Andy Vogel, Local Interactive

Report: Three Demand Media Founders Out - Stefanie Botelho - Blogs Consumer @ FolioMag.com

2012-01-31T16:38:00.001-06:00

Demand claims trio of departures to be “just coincidence”.

Why You Need a Better Elevator Pitch

2012-01-04T10:32:00.001-06:00

For decades, salespeople have practiced something called an "elevator pitch." The idea was that they had to sell themselves and their product or service in the time it took to ride an elevator from the ground to the top floor. Every good salesperson had an "elevator pitch" and could perform it flawlessly at a moment's notice.

Today, elevators are much faster and attention spans are much shorter, so you've got to amp up your pitch. You've got to have a 118.

The 118 Pitch is my modern term for the old elevator pitch. It's based on the fact that 118 seconds is the length of the average elevator ride in New York City. The first 8 seconds are "the hook"—the time you have to get the "lean in" factor, to snag your prospect, to catch their interest.

Those first 8 seconds are the key. In researching the idea I discovered that the length of time the average human can concentrate on something and not lose some focus is as little as 8 seconds. Eight! (It's true--I found it on the Internet!) Thirty seconds, then, was way too long for getting that lean-in factor for your pitch. You know how you hear something in a conversation and you lean in because you want to hear the rest of it? That's what you want from your prospect in those first 8 seconds of the 118.

If you accomplish that in those 8 seconds, they'll give you the next 110 seconds to drive your message home with no bull. It's not about name dropping. It's about what's in it for the recipient of your pitch.

Your 118 must:

•Grab the attention of your prospect
•Convey who you are
•Describe what your business offers
•Explain the promises you will deliver on

You need speed and immediate relevance. A compelling, attention-grabbing 118 tells who you are, the value of what you do and sells that to anyone, internally and externally. Used correctly, it helps your business grow bigger. Your 118 should also describe the thing that separates you from everyone else that sells the same thing. I don't care what businesses you are in or what other services you offer; tell me how you are different, your story and how that story connects to your prospect.

Leaders need to get away from bland pronouncements that say, "We do this" and focus on "what we do for you." You're supposed to understand not just what you're selling, but what it offers to your prospect.

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly of 118 Pitches:

The Good: Mentions your product or service and tells how it will help your prospect. "In less than two minutes, I will tell you how the use of me, my company, or my service will grow your development department 115%."
The Bad: Mentions what you're offering, but lacks any reference to what it offers your prospect. "My name is Sam Maybe-Somebody, and my company The Hopeful-Who Knows wants to work with your company using our We Think Super Service."

The Ugly: Makes no mention of your company or service and how the prospect will benefit. "My name is Sam Nobody, and my company wants to work with your company because we think we can help you."

Eight seconds goes by in a heartbeat and you don't have time for anything that's flabby or ambivalent. Cut to the chase, make them lean in, and then don't let go.

Start your 118 with a rough draft. Then, do another draft. Then, put it down for a while and come back to it. Does it still ring true? Repeat the process. When you finally arrive at a 118 that best suits your business, you'll know it. The vibe will be there. It'll feel good rolling off your tongue. You'll wake up in the morning reciting it and go to bed at night doing the same thing.

You'll believe it.

After all, if you don't, nobody else will.

via blogs.hbr.org

118 seconds seems like the perfect length for a video!

Posted via email from Local Andy

How Will You Measure Your Life? HBR From July 2010

2011-12-30T12:40:00.001-06:00

Editor’s Note: When the members of the class of 2010 entered business school, the economy was strong and their post-graduation ambitions could be limitless. Just a few weeks later, the economy went into a tailspin. They’ve spent the past two years recalibrating their worldview and their definition of success.

The students seem highly aware of how the world has changed (as the sampling of views in this article shows). In the spring, Harvard Business School’s graduating class asked HBS professor Clay Christensen to address them—but not on how to apply his principles and thinking to their post-HBS careers. The students wanted to know how to apply them to their personal lives. He shared with them a set of guidelines that have helped him find meaning in his own life. Though Christensen’s thinking comes from his deep religious faith, we believe that these are strategies anyone can use. And so we asked him to share them with the readers of HBR. To learn more about Christensen’s work, visit his HBR Author Page.

Before I published The Innovator’s Dilemma, I got a call from Andrew Grove, then the chairman of Intel. He had read one of my early papers about disruptive technology, and he asked if I could talk to his direct reports and explain my research and what it implied for Intel. Excited, I flew to Silicon Valley and showed up at the appointed time, only to have Grove say, “Look, stuff has happened. We have only 10 minutes for you. Tell us what your model of disruption means for Intel.” I said that I couldn’t—that I needed a full 30 minutes to explain the model, because only with it as context would any comments about Intel make sense. Ten minutes into my explanation, Grove interrupted: “Look, I’ve got your model. Just tell us what it means for Intel.”
I insisted that I needed 10 more minutes to describe how the process of disruption had worked its way through a very different industry, steel, so that he and his team could understand how disruption worked. I told the story of how Nucor and other steel minimills had begun by attacking the lowest end of the market—steel reinforcing bars, or rebar—and later moved up toward the high end, undercutting the traditional steel mills.
When I finished the minimill story, Grove said, “OK, I get it. What it means for Intel is...,” and then went on to articulate what would become the company’s strategy for going to the bottom of the market to launch the Celeron processor.
I’ve thought about that a million times since. If I had been suckered into telling Andy Grove what he should think about the microprocessor business, I’d have been killed. But instead of telling him what to think, I taught him how to think—and then he reached what I felt was the correct decision on his own.
That experience had a profound influence on me. When people ask what I think they should do, I rarely answer their question directly. Instead, I run the question aloud through one of my models. I’ll describe how the process in the model worked its way through an industry quite different from their own. And then, more often than not, they’ll say, “OK, I get it.” And they’ll answer their own question more insightfully than I could have.
My class at HBS is structured to help my students understand what good management theory is and how it is built. To that backbone I attach different models or theories that help students think about the various dimensions of a general manager’s job in stimulating innovation and growth. In each session we look at one company through the lenses of those theories—using them to explain how the company got into its situation and to examine what managerial actions will yield the needed results.
On the last day of class, I ask my students to turn those theoretical lenses on themselves, to find cogent answers to three questions: First, how can I be sure that I’ll be happy in my career? Second, how can I be sure that my relationships with my spouse and my family become an enduring source of happiness? Third, how can I be sure I’ll stay out of jail? Though the last question sounds lighthearted, it’s not. Two of the 32 people in my Rhodes scholar class spent time in jail. Jeff Skilling of Enron fame was a classmate of mine at HBS. These were good guys—but something in their lives sent them off in the wrong direction.

The Class of 2010

As the students discuss the answers to these questions, I open my own life to them as a case study of sorts, to illustrate how they can use the theories from our course to guide their life decisions.

via hbr.org

If you like this I'd also reccomend reading: Mastering the Art of Living Well - http://blogs.hbr.org/haque/2011/12/mastering_the_art_of_living_me.html

Posted via email from Local Andy

Siemer Summit Video: Digital Convergence Across Global Media

2011-12-28T21:39:00.001-06:00

This panel took place during lunchtime at the 2011 Siemer Silicon Beach Summit. Panelists included: Shawn Colo, Co-Founder and EVP, Corporate Development, Demand Media; Michael Jones, Former CEO, MySpace; David Krantz, President and CEO, AT&T Interactive; Michael Paull, EVP Global Digital Business, Sony Music; Michael Smith, SVP, Corporate Development, AOL; and Andy Vogel, SVP, Tribune Company. The panel was moderated by T. Hale Boggs, Partner, Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP.

Panel: Digital Convergence Across Global Media from Vanessa VanderZanden on Vimeo.

Posted via email from Local Andy

Tablets in 2012: Channeling a Creative Revolution

2011-12-22T17:22:00.002-06:00

By Joe Laszlo on December 19, 2011 1:51 PM Permalink Comments

Want to help lead tablet advertising grow in 2012? IAB members, email Luke@iab.net to find out how you can join the IAB Tablet Committee.

The IAB Mobile Marketing Center of Excellence held our second tablet event in the IAB Ad Lab last week. A breakfast session focused on the theme of creativity, this event included some intriguing data from Nielsen, inspirational examples of ads and content pushing the bounds of tablet creativity, and a spirited discussion on what 2012 holds for the tablet.

That part of the conversation focused on looking ahead particularly caught my attention. The answers varied broadly and included:

The rise of the “7-inch” tablet form factor; the question of where smartphones end and tablets begin will be a really interesting and tricky one.
The web experience on tablets. Delivering a better web experience, or hybrids of web and app experiences, will be a potential game-changer.
Fragmentation and the lack of standardization. A myriad of screen sizes, app user interfaces, and ad formats all combine to make tablets a great creative opportunity, but a tricky and hard-to-scale one, too.
The tablet as foundation. Right now tablets enter late in the media conversation. But that could flip: imagine discussions that center on the tablet as the start of the process of designing a new content offering or consumer service.

All great food for thought, and beyond that ongoing issues like the race to be the number 2 tablet, what Apple does next, and how tablets influence and affect overall consumer media consumption behaviors, virtually assure that we’ll have a lot to watch and learn from in the coming year.

The thing that intrigues me about tablets is that, more than any other device today, people see in them any and every device or medium they want to see. For people with a TV heritage, tablets are TVs you can hold in your hands. For people coming from the print world, tablets are the ideal, interactive magazine. And for those from the Internet universe, tablets are the perfect, tactile, portal onto interactive content. And all of these seemingly incompatible views are correct. Tablets really can be all these things, and more.

But given this wonderful, amazing diversity, how do content owners and marketers make sense of the tablet opportunity? As with previous interactive media, this is a place where the IAB can help.

The IAB Mobile Marketing Center of Excellence is turning the Tablet Task Force group into an official Tablet Committee, taking its place alongside the other platform-specific IAB committees. This group will be open to any IAB member company that wants to participate, taking on projects to grow the tablet advertising market and providing an industry-wide forum for discussing how the tablet is evolving as a medium. Interested in joining the Tablet Committee? IAB members please contact Luke Luckett in the IAB Member Services group - we’d love to have you aboard.

About the Author

Joe Laszlo

Joe Laszlo is Deputy Director of the Mobile Marketing Center of Excellence at the IAB.

Permalink: http://www.iab.net/iablog/2011/12/tablets-in-2012-channeling-a-c.html

Posted via email from Local Andy

MMA Los Angeles Forum This Thursday Discount Code Below

2011-11-14T14:44:00.001-06:00

Follow Us: #MMAF2011

Customize your Learning at MMA Forum Los Angeles 2011
November 16-17, 2011 | SLS Hotel, Beverly Hills

Andy Vogel
Senior Vice President, Digital & Mobile
Tribune Company

Surviving and Thriving Within the Mobile Revolution: Considering new Organizational Strategies and Approaches
November 17, 2011

Please use this 15% discount code when booking: SPKR15_LA

Dear Colleague,

As the premier authority on mobile marketing, the MMA has access to top thought leaders and practitioners in the industry and is able to deliver an unparalleled level of content quality and networking opportunities. Customize your mobile marketing education at MMA Forum Los Angeles: your opportunity to hear from experts on your specific interests, tailored to your level of expertise.

Special Guest Speaker:

Antonio R. Villaraigosa
41st Mayor of Los Angeles

Don't Miss Our Nov. 16 Workshops:

The workshops on Nov. 16 offer opportunities to either catch up on the fundamentals or participate in the expert roundtables that consist of keynote addresses, case study reviews and interactive, themed discussions and panels. The workshop and roundtables will help you develop an in-depth understanding of consumer behavior in today’s marketplace: mobile, social, location, commerce, search, and more.

In addition, on Nov. 17, the general session program features industry leaders and six main conference tracks that include something for everyone:

What’s On the Horizon with Advertising?
The Marketer Speaks
Mobile Relationship Management
Industry Trends You That Drive Success
Every Cloud has a Silver Lining - the Future of Mobile Cloud Computing
Engaging Business, Government and Creating the Modern Day Organization

Additional featured speakers include:

Jeff Hawley, Director, Customer Experience Group, Yamaha Corporation of America
Martin Lange, Global Head Mobile, OgilvyOne Worldwide
Brandon Lucas, Vice President and General Manager, Mobile, BET Networks
Jason Miller, Digital Content and Community Manager, P.F. Chang's / Pei Wei
Jonathan Stephen, Senior Producer of Mobile Products, JetBlue Airways
Matt Stringer, Senior Vice President, Marketing, Men’s Wearhouse, Inc.

For more details, view the agenda.

Show your leadership and generate valuable business exposure: Don’t miss the opportunity to show your leadership through the MMA Forum series. There are a number of sponsorship opportunities still available, including workshop and track sponsorships. Request the sponsorship rate card and/or contact us at sponsor@mmaglobal.com.

Posted via email from Local Andy

How Newspapers Can Optimize Traffic and Revenue with Mobile, Part 1: A Look at Mobile Web

2011-11-02T19:46:00.001-05:00

Join the MMA and Tribune Company for a free webinar on Wednesday, November 9th

Space is limited.
Reserve your Webinar Seat Now at:
https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/754226598

While many newspapers are seeing substantial audience growth on their mobile Web sites, it still represents a small percentage of overall digital audience. More significant, revenue is growth is not keeping pace with traffic growth. In this joint MMA/NAA Webinar, mobile industry experts will offer five critical steps for optimizing your traffic and revenue on mobile web sites.

Moderators:
Michael J. Becker: Managing Director, Mobile Marketing Association
Randy Bennett: Senior Vice President, Business Development at Newspaper Association of America

Speakers:
Andy Vogel: SVP, Digital/Mobile, Tribune Company
Richard Abronson: VP Marketing, co-founder, Gumiyo
JonPaul Rexing, Senior Director of Sales, ESPN Local.com

Hosted in Partnership with Mobile Marketing Association and Newspaper Association of America.

Title:		Free Webinar -- How Newspapers Can Optimize Traffic and Revenue with Mobile, Part 1: A Look at Mobile Web

Date:		Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Time:		8:00 AM - 9:00 AM PST

Posted via email from Local Andy

Apple's Celebration of Steve Jobs' Life

2011-10-19T17:33:00.001-05:00

Further coverage from MacRumors: http://www.macrumors.com/2011/10/19/norah-jones-and-coldplay-help-apple-celebrate-steve-jobs-life/

Posted via email from Local Andy

Gannett Earnings Report Is Grim, But Not Death Knell For Newspapers

2011-10-18T19:45:00.001-05:00

From SeekingAlpha

by: Ian Wyatt October 18, 2011 | about: GCI, includes: MEG, NYT, WPO

Gannett (NYSE: GCI), the biggest newspaper publisher in America in terms of circulation, released an ugly earnings report today, sending its stock plummeting more than 8 percent.

Gannett posted an 8.5 percent drop in its third-quarter advertising revenue, an earnings report revealed this morning. Gannett’s ad revenue has now fallen every quarter since 2006. In June the company laid off nearly 700 employees, roughly 2 percent of its work force, due to the ongoing decline in ad revenue.

As someone who spent most of his career as a newspaper reporter prior to arriving at Wyatt Investment Research, it’s disheartening to see the decline of the newspaper industry. But it’s certainly no surprise. Technological advances have enabled people to get their information too quickly for newspapers to keep pace. Mobile phones, news websites, Twitter, Facebook and, yes, even blogs like this are where people get their news now. When – or if – people get around to picking up a newspaper, most of what they’re reading is the equivalent of yesterday’s news.

Like newspapers themselves these days, this too is old news. People have long forecast the demise of the newspaper industry. Gannett’s poor third-quarter earnings are only the latest reflection of that.

That said, now may be the best time to buy newspaper stocks. Stocks like Gannett ($10.01 per share after Monday’s closing bell), the New York Times Company (NYSE: NYT) and Media General (NYSE: MEG) are dirt cheap at the moment. And some are managing to generate earnings in other areas.

They’re doing so by getting more tech-savvy.

Delve deeper into Gannett’s third-quarter earnings report and you’ll find that its digital revenues were up 10 percent when compared to the third quarter last year. Gannett still has considerable assets, including a foothold in the online world that is the very reason for dropping ad revenues in its 82 print publications. Gannett has a 51 percent stake in CareerBuilder.com, a leading online job-searching site, as well as 23 TV stations across the country.

The New York Times Company, meanwhile, includes About.com among its many assets. The Washington Post (NYSE: WPO), though a far more expensive stock than the New York Times or Gannett, owns Kaplan, which remains profitable and has a growing online higher education presence.

Like the rest of the world, those newspaper companies are changing with the times. Instead of thumbing their noses at technology, they’ve embraced it.

So with the New York Times, Washington Post and others about to release their third-quarter earnings reports, don’t be scared off if their ad-revenue numbers are as dismal as Gannett’s. Pay closer attention to what their digital revenues are. If those numbers are in the black, then that’s a positive trend. While those companies are still dominated by print ad revenues, as they continue to build their online presence, eventually their digital advertising revenue will make more of a dent in their overall earnings than it does now.

Disclosure: None

This article is tagged with: Services, Publishing - Newspapers, Earnings, United States

Join the Mayor of Los Angeles at the MMA Forum, Nov. 16-17

2011-10-14T11:14:00.001-05:00

If you have trouble reading this email, go to the online version.

