It was a bit of a nostalgic week for me on a couple fronts. First off on Tuesday, I celebrated my one year anniversary in my current role with my current organization. Then on Wednesday, it was announced that the first newspaper I worked for full time was sold. Both events caused me to reflect.
The very first newspaper I worked for full time was the Greenfield (Indiana) Daily Reporter, owned by the Brown family and Home News Enterprises for over 100 years. Their headquarters, and frankly the main focus of their company was the newspaper in nearby Columbus, Indiana. But still, it was very obvious that this was a family business. Profits were important but being active and contributing members to the community were highly valued as well. As a result, Greenfield, Columbus and the other communities that HNE operated in benefited. http://www.therepublic.com/view/local_story/The-Republic-other-HNE-propert_1446645932
The community that is the newspaper industry also benefited from HNE. They encouraged active participation in industry groups, like state and local press association. Because they cared about more than the bottom-line, their employees, their industry and their communities were all better as a result.
As I said, Tuesday marked my one year anniversary at my current position. Federated Media is also a family owned operation. The Dille family in Northern Indiana, like the Brown family in Central and Southern Indiana have operated their business for generations. The same traits that I respected in how HNE operates are very evident with my current employer. Profits are important, but being a good corporate citizen is a driving force of the organization.
Federated is a radio focused company today, though its roots are in the newspaper business. The newspaper that I work at is their only newspaper in the organization today. Federated and HNE have adapted to the changing tides of media in this digital era. Both would say that they are communications / multi-media companies today with a focus on audience no matter what the platform. But any media company can say that.
I would suggest that what sets them apart is that they would say that they are an employee focused company that finds ways to connect the community with advertisers. That connection with the employees and the community is what makes family owned media companies unique.
The new owners of HNE say that they will remain strong in the community. I truly hope that is the case; for the community and the employees. Big corporations in the media business is far from new, and their are some good corporations out there running TV, radio and newspapers. But more often, the bottom-line wins out, people get forgotten, corporate citizenship is lost and the product suffers.
Sunday, November 8, 2015
Monday, October 5, 2015
New York Times has more subscribers than ever and how that can translate to other publishers
Tis the season for statement of ownership ads running in newspapers and magazines across the country. It is the chance to see the numbers behind the numbers when it comes to circulation numbers.
Frankly it isn't the most exciting ad that will run in the publication, especially if you are the publisher trying to make the numbers tell a good story. One of the exception might be the New York Times, who announced today that they have more subscribers now than they have at any time in their history.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/05/business/the-new-york-times-reaches-a-milestone-thanks-to-our-readers.html?_r=1
The New York Times has reached the 1 million mark for digital only subscribers. Add in the 1.1 million print / digital subscribers and the audience opportunity is stronger than it ever has been in the 164 years of Times publications. Pretty impressive, but not terribly easy to replicate.
Unique content is the key to publishing's future; print and digital. The Times by its very nature has that type of content, and there are others including the Wall Street Journal. Every publisher has the opportunity to find their unique content. As it was described to me recently at the Deseret News in Salt Lake City, you have to determine what content you can provide that is the best in the world. In many cases, publishers are the best in the world at covering their local market. But what else? The key to success is finding those additional niches, especially since local broadcasters and internet only sites are also trying to fill the local information market.
Frankly it isn't the most exciting ad that will run in the publication, especially if you are the publisher trying to make the numbers tell a good story. One of the exception might be the New York Times, who announced today that they have more subscribers now than they have at any time in their history.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/05/business/the-new-york-times-reaches-a-milestone-thanks-to-our-readers.html?_r=1
The New York Times has reached the 1 million mark for digital only subscribers. Add in the 1.1 million print / digital subscribers and the audience opportunity is stronger than it ever has been in the 164 years of Times publications. Pretty impressive, but not terribly easy to replicate.
Unique content is the key to publishing's future; print and digital. The Times by its very nature has that type of content, and there are others including the Wall Street Journal. Every publisher has the opportunity to find their unique content. As it was described to me recently at the Deseret News in Salt Lake City, you have to determine what content you can provide that is the best in the world. In many cases, publishers are the best in the world at covering their local market. But what else? The key to success is finding those additional niches, especially since local broadcasters and internet only sites are also trying to fill the local information market.
