in online plays in recent years. I’m interested because greeting card sales are important to newsagents. I’ve seen data suggesting that our retail channel has round 40% of greeting card sales in Australia.

Check out What’s Up? by Jeroen Wijering. As he says, it’s an indespensable tool for the global news junkie. It’s thin on Australian news but isn’t everyone? Source: MicroPersuasion.

FOX News yesterday, on the Fox & Friends TV show landed some punches on Craigslist, even calling the free classified site Craigslust. It didn’t matter that the comments were ill-informed. Balance was almost non-existent in their discussion except for a brief glossed-over comment acknowledging a response from Craigslist founder, Craig Newmark. The ‘story’ was that prostitutes used Craigslist’s free advertisements to promote their services. Hmm, and News Corp. has never allowed such advertising; News Corp. has not used breasts to promote newspapers?

It’s one thing for a media company to comment on another, however, such comment ought to be fair, factual and balanced. The Fox & Friends spray was none of these things.

Craigslist has come in for other sprays in mainstream media recently: Boston Herald, New York Times – to list just two.

Craigslist is a tiny company causing significant impact on the classified advertising business. Media companies ought to respond to this competition through their offerings to consumers and not through biased stories.

Jeff Clark is a marketing graduate using the Net cleverly well to find work. Ihiredjeffclark.com is a success already thanks to viral way word of Jeff’s pitch is spreading. I heard about it from Seth Godin’s blog. It sure beats a paid ad using more traditional media.

Alan Moore has posted an exceptional article at Masternewmedia.org. In Brand Experience Replaces Broadcasting: Online Communities And User Engagement Are The Access Keys, Moore covers plenty of ground, all of it compelling for anyone interested in media, marketing and or advertising. The following paragraphs, at the end of the piece, offer an excellent take-away:

The revolution of engagement is built upon the power of the meritocracy of ideas, and the strategic combinations of different media to propel that idea into the world. But more fundamentally than that, it is about connecting large or small communities with engaging content to a commercial or social agenda.

Rather than boiling everything down to a unique selling proposition, engagement marketing is able to create bigger ideas that emotionally engage its audience. Rather than focus on the single proposition that would result in a manufactured communication strategy, engagement marketing is built upon the fundamental notion of shared and co-created experience, something which ‘interruptive’ communications cannot do.

If as a brand you are not also a provider of a valuable experience – go home – hang up your boots and retire. In this new world the key to commercial success is to make your customers successful – understand your customers needs – involve them – engage them – develop strategies that by holding their attention willingly, you can also have a commercial relationship

As a practitioner of cross-platform engagement strategies – I see more and more and more requests for ‘big ideas’ – cross platform strategies. Terms used are of engagement, creative content strategies, which we have advised on a few. Customers you see, embrace the world holistically – funnily enough where-as we marketers like to chop chop chop, everything down into little tiny pieces.

IF ONE THINKS THAT AT THE POINT OF PURCHASE YOU HAVE JUST MADE THE FIRST STEP – WHERE DOES THAT TAKE YOU?

Remove the notion that marketing is ‘adversarial’ and you start to get into a really interesting place – that can be tailored and enhanced by new digital technologies – one in which you can create and co-create value in so many ways.

Customer base is replaced with customer community – all brand interaction should deliver an experience that actively links customers, media and brand in relevant and meaningful ways.

Brand experience replaces broadcasting in its broadest sense.

It is these shared, co-created experiences available to consumers online that we in the bricks and mortar world need to somehow embrace. The MySpace generation are enjoying creating this thing and one only has to see how they wield their power over the ‘owners’. The generation wants more control than the traditional retail offers today. Just as eBay has trained people to negotiate and be prepared to wait.

Moore’s message on engagement resonates on a variety of levels.

Paul Beelen has written an excellent white paper about the future of advertising. Paul works in a creative role for Leo Burnett Santiago, Chile. He discusses the impact of technology on advertising and in particular discusses contextual advertising, the phenomenon of online social communities, blogging and the blogosphere and new language of the age. He also talks about what we used to consider PR as being part of the advertising mix in the online world. The paper is well worth reading.