Follow Us: #MMAF2011

Join Los Angeles Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa
at MMA Forum Los Angeles
November 16-17, 2011 | SLS Hotel, Beverly Hills

Antonio R. Villaraigosa
41st Mayor of Los Angeles

Dear Andy,

We’re proud to announce special guest speaker Antonio R. Villaraigosa, 41st Mayor of Los Angeles, will be speaking at the Los Angeles MMA Forum on November 17, 2011. He will share his unique perspective on how mobile has changed and forever shaped the fabric of engagement.

Check out the Forum agenda to explore the wide variety of learning and networking activities happening over two days. On Wednesday, November 16, the program offers four half-day interactive workshops and roundtables specifically tailored to your experience level and interests. The second day includes leadership panels, fireside chats, keynote speakers, and targeted sessions within six tracks, all of which is followed by an evening of festivities at the MMA global awards ceremony and gala.

Just some of the featured speakers include:

Kristin Djurdjulov: Division Vice President Marketing & Promotions, GameStop
Matt Stringer: Senior Vice President, Marketing, Men’s Wearhouse, Inc.
Martin Lange: Global Head Mobile, OgilvyOne Worldwide
Brandon Lucas: Vice President and General Manager, Mobile, BET Networks
Heather Smith: President, Rock The Vote

Additional experts presenting at the Forum include:


Michael Rosenberg Executive Director - Advertising & New Media, Paramount Pictures	Doug Busk Mobile Brand Strategy - Global Connections, The Coca-Cola Company	Sharon Knitter Senior Director of Mobile, Cars.com	Andy Vogel Senior Vice President, Digital & Mobile, Tribune

Be sure to book your ticket and stay for the MMA Global Awards Ceremony and Gala on November 17th immediately following the Forum.

Show your leadership and generate valuable business exposure: Don’t miss the opportunity to show your leadership through the MMA Forum series. There are a number of sponsorship opportunities still available, including workshop and track sponsorships. Request the sponsorship rate card and/or contact us at sponsor@mmaglobal.com.

Register by October 21 for early registration rates. I hope to see you there!

Kind regards,

Michael Becker, Managing Director North America
Mobile Marketing Association

P.S. Remember, rates go up on October 21 so register today.

You may also be interested in these MMA offerings:

October 20, 2011	FREE WEBINAR with Vibes Media: Mobile Relationship Management: Strategies for Weaving Mobile Throughout the Customer Lifecycle Learn more
October 24-27, 2011	Four City Roadshow (Vancouver, Calgary, Montreal, Toronto): Global Truths and Regional Relevance of Mobile Marketing: Insights into the Canadian Marketplace Learn more

PREMIUM MEMBERS

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Posted via email from Local Andy

First night open for O'Donoghue's on 44th in NYC

2011-10-03T20:52:00.001-05:00

Posted via email from Local Andy

Where is mobile advertising today?

2011-10-03T20:50:00.001-05:00

Posted via email from Local Andy

Newspapers need a jolt of Silicon Valley DNA

2011-08-18T11:05:00.001-05:00

From Reflections of a Newsosaur

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

I started my career as a newspaperman, became a Silicon Valley CEO and work today as a consultant helping media companies understand technology and helping technology companies understand the media. Here’s what I have learned:

The talented people in these seemingly disparate industries are remarkably alike but the cultures of the businesses are completely different. And here is why this matters:

:: The tradition-bound and risk-averse nature of the newspaper culture is the single greatest reason publishers are losing relevance, readers and revenues while competing digital products run circles around them.

:: With new technologies, media formats and business models emerging at an ever-quickening pace, newspapers must learn to think and act like start-ups – or risk falling to the margins of the media world.

In other words, newspapers need some fresh DNA that will make them think and act more like techies and less like, well, newspaper people.

The good news for newspapers is they have an abundance of the most important asset every business needs: Great people.

Just like tech companies, newspapers are filled with exceptionally large numbers of highly intelligent, highly creative and highly motivated individual contributors whose ideas, talents and egos must be channeled efficiently into creating a product that not even the brightest among them could produce on his or her own.

Although the people working at newspapers and tech companies are more similar than you would think, their business cultures are polar opposites of one another.

Newspapers are all about faithfully and efficiently producing a well-defined product according to time-honored standards and procedures. In other words, the culture values tradition, consistency and predictability, which, by definition, are inhospitable to change – particularly the sort of disruptive change that the web, mobile and social media require.

Newspaper folk essentially come to work every day to do their best to fully optimize a product that serves a clearly identified audience, that has a clearly defined revenue model and that, until the last few years, has been a stunningly profitable business.

Tech companies – which are unencumbered by tradition, institutional inertia and frequently even a clearly defined product for the first few years – are created expressly to do something that no one else has done before.

When techies come to work, everyone in the company – from engineers to marketers to sales people – is eager to debate such fundamental questions as: What’s our product? Who will buy it? How will we sell it? How will we make money? The debate persists (almost to a maddening degree) until the product is launched – and generally continues afterwards, especially if the marketplace fails to embrace the offering with sufficient zeal. Techies will tinker until they either get it right or run out of venture capital.

Although everyone marvels at how Microsoft, Google and Facebook rocked the world and turned corporate masseuses into millionaires, the preponderance of tech start-ups actually fail, because they prove to be far less clever than the founders and funders thought they would be. But failure is an option in Silicon Valley, because you learn as much from hitting the wall as from your successes. Maybe even more.

It takes a certain mind-set to take the entrepreneurial plunge. Techies embrace uncertainty and shrug off failure in a way that would unhinge most ordinary people. They are perfectly happy blowing up what they did the day before to try a better (or at least different) idea.

This sort of restless and relentless experimentation has produced all the technologies that have changed the way consumers get and give media – and the way advertisers increasingly are attempting to reach customers. A good deal of the success of the digital media has come at the expense of newspapers, which simply have not acted rapidly or boldly enough to create products and services to meet the needs of modern readers and advertisers.

Publishers have not failed to embrace disruptive experimentation because they are not smart enough to do so. The video embedded below is proof that the folks at Knight Ridder in 1994 had a pretty good idea of what the future might hold. But the newspaper business historically was so successful that publishers didn’t need, or want, to change much about it. Consequently, risk-taking and experimentation took a back seat to business as usual.

With print circulation and advertising revenues falling to ever-lower lows for each of the last five years, newspapers now must find new ways to cost-effectively create content; build new web, mobile and social audiences, and monetize their traffic as profitably as Facebook and Google do.

To do that, they will have to bring the creative chaos of Silicon Valley into every corner of their businesses. This means launching multiple, carefully planned initiatives across the full array of print and digital media. To be sure, this must be done with discipline and care.

Sometimes newspapers will get it right. Sometimes they will get it wrong. And, every now and then they will hit a home run. But they won’t win if they don’t play.

Posted via email from Local Andy

Vogels Are the Face As Detroit Coney Comes to Hollywood

2011-06-23T08:24:00.001-05:00

There's a Hollywood Coney in Detroit, and now there's a Detroit Style Coney in Hollywood.

In Hollywood, coney dog offers comforts of home in Michigan | Detroit Free Press | freep.com

www.freep.com

When the sleek new Coney Dog restaurant opened Sunday on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood, surrounded by throngs of people craving chili-covered hot dogs, there was no mystery about who those people were or how they knew to go there on Father's Day.

Detroit's Coney Dog premieres in West Hollywood | Detroit Free Press | freep.com

www.freep.com

It was just before noon today, and a line of characters, many of them dressed in U-M, MSU, Red Wings and Lions and other Detroit-themed garb, were wrapped around the corner on Sunset Boulevard, waiting for a little Motor City flavor in the heart of movie-making country.

Here's the link to Coney Dog LA's site: http://www.coneydogla.com/

Here's the story on the Sunset Strip Site: http://thesunsetstrip.com/blog/coney-dog-brings-detroit-sunset-strip

Michigan natives rejoiced on Sunday, when Coney Dog officially opened on The Sunset Strip. The lines wrapped down the block as die-hards patiently waited to taste a piece of home -- coney dogs, loose burgers, pop and chili cheese fries. While some Detroit traditionalists may have bypassed the California-centric additions (veggie dogs and vegetarian chili), all were happy to have this hometown staple in Los Angeles.

In addition to the food menu, Coney Dog also boasts an extensive list of craft and local beers. And good news for late nighters: Coney Dog is open until 2 a.m. Sunday through Wednesday and until 4 a.m. Thursday through Saturday.

Stop by and say hello!
www.coneydogla.com

Posted via email from Local Andy

Disruption Demands 'Customer-Obsessed' Model

2011-06-07T08:56:00.001-05:00

Karlene Lukovitz for MediaPost, Jun 06, 2011 04:05 PM

Technology-empowered consumers are so radically disrupting the traditional competitive scenario across industries that companies must now be "customer-obsessed," not just "customer-centric," in order to survive and thrive, contends a new report from Forrester Research, Inc.

This isn't mere jargon -- it requires willingness to make fundamental thinking, strategic and investment shifts -- including redistributing money spent on brand advertising and other traditional dominance-creating areas, stresses Josh Bernoff, senior vice president, idea development for Forrester Research and primary author of the report, "Competitive Strategy In the Age of the Customer."

"A customer-obsessed company focuses its strategy, its energy, and its budget on processes that enhance knowledge of engagement with customers, and prioritizes these over maintaining traditional competitive barriers," Bernoff explains in a Forrester blog. "Previous sources of competitive dominance -- manufacturing, distribution, even information mastery -- are now just table stakes."

Customers want things faster, better, cheaper and with a high degree of service, and technology-enabled access to full information about products, service levels, actual market prices and even supplier costs has put all of this within their grasp, Bernoff points out. The other competitive forces originally defined by economist Michael E. Porter and used as strategic guides by companies for decades have also changed, he says: Barriers to entry are lower; substitute products and channels are gutting profits; employees have greater power over companies (if key talent leaves, customers will follow knowledge, ideas and relationships to other companies); and strategies and tactics are now instantly obtainable by competitors.

Result? Customer engagement and relationships -- "understanding, delighting, connecting with and serving customers" -- are the only advantages that will enable companies to survive the continuous disruption that will define business going forward, Bernoff says.

To be customer-obsessed, a company must pull budget dollars from brand advertising, distribution lock-up, mergers for scale and supplier relationships, and invest in four priority areas, according to the report: real-time customer intelligence; customer experience and customer service; sales channels that deliver customer intelligence; and useful content and interactive marketing.

Companies that make this corporate-wide thinking shift, master the customer data flow and improve front-line customer staff will grow and thrive; those that "keep riding their current model and attempt to lock in customers are doomed," maintains Bernoff. "They're dead men walking. They just don't know it yet."

Companies including Circuit City, Tower Records, Borders and Blockbuster have succumbed or gone into bankruptcy because their traditional strengths -- business models, distribution and supplier relationships -- were not sufficient to keep them competitive in the face of rapidly shifting customer expectations, the report concludes. In contrast, companies such as IBM, Best Buy and Amazon.com have embraced the new, customer-driven model.

Attributes of customer-obsessed companies, according to Forrester, include: nimbleness and emphasizing speed over strength (management structures that permit rapid pursuit of customers in new markets and channels); valuing versatility over customer lock-in tactics (building true loyalty rather than blocking customer abandonment with contracts, proprietary technology, frequent-flier programs, etc.); global reach and strategy (in supply, demand and markets); and information-rich services (continuously updated information about products/services with mobile accessibility).

While the specific dynamics are somewhat different for each industry, one example cited is the CPG industry. The industry's historic "sources of lock-in" have been mass advertising, shelf space and shopper behavior; current sources of disruption include e-commerce and mobile distribution, pricing, and new forms of consumer awareness and advocacy; and examples of disruption include private-label goods, Amazon, Drugstore.com, Shopkick, FreshDirect and Groupon.

Bernoff highlights some of the specific changes that go into transforming to the customer-obsessed model:

* Research: Spend less on surveys that generate results too late to act on, and more on real-time listening to social media and the search for customers' unarticulated needs.

* Service: Invest in a comprehensive, cross-channel customer experience program, and stop treating call-center workers as "slaves" (hire carefully for problem-solving mentality, train for conversation skills, and measure and reward problem-solving excellence over speed).

* Sales: Stop incentivizing the sales force to "cram the channel," and concentrate on connecting directly with end consumers. Obsess about repeat customers, rather than new business. Take money from email and advertising blasts and spend it on interactive content and mobile apps that create real connections.

Posted via email from Local Andy

Using Mobile Phones to Capture Customer Experiences

2011-05-06T10:40:00.001-05:00

This post is part of Creating a Customer-Centered Organization.

How well do you know your customers?

We're guessing not as well as you would like to ... and not as well as you'll need to in the future.
Understanding customers has never been more important as empowered, fickle consumers take less notice of your marketing campaigns, listening instead to the experience of other customers, online and offline, and doing their own research. Surveys are useful for obtaining quick feedback from a large number of customers but may lack the depth we need. Ethnographic programs such as Procter & Gamble's "Living It," which sends managers to live with a family for a time, can be invaluable, but they are not always practical, the effects are difficult to quantify, and the act of observing customers in such close proximity influences them significantly.

So what can you do?

Imagine you could live in the pocket of your customers as they use and talk about your products and services. While you can't get that close to your customer, their mobile phones can. What if you could appropriate the phone to provide real-time updates on the customer's behaviors, perceptions, and emotions? This is just what companies — from Coca-Cola to LG Electronics and Unilever — are doing by using a real-time experience tracking approach.

With this approach, you recruit a consumer panel that will send a text message whenever they come across your company or its competitors. The brief, structured text messages capture what kind of touchpoint it is, how the consumer feels in response to the company touchpoint, and what they think about the brand as a result of this encounter. (A touchpoint includes every way that a customer comes into contact with your company's product, service or brand., including your channels, your communications, your service points and product usage — and even encounters a company doesn't control, including hearing about your brand from a colleague or seeing it in a friend's home.)

Add these encounters up across a week and across a whole sample, and you can assess experience share and experience effectiveness. ("Experience share" is a brand's share of all touchpoints in its category, and "experience effectiveness" is the quality of a brand's touchpoints, as measured by emotional response and perceptual response, measured in real-time.)

From our analysis of over 230,000 customer touchpoints collected by market research agency Mesh Planning, we've reached two broad conclusions about the lessons for all companies.

First, it's important to track your customer's brand experience in real time. To get closer to your customers, you would ideally walk along with them, seeing what your customers see, listening to the conversations they have, watching who they take notice of online and observing how they use your brand. This observation would happen in real time so you could record when your customers "touch" your products, services or communications and their immediate responses to these experiences. Present your customer with a survey question which asks about their emotional response to a brand encounter that occurred two months ago and they've probably long forgotten. However, by capturing this emotional impact in real time, it is possible to understand how your brand is affecting your customers. By collating the series of encounters your customers have with your brand over a period time, you can better understand the relative impact of brand touchpoints and how they lead to purchase. You can work out what aspects of your operations you should be spending on.

Second, it is vital to capture all touchpoints, including those that you don't control.
The consumer panel sends texts for all touchpoints. This is not onerous — it requires a time investment of 20 seconds for the customer after each time they see your brand in a TV ad, in a newspaper article, online, etc. The wide scope of experiences tracked is important and revealing. Customer experiences with service touchpoints have traditionally been evaluated via satisfaction surveys. But we also need to understand our customers' responses to those activities we don't control, such as word of mouth or observing other customers, which often occur without any visibility to us. Customer-initiated encounters — such as going into a store or having a conversation — are often more frequent than posters, mailings, radio, and many other supplier-driven touchpoints.

Without this breadth as well as granularity of information, we don't know whether to allocate resource to improving call centers, retail channels, advertising campaigns or new product innovation. Managers might have traditionally spent money on outbound media, without clearly understanding its relative impact on the customer compared to all the other aspects of their brand experience. If these encounters aren't right then no amount of spending on outbound communications is going to do the trick.

For instance, one major cellphone network provider had such poor word-of-mouth that its disgruntled customers talked about it all the time. As a result, among its prospects, conversation was the single most common touchpoint. Any amount of ad spending was going to be wasted until the customer service problems were fixed.

Time was when customers learned about our products and services through what we told them. No more. Rather, we need to listen to customers in real time. Customers touch the brand more often than we think. By better understanding the magic moments that our customers have with our brands, we can identify the most profitable opportunities to improve our customer interaction.

Emma Macdonald is a senior research fellow and Hugh Wilson is a professor of strategic marketing at Cranfield School of Management in the U.K.. Umut Konus is assistant professor of new product development at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands.

via blogs.hbr.org

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5 Reasons You’re Consuming More Mobile Content

2011-04-28T22:10:00.001-05:00

Christina Warren

The Mobile Content Series is supported by Mygazines, the better way to enhance and distribute brochures, catalogues, magazines, reports and other documents on every device, including iPad, iPhone, Blackberry Playbook, Android and desktop. Learn more.

Whether it’s listening to the latest album using a subscription streaming service on your phone or reading the newest issue of a magazine on an iPad, users are spending more time consuming content on mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets.

Browser usage statistics indicate that more users access the Internet using an iPad (not the iPhone oriPod touch, just the iPad) than using a Linux-based desktop computer system. This is a notable fact if only because the iPad has been on the market for a little more than a year and Linux has had nearly twenty years to develop a userbase on desktops, laptops and netbooks.

We know that consumers are accessing and consuming more mobile content than ever before, but why? We take a look at some of the biggest reasons why mobile content consumption is starting to explode.

1. Better Access to 3G and Beyond

In February, comScore released its 2010 “Mobile Year in Review” report. The report highlights some of the biggest trends in mobile and smartphone usage over the last year, including the surge in mobile media consumption.

