Mathew twittered about this iMedia Connection article by Robert Moskowitz the other day, and it piqued my interest. Its thesis is that because offline advertising costs a lot more than online advertising, it must be much more valuable:
According to Michael Hirschorn, for example, writing in the January/February issue of The Atlantic magazine, “Already, most readers of The [New York] Times are consuming it online. The Web site… boasted an impressive 20 million unique users for the month of October… The print product, meanwhile, is sold to a mere million readers a day and dropping….
“The conundrum, of course, is that those 1 million print readers … are worth about five figures a page to advertisers, [and] are far more profitable than the 20 million unique Web users, who… could support only 20 percent of the [newspaper's] current staff…”
The article goes on to cite a bunch of ad executives as they opine on the differences between the two landscapes. There’s a great deal of hedging of bets, lingo and hand-wringing about the state of the industry. What’s illustrative, I think, is how little discussion there is of actual measurement.
Measure, Measure, Measure
We aggressively discourage our clients from spending a cent on advertising that they can’t measure. And I’m not talking about the invented metrics of the ad industry–”brand impression” is a synonym for “might have vaguely glanced at your billboard on the subway”–but actually measuring actions that potential customers may take. This limits their offline advertising options, but if you can’t measure outcomes, why throw money at it?
I was holding forth on this measuring theme at a little brainstorming session for Hollyhock, an extraordinary retreat centre on Cortes Island. It’s the answer I always give to busy marketers who say “I’m already swamped, how do I do this social media marketing stuff, too?” I tell them that they don’t necessarily have to. They just need to analyze the value of all the work they do, add social media stuff to the mix, and see what’s most valuable. If your billboards outperform your Twitter account, then stick with what works.
Speaking of advertising, I read a couple interesting posts on TechCrunch over the past couple of days about the state of the industry. First, it’s shocking to see how rapidly the newspaper industry’s revenue base has declined. The rate of newspaper advertising decline has been accelerating for the last six quarters. Likewise, that article points out that online advertising has declined slightly over 2008.
Also, Manuela Valle, the lady who got all this started here? Is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Women’s Studies and Gender Relations, so I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to think she might have a vested interest in this story becoming as big as possible.
I read several articles about this event (I was trying to catch up), and never read this fact. Doing someGoogle Newssearches, I could only find one mainstream media story which specifically referenced her area of study.
This would matter less if she were a quantum physicist, but Ms. Valle’s scholarly interests merit mention. I don’t mean to insinuate any kind of malfeasance on her part, or suggest that she was in the wrong. Nor do I wish to ascribe any particular agenda to her (besides lactivism–what a fun word). I do, however, think her background is relevant to the story.
Today this story is getting a lot of attention. It’s titled “‘Euros Accepted’ signs pop up in New York City”. Here’s the lead:
In the latest example that the U.S. dollar just ain’t what it used to be, some shops in New York City have begun accepting euros and other foreign currency as payment for merchandise.
This is just lazy journalism. Why?
Sum total of stores referenced in article: two.
Sum total of people interviewed in article: two (both shopkeepers).
Sum total of actual signs referenced in the article: none.
The media loves a big, controversial, easy-to-articulate idea. And they love a trend story. Does two stores make a trend? Absolutely not. Did the journalists bother to interview anybody else–a European tourist, a finance expert, a chamber of commerce rep? Nope.
I appreciate that the media industry is struggling with shrinking staffs and increasing demands, but this shouldn’t have been published by a reputable agency like Reuters.
Plus, the final quote has the distinctive scent of a PR professional:
“I’m happy if I take in 200 euros, because what I do is keep them,” he said. “So when I go back to Paris, I don’t have to go through the nightmare of going to an exchange place.”
That feels like it’s right out of a press release. The fact is that most travelers–especially those going to Europe–don’t exchange money anymore. It’s much easier, and often cheaper, to use the ubiquitous bank machine. Plus, European currency exchanges have never been nightmarish. They’re usually quite efficient, especially now with the marked decline in business.
James pointed me at a fascinating article by Scott Karp speculating on the future of (and the future prices of) print and digital content. There are a number of excellent propositions in the piece. Here are two:
To find the right price for ebooks, publishers need to FORGET the value of distribution in the traditional print model. There’s only one question — what is the CONTENT worth? (Even the ability to search an entire library can’t be valued — Google has commoditized it.)…
Print publishing won’t be dead until the people who value print distribution are dead — and that’s going to take at least a generation. People will still pay for print publications when they DO value the print distribution, e.g. the newspaper on the doorstep, the book or magazine in your bag on the plane or at the beach.
