The Media and the Message

You may consider yourself too worldly to fall for a phishing scam.  But be honest.  Chances are that some time in your internet life, overwhelmed by the daily barrage of emails and other messages, you let your guard down.  That’s when you received an authoritative-looking email with a link you clicked on in haste, only to learn you were tricked by a cyber-criminal seeking to take control of your computer and/or steal your valuable personal information.

If this has never happened to you, then you are most savvy.  Or maybe lucky.   Care to test your level of gullibility? SonicWall, a company that provides secure network solutions, has a 10-question quiz you can take to see if you can tell the scammers from the mere spammers.  According to the site, only 7.4% of those who have taken the quiz have scored a 100%, so if you don’t get an “A,” don’t feel too bad.

But in addition to being taken by bad people, how good are you about not to be taken in by bad information?  If fending off phishers is difficult, consider how hard it is to sift through the countless news resources – broadcast and cable networks, newspapers and magazines, email newsletters, blogs, tweets, comments, and on and on.  Even the most respected, best- intentioned members of the fourth estate can sometimes, if inadvertently, misrepresent the reality involving a particular issue or story.  And while the blogosphere and comments boards offer democracy the greatest forum in human history, the conversations often have less to do with sober scholarship and due diligence than with emotional and even juvenile partisanship (partisanship in the broadest sense of that term).  Even the most discerning information consumer will at some point, due to data-weary vulnerability, accept something as fact when it should have been treated with a healthy dose of skepticism.

The tools that make it so easy to disseminate inaccurate and distorted information also enable simple double-checking of facts.  So while it’s easy to get caught in the frenetic pace of an electronic news junkie, it’s also simple enough to step back and carefully consider an article or statement that’s been presented as truth.  Just as one might use the web to authenticate or debunk a phishy-looking email, one can conduct a Google web and news search to bring up a wide range of well-documented results covering a seemingly infinite range of topics.

There are also numerous sites dedicated to fact-checking.  One such site is, in fact, called FactCheck, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, which tests the validity of assertions made in the world of politics.   Another, Snopes, has become popular for verifying or discrediting urban legends across a wide range of categories.

So the next time someone tries to play on your emotions, whether with a scary looking email pretending to be from your bank or a terrifying-sounding message masquerading as the truth, don’t forget the power of the Internet to shine a light on the reality of the situation.  It can’t hurt to get information from more than one source.



Filed under: internet by LGreenberg
Tags: « FactCheck.org - internet - Online - phishing - rumor - scam - snopes.com - SonicWall »
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What’s a national newsprint magazine to do in an era of declining ad revenues?  Add many more pages and stories, and use more expensive paper stock, of course.

If that seems to contradict the prevailing industry wisdom about the future of news publishing, Bloomberg LP may know something others don’t.

MediaWeek reported recently that Bloomberg executives unveiled their plans for BusinessWeek at an internal staff meeting.  In addition to a bigger, glossier magazine, Bloomberg will make most of BusinessWeek’s general coverage available online for free.    Bloomberg is, however, considering a $100 annual online subscription fee for those wanting access to an extensive library of vertical-specific content.  Further, the Wall Street Journal wrote, Bloomberg is considering charging subscribers as much as $1,000 per year for access to certain content on Bloomberg.com.

This latest development suggests the publishing industry has cast another vote for the freemium model.

Although not a consumer publication in the mold of a general news weekly, BusinessWeek nevertheless appeals to a much broader readership than Bloomberg and other hard core business information services.  Will the industry see more mergers between B2B and consumer media outlets?  Will such arrangements involve B2B outlets, with their relatively lucrative corporate-paid subscriptions, supporting the ad-dependent consumer partner that, in turn, brings more readers and its print brand prestige to the table?

Getting consumers to pay for online content — either as subscribers or per article — is going to be a tougher sale.  Rupert Murdoch has indicated the News Corporation may delay plans to charge for the New York Post, the Australian and, in the UK, the Sun and the Times.  There seem simply to be too many competitors willing to give away similar online content.