ComScore attributed this surge not just to growing smartphone adoption, but also to 3G penetration and “unlimited” data plans. 3G is now nearly ubiquitous in many parts of the world, which means that the overall mobile content experience offers users fewer compromises.

Moreover, the big push towards 4G technologies ensures that consumers — even those in more rural areas — will have access to high-speed wireless Internet from their mobile devices in years to come.

Having faster, more reliable connections is crucial for content consumption. After all, that Internet video or interactive application isn’t going to be much good if the data connection harkens back to the days of dial-up. The better the bandwidth, the better the overall experience will be for users, which in turn fosters increased consumption.

Although comScore cites unlimited data plans as one of the drivers of mobile content consumption, we are seeing wireless carriers — at least in the United States — push back with more strict data limits. The downside of increased consumption is that it requires the network at large to be wide enough to support the consumption habits of many millions of users.

2. More Commercial Content Choices

Even if you disagree with Steve Jobs and his position on Flash and mobile devices, it’s hard to argue that Apple‘s decision to spurn Flash in iOS hasn’t been good for the mobile content ecosystem as a whole.

The success of the iPhone — and now the iPad — has given commercial content creators an incentive to make their commercial multimedia content accessible in mobile-friendly formats. Companies like Netflix, Hulu, Crackle and Vevo all have mobile apps or mobile-optimized video streams.

The rise of HTTP adaptive streaming has also allowed commercial video content companies to serve live or pre-recorded video to mobile consumers at bitrates that adapt to a user’s connection. This means that users can get the best quality video, whether they are connected through 3G or Wi-Fi.

The iPad is often referred to by executives in the TV industry as a “second screen” device. But after seeing how users engage with content formatted for the iPad (versus the same content on a computer or television), content companies are embracing tablets with full steam.

Plus, let’s face it, if I can watch an episode of Gossip Girl on my iPad with little fuss, it makes sense for me to do so. If I can pick up that same episode and watch it on the iPhone, even better.

3. Ubiquitous Connectivity

In addition to the growing adoption and penetration of 3G Internet, access to Wi-Fi hotspots continues to grow. Starbucks made Wi-Fi in all of its stores free last year, making the world’s best unofficial workplace that much more inviting.

And it’s not just coffee shops and airports that are embracing and providing Wi-Fi access — parks, municipalities and even doctor’s offices now often provide it. I have become so dependent on Delta’s in-flight Internet service that I feel lost if I take a flight with an airline that doesn’t have its fleet fitted with Wi-Fi in nearly every plane.

4. Better Content Formatting

Having more commercial content options on mobile devices is great, but a key reason that more content is being consumed on mobile devices is that publishers and producers are formatting that content with mobile devices and smartphones in mind.

The success of apps like Flipboard show that content is easier to consume when properly formatted for the device. As we’ve discussed at length, having a mobile-friendly website is quickly becoming a necessity for businesses and publishers large and small.

Consumption in the context of audio and video is on the rise, but the success of services like Instapaper and Readability proves that textual media is also ripe for consumption on mobile devices.

5. Social Networking Integration

An exciting mobile app trend that has emerged over the last six months is the rise of entertainment checkin services. Apps like Philo, Miso and GetGlue let users check in to content they are consuming on their mobile devices. That content might not necessarily be consumed on a mobile device, but these apps offer a great avenue for content discovery.

A growing number of applications also allow users to share content via Twitter,Facebook, Tumblr and Instagram. The advantage of these sharing tools is that users checking their Twitter feeds on a phone or tablet can find and save links to read later or videos to watch as they scan through their social networks.

How Much Mobile Content Do You Consume?

How much mobile content do you consume on your smartphone or tablet? What types of content do you most frequently access? Let us know in the comments.

Series Supported by Mygazines

This series is supported by Mygazines, an interactive marketing solution that lets you enhance, distribute and track your content on any web enabled device, including desktop, iPad, iPhone, Blackberry and Android phones. Looks like an app, works on any browser. Learn more.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, webphotographeer.

Posted via email from Local Andy

LA Times Magazine on Norm MacDonald Show on Kobe Bryant's Homophobic Slur

2011-04-20T23:04:00.001-05:00

via gotchamediablog.com

Quite a mention on Norm's SportsShow for LA Times Magazine.

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Untitled

2011-04-18T08:57:00.001-05:00

Mobile Web Impacts Shopping Significantly

According to a new study from Performics, Mobile Search Insights, conducted by ROI Research, found that 57% of respondents use the mobile Web more than once/day, with 77% using mobile search more than five times in the last month.

Daina Middleton, CEO of Performics, says "... mobile paid search has surged as a percentage age of overall paid search spending for our clients, particularly over the last 15 months... "

Satisfaction with and adoption of mobile search rang true throughout the study:

75% said mobile search makes their lives easier
63% said access to mobile search has changed the way they gather information
32% said they use mobile search more than search engines on their computers

Use of mobile search at home topped the list with 81% reporting evening use, 80% reporting weekend use and 59% reporting use before work. Another 61% reported using mobile searchat work. Respondents also revealed dual screen multi-tasking, reporting at least occasional use of mobile search while watching TV (66%) or using the computer (45%).

People reported significant use while:

Commuting [47%]
Attending social events [56%]
Running errands [74%]

Running errands often includes shopping and making mobile purchases. In addition to the 49% who have made a mobile purchase in the last six months, the rules have changed when it comes to brand interaction using mobile search:

84% look for local retailer information (phone, address, hours)
82% find online retailers
73% find a specific manufacturer or product Website
71% learn about a product or service after seeing an ad
68% find the best price for a product or service
63% search before purchasing offline in a store or from a catalog

The study examines differences in mobile search adoption and use across gender and age groups, and across 12 top product categories, including apparel, appliances, automotive, CPG, electronics, financial services, travel and more.

To request a complimentary copy of the 2011 Mobile Search Insights Study's key findings,please visit Performics here.

Posted via email from Local Andy

Untitled

2011-03-28T23:23:00.001-05:00

Mobile Searchers Even Search At Home
Jack Loechner
According to the Performics 2011 Mobile Search Insights Study, conducted by ROI Research, focusing on people who use the mobile Web at least weekly, 57% use the mobile Web more than once/day, with 77% using mobile search more than five times in the last month.
Overwhelmingly, satisfaction and adoption of mobile search holds true throughout the study:

75% said mobile search makes their lives easier
63% said access to mobile search has changed the way they gather information
32% said they use mobile search more than search engines on their computers

81% of respondents reported evening use of mobile search at home, 80% reported weekend use, and 59% reported use before work. Another 61% reported using mobile search at work. 66% of respondents also reported at least occasional use of mobile search while watching TV, with 45% using the computer while mobile searching.

Additional significant mobile search usage included:

47% while commuting
56% while attending social events
74% while running errands

Daina Middleton, CEO of Performics, notes that "... this data proves that growing smart phone adoption is permeating all aspects of everyday life..."

In addition to the 49% who have made a mobile purchase in the last six months:

84% look for local retailer information (phone, address, hours)
82% find online retailers
73% find a specific manufacturer or product Website
71% learn about a product or service after seeing an ad
68% find the best price for a product or service
63% search before purchasing offline in a store or from a catalog

The study also explores differences in mobile search adoption and use across 12 top product categories, including apparel, appliances, automotive, CPG, electronics, financial services, travel and more.

For additional information and access to a complimentary copy of the 2011 Mobile Search Insights Study's key findings, please visit here.

Click to read this article on the MediaPostPublications.com website.

Posted via email from Local Andy

Untitled

2011-03-28T23:22:00.001-05:00

Mobile Touted As Major Revenue Driver
Laurie Sullivan
Advertisers will spend 17.8% of online ad budgets for local this year -- up from 14.9%, or $13.5 billion, according to a report by Borrell Associates. The Benchmarking Local Online Media: 2010 Revenue Survey points to mobile as the catalyst driving growth.
While local advertising reached $90.4 billion across all media in 2010, mobile will drive local advertising through 2015. Borrell estimates that within five years, two-thirds of the $24 billion in local online advertising -- up from $18 billion in 2012 -- will arrive on mobile devices such as tablets, smartphones, and GPS-enabled laptops.
Pure-play Internet companies that offer the best technologies are partnering with legacy media companies with the best local sales forces and promotional strength. Companies like Yahoo, Google, Local.com, Groupon, Zillow, Monster and others find it more productive and lucrative to work with legacy media companies than to compete.
In 44 of more than 200 markets Borrell tracks, Groupon or Autotrader. com generate more revenue than the largest local newspaper, TV or radio station online operation in that market, according to the study.
This year, about two dozen of Groupon's local offices will generate more than $10 million each. Craigslist brought in about $20 million from its New York location, and about $1.6 million each in Phoenix and Houston. Autotrader.com brings in more than $10 million per site in more than two dozen cities.
The study, which analyzes 4,588 U.S. and Canada online operations and advertising projections in 2011, suggests that market share held by pure-play Internet companies has stopped growing. While they held the lion's share of local online ad dollars from zero to 48% between 2000 and 2008, growth for them slowed. The biggest have been forced to form partnerships with local newspapers, TV, radio and directories.
AT&T YP.com, Autotrader.com, Groupon, CareerBuilder.com, YP.com in Canada, and Monster.com derive content from their own advertisers. Autotrader.com and Groupon expect to see their respective revenue in the U.S. exceed $1 billion this year. The remainder in the top five should see revenue between $400 million and $475 million.
AT&T experienced a 125% increase in mobile searches across the YP Local Ad Network in 2010, according to AT&T Interactive Analytics. The division also estimates YP.com attracts over 30 million monthly online unique visitors.
The report points to AT&T's YP.com as an example of a Yellow Page company making a quick adoption, and benchmarks a variety of traditional platforms from newspaper to television to radio.

Click to read this article on the MediaPostPublications.com website.

Posted via email from Local Andy

Microsoft Mobile Market Infographic

2011-03-23T19:49:00.001-05:00

Mobile By The Numbers [via Mashable]

Wednesday, March 23, 2011 at 04:41 PM | Sarah Kessler

Mobile is a rapidly developing sector. According to some projections, mobile internet usage will overtake desktop usage before 2015. In preparation, companies are developing new mobile commerce platforms, strategies, and marketing efforts.

Microsoft Tag recently attempted to sum up this constantly changing space with a single infographic.

Here’s the summary: The mobile market is large; local searches, games, and YouTube are all doing well on Mobile; and socializing is the most prominent use of the mobile Internet. See the full infographic below.

More About: microsoft tag, Mobile 2.0, stats

For more Mobile coverage:

Follow Mashable Mobile on Twitter
Become a Fan on Facebook
Subscribe to the Mobile channel
Download our free apps for Android, Mac, iPhone and iPad

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Los Angeles Times Reaches Second Most Readers - Poynter.org

2011-03-22T18:14:00.001-05:00

New ranking combines print-digital reach of metro papers, reveals surprising winners

by Rick Edmonds Published Mar. 22, 2011 12:30 pm Updated Mar. 22, 2011 12:33 pm

Which American newspaper reaches the most readers in its market if print and online audiences are combined?

That seems a fundamental question in an era of hybrid print/digital business models. But in preparing the annual State of the News Media report released last Monday, my colleagues at the Project for Excellence in Journalism and I could not find a ready answer.

At our request, Scarborough Research came up quickly with a Top 20 ranking, shown in the chart below.

There is one important qualifier. Scarborough’s methodology measures local markets only. So The Wall Street Journal and USA Today are excluded entirely, and the extensive national audience for The New York Times’ and Washington Post’s websites does not figure in the calculation.

That said, the winner, somewhat to my surprise, is the New York Daily News at 4,562,458. That is just 70,000 more than the second-place Los Angeles Times and about 450,000 more than The New York Times in its own metro market.

Find the full story here: http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/business-news/the-biz-blog/123040/new-ranking-combines-print-digital-reach-of-metro-papers-revealing-surprising-winners/#

Posted via email from Local Andy

MMA Releases New Version of U.S. Consumer Best Practices

2011-03-22T08:13:00.001-05:00

MMA Releases New Version of U.S. Consumer Best Practices for Cross-Carrier Mobile Content Services
Version 6.0 guidelines provide the industry-standard reference for the mobile marketing ecosystem, including the four largest U.S. carriers

Orlando, CTIA Wireless 2011 – March 22, 2011 – The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) (www.mmaglobal.com) today released the latest version of itsU.S. Consumer Best Practices (CBP) Guidelines for Cross-Carrier Mobile Content Services. Updated twice annually, the guidelines are the cross-carrier industry standard for mobile content services such as text messaging (SMS), multimedia messaging (MMS), common short code programs and Interactive Voice Response (IVR).

Produced by the MMA’s CBP Committee, the 165-page version 6.0 guidelines provide measures of acceptable and unacceptable practices for all players in the U.S. mobile marketplace. The guidelines also serve as the benchmarks for the four largest U.S. wireless service providers – Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile USA. This makes it possible for brands, agencies and marketers to implement one campaign across all carriers.

The major updates and additions in version 6.0 include:

Cross-carrier standards separated into standalone sections by billing type, specifically standard rate and premium SMS, in order to make the document easier to use.
New standard-rate guidelines, which extend the automatic opt-out period due to inactivity from six to 18 months and the addition of terms on how to migrate an opt-in from one code to another.
Updates to the Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile USA mobile marketing guidelines and codes of conduct known as carrier playbooks.

"The MMA Consumer Best Practices Guidelines is the industry-standard and reference guide for all constituents of the mobile marketing ecosystem to access definitive answers for ensuring consistency across campaigns and protecting the consumer experience,” said Michael Becker, managing director of North America for the MMA. “Through regular updates, the guidelines are designed to anticipate and address changing industry needs and opportunities."

The new guidelines take effect April 1 and are available for download immediately at www.mmaglobal.com/bestpractices.pdf.

The MMA will host a webinar on April 5, 2011 to review the changes in the CBP and to answer industry questions. Participants include:

Michael Becker, Managing Director of North America, MMA
Leo Scullin, Industry Initiatives, MMA
Allison Billings, Mobile Accord and MMA CBP Committee Co-Chair
Alykhan Govani, Payfone and MMA CBP Committee Co-Chair
Kristen McMullen, 4INFO

At the beginning of each year, the MMA holds an industry forum to solicit feedback about the CBP guidelines from representatives of the mobile marketing ecosystem. In January 2011, more than 200 individuals, representing over 120 companies, were in attendance. The MMA CBP committee is comprised of representatives from the following companies that participated in developing the new guidelines:

3C Interactive
4INFO, Inc.
AT&T Mobility
BANGO
Brightkite
Buongiorno
Cellfish Media LLC
Distributive Networks
FOX Mobile Entertainment
Lavalife Mobile

mBlox, Inc.
Mobile Messenger
Motricity
Neustar, Inc.
OpenMarket
Payfone
Publicis NA
Snackable Media
Sprint-Nextel
Sybase, Inc.

Telcordia Technologies, Inc.
Telescope, Inc.
Thumbplay Inc.
T-Mobile USA
Velti
VeriSign, Inc.
Verizon Wireless
Virgin Mobile USA
Wells Fargo Bank

About the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA)

The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) is the premier global non-profit trade association representing all players in the mobile marketing value chain. With more than 700 member companies, the MMA is an action-oriented organization with global focus, regional actions and local relevance. The MMA’s primary focus is to establish mobile as an indispensable part of the marketing mix. The MMA works to promote, educate measure, guide and protect the mobile marketing industry worldwide. The MMA’s global headquarters are located in the United States and it has regional chapters including North America (NA), Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), Latin America (LATAM) and Asia Pacific (APAC) branches. For more information, please visit www.mmaglobal.com.

For More Information:

Valerie Christopherson
Global Results Comm. (GRC)
P: +1 949 608 0276
E: mma@globalresultspr.com

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Mobile Now A Third of AT&T Local Search

2011-03-10T11:59:00.001-06:00

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Jason E. Klein: Print newspapers have a place in a tablet-heavy future

2011-02-10T17:13:00.001-06:00

By Jason E. Klein

February 10, 2011, 12:00 pm

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Editor’s Note: In the increasingly competitive world of journalism, it’s easy to start declaring winners and losers. The reality will likely be somewhere in between; just as television didn’t kill radio, there’ll be room for lots of different kinds of news outlets in the Internet age.

So today, we’re going to feature two pieces by people whose medium of choice some have recently forecast to come up short: print newspapers (facing threats from tablets) and homegrown local news sites (facing threats from national networks).

Here, Jason E. Klein — president and CEO of the Newspaper National Network — argues that tablets aren’t going to sweep away the print newspaper business any time soon. NNN describes itself as the “primary nationwide sales and marketing network for newspapers, both print and digital” and counts nearly all American newspaper companies as shareholders.

In 1979, an English new wave band called The Buggles hit No. 1 on the singles chart in 16 different countries with its debut single “Video Killed the Radio Star.” Two years later, it was the first music video to be shown on the new network MTV just after midnight on August 1, 1981. After almost thirty years have passed, The Buggles are largely forgotten, and radio is still around.

The new rage is tablets, and many believe tablets mean the death of print, and especially newspapers. Not in 30 years, but very soon. Forrester CEO George Colony recently told a gathering of media leaders that tablets were “the nexus of media” and would overtake e-readers, and ultimately the web. Wow!

Even the most hard-core newspaper junkies envision a world when tablets replace print, but they see that world far off. Maybe thirty years or so, maybe a hundred, give or take. So George and the newspaper junkies see a similar fate — it’s just a question of timing. I’m not sure when George thinks the last tree will go down for newspaper pulp, but I’d guess that he thinks the tipping point is soon, in the next two to four years. Maybe he’ll read this and weigh in.