Saturday, August 29, 2015
Internet hoaxes within social media feeds dupe millions
I guess it started back in the 1960's with the "Paul is dead" hoax surrounding Paul McCartney's death. Probably earlier frankly, but the concept of a hoax was tougher and more isolated pre-internet days.
Today, the internet hoax is a daily occurrence. In fact in the past week, I've seen fake death announcements for both Willie Nelson and James Earl Jones. Both are alive and well as of my writing this post. It is such a regular occurrence now that The Washington Post has a digital culture critic, Caitlin Dewey that does a weekly column titled "What was fake on the Internet this week". I highly recommend the column, as it keeps me up to speed on just how gullible people are plus it is pretty clever and well written.
The scary thing about these scams and hoaxes is the alarming amount of people that get their news solely from their social media feeds, especially Facebook. Real news outlets, such as the Washington Post fact check and sift through the garbage to report on the facts. Online outlets like the Business Standard News (B-S News) continue to hook people on these fake news stories and make money.
The James Earl Jones story is a great example. The Facebook feed, if anyone would bother to click on it links to a display that reads "you got owned!" Problem is, thousands (millions?) of people never click. They just go about their day thinking that the voice of Darth Vadar, Mufassah and CNN is dead.
Legit news sites have to do a better job of marketing themselves as the reliable, trustworthy source for news and information. Fighting the social media feed of 'news' is the next battle for consumer's time, and it is a battle that most news outlets are losing.
Social media outlets, especially Facebook have been given by default an extremely important task of informing the population. I would say that they are failing so far, allowing bogus claims to seemingly dominate the platform because of the share-ability factor and click through rates these often get. It is a fine line, trying not to sensor information, but there has to be a responsibility to promote factual and reliable content.
In the meantime, news outlets online need to work on creating confidence in their product by the general public. Educating the general public on what to look for in terms of if the source is leg it or not needs to also happen. Facebook can help on that if they wish, and hopefully they will.
Saturday, August 15, 2015
How legacy media can position itself to compliment SEO campaigns
In my early days of advertising sales for a newspaper, one of our biggest competitors was yellow pages. There were multiple books competing in a relatively small market. In fact, I worked at a newspaper that even started its own yellow pages product.
Clearly times have changed for yellow pages. They are doing so much more that an annual directory; a directory that is likely to go away in many markets. Honestly, I'm not sure where my phone books are at my house.
Yellow pages are offer a wide variety of services to help them survive. Among them, yellow pages offer SEO, SEM, text clubs, mobile advertising, web hosting, online directories, and...oh yeah yellow page ads!
Selling against the yellow pages was an important training session. I hired consultants to help sell against yellow pages, with some level of success. The key was pretty simple: sell top of mind awareness (TOMA) campaigns to businesses that would run at a high frequency in the local newspaper. That way if consumers were reaching for a phone book because of a need, they would turn to the white pages and that directory instead of the yellow pages and the ads.
It wasn't rocket science, but it worked. The percentage of referrals to yellow pages for event their best categories was very small, while newspaper readership was strong (and it still is!). As I read an article about the importance of SEO, I started thinking about that old tried and true strategy.
Barry Feldman's from feldmancreative.com writes about the importance of SEO. I don't diminish the importance of SEO by suggesting reps sell against it. While I would sell against it, I would prefer actually sell it as a solution to a customer, and in fact my current company does.
I do think that legacy media like newspapers need to get back to TOMA selling as either a way to combat SEO or to compliment it if you are offering it to customers. The same principle applies to SEO that did with yellow pages. Run high frequency campaigns so that when that go to Google to search, they are searching you specifically instead of your industry type. A specific search is the same as getting the consumer to look your contact info up in the white pages directory instead of being exposed to the open market through yellow pages.
Clearly times have changed for yellow pages. They are doing so much more that an annual directory; a directory that is likely to go away in many markets. Honestly, I'm not sure where my phone books are at my house.
Yellow pages are offer a wide variety of services to help them survive. Among them, yellow pages offer SEO, SEM, text clubs, mobile advertising, web hosting, online directories, and...oh yeah yellow page ads!
Selling against the yellow pages was an important training session. I hired consultants to help sell against yellow pages, with some level of success. The key was pretty simple: sell top of mind awareness (TOMA) campaigns to businesses that would run at a high frequency in the local newspaper. That way if consumers were reaching for a phone book because of a need, they would turn to the white pages and that directory instead of the yellow pages and the ads.