The New York Times ran an article about how subscriptions remain the holy grail of revenue generation.    The piece noted that unlike a pay-per-use model, in which the consumer must make repeated value judgments, the traditional subscription model spares customers the bother of repeated decision-making and ensures a steady stream of revenues.   Most people, however, are already accustomed to free online content. Further, when a tough economy is pressuring individuals to reduce discretionary spending,  the task of getting consumers on  board appears even more daunting.

It seems online subscriptions would more likely succeed with business customers, because people are more willing to pay for the news they need, not want.

Filed under: Media Industry, Online, Publishing by LGreenberg
Tags: « B2B - Bloomberg - BusinessWeek - consumers - magazines - Media Industry - news - News Corporation - news industry - Online - pay walls - subscriptions »
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Crowdsourcing site Kickstarter

I attended recently what might be termed a crowdsourcing event.

It was a Meetup.com group involving a presentation at a popular New York bar by Pepsi’s Gatorade brand team.  At the end of their presentation, the Gatorade folks solicited ideas for revamping the sports drink’s image from a room of social media and marketing professionals.  The reward?  Those who offered the best concepts might be invited to make a more comprehensive, one-on-one pitch for Gatorade’s business.

I don’t know if Pepsi ever contracted with any of the marketers who spoke up at that open call, but recent news suggests that crowdsourcing is growing in popularity as both a marketing and fundraising strategy.

A few years ago, when the internet was evolving into a practical way to distribute multimedia, brands began latching onto crowdsourcing as a new way to tap the brainpower of the masses. Actually, companies didn’t call it crowdsourcing then.  Other terms like “active engagement” and audience “conversation” were used to describe the promotions that brands created to gain mindshare. Many brands started awarding prizes, fame and the remote dream of an entertainment career to the consumer or prosumer who created the cleverest video, song or other type of content.   These crowdsourcing efforts were primarily about publicity, not necessarily about mining for marketing gold. Contests quickly became old hat.

That could be changing, however.  In Britain, Unilever has announced a new $10,000 competition soliciting ideas from the public through a specially created website for a new TV and print campaign promoting its Peperami snack food brand. What’s different is that Unilever jettisoning their advertising agency of 16 years, Lowe, in favor of the crowdsourcing strategy.

It could be that tough economic times helped influence Unilever’s decision to experiment with a crowd-driven creative approach. Likewise, the economy could be stimulating interest in new entrepreneurial models for raising funds.

As Silicon Alley Insider has noted, dwindling dollars from traditional investors may be prompting entrepreneurs to experiment with the crowd-funding approach.  Companies such as Kickstarter, SellaBand and Spot.us are enabling start-ups, artists, journalists and others to obtain micro-financing from thousands of individuals.  In a New York Times profile of his company, Kickstarter Co-Founder Perry Chen referred to it as, “a sustainable marketplace where people exchange goods for services or some other benefit and receive some value.”

It seems that social networking and microblogging have been hogging the news on the front page – or landing page, if you prefer – for some time now.  Don’t be surprised if a new phenomenon, crowdsourcing, begins grabbing some headlines of its own.

Filed under: Branding, Media Industry, Social Media by LGreenberg
Tags: « crowdsourcing - Gatorade - investors - Kickstarter - Pepsi - SellABand - Spot.Us - start-ups »
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New York Times film reviewer A.O. Scott recently lamented Hollywood’s reliance on formulaic juvenility.  Just look at this summer’s crop of sequels, comic-book based adventures and bawdy comedies. For Scott, the issue wasn’t whether they were financially successful – many were – but whether box office success means movie-goers actually liked what they saw.

Cinemas continue to attract audiences, despite countless other entertainment options. It could be that unlike professional movie critics,  ticket buyers, both young and old, enjoy what the studios are offering. It could also be that going to a movie theater is still a relatively inexpensive (if you forgo the super combo at the concession stand), immersive and social experience. It’s a good excuse to get out of the house. For many, it would take a record string of stinkers to break their movie-going habit.