Let me define what I mean by tipping point. There are still almost 1,400 daily print U.S. newspapers. While circulation and revenue has contracted, very few print newspapers have gone out of business. Since 1980, the number of print newspapers has declined at a fairly steady rate of about one percent per year — far fewer than the number of magazines to fold over that time. At the moment, newspaper companies are coping with the changes to their business. To me, the tipping point is when print newspapers are shutting at a rapid clip and the number of papers drops by half from today. When will the tipping point be?

The most predictable underlying trend is generational. Print readers are dying off, and younger adults read print at half the rate of older adults. But people are living longer, and 60 is the new 50. If the aging of the population is the dominant driver of the demise of print, you can model the numbers to show that print will be around for 30 years, or 50, or more, and George will be wrong.

But print junkies are changing their habits, even if their anti-aging creams, whole grains, and yoga are halting the ageing process. If the tipping point is at hand, as George seems to believe, it will be driven by the conversion of print junkies to tablets and not by Gen Y.

Tablets — which right now really mean just the iPad — are a delightful way to read newspapers. Ask most anyone who is not a luddite, has an interest in current events, and is a regular iPad user and you’ll get the same response. I am in that camp; I even hugged my iPad last week, once. However, there are still many print junkies who see the advantages of print newspapers, and relish their time with newspapers spread out in front of them, a cup of coffee at their side, and a smile on their face. I am in that camp too. From a usage standpoint, each fills a need, and the formats each have reason to coexist. I am a happy camper in both worlds. Even in a pre-tablet world, paid print newspaper circulation is over 40 million at the same time as 100 million people can and do read the same newspaper content on the web — for free.

Keep in mind that the forecast for tablet penetration is explosive, even more so than expectations for MTV in 1981. Tablet prices will come down, and people will have tablets in different rooms, in different colors and flavors. Corning makes the glass for tablets (now that’s a business!) and recently forecast 180 million tablet sales by 2014. With all those tablets around, it’s reasonable to expect that millions of print junkies will hug their iPads and use their newspaper apps. This means opportunities for newspaper publishers for new advertising and subscription revenues. Unfortunately for publishers, newspaper content engines depend on the economics of print since digital dimes don’t replace print dollars.

Will the print junkies jump ship as tablets multiply like rabbits? Is it a foregone conclusion that the tipping point of 700 closed newspapers follows right after Corning sells 180 million sheets of glass?

I don’t think it has to be. Just as radio has found its niche, print has its place as well. As Clay Shirky notes in his recent book, citing research by Clay Christensen and Gerald Berstell, you need to ask: What job are customers hiring your product to do? Print fills a different need; the experience of handling and reading a print newspaper provides an intellectual and leisure experience that offers an alternative to the hours spent on digital devices. With its broadsheet format, print is an ideal vehicle for both scanning and in-depth reading, and reading a newspaper from front-to-back is a complete experience a tablet environment finds hard to duplicate. Our research with dual print/digital newspaper consumers also suggests that consumers still trust print more than digital. While the tablet has invaded print’s turf, it’s not filling all the needs that print does.

How newspapers are marketed will make an enormous difference. It will control (a) the rate at which print junkies adopt the tablet format of newspapers and (b) the rate print at which junkies abandon print. The net of those rates will determine if the tipping point is imminent or a generation away.

Newspaper publishers seem to be headed to a paid model for tablet newspapers. Publishers realize that if tablet newspapers are free, their adoption rate by print junkies is constrained only by tablet sales, which will go through the roof. If tablet newspapers are free, and print newspapers cost $30-40 per month and up, why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free? As the music industry learned, it’s very difficult to compete with free. Nonetheless, some publishers are planning for free tablet newspapers, banking that advertisers’ current infatuation with tablet ads — and premium pricing — continues, and hoping that the print junkies don’t notice.

Most newspaper marketers are sweating the details. To bundle or not to bundle? Pursue a clever mix of free and paid? Extract a premium price at first from early adopters, then lower — or price low at first to encourage adoption, then raise? Vary price by geography, or usage, or time of day, or news cycle? Some publishers favor a bundled pricing plan: one price for access across all formats. Apple is not making the choices any easier as it looks to embed the App Store in all transactions.

This entry was written by Jason E. Klein, posted on February 10, 2011 at 12:00 pm, and tagged App Store, Buggles, Clay Christensen, Corning, Forrester Research, George Colony, Gerald Berstell, iPad, MTV, Newspaper National Network, newspapers, print, radio, replacement media, tablets. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Post a comment or leave a trackback.

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Vogel to represent Tribune on MMA Board

2011-02-07T10:04:00.001-06:00

Tribune Company Joins MMA as Premium Member

Membership Emphasizes the Multimedia Company's Leadership Role in Mobile Marketing Industry

CHICAGO

, LONDON, LOS ANGELES, NEW YORK, SINGAPORE and SAO PAULO, Feb. 7, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- The MMA (Mobile Marketing Association) and Tribune Company(www.tribune.com), one of the United States' leading media companies operating businesses in broadcasting, publishing, and digital media, today announced the company has joined the MMA as a Premium Member. Launched in November 2009, MMA's Premium Membership is the highest-tier membership for companies wishing to establish an advanced global leadership position across the Mobile Marketing Industry. MMA Premium Members currently include Alcatel-Lucent, Microsoft Advertising and The Coca-Cola Company.

As a Premium Member, Tribune Company Co-President and Los Angeles Times Publisher and CEO Eddy Hartenstein will be appointed as an honorary member to the MMA Global Board. The MMA also announced today the creation of its new Mobile Publishing Committee, and the appointment of Tribune Company as its chair. The committee is open to all MMA members. Initial goals include:

Gaining a better understanding of market reaction and consumer engagement and interaction with content across a variety of mobile platforms;
Exploring the development of unique mobile advertising models;
Helping advance and define the future of publishing on mobile platforms while effecting genuine change.

"We are thrilled to welcome Tribune Company as a Premium Member of the MMA," said Greg Stuart, MMA CEO. "Tribune's commitment to helping shape the future of the mobile channel will benefit the entire ecosystem and we look forward to their leadership both at the Board and Committee levels."

"The Tribune Company is deeply committed to determining how best to harness the possibilities the mobile media industry offers," said Hartenstein. "Joining the MMA ensures we can collaboratively advance development of mobile technology, business models, emerging content distribution channels and industry standards, with a keen eye on raising the awareness for and value of mobile marketing."

The Premium Membership tier brings together "market-making" companies with the scale, scope, commitment and resources to effect genuine change benefiting the worldwide mobile marketing industry. These companies provide leadership by accelerating innovation, removing critical industry roadblocks and expanding industry awareness regarding the benefits of mobile marketing. Premium Members commit themselves to a long term concerted and collaborative effort through the MMA to help build the industry.

MMA also announced that Andy Vogel, Los Angeles Times Vice President of Emerging Media, will represent the Tribune Company on the MMA North American Board.

About Tribune Company

Tribune is one of the country's leading multimedia companies, operating businesses in publishing, interactive and broadcasting. In publishing, Tribune's leading daily newspapers include the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, The Baltimore Sun, Sun Sentinel (South Florida), Orlando Sentinel, Hartford Courant, The Morning Call and Daily Press. The company's broadcasting group operates 23 television stations, WGN America on national cable and Chicago's WGN-AM. Popular news and information websites complement Tribune's print and broadcast properties and extend the company's nationwide audience.

About the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA)

The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) is the premier global non-profit trade association representing all players in the mobile marketing value chain. With more than 700 member companies, the MMA is an action-oriented organization with global focus, regional actions and local relevance. The MMA's primary focus is to establish mobile as an indispensable part of the marketing mix. The MMA works to promote, educate, measure, guide and protect the mobile marketing industry worldwide. The MMA's global headquarters are located in the United States and it has regional chapters including North America (NA), Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), Latin America (LATAM) and Asia Pacific (APAC) branches. For more information, please visit www.mmaglobal.com.

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

Valerie Christopherson/Evan Tamura
MMA PR/Global Results Comm. (GRC)
P:+1 949 608 0276
E: mma@globalresultspr.com

Gary Weitman
Tribune Company SVP/Corporate Relations
P: +1 312/222-3394
E: gweitman@tribune.com

SOURCE MMA

Gannett’s Dubow: Doubling Down On Local And Mobile Gannett

2011-02-01T09:23:00.001-06:00

(NYSE: GCI) CEO Craig Dubow began the company’s largely positive Q4 earnings results by highlighting the local digital moves on the hyperlocal and marketing fronts and offered a lot of credit to its partners in display for newspapers and TV (Yahoo) and hyperlocal (DataSphere). Although not anywhere near the coverage of AOL’s Patch, which has over 750 sites now, Gannett has 264 hyperlocal sites in 10 markets. In addition to building up its hyperlocal offerings, mobile is the other big bet Gannett is training its strategy on this year.

In January, Gannett had 7.3 million app downloads. Apple’s iPhone and iPad comprised 70 percent of the Gannett mobile downloads so far, but Google’s Android is catching up, as it accounted for half of the downloads Gannett recorded this past month. Mobile pageviews were up 267 percent. “We’re seeing signs for an emerging ad market for both national and local across mobile devices,” Dubow said. The company plans to expand its mobile development platform across the rest of its community papers this year— so far, flagship paper USA Today launched its new mobile platform in December. The plan outlined by Dubow calls for new mobile 100 sites for all local U.S. news properties that will support mobile video to be rolled out this year. During the Q&A, Dubow was asked about the company’s thinking about a subscription offering around its news apps. For example, when Gannett launched the iPad app for USAT last April, the company had eventually planned to move it to a subscription format. But as the ad market came back, especially in digital, the company decided to hold off on charging users for access. In his answer today, nothing much has changed, as Dubow didn’t close the door on eventually charging, he also seemed to say that nothing was in the works in terms of any mobile paywalls. That said, the company is continuing to experiment in paywalls for its three community papers—online readers are charged $9.95 per month for full access to The Tallahassee Democrat, The Greenville News, and The Spectrum. In addition, subscription-based news curator Ongo had its full launch last week with backing and content from Gannett, the NYTCo (NYSE: NYT) and the Washington Post (NYSE: WPO) Co. – PaidContent.org

Posted via email from Local Andy

AdWeek and Bloomberg on Paywalls

2011-01-31T11:29:00.001-06:00

Pay Walls Crumble

The New York Times effort presents a half measure

The New York Times is ignoring the deep flaws in its online business model, say industry observers, blowing a

chance to transform online publishing by instead opting to earn a few quick bucks.

Based on the details that have emerged, the Time’s meek metered approach will result in just 15 percent of readers

paying for content access—a figure unlikely to start a revolution.

And even though the company announced its plans a year ago, few publishers have joined the cause, outside of

several U.K.-based papers and Long Island’s Newsday—neither of which have generated meaningful numbers of

paying subscribers. It was quite a different story a year or so ago when getting paid for content was increasingly

seen as essential to the industry’s survival, given the overabundance of online ad inventory and the subsequently

low CPMs.

Yet industry observers say that the appetite for pay walls has diminished significantly as the economy has improved

and social media has become increasingly crucial in spreading Web content. “The thinking is you need to be part of

the online conversation,” said Benedict Evans, an analyst at the U.K.-based Enders Analysis. “You can’t give

readers a taste of content with a pay wall.”

Plus, a consensus seems to have emerged that most online readers just won’t pay. “It’s tough to add a pay wall.

The market is so competitive,” said Peer Schneider, svp of content publishing at News Corp.’s IGN Entertainment,

which began charging for access during the dot-com collapse, only to see traffic suffer. “There are very few sites

that do something that’s special enough to pay for. And if you charge for some content, you create the perception

that the site isn’t open to everyone.”

Thus companies like the Times and News Corp. have shifted their focus to the iPad—where the belief is consumers

are more open to paying for apps. Meanwhile on the Web, the hope is to pull in secondary revenue from high

consumption readers. “That’s smart,” said Jim Spanfeller, CEO of the Spanfeller Group. “The problem is you

penalize your biggest users.”

Echoing Spanfeller, Vivek Shah, CEO at Ziff Davis, said that publishers that get a few paying customers will only still

earn pennies on the majority of users. “Even in the offline world, revenue from consumers was never that material,”

he said. “This is still an advertising problem.” It’s one that the Times essentially is ignoring. “Print guys are trying to

take their circulation revenue and migrate it online,” said Matt Shanahan, svp, strategy, Scout Analytics. “The

challenge is they’ve got to fix their online advertising model, and the quality of online advertising is just not that

great.”

To change that equation, Joe Marchese, president of SocialVibe, which has executed several ad campaigns with

Zynga, is talking with several major newspaper and magazine companies about employing an ad credit system for

content—similar to the model for casual games. “When you set a price for content, and then advertisers provide it

free, it becomes much more palatable,” he said.

Others would argue that micropayments, rather than subscriptions, are still the way to go. WPP’s The Content

Project is said to be developing an electronic wallet that would allow users to access content on numerous sites in

small bites.

Some have even suggested that Facebook would be the ideal partner for the online news industry, given its ubiquity

and its increasingly popular Credits currency. “The question is, do you want to give them even more power?” asked

one publisher. - AdWeek

New York Times Fixes Paywall Flaws to Balance Free Versus Paid on the Web

New York Times Co. has been working to fix about 200 glitches in the technology for charging online readers of its

namesake newspaper, just weeks before the project is scheduled to debut, said a person familiar with the matter.

The company has already repaired more than 500 of the 700 glitches uncovered during tests of the paywall system,

said the person, who couldn’t be identified because the testing isn’t public. Among the issues still being addressed

are how the system will determine who is required to pay and the point at which various visitors hit the paywall.

Times Co.’s effort to turn online readers into paying subscribers is being watched by other newspaper companies

struggling with a decline in traditional print advertising. The New York-based company is spending $40 million to

$50 million on the project and has said it plans to debut it by March.

Developing the technology for paywalls is challenging because publishers are trying to strike the most profitable

balance between charging some online readers and letting others in free to generate advertising and attention.

Though Times Co. has said it will charge visitors after they’ve read a certain number of stories, for example, the

company plans to let people coming to the website from social networks such as Facebook Inc. view an unlimited

number of those stories for free.

Such visitors translate into ad revenue for Times Co. and allow the newspaper’s stories to remain central to the

global conversation, according to John Morton, a Silver Spring, Maryland-based newspaper consultant and analyst.

“The Times’ website gets a lot of visitors and they don’t want to drive those people away,” said Morton. “Everybody

is watching them to see how they do it.”

50 Million Visitors

Any problems with the paid website are “routine” for such projects and will be fixed in time for the introduction, said

Robert Christie, a Times Co. spokesman. “This is a massive, massive technical undertaking,” Christie said.

Times Co. is trying to extract more from its website as slumping print advertising and circulation revenue cut into

sales. The company’s revenue probably dropped to $2.4 billion last year for the fourth straight annual decline,

according to the average analyst estimate in a Bloomberg survey.

About 45 million unique visitors worldwide access the newspaper’s website each month, according to comScore

Inc., on computers, handheld devices and tablets such as Apple Inc.’s iPad. The company will charge readers less

than $20 a month for full access to the newspaper’s content on the Web, a person familiar with the matter told

Bloomberg last week. “We believe that enough people will pay, but we will not cut ourselves off from the rest,”

Arthur Sulzberger Jr., Times Co.’s chairman, said at a conference in Munich last week.

Multiple Options

The company’s paywall effort is particularly complex because it’s aimed at segmenting readers in several different

ways and charging them differently. There will be multiple payment tiers and options, said the person familiar with

the plans. The site’s technology will have to keep track of how many stories a visitor reads and then ask for payment

at some point.

The site will also have to let people who find story links on Facebook or Twitter read for free, which lifts the

newspaper’s profile if it helps a story on unemployment or child-rearing go viral. Times Co. will also give readers free

access to stories they find through search engines such as Google Inc., a practice that helps their draw in search

results.

Times Co.’s engineers are also trying to make sure the online technology automatically recognizes print subscribers,

who will get full access to the site at no additional charge.

“They should never, ever, see the paywall,” said Christie.

Philly.com

The effort is aimed at generating money from the paper’s most active online readers who aren’t print subscribers,

while keeping as large an audience as possible for digital advertising. “The Times has a large devoted readership, so

they are likely to do better with this than other newspapers,” Morton said.

Times Co. fell 28 cents, or 2.6 percent, to $10.53 at 4 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The

stock declined 21 percent last year.

Many newspapers are trying to strike the right balance between paid and free, according to Greg Osberg, chief

executive of Philadelphia Media Network, publisher of The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Philadelphia Daily News.

Challenging Proposition

Beginning next week, Philadelphia Media Network’s two newspapers will begin charging for access to their

respective websites. Content on Philly.com, a website also owned by Philadelphia Media, will remain free and

function as the main portal to the newspapers. When a visitor clicks a tab inside Philly.com to access either of the

company’s newspapers, the visitor will be required to pay. Asking for money for something that has been free is

challenging, Osberg said in an interview, because total visitor numbers to the websites could drop initially. “We may

have a short-term setback,” Osberg said. “It’s sort of a step back, to make a leap forward.”

Gannett Co., publisher of USA Today, has begun testing paid content at three of its 82 newspapers, according to

Bob Dickey, Gannett’s head of U.S. Community Publishing. At Gannett’s newspaper in Greenville, South Carolina,

readers have started paying $7.95 a year to access content devoted to Clemson University sports. Those

subscribers view 40 to 70 pages per visit, compared with 6 to 8 pages on Gannett’s free websites, according to a

presentation that Gannett’s Dickey made to investors in December.