It wasn't rocket science, but it worked. The percentage of referrals to yellow pages for event their best categories was very small, while newspaper readership was strong (and it still is!). As I read an article about the importance of SEO, I started thinking about that old tried and true strategy.
Barry Feldman's from feldmancreative.com writes about the importance of SEO. I don't diminish the importance of SEO by suggesting reps sell against it. While I would sell against it, I would prefer actually sell it as a solution to a customer, and in fact my current company does.
I do think that legacy media like newspapers need to get back to TOMA selling as either a way to combat SEO or to compliment it if you are offering it to customers. The same principle applies to SEO that did with yellow pages. Run high frequency campaigns so that when that go to Google to search, they are searching you specifically instead of your industry type. A specific search is the same as getting the consumer to look your contact info up in the white pages directory instead of being exposed to the open market through yellow pages.
Thursday, August 6, 2015
Marketing win for Arby's for their handling of The Daily Show with finale TV spot and social media posts
Kudos to Arby's for making the best of a bad situation and turning it around into a win for their marketing team and their brand. Arby's Restaurants have been the butt of numerous jokes and jabs at the hands of The Daily Show's Jon Stewart.
The finale for Jon Stewart's run on The Daily Show is coming soon, and Comedy Central's working on selling out the available inventory. Estimates are the :30 spots are going for $230k each which is a nice boost from the typical $46.2k per spot earlier this year.
Arby's is buying a spot on the show, despite hundreds of lampoons by the writers of the satire show. The TV spot from Arby's features a collage of the comments made by Stewart with the tune "Thank You For Being A Friend" playing in the background. "Not sure why, but we'll miss you" is on the screen as the commercial ends.
This isn't the first time the Arby's marketing department has gained free publicity and positive brand awareness off of The Daily Show. When Stewart announced he was leaving The Daily Show, the Twitter feed for Arby's offered him a job. That message was retweeted over 2,000 times.
The finale for Jon Stewart's run on The Daily Show is coming soon, and Comedy Central's working on selling out the available inventory. Estimates are the :30 spots are going for $230k each which is a nice boost from the typical $46.2k per spot earlier this year.
Arby's is buying a spot on the show, despite hundreds of lampoons by the writers of the satire show. The TV spot from Arby's features a collage of the comments made by Stewart with the tune "Thank You For Being A Friend" playing in the background. "Not sure why, but we'll miss you" is on the screen as the commercial ends.
This isn't the first time the Arby's marketing department has gained free publicity and positive brand awareness off of The Daily Show. When Stewart announced he was leaving The Daily Show, the Twitter feed for Arby's offered him a job. That message was retweeted over 2,000 times.
Thursday, July 9, 2015
Does Jared still have marketing power for the Subway brand after recent allegations?
Having a celebrity endorser has a lot of upside potential. Look no further than NIKE and their relationship with Michael Jordan. The Air Jordan shoe model was a good shoe, but made great through its association with #23.
But even Jordan has some rough waters, when he had some accusations for gambling issues. Jordan righted that ship and, even now years after retirement, is a prolific commercial pitchman.
Which leads to the question of Jared Fogel from Subway. Jared is a well known guy internationally as the person that lost a lot of weight eating Subway. For me living in Indiana, he is also a local guy that is pretty well known too.
This last week has been tough on Jared. Police raided his home in suburban Indianapolis in connection with a child porn investigation. As of today, no one is directly connecting Fogel to child porn, but rather an associate of his and the Jared Foundation. But not all of the information is out yet.
Gawker.com reported this week that Fogel allegedly ran a lending library for porn while a student at Indiana University. In fact, according to their article, that side business was a part of what led him to start eating Subway sandwiches all of the time.
How Subway handles this image crisis with their spokesman will be very interesting to watch. Jared has meant a lot to that brand. Remember a few years ago, he had a diminished role as spokesman and their sales dropped prompting his return. Suspending him as spokesman is the smart choice for Subway, and if they find any link to illegal activities by Fogel rest assured he will be completed dropped.
If they find no wrong-doings by Fogel, can the brand still associate with him? I think that is a tough reality that Subway and Jared are facing. Right or wrong, newscasts, Facebook posts, news stories and blog posts (like this one) are casting a conversation about child pornography and a brand spokesman. That is bad for Jared, and thus very bad for his ability to be a pitchman for any product.
Jared's hometown newspaper, The Indianapolis Star has a good story in today's edition about whether the image of Jared and the brand of Subway can be repaired.