Not the all-too-common doom and gloom, and thus required reading for anybody who publishes anything printed on dead trees.
A coalition of arts groups is asking Ottawa to protect the Canadian identity by regulating the Internet, which so far has remained untouched by government oversight in this country.
The group of 18 associations of content creators - most of them from Quebec - says the Internet should be subject to the same rules as TV and radio - that is, it should have more Canadian-made content.
Also, artists should get a cut of the money Internet providers make every time Canadian content is transmitted to homes, said Richard Hardacre, president of the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists.
What’s the real story here? I don’t think it’s artists hungry for cash, and here’s why:
In a world where file sharing is ubiquitous and web regulation is relegated to Saudi Arabia and China, only an imbecile would think that Canada could and would control Internet content.
No actual artist is quoted in the article, nor are any of the other “18 associations” cited. Given that we’re talking about Canadian arts and culture, I would have liked to have heard from a Canadian artist.
The Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists is also known as ACTRA, and they’re a labour union.
Richard Hardacre, the ACTRA president, has no ideas about how this regulation might take place, or what it might look like. He says (I’m not sure if I hear irony or not) “”We have great deal of faith in the CRTC. We’re just asking them to not let this remain the Wild West.”
Reframing the Issue
I’m ill-informed, but let me speculate. ACTRA is a protectionist organization, and according to a recent press release, fears foreign ownership. That release specifically identifies “CanWest Global’s U.S.-funded takeover of one of Canada’s leading media companies” as a threat. They’re reframing the foreign ownership issue, arguing that it will “damage our cultural sovereignty, deepen the crisis in Canadian drama and potentially jeopardize Canadian content rules”.
CanWest also owns the Montreal Gazette, where this story was reported. They were all too happy to go along with the CanCon angle, because it directs attention away from the corporate takeover and union’s true concerns about job loss.
Does anybody have the average Canadian news consumer in mind? Nope. Both parties seem to be intentionally obfuscating the truth.
I’ve invited both Roberto Rocho, the Gazette journalist, and Mr. Hardacre to clarify things. Specifically, I’ve asked Mr. Rocho why no artists were quoted in the story, and why none of the other arts organizations were mentioned. I’ve asked Mr. Hardacre to provide some specific information about the kind of regulation he’d like to see.
UPDATE (December 4, 2007): I failed to recognize that this article was actually about a month old. My bad, there.
UPDATE #2 (December 4, 2007): I heard back from Mr. Rocho, who wrote article. With his permission, I’ll quote his response:
Now, as to why other artists weren’t quoted, the answer is simple: none of the artists organizations I contacted returned my calls in time. Only ACTRA.
I wasn’t satisfied with only Mr. Hardacre’s voice in my story, since one in 18 hardly satisfies my idea of a representative view. But given that all groups put their names of the press release and showed a united front, given deadline demands, it had to do.
Personally, I found it hard to believe that hundreds of content makers spanning 18 groups can all be this monumentally clueless about the reality of the Internet. But my personal opinion shouldn’t matter. I reported the information that was available to me at the time.
I just wrote a letter to the editor of the Malta Times, pillorying Fiona Galea Debono for some dodgy reporting. She wrote a profile of Maltese singer Ira Losco (she covers The Cure’s “Love Song” on her MySpace page), and introduced the subject of music piracy:
The DVD will be available from leading record stores and off her website… but, sadly, probably also from the marketplace at a fraction of the price.
Indeed, piracy is a scourge that even Ira has to contend with; it is destroying the industry and makes her blood boil.
Ira sells well and not enough fake CDs are printed to hurt her, so she need not devise a strategy to counteract piracy - in the same vein as international stars, who are basing their earnings on live performances. But it is still an irritating issue.
Do you get the feeling that Sony set up this interview, and told Ms. Debono (and/or Ms. Losco) to dedicate a few column inches to the piracy issue? Here’s my letter:
Dear Sir:
Ms. Debono’s profile of Ira Losco read like a thinly-veiled propaganda piece for the record industry. Despite music piracy not impacting Ms. Losco, Ms. Debono introduces the subject into her article and claims–without citing any evidence–that it’s “destroying the [music] industry”.
This simply isn’t true, and it’s lazy, shoddy journalism to claim otherwise. There are many reasons for the downturn of the music industry–declining radio listenership, free music via the web (YouTube and such), diverging audience tastes, the missed opportunity of legal file sharing, rising video game and DVD sales and so forth.