Successful Models

Washington Post Co. is tracking the paywall experiments, though it has no plans to charge for its website at this

point. “We’re not going to be pioneers,” Donald Graham, the company’s chief executive officer, said in an interview

last month. “But we’ll be watching every one and if somebody knows a better way to operate a newspaper

business, we’ll be interested.”

Among those that have successfully implemented pay models are News Corp.’s The Wall Street Journal and Cooks

Illustrated, published by Boston-based America’s Test Kitchen, said Dominic Venuto, global managing director of

Posted via email from Local Andy

ILM:10: Local Content Economics ‘Not Like Demand Media’

2010-12-10T11:16:00.001-06:00

ILM:10: Local Content Economics ‘Not Like Demand Media’

Content farms and aggregators are a major part of the new, scaleable local ecosystem. But the rules of the road are different for local content than for general content, according to executives speaking at ILM:10 in Santa Clara.

MerchantCircle Local Content Studio GM Andy Halliday noted that Merchant Circle is pumping up its context with local content, and now has 120,000 pieces of local content from 15,0o00 contributors after just six months. “Local content has a long tail but there are fewer searches per item,” said Halliday. “It is not the same economics as non-geo topical content like Demand Media.

Halliday also noted that local is “the wild west frontier for getting content up on the Web. It needs to have ‘liveness’ or it’s just a placard. More possibilities open up with the advent of mobile with geo-tracking,” he adds.

Local.com VP for Octane 360 Adam Rioux echoed Halliday’s view, noting that Octane is custom building content that Local.com can sell targeted advertising around. He also noted that Local.com is driving much greater usage for the content by distributing t he content not only to Local.com, but to its partner network, publishers and to SMB profiles.

Perfect Market CEO Julie Schoenfeld said the company has been successfully focusing on working with publishers to monetize non-mainstream content that may have low usage at first but can be pumped up with contextual placement based on search algorithms. It is now working with 30 publishers.

“Think of every article you produce as a deposit in the vault that yields dividends over time,” said Schoenfeld. She advised the audience that with location based services becoming more prevalent, “great meta data, including local geo-targeted content about when or where it was written, is very important.”

Posted via email from Local Andy

Yahoo CEO: Don’t Judge Me Until 2012

2010-12-07T21:36:00.001-06:00

From Forbes.com

Dec. 7 2010 - 6:04 pm | By JEFF BERCOVICI

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

Carol Bartz has been CEO of Yahoo for almost two years now. That’s long enough for some people to declare her ineffective and call for her to be replaced. But to hear Bartz tell it, not only is it premature to demand her resignation now — it will still be premature 12 months from now.

In a keynote interview at the UBS Media and Communications Conference, Bartz noted that she has said from the start that an overhaul of Yahoo’s technology operations that she undertook upon arriving at the company is only now nearing completion. “We were very, very forthcoming with investors that the technology refresh would take two years,” she said. “It does take time to work under the hood. It’s nice to see the car going down the highway, but if you’re trying to change the tires at the same time, it’s a little precarious.”.

But shouldn’t that mean we can judge Bartz’s performance based on Yahoo’s results starting in the first quarter of 2011? No, she said, because of a deal cut last year under which Microsoft will power Yahoo searches in exchange for 12 percent of the revenues they generate. Trying to make year-over-year comparisons would therefore be misleading, said Bartz: “One year has full revenues, the other has minus 12 percent.”

But wait — Yahoo and Microsoft have said it will take months to complete the transfer of Yahoo’s search platforms to Microsoft. The whole thing won’t be completed until early 2012. That means that to give Bartz a completely fair shake, you’re going to have to hold off on making any final evaluations until, says, second-quarter 2013.

Whaddya say, Yahoo investors? Can you sit tight for another couple years?

http://blogs.forbes.com/jeffbercovici/2010/12/07/yahoo-ceo-dont-judge-me-until-2012/

Posted via email from Local Andy

Can you stop yourselves?

2010-12-04T14:44:00.001-06:00

Don't fall for it. Changing your photo to a cartoon won't stop child abuse. Volunteer or write a check or do anything except perpetuate another Facebook craze that gives people a false sense of doing something rather than encouraging them to actually do something.

Posted via email from Local Andy

Q and A with Jim Brady about TBD.com, hyperlocal and what’s next

2010-12-03T09:54:00.001-06:00

Q and A with Jim Brady about TBD.com, hyperlocal and what’s next

Posted in Journalism by sarahhartley on December 3, 2010

This is the full text of the email correspondence between myself and Jim Brady in Washington about his decision to quit from TBD.com. Extracts from this appear in today’s Media Guardian post by me which you can read here.

1. The inevitable first question. Your surprise resignation from TBD. Could you explain a little more about the ‘stylistic differences’ which prompted your decision to leave?

The press on this was largely correct. Robert Allbritton wanted to shift away from some of the stuff I thought was most innovative — geo-coding of content, heavy use of aggregation, heavy use of social media, etc. — and put more toward original reporting. I’m all for more original reporting, but not at the expense of the strategic elements that I felt were a large part of the reason we’d been successful. We could not come to an agreement on how to move forward. Robert is the boss, and he needs someone in that position who agrees with his strategy. I obviously didn’t. As for stylistic differences, I think what he meant when he said that was he wanted me to do things I didn’t agree with, and I wouldn’t do them. I guess you can say both sides had a stubborn belief in what they thought was right, and neither was the type to back down.

2. What was the most difficult thing about setting up TBD and how did you overcome it/them?

Well, it was probably getting the Channel 7 folks to understand and support what it is TBD was doing on the web, and to be truthful, I don’t know that we ever did while I was there. I think, on the web side, everything went pretty smoothly — beyond coming up with a name. But I think the issue any web site faces when it’s connected to an existing legacy brand is the steely desire of some on the legacy side to preserve their own way of doing things, and by extension, their own existence. That’s a difficult battle to fight, since the legacy folks are entrenched, better-known than new folks coming into an organization and — not insignificantly — still working for the parts of the business that generate more of the revenue. Frankly, it’s a battle I’m not interested in fighting anymore. I want to be somewhere where everyone is pulling the same direction, a direction set clearly and uncompromisingly by senior management. That wasn’t the case with TBD and Channel 7. The former NewsChannel 8 TV folks that we inherited were a joy to work with: they bought into the concept, were willing to try new things and brought a lot of positive energy to the effort.

3. Why do you dislike the term ‘hyperlocal’ and what’s a better term?

It’s just one of those terms that means different things to different people, and is thus meaningless. I also think it’s a bit cursed, as is “there’s no business model for hyperlocal,” etc. I guess I’m not sure we need a name that encompasses the broad range of local efforts going on around the world. Trying to name it wastes time we should be using to build it.

4. What’s your proudest moment from the project?

Coverage of the Discovery Channel hostage situation on Sept. 1. That was the day we used the partnership with the TV stations perfectly, used social media as a newsgathering tool, i.e. building photo galleries using photos uploaded on Twitter, communicating with people inside the Discovery building using FourSquare, being aggressive in updating the story every few minutes, etc. We got great press for how we covered that, and from that point on, I thought we were a breaking news source for a lot of Washington-area residents.

5. How do you see the news industry generally evolving over the next few years and will projects such as TBD have any role to play?

Sure, I think local is the next big thing, so sites like TBD definitely have a future — and a present. The upcoming mobile revolution will do more to help local sites than national, in my view. Location-based services — both on the editorial and business side — will become increasingly important. I also think you’ll see a shift in news organization structure, where there will be far fewer newsrooms of 100 or 200 people, but an explosion in newsrooms of 10 or 20. And I think those newsrooms will need to be more niche in order to have a viable business. So general-interest publications have some challenges ahead of them.

6. What did you want to achieve with TBD – audience, revenue, engagement? And how close is it to achieving those goals?

All of the above. I think what I was trying to do — and the great staff that’s there is still trying to do — is build a local news site that’s of the web, not just on it. That means having a real conversation with readers via social media and commenting. That means working collaboratively with the community by linking with them and, more importantly, working with them via the blog network we built. It means being aggressive in mobile, and producing a mobile site that take into account what information people want when they’re detached from a desktop or laptop. It means understanding that, in any major metro area, people only care about certain areas and you should try and get that information to them by using smart curation and geo-coding. By using curation, social media and excelling at breaking news, you can build engagement, and that eventually builds audience and revenue. Also, having geo-location features and mobile positions you nicely on the business side, especially for local sites.

7. What will you be doing next? i.e. where should well be looking for the next big shift?

Not sure yet. Going to do some consulting through the holidays, and start looking at some opportunities to start something then. Have some ideas, just need to flesh them out before pitching them. But definitely want to be in something that’s 100 percent digital the next time out. Maybe I’ll feel differently some day, but for now, not interested in evangelizing the web to anyone. In my view, if you still need to be convinced to pay attention to the web, you probably shouldn’t be in the job you’re in. But that’s the culture that legacy companies have set up: Hey, new guys, convince the old guys to get on board. Maybe that’s how it has to be, but I know I don’t want to do that anymore. Working with the TBD.com and TBD TV folks was as close as I’ve ever come to having a full allotment of open-minded, experimental folks all focused on launching something new, different and successful. It’s hard to get that close, and not want to take it all the way.Q

Posted via email from Local Andy

Movember

2010-11-22T22:50:00.001-06:00

Hi,

This Movember I’ve decided to donate my face to raising awareness about cancers that affect men. My commitment is the growth of a moustache for the entire month of Movember, which I know will generate conversation, controversy and laughter.

I’m doing this because:

· 1 in 2 men will be diagnosed with cancer in his lifetime

· 1 in 6 men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer during his lifetime

This is a cause that I feel passionately about and I’m asking you to support my efforts by making a donation to support the great work of the Prostate Cancer Foundation and LIVESTRONG. To help, you can either:

- Click this link http://us.movember.com/mospace/910754/ and donate online using your credit card or PayPal account
- Write a check payable to Movember, referencing my name or Registration Number 910754 and mailing it to: Movember, PO Box 2726, Venice, CA 90294-2726

The money raised will help make a tangible difference to the lives of others, through the world’s most promising prostate cancer research and LIVESTRONG’s programs that support young adults and their families battling and surviving cancer.

For more details on how the funds raised from previous campaigns have been used and the impact Movember is having please visit
http://us.movemberfoundation.com/research-and-programs/.

Thanks.

Posted via email from Local Andy

Meeker predicts $50 billion online ad market

2010-11-17T00:05:00.001-06:00

Meeker predicts $50 billion online ad market

The online ad segment is on track to reach $50 billion and mobile e-commerce could grow at a faster rate than e-tailing. That's according to Morgan Stanley analyst Mary Meeker, who was called the "Queen of the Net" during the late '90s dot-com boom and who has retooled her methods and messages for the Web 2.0 era. Meeker is scheduled to speak today at the annual Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. Bloomberg Businessweek

Posted via email from Local Andy

Old Navy Scares Up Halloween Intrigue

2010-10-30T11:55:00.001-05:00

Oct 28, 2010

- Adweek Staff

A bunch of TV stars -- Judy Greer, Jamie Pressley, Bailey Chase -- star in this long-form Old Navy promo by DumbDumb, the digital content company formed by Jason Bateman and Will Arnett.

The effort casts Pressley as "Biffany," who tries to sabotage the Halloween Party hopes of guileless Greer -- who in fact plays a character called "Hope" in the vignette. Chase portrays a hunky fireman.

It's all part of the retail giant's "Scream for Savings" campaign. The work was guided by creative direct Roger Camp and a team at Havas North America.

Old Navy spent more than $100 million in measured media through the first two-thirds of 2010; annual ad spending has topped $175 million in recent years, per Nielsen.

Posted via email from Local Andy

Mobile advertising to ring up $3.5bn this year

2010-10-30T11:40:00.001-05:00

Apple and Google drive mobile advertising growth

By Shelley Portet, Silicon.com, 28 October 2010 15:49

Mobile advertising will generate revenues of $3.5bn this year as big brands move from merely experimenting with mobile ads to spending significant money.

As media and consumer goods brands in particular try to increase their engagement with consumers via their mobile phones, this is creating momentum for the mobile advertising industry, which could be generating revenues of around $24bn within five years, the report from Informa Telecoms & Media has predicted.

Growth in the mobile advertising market over the past 12 months has been driven by Apple and Google's acquisitions of Quattro Wireless and AdMob respectively, according to the report author, Shailendra Pandey.

"The launch of Apple's iAd advertising platform is forcing rivals to speed up their own mobile advertising strategies. Google has responded by acquiring AdMob and has announced it is on track to generate US$1bn in revenues from mobile in 2010, a significant portion of which will be mobile advertising revenues. Google has also reported a 500 per cent growth in mobile search queries between 2008 and 2010," said Pandey in a statement.

Mobile advertising has moved away from an experimental phase and many brands are now spending significant sums on mobile campaigns on a regular basis, the research house said. Despite this trend, the next 12 to 18 months will see a period of consolidation in the mobile advertising market, it warned.

http://www.silicon.com/management/sales-and-marketing/2010/10/28/mobile-advertising-to-ring-up-35bn-this-year-39746553/

Posted via email from Local Andy

Facebook and Twitter say social is the new normal

2010-10-30T11:07:00.001-05:00

By Ros Krasny. http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE69R54120101029?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Reuters%2FInternetNews+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+Internet+News%29

BOSTON
| Fri Oct 29, 2010 1:32am EDT
(Reuters) - The social networking phenomenon has nowhere to go but up as computer use becomes more mobile, according to leading figures in the development of the popular sites Facebook and Twitter.
"Two to five years from now, the whole question of what other social networks you use will be moot, because it will all be social," Chris Hughes, co-founder of Facebook, said in Boston on Thursday.
"Social is becoming the frame, the filter to a lot of information," Hughes, 27, said during a panel discussion at the Charles Schwab "Impact 2010" investment conference.
Facebook has over 500 million active users, including more than 150 million who access the site through their mobile devices. The number of registered Twitter users is estimated at more than 165 million.
Both companies are privately held, and investors are on constant alert for any sign either will go public.
Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, said the expansion of social networking would closely track a rise in personal mobility as devices such as smart phones replace traditional computers.
"I would like to see a lot less people hunched over computers in their offices in five years," said Stone, 36.
Hughes said applications such as Facebook Connect would increasingly be knitted into the social networking fabric.
For example, Facebook Connect users going to The New York Times' website can now see which articles their friends are reading and recommending.
"With a few clicks you're having a social experience," Hughes said, adding that the functionality can be a way to cut through information overload that many struggle with.
"There is no better filter than people that you know and trust," he said.
Stone has 1.6 million followers for his tweets. He said he likes to follow to follow the Twitter feed of Sockington the Cat, a Waltham, Massachusetts, feline with a knack for clever repartee.
Twitter, said Stone, "is not going to be a triumph of technology -- it's going to be a triumph of humanity ... the growth potential is there from a positive change perspective, not just a business perspective."
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE69R54120101029?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Reuters%2FInternetNews+%28News+%2F+US+%2F+Internet+News%29
(Editing by Jerry Norton)
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What the Detroit Public Schools Can Teach Marketers - The Conversation - Harvard Business Review

2010-07-13T09:07:00.001-05:00

Last month we served as judges on the North America Grand Effies Judging Committee. For those of you who do not know the Effies, they are considered the top awards for effective marketing communications around the world. Several rounds of judging submissions in different marketing categories result in a list of finalists for the "Grand Effie" or the award for the most effective marketing across all categories. That's what we were tasked to judge, along with nine other senior marketers representing both the creative and business sides of the industry.

The winner was a surprising choice. It wasn't a multi-million dollar television campaign for a Fortune 50 company, nor was it a digital media program for some new-age service. Instead, the Grand Effie award was given to the Detroit Public Schools (DPS) for a very simple, and cost-efficient word-of-mouth program to encourage student enrollment. Here's what they did.

With enrollment declining 80,000 students in the past 10 years, the school system faced a $305 million dollar deficit, forcing the Governor and The Michigan Department of Education to close 29 schools in 2009. This caused a major public outcry and highlighted the lack of confidence that residents placed in the DPS.

Leo Burnett Detroit created the "I'm In" marketing campaign to drive awareness of the positive aspects of the Detroit Public Schools as well as to halt the decline in enrollment. The main idea of this campaign is that the Detroit Public Schools have amazing and surprising opportunities behind them. This idea was brought to life by the creation of 172 blue doors representing the 172 public schools in the district. The doors appeared at various community events and in a large installation at Hart Plaza in downtown Detroit. Teachers, parents, and students brought the positive message of DPS success to local neighborhoods and encouraged residents to make a commitment to their local school. This commitment took many shapes, including a yard sign that featured a blue door and the phrase "I'm In". Residents could now see which of their neighbors were sending their children to the public schools, encouraging others to join the movement. With only $250,000 in paid media, the "I'm In" program generated over $1.5 million in free press coverage built awareness of the success stories from the DPS. Local and national celebrities, including Bill Cosby, used their status to support the "I'm In" program.

In the end, student enrollment in Detroit actually rose 6,500 in 2010. As a result, an incremental $49 million of funding was generated for DPS, keeping the school system financially viable. The program provided a beacon of hope for Detroit and its public school system.