But even Jordan has some rough waters, when he had some accusations for gambling issues. Jordan righted that ship and, even now years after retirement, is a prolific commercial pitchman.
Which leads to the question of Jared Fogel from Subway. Jared is a well known guy internationally as the person that lost a lot of weight eating Subway. For me living in Indiana, he is also a local guy that is pretty well known too.
This last week has been tough on Jared. Police raided his home in suburban Indianapolis in connection with a child porn investigation. As of today, no one is directly connecting Fogel to child porn, but rather an associate of his and the Jared Foundation. But not all of the information is out yet.
Gawker.com reported this week that Fogel allegedly ran a lending library for porn while a student at Indiana University. In fact, according to their article, that side business was a part of what led him to start eating Subway sandwiches all of the time.
How Subway handles this image crisis with their spokesman will be very interesting to watch. Jared has meant a lot to that brand. Remember a few years ago, he had a diminished role as spokesman and their sales dropped prompting his return. Suspending him as spokesman is the smart choice for Subway, and if they find any link to illegal activities by Fogel rest assured he will be completed dropped.
If they find no wrong-doings by Fogel, can the brand still associate with him? I think that is a tough reality that Subway and Jared are facing. Right or wrong, newscasts, Facebook posts, news stories and blog posts (like this one) are casting a conversation about child pornography and a brand spokesman. That is bad for Jared, and thus very bad for his ability to be a pitchman for any product.
Jared's hometown newspaper, The Indianapolis Star has a good story in today's edition about whether the image of Jared and the brand of Subway can be repaired.
Tuesday, June 30, 2015
Gannett's stand alone newspaper company launches June 29
Did you notice anything different yesterday in the media world? Probably not, but it was a new day at least for Gannett. The long awaited split between broadcast and print occurred yesterday, June 29. Despite clearly defined plans for digital transformation, how this impacts the two companies long term remains very much in question.
The newspaper side of the business retains the Gannett name, while the broadcast side takes on the name TEGNA. TEGNA is an anagram for Gannett without the double letters. Gannett's revenue growth has come from their broadcast side, which many says have helped prop up the print side of their business.
With broadcast gone, how will Gannett whether upcoming storms? First quarter advertising revenue was off 9%, with projections for second quarter not fairing any better on the print side. Programmatic ad buying for online publications impacts larger markets and national websites most, and that is the segment where most of Gannett's websites would fall. This leaves a lot of questions yet to be answered.
Rick Edmonds wrote yesterday on www.poynter.org that "Gannett shares were down 5.2percent for the day (with stocks generally off 2 percent because of the Greek and Puerto Rican debt crisis) TEGNA's shares were up 5.1 percent."
Granted, that is only one day of trading but something definitely worth watching to see if Wall Street is buying what the new Gannett is selling. Locally, Gannett titles are spinning this as a way to build up community journalism.
In Indianapolis, publisher Karen Ferguson penned a nice column about the changes and how it strengthens Gannett and specifically the Indianapolis Star. And while Indianapolis celebrated Gannett Day with a mayoral proclamation, no one is proclaiming this is a successful model. At least not yet.
The newspaper side of the business retains the Gannett name, while the broadcast side takes on the name TEGNA. TEGNA is an anagram for Gannett without the double letters. Gannett's revenue growth has come from their broadcast side, which many says have helped prop up the print side of their business.
With broadcast gone, how will Gannett whether upcoming storms? First quarter advertising revenue was off 9%, with projections for second quarter not fairing any better on the print side. Programmatic ad buying for online publications impacts larger markets and national websites most, and that is the segment where most of Gannett's websites would fall. This leaves a lot of questions yet to be answered.
Rick Edmonds wrote yesterday on www.poynter.org that "Gannett shares were down 5.2percent for the day (with stocks generally off 2 percent because of the Greek and Puerto Rican debt crisis) TEGNA's shares were up 5.1 percent."
Granted, that is only one day of trading but something definitely worth watching to see if Wall Street is buying what the new Gannett is selling. Locally, Gannett titles are spinning this as a way to build up community journalism.
In Indianapolis, publisher Karen Ferguson penned a nice column about the changes and how it strengthens Gannett and specifically the Indianapolis Star. And while Indianapolis celebrated Gannett Day with a mayoral proclamation, no one is proclaiming this is a successful model. At least not yet.
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