Scott’s wish that Hollywood give more original, mature and complex films a chance to find an audience has been echoed by many.  I share the sentiment. I would probably go to the theater more often if only there were more interesting choices.  But the studio statisticians aren’t about to ignore numbers like these: According to a 2007 MPAA Movie Attendance Study, “although 12-24 year-olds represent 22% of the total population in the United States, they represent 27% of all moviegoers and 41% of all frequent moviegoers.”   No surprise that the teenager perspective totally rules.

Scott is not the only one to recently express unhappiness with Hollywood’s long-accepted youth marketing strategy. Late night talk show host Craig Ferguson recently railed in his monologue against television advertisers, their obsession with the young adult demo, and how this is the reason why many shows tend to be sophomoric or, as he puts it, “why everything sucks.”

You can view Craig Ferguson’s monologue here:

The conventional wisdom, established by the television advertising industry some time back in the 1950s, is that young audiences are most valued because they represent an opportunity to build a lifetime brand relationship. Television programming executives, therefore, must design shows to reel them in; to do otherwise would be innovative, but possibly career-ending, risk-taking.

Can we expect studios and networks to continue to cater to the tastes of a young audience at the expense of the older demographic?  Or will the emerging economics of the online world enable new opportunities for producers to serve the diverse tastes of a chronologically broader audience?

Decades after U.S. homes began being wired, cable networks finally began to deliver programming with the sophistication, interwoven plotting and nuanced character development of a great novel.  Premium networks like HBO broke the mold with The Sopranos and Six Feet Under, and now the basic cable networks have followed suit with such series as Mad Men and Breaking Bad.

Online “television,” which is associated typically with user-generated content, is often accused of celebrating juvenility.  As the technology grows up, it’ll develop into a platform that better serves a broader demographic. And then, who knows? If the quality of the content is good enough, some people might be willing to pay for it.

Filed under: TV and Film by LGreenberg
Tags: « A.O. Scott - advertising - box office - cinema - demographic - film - Hollywood - long tail - marketing - movies - MPAA »
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Imagine that in 1979 U.S. newspaper publishers somehow had had access to a time machine that revealed how the advent of the internet would impact their business 30 years hence.  What steps might they have taken to ensure continued profitability in an age of instant, free access to information?

In a sense, India has such a time machine in North America and Europe.  According to a recent article in Foreign Policy, the newsprint industry in India is expanding so rapidly that it resembles the heyday of newspapers in the United States, which was about a century ago.  Back then there was enough demand in New York City alone to support 20 daily papers, one scholar notes. Today, the article quotes a government report, India has more than 62,000 newspapers in circulation, and that number is expected to continue to grow.

Rising income and literacy rates are driving this dramatic increase in print readership in what is the world’s largest democracy.  Another key fact: the Internet has yet to become a major player.

According to internetworldstats.com, as of November 2008, there were 81 million internet users, a penetration rate of 7.1%, and as of March 2008, just over three million with broadband connections.  A 2009 study by Akamai Technologies reported that India “has an average internet connection speed of just 772 Kbps compared with the global average of 1.5 Mbps.”

Those numbers may seem small now, but in a country with a fast-growing middle class, widespread broadband adoption seems inevitable. Are the consequences of such adoption, as experienced in the U.S., also inevitable for the Indian news publishing industry? Or can news publishers in India learn from the missteps of their U.S. counterparts?

Harjiv Singh, Co- Founder and CEO, International, of Gutenberg Communications, a global agency with offices in New Dehli, Mumbai, Bangalore and Hyderabad, said it’s important to remember that there’s a clear link between democracies – whether it’s in the U.S., UK, France or India – and a vibrant media industry

“India is clearly at the cusp of a phenomenal growth phase in its economic cycle,” Singh said.  “It will at certain times leapfrog ahead in terms of technology and at other times forge its own path unique to its needs and aspirations.”

“It will be interesting to watch how India’s media industry evolves given that it has the world’s second largest population,” Singh added.

Filed under: Publishing by LGreenberg
Tags: « broadband - Foreign Policy - India - internet - internet penetration - newspapers - United States »
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