Here are five lessons we tookaway from the Detroit Public Schools campaign and the finalists at this year's Effies:

1. Cause marketing matters more than ever. We live in a difficult world. Through these difficult times we expect brands to do more for our communities. If they take the lead, we'll reward them. The Detroit Public Schools campaign and Ford's "Drive One 4 UR School" are perfect example of this. People are excited to rally around important causes and brands that engage authentically in this effort can benefit too. The critical factor is to find a cause that authentically relates to your brand's equity and culture.

2. Taking the right posture in an economic downturn can bring success. The economic downturn caused a lot of suffering, but it also created an opportunity for brands to say, "We understand what you're going through and we are going to do something different as a result." Programs that did well in 2010 were ones that understood the impact of the economic crisis and responded to it with the appropriate voice and tone. For example, Hyundai brought compassion and assurance to a new car purchase by offering to refund your money if you lost your job.

3. Advertising is dead, long live advertising. There's a meme in the world of business that consumers do not like advertising and even more broadly, that marketing communications does not work. If there's anything that the finalists and the winner showed is that there's a very direct line from successful marketing programs to an organization's bottom line. The Detroit Public Schools turned around a 10 year decline in enrollment with some paint and lumber. Hyundai was the only car company to grow while their other competitors declined by up to 40%.

4. Resonance, resonance resonance. We live in a cluttered media ecosystem. For a message to break through, it needs to resonate with customers. That's what Apple did with "There's an App For That" campaign, where different iPhone applications were matched with corresponding print publications. For example, the advertisement in Gourmet magazine only promoted food related applications. Simple but powerful. The Detroit Public Schools took their message to the streets, neighborhoods, and local events frequented by the residents of Detroit.

5. Marketing means creating movements. There is no doubt about it that the most effective marketing programs are the ones that rally people, encourage them to serve as social voices for the brands, and make them feel like they are part of something greater.

The Detroit Public Schools is a brilliant example of all that works in marketing in 2010. It had a simple and emotionally compelling idea. It had disruptive and brilliant creative executions. And it leveraged the power of personal persuasion to generate outstanding results. As judges, we had to compare the impact of a national effort like Hyundai "Assurance" with a local effort like DPS's "I'm In." In the end, we made our decision based on the magnitude of the challenge. Many of the finalists required people to change their minds or make major purchases during an economic downturn. The DPS "I'm In" campaign encouraged over 6,000 more people to put their most precious possession on the line — their child's future. That's great marketing.

Shiv Singh is the Head of Digital for PepsiCo Beverages and a regular blogger at Going Social Now. Peter Carter is the Director of Brand Building Integrated Communications-Americas at P&G. To review the work and read the case studies of the campaigns mentioned visit their page on the Effies' site.

via blogs.hbr.org

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L.A.Times: 5.4 earthquake hits Southern California

2010-07-07T20:02:00.001-05:00

From the Los Angeles Times:
5.4 earthquake hits Southern California
A 5.9 earthquake rocked Southern California this afternoon and was felt across a wide area.
The full story can be viewed at: http://www.latimes.com/la-0708-quake-m,0,4085478.story?track=latiphoneapp
Get the Los Angeles Times iPhone app from iTunes: http://www.itunes.com/apps/latimes

A 5.9 earthquake rocked Southern California this afternoon and was felt across a wide area.

According to U.S. Geological Survey, the quake hit at 4:53 p.m. near Borrego Springs, about 28 miles south of Palm Springs. It was followed by several small aftershocks.

There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries, but some residents said the quake caused glass to break.

Its the latest in a string of powerful of quakes to hit Southern California in the last few months, ever since a 7.2 quake hit the Mexicali area on Easter Sunday.

[Updated at 5:07 p.m.: The USGS downgraded the quake to 5.4 magnitude. The Los Angeles Fire Department said it has not received reports of serious damage or injuries. Residents in Riverside County told The Times they felt a sharp jolt but have not witnessed major damage.

Riverside Police Chief Sergio Diaz said that he experienced strong jolts at police headquarters but that there was no initial report of serious damage.

“So far everything is OK,” Diaz said. “To me it felt like two separate events. The first felt like a foreshock; the second one was stronger.”

“It was scary,” said Celina Vega of Borrego Springs. “I can hardly talk because I’m still shaking. “

She said the earthquake hit as she was getting ready to go to work at Kendall’s Cafe. “I screamed. Glasses fell at my house. We’re not used to earthquakes here in Borrego Springs. When we felt it, oh my gosh, scary!”]

[Updated at 5:26 p.m.: The quake swayed skyscrapers in downtown San Diego, but there were no reports of damage there.

A rock slide was reported on a road outside Palm Springs near the aerial tramway, accord to the Desert Sun. But someone at the tramway restaurant told The Times there was no major damage.

Mary Jane Laws, an assistant manager at Center Market Grocery Store in Borrego Springs, said a lot of products fell off the shelves but there was no major damage.

“I’ve been here 30 years, and it was bigger than any of us have experienced,” Laws said. “It shook up and down really hard. That was the big jolt, then back and forth. It feels like forever, but it was probably only 10 to 15 seconds.”

There weren’t many customers in the store when the quake hit, but Laws said, “The employees, they bolted. The cash registers are right by the door.”

The residents are accustomed to an occasional temblor, but Laws said, “It was a little bit more than we’re comfortable.” At least for the evening, it will give the sleepy town something to chat about in the off season. “This place is going to be just atwitter,” Laws said. “We’ll be in the coffee shop, talking about all kinds of things." ]

-- Andrew Blankstein, Rong-Gong Lin II and Kimi Yoshino

Map: U.S. Geological

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Looking Up | American Journalism Review

2010-06-05T11:58:00.000-05:00

At the Los Angeles Times, Vogel thinks the iPhone has proven that some people will pay for content, which is promising. However, "I think a lot of people view [the tablet] as a destination, and it's not." Looking Up American Journalism Review

5 Creative Uses for Crowdsourcing

2010-05-29T21:11:00.001-05:00

About 2 days ago

Sarah Kessler 9

5 Creative Uses for Crowdsourcing

When Jeff Howe coined the term “crowdsourcing” in a 2006Wired article his examples were mainly “labor markets for specialized talents,” like iStockphoto, iFilm, and InnoCentive. But the business model of outsourcing to the crowd has grown (as has Howe’s article — he published a book on the topic in 2008).

As open-source software developers learned long ago, asking a pool of people to create something can be faster, cheaper, and more accurate than putting a project in the hands of individuals. These five start-ups are doing just that by using crowdsourcing in creative ways.

http://mashable.com/2010/05/26/creative-crowdsourcing/

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Reuters readers spend 3 times as long on the iPad app than on Reuters.com

2010-05-28T18:58:00.001-05:00

via editorsweblog.org

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Times Media Group promotes entertainment ad execs

2010-05-27T22:33:00.001-05:00

From the Los Angeles Times

May 27, 2010 | 5:52 pm

The Los Angeles Times Media Group announced Thursday that it restructured the entertainment division of its advertising department.

The company announced the promotion of three sales executives to head up its film and media and live-entertainment groups: Andy Vogel, appointed to the new position of vice president of emerging media; Francie Berns, promoted to vice president of film advertising; and Stacey Farish, vice president of media and live entertainment.

All three will report to John T. O'Loughlin, executive vice president of advertising and chief revenue officer of the Times Media Group.

"It is crucial that our team, our products and services continue to evolve to create and provide new value to our clients," O'Loughlin said. "Francie and Stacey are both innovators and experts in their fields who will bring the tenacity and vision necessary to aggressively drive bold solutions. Likewise, Andy's rich background in new ventures and digital initiatives makes him uniquely qualified to lead new and nontraditional product sales efforts for our entire media group."

Vogel also will work with digitally focused advertising agencies and on expanding the Times Media Group's portfolio of tech-driven products. He joined The Times in 2009. Before that, he had been sales director at InfoSoft Group and vice president of advertising and online products at Shepherd Express and ExpressMilwaukee.com.

Berns will oversee the expansion of film-related sales efforts, including a series of editorial and event-related entertainment products such as new blogs on latimes.com and the upcoming Hero Complex Film Festival. She has been director of movie advertising at The Times since 2006, during which time she was the architect of creative advertising campaigns in The Times for Walt Disney Co.'s films "Alice in Wonderland" and "Prince of Persia." Berns came to The Times from an advertising agency in Chicago.

Farish will lead a broader program to increase sales, particularly in the cable and satellite TV categories, and will oversee sales teams on both coasts. Before her current assignment, Farish was The Times' senior director of entertainment advertising sales, where she created HBO's front-page "True Blood" Season 2-opener ad; she spearheaded an innovative campaign for the TV listings that appear in the Calendar section and the Envelope Primetime Emmy Screening Series. She previously was senior director, Western region, at ABC Radio Networks.

As part of the realignment, Lynne Segall, vice president, entertainment and luxury, is leaving the company to pursue other opportunities.

The Business section has the full story on The Times' entertainment advertising appointments

-- Times staff writer

Photo: (Left to right): Farish, Vogel, and Berns

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Three Birds, a Billionaire and the Hyper-Local Future of News | The New York Observer

2010-05-19T16:44:00.001-05:00

Mr. Ricketts, who owns a movie business called the American Film Company, was in France for the Cannes Film Festival and unavailable for an interview. In an email exchange with The Observer, he explained that he started DNAinfo here-and not in, say, Jackson Hole-because he loved Manhattan neighborhoods and believed, in general, that there was an "under-served market for concise, factual, original local content."

John Sutter, the longtime publisher of Community Media, a network of local newspapers and Web sites in Manhattan, including Downtown Express, The Villager and Chelsea Now, disagrees. "The easiest thing to do in publishing is to spend money," he said. "The hardest thing to do is to earn money to pay for your operations."

Mr. Sutter said that in recent months, he has lost a number of talented employees to DNAinfo and (what he believes to be) their higher salaries. "A charismatic benefactor has opened his wallet and attracted serious journalistic talent," he said. "We'll see if this exercise can transcend into a media property capable of supporting its journalism. When they do develop a revenue model in cyberspace, they're going to find that it is a very crowded space. They're going to confront some of the people that they think they're moving ahead of, like us-traditional newspapers with very viable Web sites."

Currently, the only advertisement running on DNAinfo.com is for High Plains Bison ("Buy 4 Bison NY Strips, Get 2 Extra Steaks" $69.99, free shipping)-a company owned by Mr. Ricketts' family.

MS. DE KRETSER said that DNAinfo recently expanded its sales team, and Mr. Ricketts is keen on profitability. "He comes to New York all the time," said Ms. de Kretser. "It's not a vanity project. He genuinely cares."

For years, hyper-local news-gathering on the Web was dominated by small-time players-neighborhood-gadfly types dedicated to their blogspots. Recently, however, larger investors have begun launching professionally staffed sites, muscling in on the field. In Washington, Allbritton Communications, the owner of Politico, is pouring money into a new Web-only local news venture, TBD.com. And AOL recently revealed plans to spend up to $50 million over the next year to expand Patch, a network of local-news neighborhood sites, with operations in communities around the country.

New-media consultant and author Jeff Jarvis told The Observer that CUNY research has found that hyper-local bloggers today, who were covering neighborhoods and towns of 50,000 people, were bringing in $200,000 in annual revenue. With a few tweaks, he said, there are profits to be made.

But he cautioned that New York is the grand exception to all rules. "We have many papers and a highly contested marketplace," he said. "The rest of the country is not like that."

Nevertheless, he said that Patch (for whom he has consulted) is on its way into this market. "I just don't think they're going to try New York as a whole," he said. "There are a lot of opportunities here. DNAinfo just has to find its place."

For the foreseeable future, DNAinfo will continue to try and lure in larger local audiences with writing and reporting that is straightforward and to the point. For the most part, phrases don't turn. Narratives don't arc.

"We try and have some fun with stories," said Ms. de Kretser. "There's no reason to bore people to tears. But I think people want to read something for the information and to know what's going on. There are already established leaders in narrative journalism. Why would you get into that?"

fgillette@observer.com

via observer.com

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Explained: Why Jill Abramson is Getting a New Job | The New York Observer

2010-05-19T16:41:00.001-05:00

As far as we can tell, there are three significant reasons why Jill Abramson is getting a six month leave from her managing editor duties to become the digital czarina. Here's why:

Integrate that Newsroom! And to Help with the Paywall

Obviously, this point can't be understated. The Times still needs to figure out how to fully integrate its newsroom. As Bill Keller explained in an email, she needs "serious time under the hood" before it actually happens in any real way.

Also, the timing of her move is obviously intriguing. Next January, the Times will introduce a paywall. Jill Abramson will be doing digital stuff basicially through the end of the year. This gives the Times newsroom a dedicated point person to talk to the business side about the paywall while it's under construction. It's a big message to Arthur, Janet, Martin and Denise that Jill will be available for any breakfast, lunch, coffee or dinner to talk paywall.

The Refresh Button

There hasn't been a whole heck of a lot of movement inside or outside the New York Times for the last three years. Not a lot of people have been hired, and other than two rounds of job cuts, not a lot have left.

The lack of movement inspired a whole series of changes late last year and early this year. Rick Berke, the traffic cop for the front page became national editor; Jon Landman went from digital dude to culture editor; Suzanne Daley left as National head to become a writer; Sam Sifton left culture to become a restaurant critic; Trip Gabriel left Styles to write and report. Bill Keller referred to it as hitting the refresh button.

The decision about Ms. Abramson is essentially inspired by the same thing.

"Jill's been in that same job seven years this July," said an editor. "It's a job where you go to Page One meeting twice a day. You're involved in every big story. The oil spill and Afghanistan and coal mine disasters and everything else. It's a wearing job. She has a lot of irons in the fire. She teaches and writes about her puppy. She needs a break as much as anyone else."

It also gives Foreign editor Susan Chira and Business editor Larry Ingrassia--both of whom have been running their departments for more than five years--a break away from their jobs as they fill in for Jill Abramson. Same goes for Dean Baquet who will get to come up to New York for a couple of months.

Empower the Deputies

After the Times made those department head switches there was an undercurrent of frustration in the newsroom that the deputies, for the most part, were being overlooked. Rick Berke, who already had a big job, got another big job. Same with Landman. Same with Stuart Emmrich (who became the Styles editor). What about the deputies?

Well, with Chira-Ingrassia-Baquet stepping aside for two months each, that means deputies for three big departments (Foreign, Business, DC Bureau) get to have fun for two months each.

Other Elements

OK, so we haven't brought up the whole succession thing, since Bill Keller made it quite clear that this isn't about that! But nevertheless, Chira-Ingrassia-Baquet could all be in the mix when it comes time for a new managing editor at the paper. This isn't a bad trial run for them to impress.

via observer.com

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Success for Mobile Coupons Begins at the Register

2010-05-18T19:57:00.001-05:00

via readwriteweb.com

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I've fallen and I can't get up - iPad Version

2010-04-26T00:11:00.001-05:00

It's big when your great grandmother can use it! Is there anything that Oregonians can't do?

Here’s the related article.

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Having Ideas Versus Having a Vision

2010-03-02T14:44:00.001-06:00

In the past decade, firms have been praised for ideas. Experts have celebrated the power of brainstorming and idea-generation techniques. Eureka light bulbs have populated the covers of many books. Businessmen have been asked to improve their creative attitudes. And 2009 was named the Year of Creativity and Innovation by the European Union.

One consequence of a decade focused on idea generation is ideas are now more easily accessible, which has also made idea generation less of a differentiator in competition than it has traditionally been. When more than 30% of the population belongs to the creative class, as Richard Florida suggested in his 2003 book The Rise of the Creative Class, ideas are not in short supply. And with the diffusion of open innovation processes, ideas competitions, and the like, executives are increasingly exposed to a wealth of ideas.

What is in short supply, I'm afraid, are visionary thinkers who will be capable of making sense of this abundance of stimuli — visionaries who will build the arenas to unleash the power of ideas and transform them into actions.

Could the next decade be the decade of vision building? If so, we will witness a significant shift in the way we think about innovation, creativity, and leadership. Popular studies of creativity have suggested that the fast generation of numerous ideas (the more, the better); in contrast, visionary leadership requires a relentless exploration of one direction (the deeper and more robust, the better). Idea generation values a neophyte perspective; vision building is based on research and deep understanding. To generate fresh ideas we have been told to think outside of the box and then jump back in; vision building destroys the box and builds a new one. It does not play with the existing paradigms; it changes them. Studies of idea generation have lingered on variety and divergence, but vision building is based on convergence, on bringing others onboard. Ideas are culturally neutral as long as they help solve problems; visions are intrinsically ideological and biased towards a clear aspiration of how the world should be: They strongly reflect the personal culture of the thinker.

I'm certainly not questioning the essential value of ideas. They will still ignite the innovation process. Tossing around a large number of ideas will still be important, especially for incremental improvements. It is not one or the other. It is a shift in the most rare and precious asset that will drive competitive advantage: visions. It's time for thought leaders to move beyond post-its and embrace a more advanced form of creativity. A radical form of think-action that somewhat resembles that of researchers and entrepreneurs fighting to implement their vision.

What do you think? Is it time to call for a new form of creativity? If last decade was the decade of idea generation, will the new one be the decade of vision building?

Roberto Verganti is the author of Design-Driven Innovation. Changing the Rules of Competition by Radically Innovating what Things Mean and has pioneered research on the intersection of strategy, design and technology management. A professor of the management of innovation at Politecnico di Milano, Verganti also is a member of the board of the European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management. He has served as an executive advisor, coach, and educator at a variety of firms, including Ferrari, Ducati, Whirlpool, Xerox, Samsung, Hewlett-Packard, Barilla, Nestlè, STMicroelectronics, and Intuit.

via blogs.hbr.org

Time to go back and re-read "The Art of the Long View" by Peter Schwartz. Vision requires a different discipline than does "throwing ideas against a wall." It also requires senior level buy-in that is difficult in this economy. There were a lot of ideas and quite a few visionaries with business plans back at the turn of the last decade. Mobile commerce was an area that had a lot of vision around it in 2000, but now seems to be focused more on short-term ideas. Who's out there trying to make lives better via a mobile strategy today?