Besides, a recent independent study comissioned by Industry Canada indicated that file-sharing doesn’t put downward pressure on purchasing music. In fact, fans who download music tend to buy more.
According to Simon Wright, CEO of Virgin Entertainment Group in Rolling Stone magazine, “The record companies have created this situation themselves.”
Here’s a lesson for Ms. Debono: I’ve just built an argument based on considered supporting evidence. Perhaps she’ll try this approach the next time she wants to trot out hollow, deceptive claims
Every time a journalist (or a blogger or whoever) mindlessly parrots a corporate party line, it lessens the profession.
You know the rest. Chris Anderson, editor in chief of Wired (when did they change their website? It’s a vast improvement), has posted a rant about PR people randomly spamming him with media releases. He’s gone so far as to publish the email addresses of 329 people who have wasted his time in the last month. As you might imagine, he’s sparked a wildfire of discussion.
Good for him. There’s far too much of this useless send-release-to-a-big-list in the industry, and it needs to go away. That ol’ nugget about public relations being about relationships is 100% true. You don’t build relationships via spam, you build spite and loathing.
Could Chris have taken the high road and not posted the email addresses? Probably, but he wouldn’t have caused the subsequent, compelling conversation.
There are a ton of comments on Chris’s post, and I wanted to extract a few that resonated with me. They’re after the jump:
My friend Gillian linked to this engrossing story of the Miracle Theater in Pigeon Forge, “a stunning musical recreation of the life of Christ told in epic proportion”. Check out the video, this thing is a seriously epic show (and, like so much of Americana, ripe for parody). Speaking as somebody who’s directed the (very) occasional play, I think it’s tacky to have Jesus sing on the cross, particularly in a post-Life of Brian world.
The folks at the Miracle Theatre have a mighty beef with comedian and actress Kathy Griffin, for something she said while accepting an award at this year’s Emmys:
That beef is apparently worth US $90,000 of the theatre’s money, which they used to take out a full page ad (PDF) in USA Today arguing that “Enough is Enough” and scolding Kathy Griffin for her outburst. Griffin was also criticized by the Catholic League, to which she replied “am I the only Catholic left with a sense of humour?”
Before I proceed with the main point of this meandering post, I should observe that this has been a win-win for everybody involved. The Miracle Theatre blows some money on a big ad, but gets a bunch of spin-off attention in the mainstream press. Kathy Griffin, a self-professed ‘D-list celebrity’ gets attention reserved for, well, B-list stars, and plenty of pictures in the paper with her clutching an Emmy.
A Thoughtful, Moderate Response
Here’s what I really wanted to reference: Phil Cooke’s elegant, thoughtful, moderate response to the whole affair. According to his bio, Cooke is “a working producer in Hollywood with a Ph.D. in Theology.” He needs a Wikipedia entry.
In our media culture, the extremists get all the air time. The media rarely wants to hear from the moderates, they like their sound bites O’Reilly and Garofalo-style. The church figures we see on TV and in the newspaper tend to be radically conservative. Based on his response, Cooke doesn’t seem to fit that mold. Go read the whole thing, but here are a couple of bits I like:
Does standing on a street corner holding posters of bloody, aborted fetuses, change the minds of people considering abortions? Or does it make the protestors look like radical fundamentalists?
Does Pastor Fred Phelps, who created the God Hates Fags website, actually draw homosexuals to the faith, or does he make all Christians look like intolerant jerks? I’m sure he’s a sincere guy wanting to reach the gay community, but does that make it OK?
Er, I haven’t read enough of Cooke’s material to know whether this is sarcasm or not. I hope it is.
Some responses from people have sited [sic] Jesus turning over the tables in the temple as an example that we should be confrontational with the culture. But we often forget that the money changers Jesus tossed out were the religious people. There’s no record to my knowledge of Jesus confronting the non-believing culture. He didn’t go into a Roman guardhouse and turn over the tables.
But for me, the scripture that drives my thinking on the issue is Paul’s note in I Corinthians 5:12 - “What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? God will judge those outside.”
My favourite ammunition for confronting religious nutters and extremists of all creeds is their own text. I’ll keep that last quote handy.
Otherwise, feel free to look around. You may want to browse the categories in the left sidebar below my little link blog. If you like what you see (and you know what I’m talking about), consider subscribing to my RSS feed.
