2007/08/25 11:15
An Exercise In Marketing
I posted an entry about media organizations talking themselves up.
Sometime last week, Jason was leafing through my daily paper (on a quest for the comics) and found a rather prominent story about how trustworthy its readers feel it is. Not opinion, not even the ombudsman's column, but a full-out story, started on A1. He actually (oh, the naivete!) got mad about it. But I smiled sadly, world-weary journalist that I am, because despite the Slantinel's ham-handed handling of it (most other papers put it inside, at least, and usually below the fold), this is really common practice.
On a similar note, this morning while I was watching ESPN News (which I won't write in their logo format -- ESPNews -- because that reads like information and updates for psychics), an item on the ticker noted that "ESPN reports Michael Vick won't plead guilty to killing dogs or gambling on dogfights." Is all that information necessary? The subject of the story is Michael Vick, unless I miss my guess, but the sentence makes the subject ESPN's diligent news coverage. If this nugget of info had been scooped by, oh, the New York Times, would Extra-Sensory Perception News have also said that?
You don't have a media outlet without an audience. It absorbs your information, of course, but more importantly to your bottom line, it views your ads. Without an audience, you won't have any advertisers, and you can't keep going very long without that revenue. (Even Disney Channel, long a self-supported ad-free entity, is now accepting underwriters of a sort.) So how do you build an audience? You let people know that you're a reliable, consistent source of information and entertainment. And what's the best way to dissiminate this information? It would be overkill to hire a public relations firm -- after all, you've already got this outlet. You might as well just print your accolades using your own ink.
You're seeing a problem here. When you use your medium as your PR vehicle, the people who get your message are the people who already believe in your product, so you're not going to sell anymore ads. But that's only arisen in the last thirty or so years, now that the newspaper is no longer the only game in town. Just like everything else, print journalism has been slow on the uptake on modern marketing -- readership goes down, sales go down, and the only thing the managing editors can think to say is "We've always operated like this!"
ESPN's self-reference works, though. Since they've got multiple outlets, referring from one to another ensures that their product will never be far from their customers' minds. In fact, we might be channel-surfing between ESPN News, SportsCenter on ESPN, the World's Strongest Man Competition on ESPN2, andKiana's Flex Appeal the 1985 Celtics-Lakers series on ESPN Classic, thus exposing ourselves to all their separate advertisers -- maybe even while surfing ESPN.com and leafing through ESPN the Magazine. It's an all-new shell game. Rather than looking for new customers to bolster the audience, outlets give their existing customers more items on which to spend their money. A caged chicken struggles less than a free-range one, after all.
Oh, for the record -- my first sentence? I was talking about this entry right here. But it sure got some of you searching for my previous dissertation on the topic, thereby increasing my hits and likewise my Web presence. Crafty, no?
Sometime last week, Jason was leafing through my daily paper (on a quest for the comics) and found a rather prominent story about how trustworthy its readers feel it is. Not opinion, not even the ombudsman's column, but a full-out story, started on A1. He actually (oh, the naivete!) got mad about it. But I smiled sadly, world-weary journalist that I am, because despite the Slantinel's ham-handed handling of it (most other papers put it inside, at least, and usually below the fold), this is really common practice.
On a similar note, this morning while I was watching ESPN News (which I won't write in their logo format -- ESPNews -- because that reads like information and updates for psychics), an item on the ticker noted that "ESPN reports Michael Vick won't plead guilty to killing dogs or gambling on dogfights." Is all that information necessary? The subject of the story is Michael Vick, unless I miss my guess, but the sentence makes the subject ESPN's diligent news coverage. If this nugget of info had been scooped by, oh, the New York Times, would Extra-Sensory Perception News have also said that?
You don't have a media outlet without an audience. It absorbs your information, of course, but more importantly to your bottom line, it views your ads. Without an audience, you won't have any advertisers, and you can't keep going very long without that revenue. (Even Disney Channel, long a self-supported ad-free entity, is now accepting underwriters of a sort.) So how do you build an audience? You let people know that you're a reliable, consistent source of information and entertainment. And what's the best way to dissiminate this information? It would be overkill to hire a public relations firm -- after all, you've already got this outlet. You might as well just print your accolades using your own ink.
You're seeing a problem here. When you use your medium as your PR vehicle, the people who get your message are the people who already believe in your product, so you're not going to sell anymore ads. But that's only arisen in the last thirty or so years, now that the newspaper is no longer the only game in town. Just like everything else, print journalism has been slow on the uptake on modern marketing -- readership goes down, sales go down, and the only thing the managing editors can think to say is "We've always operated like this!"
ESPN's self-reference works, though. Since they've got multiple outlets, referring from one to another ensures that their product will never be far from their customers' minds. In fact, we might be channel-surfing between ESPN News, SportsCenter on ESPN, the World's Strongest Man Competition on ESPN2, and
Oh, for the record -- my first sentence? I was talking about this entry right here. But it sure got some of you searching for my previous dissertation on the topic, thereby increasing my hits and likewise my Web presence. Crafty, no?
You crafty, crafty devil. I might have even clicked your Contact Me link to find out where that article is, if you had one, thus increasing interest in the Moyamedia brand.
I thought I remembered you doing some media experiment, or mentioning that you had or something, but who knows when that was or if that was here or on LJ. So I didn't bother. :D
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