Posted via web from Local Andy

How The Newspaper Business Killed Itself

2010-02-25T12:49:00.001-06:00

How The Newspaper Business Killed Itself

02.23.10

Newspapers are on life support, and they have no one to blame but themselves.

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by John C. Dvorak

The New York Times is about to make a huge mistake. The paper thinks it can charge readers $360 or so a year for the privilege of browsing its pages on the iPad or Kindle. When will newspapers realize that the party is over? They can't go on in this dream world.

Sure the print edition of The New York Times and other papers are still making money, but that number is waning. Papers around the country are bleeding cash. Many exist as shells of their former selves or as hyper-local small town papers.

The decline of the big metro daily began with the advent of television. The Internet has sped up that deterioration by highlighting the curious redundancy of the news. Ironically, this began with The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times syndicating their entire paper for anyone who wanted to pay for it. Now there are papers all over the country running the exact same stories and columnists you find in the Times. They're there when you read Google News—thousands of redundant stories, all the same. The Associated Press is part of the problem as well.

How stupid has all of this become? Here's an example.

Once in a while, there is a story about XYZ. If you visit the New York Times site, it gives you the headline and prompts you to register in order to read the full story. It's a waste of time. Cut and paste the headline into Google, and you'll find the exact same story running in a Florida paper for free. Now The New York Times wants $30 a month from you. It's laughable, unless it stops syndicating everything to other papers that post the content for free. Good luck with that.

The Times and other papers set out to destroy smaller publications by replacing local content with their own stories. One of the keys was getting local papers to dump their expensive columnists, foreign correspondents, and national reporters, in favor of outsourced content. Once the local paper was essentially publishing Times content, The New York Times would slowly begin rolling out localized editions of the paper. People were already used to the paper's content anyway. The Times was trying to take over the country, market by market. The fact that the local papers didn't see this ploy coming from a mile away shows just how dumb they are.

The San Francisco Bay Area was a classical example of this. The San Francisco Examiner and the Chronicle soaked up content from the aforementioned papers and the Associated Press, leaving only restaurant reviewers, food writers, and metro beat reporters in-house. The papers got so dependent on syndicates that many local stories were covered by outside sources.

Just as it became clear that the scene was going to consolidate into five national papers (The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, and The Wall Street Journal), the Internet foiled the plan. There wasn't enough time to rid the nation of its local papers. The smaller papers went online and the syndicated content created a flood of news redundancy. Its value waned and soon everyone expect it all for free.

What really killed the papers was their dependency on classified ads. Along came Craigslist, and boom, the classifieds were decimated—and so too were the papers. To save money, publishers cut writers and used more syndicated material than ever. It was like attempting to fix a flat by letting the air out of the rest of the tires.

Many papers began producing a crappy product with no local value. The Internet, radio, and TV all served the public better. Worse, what staff was left on the paper all seemed politically motivated in a very singular, unbalanced, and preachy way. It had no appeal for readers. Most big metro dailies continue to bleed readers like crazy.

Now The New York Times thinks it can charge $360 a year. For what? A daily PDF filled with redundant news and feature articles about the growing use of smoked paprika? This is too funny to watch.

More John C. Dvorak:
• How The Newspaper Business Killed Itself
• Macworld Expo's Iffy Future
• Hey Microsoft, Get Out of the Cloud
• Apple's Good for Nothing iPad
• Why the Past Decade Was No Good for Tech
• more

Go off-topic with John C. Dvorak.

See John get cranky about technology in his new Cranky Geeks IPTV Show.

via pcmag.com

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Adify Data Points To Rising Ad Prices

2010-02-23T23:03:00.001-06:00

Highlighting a rebound in ad pricing, the median effective CPM on sites across vertical ad network Adify increased to $6.04 in the fourth quarter of 2009, up from $4.28 in the prior quarter. The minimum espy saw a quarterly increase from $1.55 to $2.36 while pricing at the high end remained essentially unchanged at $8.95, according to the latest quarterly data from

Adify.

Among the 11 ad categories tracked on Adify, fashion and beauty enjoyed the biggest gains over the last year -- up 57% to a $4 eCPM, while travel continued to commands the highest rate of nearly $9. The study concluded the fashion audience is spending less on big-ticket offline purchases, but increasing spending on less costly items online such as cosmetics.

The sports vertical had the fastest growth in the last quarter, jumping from a $4 to a $7 eCPM. Adify said the sharp rise in ad pricing in the category wasn't seasonal but the result of attracting high-paying advertisers such as sports drinks, auto, and personal hygiene advertisers.

More broadly, Adify said that the number of page views across the network more than tripled in 2009. "This trend is the result of more vertical ad networks adopting the Adify platform, existing vertical ad networks adding sites and content to their network, and increases in traffic to sites within vertical ad networks," according to the report.

The traffic growth also stems from an increase in repeat visitors to sites. The proportion of unique visitors per month that visit an Adify-powered site on a given day increased from 9% to 14% during the last year. The company's platform overall encompasses more than 200 vertical ad networks and 17,000 sites and blogs.

Underscoring the growing interest of agencies and advertisers in branded content, Media Contacts, the interactive media agency of Havas Digital, last week announced a partnership with Adify to develop custom networks on behalf of clients.

Posted via email from Local Andy

Mobile Phones Organize Lives

2010-02-23T22:43:00.001-06:00

A total of 234 million people age 13 and older in the U.S. used mobile devices by the end of Q4 2009.

According to a new survey recently announced by Ruder Finn, Americans are spending an average of 2.7 hours on the mobile Internet, connecting socially, managing their personal finances, and even as a means for advocacy. 91% of mobile phone users go online to socialize compared to only 79% of traditional desktop users. Mobile phone users are 1.6 times more likely to manage finances compared to traditional desktop users. Mobile phone users are 1.4 times more likely than traditional desktop users to rally support for a cause.

According to the Mobile Intent Index, mobile phone users do not access the mobile Internet for educational purposes or for creative expression, as the transitory nature of mobile intent goes against spending time to engage in discussions about personal issues. Usage by gender and age differ, with men accessing the mobile Internet 'to escape,' and women to entertain others.

Kathy Bloomgarden, Ruder Finn co-CEO, says "Mobile phones have become the way people organize their lives... and this trend will... accelerate... the faster businesses can adapt their services... the more rapidly they can... understand their customers to drive growth."

The Mobile Intent Index asked respondents how frequently they use their mobile phones to go online, and the results show that immediacy is the primary factor driving behavior.

Marty McGough, director, Ruder Finn Insights says, though, that "Mobile phone use goes beyond instant gratification...people use their mobile phones... for instant access to conduct business with the most recent information or advocate on the spot on issues of pressing concern and breaking news."

Michael Schubert, Chief Innovation Officer overseeing digital strategy at Ruder Finn added, "... people are taking advantage of (mobile technolog y)... to do their core work while using desktops to navigate longer format and higher bandwidth content and tools... resulting in huge... opportunities across industries... making mobile an essential channel in keeping businesses competitive."

Key results from the Mobile Intent Index Survey, include:

Mobile phones are a social connector, says the report. 91% of mobile users go online to socialize, compared to only 79% of traditional users. The top socialize intents are:

* Instant message (62%)

* Forward e-mails (58%), content (40%) and photos (38%)

* Post comments on social networking sites (45%)

* Connect to people on social networking sites (43%)

Mobile phone users are more likely to go online to do business compared to traditional users, and are 1.6 times more likely to manage finances. Mobile phones offer users the chance to conduct business in real time, and this is the major reason that business-related intents are so high. The top business intents are:

* Online banking - 46%

* Check bill/credit card status - 40%

* Read business blogs - 33%

Nearly half of mobile users go online to advocate compared to only 41% of traditional users. Mobile phones offer users the chance to immediately respond to breaking news, whether it is a new piece of legislation or the latest ongoing development of a corporation or politician under siege. The top advocacy intents are:

* Activate support for a cause or position - 67%

* Post opinions on social networking sites - 45%

* Forward content on a cause - 40%

* Mobile users are much less likely than all users to go online to learn. Learning requires time and patience, something mobile phone users are in short supply of.

* They are 1.5 times less likely than the traditional user to go online to educate themselves

* They are 1.4 times less likely than the traditional user to go online to research

* They are more likely than the traditional user to go online to keep informed

* Mobile users are 1.3 times less likely to personally express themselves online compared to traditional users. The transitory nature of their intents speaks against spending the time to engage in discussions about personal issues while using their mobile phones.

* They are 1.7 times less likely than the traditional user to go online to opine

* They are 1.8 times less likely than the traditional user to go online to be creative

Additionally, gender and age influence the Intent of mobile phone users according to the study:

* Men (79%) are much more likely than women (61%) to use their mobile phone to simply "escape"

* Many more women (70%) than men (58%) go online using their mobile devi ces to entertain others

* Youth (44%) are more likely to shop over their mobile phones than the average mobile user (35%)

* Seniors (82%) are much more likely than the traditional user (64%) to use their mobile phones to educate themselves

Posted via email from Local Andy

Untitled

2010-02-23T22:26:00.001-06:00

Will Twitter launch an ad platform? The hot news at the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting is the possibility, revealed by SocialMedia.com chief executive Seth Goldstein, that Twitter will unveil an ad platform in about a month. Twitter's head of product management, Anamitra Banerji, clarified the rumor, saying that a platform was in the testing phase. When Twitter does launch such a platform, Banerji noted, sponsored content would be clearly identified. MediaPost Communications/Online Media Daily (2/23)

Posted via email from Local Andy

The home of the Sting gets Stung

2009-10-10T14:19:00.001-05:00

Sports, politics, this story has it all in a very funny look at last week:

Admit It, Chicago: that Was a Great Sting

By Frank Clines & Art Kumbalek

Artie: He's catching hell from Glenn Beck and other right-wing nuts. But with them, he's always damned if he does and damned if he doesn't, ain'a?

Frank: Absolutely. And I'm proud to say I voted for Obama. But I think pandering to the IOC was improper, regardless of the outcome. The Associated Press says it probably cost more than a million bucks for the Air Force One flights, security and whatever other expenses. That's our money, and I didn't want it spent that way—any more than I wanted it spent on a trip to New York to josh with David Letterman. This stuff is not what the nation's leader should be doing.

Artie: He was acting more like the president of Chicago’s Chamber of Commerce.

Frank: There was talk about the Olympics boosting the whole country, but how? I'm an American and it wouldn't have changed my life one bit. I don't care where the Olympics are, as long as they're on my TV screen.

Artie: I'm glad Rio won because I sure don't want Al Qaeda 90 miles from here. You know they'd be coming in '16 if the target was Chicago.

Frank: Like all Olympic bidders, Chicago expected an economic boom. But cities like Montreal and Athens have found that in the long run, the Games are a bust. Costs always go sky high and the public ultimately gets stuck for the deficits.

Artie: Chicago had some venues in place, like the United Center and Soldier Field. But during the Games there'd still be baseball with the Cubs and White Sox, and maybe football season starting up. Think about the traffic. Cripes, you can't drive around Chicago on a regular day!

Frank: No wonder the public was, to say the least, divided on the Olympics, according to all the polls. But Chicago's loss was also Wisconsin's, sort of. The Madison area would have been the venue for many of the cycling events.

Artie: We had the last Summer Games in Beijing. Why have even part of 'em in another Communist territory?

Frank: Are you channeling Glenn Beck?

Artie: Hey, the Badgers don't have red as their main color by accident, mister.

Frank: In the end, I think, the Rio choice was based on giving the Games to South America for the first time, plus a little bit of "stick it to America." And let's never forget the self-interest of IOC members; as I heard one pundit say, "They'd rather go to Rio."

Artie: Who wouldn't want to samba with those babes you see at Carnival, their version of Mardi Gras? And think of it, Mr. Beach Volleyball Fan—Blame It on Rio came out 25 years ago, and Ipanema looked pretty uninhibited then. God knows how wild that competition will be in '16!

Round 1 Is Favre’s

Frank: A tight deadline keeps us from commenting much on the Packers' loss at Minnesota, and I guess from your standpoint that's fine.

Artie: You betcha. The less said about that offensive line the better.

Frank: Still, for all the negatives—eight sacks including a safety, plus a fumble and interception while they were driving toward scores, plus a dropped fourth-down pass in the end zone—the margin was just 30-23.

Artie: I thought the key would be stopping Adrian Peterson, and they pretty much did. But they still lost.

Frank: The biggest reason, as tough as it might be for some folks to take, was that No. 4 in purple.

Artie: Brett played like the Favre of old, as we heard constantly from Ron Jaworski and Jon Gruden. But a lot of that was because the Packers never, ever put any pressure on him.

Frank: That may have had something to do with the schemes they used to stop Peterson. But yeah, the difference in quarterback protection was glaring.

Artie: Remember a couple of years ago when Favre was telling Ted Thompson, "Get me more weapons"? Aaron Rodgers is gonna be begging Thompson, "Get me a line!"

Frank: Rodgers gets a chance with the bye week to rest up from this pounding. And with games against Detroit and Cleveland after that, the Packers should be 4-2 when they see Favre again on Nov. 1 at Lambeau Field.

Artie: He won't feel as comfortable then.

Better Late…

Frank: Chalk up another victory for the Observers! Oregon football coach Chip Kelly has changed his mind and given LeGarrette Blount a chance to play again this season.

Artie: That's the running back who punched a Boise State guy after the season opener, ain'a?

Frank: And was suspended for the rest of the season by Kelly—which we said was excessive.

Artie: Mainly because the Boise guy started it by taunting Blount and whacking him on the shoulder pad. And Boise coach Chris Petersen didn't punish him.

Frank: Last week Kelly said Blount might return if he meets certain goals, including academic.

Artie: Kelly will get some raised eyebrows for backtracking, but he can't... DUCK that.

Frank: Pun duly noted. Some might suspect he wants Blount's help for a possible run at the Pac-10 title.

Artie: Or even the national title. Since the Boise loss, the Ducks are 4-0. Before the season some folks said they could knock off USC in the conference, and they play the Trojans at home on Halloween night.

Frank: Kelly says Blount can't return until after Nov. 7 at the earliest. That would give him three regular-season games plus a bowl.

Artie: If they finish with just the one loss to Boise, that bowl could be the BCS champ-een-ship game.

Frank: Maybe even a rematch with Boise, which is unbeaten.

Artie: I'd love that. It would screw up the BCS system big-time!

Frank: As long as we're dreaming, why not have Bucky Badger in the title game? UW is 5-0, and with a little luck Saturday at Ohio State...

Artie: Why not? Until you're defeated, you're undefeated!

Frank: Readers, you can't get wisdom like that just anywhere.

Posted via email from Local Andy

Bernstein Ad Tracker, Releases Report

2009-08-18T12:23:00.001-05:00

There's a Turn, But Will There Be a U-Turn? which is a bottoms-up analysis of quarterly U.S. advertising trends using publicly reported, quarterly financial results.

Highlights of the report include:

* Q2 U.S. advertising growth was -14.0%, 190 bps better than the decline in 1Q and the first sequential acceleration in quarterly growth since 1Q:08. Excluding Online, growth in traditional media advertising declined by -16.5%, 300 bps better than the decline in Q1. According to the report, Q109 was the trough in advertising growth.

* The sectors that drove the sequential improvement in advertising growth were Retail, Media & Entertainment, Telecom, and Government/Political. 17 out of 19 industry sectors reduced advertising spending year-on-year in Q2. The 2 industries that increased advertising were Telecom (+17%) and Restaurants (+4%). Telecom advertising growth in the second quarter accelerated to an astonishing 17.4% compared to 4.0% in the Q1. Telecom alone accounted for over 60% of the sequential improvement in growth. The biggest beneficiaries of the increase in Telecom advertising in the Q2 were Display Internet and Broadcast Networks.

* In terms of contribution to the Q2 decline, Newspapers led the way, accounting for 27% of the total decline, followed by TV Stations (18%), Radio (17%) and Online (9%). Cable Networks posted the smallest decline in the second quarter, at -3.8%, followed by Broadcast Networks at -4.6% and Online at -5.5%. Only 3 out of the 32 companies in the Ad Tracker posted positive growth in the second quarter: Google (+3.5%), Discovery (+0.7%) and National Cinemedia (+11.6%).

* The declines in local advertising (e.g., TV Stations, Radio Stations, Newspapers) continue to outpace the declines in national advertising. Local advertising declined by -23.3% in Q2 compared to the national advertising decline of -6.3%. Local advertising has not posted positive growth since Q406, and this is only the third quarter that national advertising had declined in sync with the recession.

Bernstein Research

Posted via email from Local Andy

ReachLocal Grossed $147 Million

2009-08-15T09:36:00.001-05:00

Thanks once again to Peter Krasilovsky for some excellent analysis on the local space:

ReachLocal Grossed $147 Million in 2008; Projects ‘09 Growth

August 14, 2009

One of the big q's in local has been how well ReachLocal is doing. The SMB online advertising consultant was reportedly valued at $305 million after an October 2007 investment round. While ReachLocal says that number is “inaccurate,” the company’s ultimate success – still undetermined — would have important implications on the future of small business marketing.

At this point, the company has expanded rapidly to 38 offices in the U.S., Canada, Australia (in 2007) and the U.K. (in late 2008). It has 800 employees, including 500 sales people; and it has added display to its search offerings.

But we’ve also heard reports of scary levels of churn, both among customers and salespeople – something else that the company says is inaccurate. While additional information isn’t provided on churn, a spokesman says its numbers are well south of the 60 percent+ levels cited in a recent report.

Read the rest of the article and other great posts on the Local Onliner....

Posted via email from Local Andy

Very interesting data points on Twitter

2009-08-11T17:48:00.001-05:00

"The problem with most analysis on Twitter," says Rohit Bhargava in a post at the Influential Marketing Blog, "is that it is limited by the minimal amount of data that Twitter collects." He found some useful information, however, in a comprehensive eport on Twitter usage recently released by Sysomos. Here are a few of the key takeaways Bhargava cites:

More than 20% of Twitter accounts are empty placeholders. In other words, a fifth of Twitter's registered users have never posted a single tweet. According to Bhargava, they've likely claimed a username for later use, or signed up and never followed through.
The magic number for followers is 150. "In a particularly interesting data point from the survey," he says, "Sysomos found that Twitter users tended to 'follow back' all their followers up until about 150 connections. Then the reciprocation rate fell off dramatically."
A slight 5% of users generate 75% of the activity. "A steep curve of a small minority of actively engaged content creators generating most of the activity on a site is common among social networks," notes Bhargava, "but it is steeper and more pronounced on Twitter."
Weekly activity peaks on Tuesday. The next most active days are Wednesday and Friday.

The Po!nt: You need data. According to Bhargava, the Sysomos report and others like it can help you and your brand better understand how to make the most of Twitter.

Source: Influential Marketing. Click here for the full post.

Posted via email from Local Andy

Twitter Takin' Heat

2009-08-06T14:26:00.001-05:00

Twitter isn't just in the news these days -- they are the news. In the midst of an attack that overwhelmed Twitter today, it seems as though everybody is racing to adopt policies to address the phenomenon. Here are a few examples:

I. From PCWorld: "Social Network Policies: Pentagon vs. NFL"

This week, two major organizations have made headlines by banning social networking in one way or another. The United States Marines have issued a direct order from the top that all social media is banned on Marine networks and computer devices for a period of one year. At the same time, the NFL has banned players from using Twitter.

Social media hasn’t been banned by all branches of the military. The United States Army has officially embraced Twitter as a means of pseudo-public relations and microblogging the story of their efforts in Afghanistan.

That said, perhaps it should be banned. There have been a number of high profile leaks or breaches of sensitive information via social networking. In February of this year Congressman Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) tweeted sensitive information regarding his movements while in Iraq including “Moved into green zone by helicopter Iraqi flag now over palace. Headed to new US embassy Appears calmer less chaotic than previous here [sic].”

It doesn’t even have to be the individual in question posting the information. A more recent leak occurred when the wife of the head of Britain’s MI6 foreign intelligence service posted details about where they live and work, who their friends are, where they go on vacation, and other sensitive information on her Facebook page.

Contrast those violations of confidential and national security type information with whether or not NFL football players are allowed to tweet from a locker room and it seems like a silly comparison. The justification from the NFL is that players may speak too openly about the conflicts and drama that go on in the locker room or leak injury information that the team would rather their opponents not be aware of.

II. From WebProNews: "ESPN To Employees: Only Tweet About ESPN"

UPDATE: ESPN has responded to the rumored Twitter policy, by releasing their "ADDITIONAL GUIDELINES FOR SOCIAL NETWORKING"

"ESPN regards social networks such as message boards, conversation pages and other forms of social networking such as Facebook and Twitter as important new forms of content. As such, we expect to hold all talent who participate in social networking to the same standards we hold for interaction with our audiences across TV, radio and our digital platforms. This applies to all ESPN Talent, anchors, play by play, hosts, analysts, commentators, reporters and writers who participate in any form of personal social networking that contain sports related content.

ESPN Digital Media is currently building and testing modules designed to publish Twitter and Facebook entries simultaneously on ESPN.com, SportsCenter.com, Page 2, ESPN Profile pages and other similar pages across our web site and mobile platforms. The plan is to fully deploy these modules this fall."

The next time ESPN makes a policy change for their employees, they need to be careful with the wording to avoid this type of media coverage.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE: A rumor has begun floating around tonight that ESPN has all but ended employee tweeting - unless it serves ESPN. But, what does this mean exactly? Are ESPN employees suppose to become mindless robots who only talk about ESPN, with no mention of their pesonal lives?

Posted via email from Local Andy

Are we in a Social Media bubble?

2009-08-02T21:40:00.001-05:00

I love this post because it reminds me of something Greg Stuart used to say during the very early days at cars.com: "Is it a planet or a comet." Chasing after the exact right way to use Twitter strategically is the wrong approach. Figuring out your social media strategy is as far as you need to be today.

Are we in a Social Media bubble?

by Josh Gordon in Social Media Today on 07/28/2009

You may not agree with this but you can't ignore it either. A recent issue of Media Life lays out a compelling case making the current enthusiasm for social media sound a lot like the "irrational exuberance" that led to the dot com bubble crash of 2001.

Consider:

"The fact is, it's a good bet these social networking sites will never figure out a workable business model because there may not be one. On the internet, it's accepted faith that if you build traffic, revenue will follow, typically from advertising.
But it simply may not apply to social networking sites such as MySpace, Twitter and Facebook.
That's for a reason that makes perfect sense on the face of it. Social networking sites are about people communicating with one another and sharing information. It's not a format that's suited for ad messages. In that environment, advertising becomes social interference, in some ways akin to eavesdropping, and it has the potential to backfire.

Why should we know this already? Because of the telephone.
Telephones have been around for more than 100 years, and yet despite numerous attempts, Americans have resisted attempts to put advertising on phones, even when the phone service was offered for free. Note too the rising public protest over telephone marketing, which eventually led to the federal do-not-call program several years ago.

One might argue that over time internet users will give in and accept advertising on their social networking sites. One might also reason that over time hell will indeed freeze over and Canada will indeed run dry. But it is the sort of bet anyone in their right mind would place billions on? No.
There are several lessons to be drawn from this.
One is that where big money in involved--call it greed--our inability to remember lessons of the past can be mind-numbing.
Another is that after all these years, we still don't fully appreciate how different and unique a medium the internet really is. We assume that because advertising works in some environments, it works in all. And it doesn't."

Agree or not, economic bubbles happen. One could happen again.

Read the article, "Listen for the pop of social media" in Media Life

Posted via email from Local Andy

GrowthSpur has a strategy to help business

2009-07-31T16:49:00.001-05:00

Backfence.com founder and fellow alum Mark Potts launches new service for local sites. Best of luck, Mark.

Here's more on the story from Business Week:

Taming the Web for Local Advertisers

GrowthSpur has a strategy to help business connect with fragmented audiences

By Jon Fine for Business Week

When executives talk about media fragmentation, they often mean national media: myriad cable channels splitting off audiences from declining broadcast networks and consumers increasingly drawn to offerings online and on their phones—Facebook, YouTube (GOOG), blah blah blah. But such fragmentation is, if anything, more acute at the local level. The same competitive troubles affect the established TV and radio players, and the city newspaper is likely readying its application for the endangered species list. Or it's already beginning its slow fade: In mid-July, the Ann Arbor News ceased daily publication, though a smaller-staffed Web site and a twice-weekly print product will remain.

If you're an advertiser, this leaves a hole in the market. The newspaper, one crucial way to get a message to lots of consumers, is shrunken or gone. Sure, a zillion local blogs have popped up; some of them have real value. But the thing is, there's a zillion of them, and few have followings of any size, so you have to amalgamate ad buys across 10 or 15 blogs to get anything resembling a decent audience. Buying ads on one neighborhood's best little blog might leave much of a retail outlet's market uncovered. And buying ads on such blogs often means dealing with one- or two-person operations run by people who might be good at making sentences but who know little about business. "They are bloggers, not salespeople. They have other jobs," says Andrea Kerr Redniss, senior vice-president at media-buying agency Optimedia. "Wrangling those people together is horrendous."

All of which helps explain why so much advertising remains concentrated in traditional outlets and why so few, if any, independent local online ventures end up knee-deep in ad dollars. Many fail. Mark Potts, who knows from unsuccessful local online ventures—his Backfence.com, a network of community news sites, went under in 2007—is trying to erect a superstructure that will help advertisers and content sites alike make sense of the new landscape. His new company, GrowthSpur, will drape an ad network around the chaosphere of local online markets. Its networks will allow advertisers, local or national, to buy ads from sales reps across a wide array of sites, choosing among them (yes to the local parenting blog, no to the local beer-geek site) to assemble ad buys in a new and more painless fashion. For an undisclosed cut of ad revenues, GrowthSpur will string a bunch of sites into a network and automate the buying and selling of ads across said network. It will also teach inexperienced bloggers the finer points of selling ads.

VVM Getting Aggressive Online

2009-07-28T21:24:00.001-05:00

The conventional wisdom is that alternative weeklies have their best days behind them. But that’s clearly not the position of Village Voice Media, which owns 15 titles reaching about ¼ of the 7.6 million alt weekly readers in the U.S.

President and COO Scott Tobias notes that VVM has aggressively moved online in the last 2.5 years. Online currently represents 20 percent of the company’s revenue. Title revenue is complemented by revenue from national features (BackPage.com, which is claimed as the largest classifieds site after Craig’s List; and Likeme, a ratings and review site) and networks (Voice Local Network and Ruxton Media Network, the latter of which will soon be rebranded ).

At the local level, the company’s especially zeroed in on breaking out VVM’s vertical strengths, particularly in restaurants, music, arts and calendars. “We are the number one in music page views in all of our markets,” says Tobias. “We’re number 1 or 2 in food.”

Unlike daily newspapers, “we do just a few things and we do them very well,” he says. Everything is tailored around the core 18-34 year old demographic. Tobias adds that vertical strengths should pick up as new widgets are applied that direct traffic directly to the individual verticals.

We are diminished by his passing

2009-07-26T19:15:00.001-05:00

Can objective journalism endure, after Cronkite?

By Larry Atkins

Editor's note: Larry's thoughts on Walter Cronkite provide us an opportunity to talk about what journalism is, and might be, in the Internet era. I'll follow Larry's piece with a comment of my own, and I invite you to do the same.

As a journalism professor, the death of Walter Cronkite is a reminder of what journalism was and may never be again.

When my college students ask me who I think the best journalists in the business were, my first answer would always be Walter Cronkite. Like most young people, most of my students tend to get their news from local television, the Internet, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. Most of them do not read newspapers. Very few of them were familiar with Cronkite.

"Walter Cronkite was and always will be the gold standard," ABC News anchor Charles Gibson told the Associated Press. "His objectivity, his evenhandedness, his news judgment are all great examples."

Walter Cronkite was everything a journalist was supposed to be. He was truly fair and balanced; not in the Fox News sense. He was thorough and prepared and he asked the tough questions that needed to be asked of politicians and government officials, whether they were liberal, conservative, Democrat or Republican.

Back in 1972, Cronkite was voted as the most trusted person in America. Since then, the public's trust of journalists has eroded over the years due to various scandals and controversies involving plagiarism and fabrication, including Jayson Blair, Steven Glass, Janet Cooke, Jack Kelley, the emergence of doctoring photos through Photoshop, and the 60 Minutes' use of an allegedly forged document.

More from Online Journalism Review Here...http://www.ojr.org/ojr/people/larryLTatkins/200907/1763/

Posted via email from Local Andy

Green Machines, CBs, Tandy - 1979

2009-07-23T22:41:00.002-05:00

Thanks to Steve Rubel for turning me onto Gizmodo's homage to all things 1979. Speak and Spell? 8-track? Walkman's the size of laptops? Sweet.

Posted via email from Local Andy

Social Media Snake Oil

2009-07-23T22:37:00.001-05:00

Is a lot of Social Media Monitoring "Snake Oil"?

Richard Stacy wonders if he missed something. Do today's tricked-out social media monitoring t ools ("impressive black boxes that reel out reams of charts and data and figures and tracking and all sorts of other wizardry") offer intelligence of real value? Are they the "next generation", replacing solutions that rely primarily on the intelligence and analysis of a real person? Or are the purveyors of such tools trading (albeit unwittingly) on ignorance? There's no denying that it has become big business. If you didn't catch this revealing post, read it now.

Click here to download:

jpeg (6 KB)

Posted via email from Local Andy

Local Numbers Matter

2009-07-23T22:32:00.001-05:00

Report: Local Numbers Outperform 800 by 2X

By Greg Sterling

Dennis Fromholzers CRM Associates recently issued a report that said the following about use of local telephone numbers vs. 800/toll-free numbers in print or online advertising:

In general, ads with local phone numbers receive more than twice as many calls as ads with just an 800 or toll-free number. The cost per call is 2.4 times higher in ads with just an 800 number than with ads with just a local number. The pattern of results that is observed in the US data is the same as has been observed in several other countries around the globe, which indicates that the results are reflective of very clear, deep, and culture-independent patterns of consumer shopping behavior.

Accordingly, Fromholzer says, 800 numbers wind up costing more than local numbers because they deliver fewer calls given what he says is a clear consumer preference for local numbers suggestive of more personalized attention than 800 numbers, which suggest not-local, call center, less caring, less personal attention, computerized answering service.

Andy Vogel, Local Interactive

Report: Three Demand Media Founders Out - Stefanie Botelho - Blogs Consumer @ FolioMag.com

Why You Need a Better Elevator Pitch

How Will You Measure Your Life? HBR From July 2010

Siemer Summit Video: Digital Convergence Across Global Media

Tablets in 2012: Channeling a Creative Revolution

Tags:

MMA Los Angeles Forum This Thursday Discount Code Below

How Newspapers Can Optimize Traffic and Revenue with Mobile, Part 1: A Look at Mobile Web

Apple's Celebration of Steve Jobs' Life

Gannett Earnings Report Is Grim, But Not Death Knell For Newspapers

From SeekingAlpha

Join the Mayor of Los Angeles at the MMA Forum, Nov. 16-17

First night open for O'Donoghue's on 44th in NYC

Where is mobile advertising today?

Newspapers need a jolt of Silicon Valley DNA

From Reflections of a Newsosaur

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Vogels Are the Face As Detroit Coney Comes to Hollywood

Disruption Demands 'Customer-Obsessed' Model

Using Mobile Phones to Capture Customer Experiences

5 Reasons You’re Consuming More Mobile Content

Christina Warren

The Mobile Content Series is supported by Mygazines, the better way to enhance and distribute brochures, catalogues, magazines, reports and other documents on every device, including iPad, iPhone, Blackberry Playbook, Android and desktop. Learn more.

1. Better Access to 3G and Beyond

2. More Commercial Content Choices

3. Ubiquitous Connectivity

4. Better Content Formatting

5. Social Networking Integration

How Much Mobile Content Do You Consume?

LA Times Magazine on Norm MacDonald Show on Kobe Bryant's Homophobic Slur

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Microsoft Mobile Market Infographic

Mobile By The Numbers [via Mashable]

Wednesday, March 23, 2011 at 04:41 PM | Sarah Kessler

Los Angeles Times Reaches Second Most Readers - Poynter.org

New ranking combines print-digital reach of metro papers, reveals surprising winners

MMA Releases New Version of U.S. Consumer Best Practices

Mobile Now A Third of AT&T Local Search

Jason E. Klein: Print newspapers have a place in a tablet-heavy future

Vogel to represent Tribune on MMA Board

Tribune Company Joins MMA as Premium Member

Membership Emphasizes the Multimedia Company's Leadership Role in Mobile Marketing Industry

Gannett’s Dubow: Doubling Down On Local And Mobile Gannett

AdWeek and Bloomberg on Paywalls

ILM:10: Local Content Economics ‘Not Like Demand Media’

ILM:10: Local Content Economics ‘Not Like Demand Media’

Yahoo CEO: Don’t Judge Me Until 2012

Can you stop yourselves?

Don't fall for it. Changing your photo to a cartoon won't stop child abuse. Volunteer or write a check or do anything except perpetuate another Facebook craze that gives people a false sense of doing something rather than encouraging them to actually do something.

Q and A with Jim Brady about TBD.com, hyperlocal and what’s next

Q and A with Jim Brady about TBD.com, hyperlocal and what’s next

Movember

Hi,

Meeker predicts $50 billion online ad market

Old Navy Scares Up Halloween Intrigue

Mobile advertising to ring up $3.5bn this year

Facebook and Twitter say social is the new normal

What the Detroit Public Schools Can Teach Marketers - The Conversation - Harvard Business Review

L.A.Times: 5.4 earthquake hits Southern California

Looking Up | American Journalism Review

5 Creative Uses for Crowdsourcing

5 Creative Uses for Crowdsourcing

Reuters readers spend 3 times as long on the iPad app than on Reuters.com

Times Media Group promotes entertainment ad execs

From the Los Angeles Times

Three Birds, a Billionaire and the Hyper-Local Future of News | The New York Observer

Explained: Why Jill Abramson is Getting a New Job | The New York Observer

Success for Mobile Coupons Begins at the Register

I've fallen and I can't get up - iPad Version

Having Ideas Versus Having a Vision

How The Newspaper Business Killed Itself

How The Newspaper Business Killed Itself

Adify Data Points To Rising Ad Prices

Mobile Phones Organize Lives

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The home of the Sting gets Stung

Admit It, Chicago: that Was a Great Sting