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All Posts Tagged Tag: ‘Fox News’

Home / Tag: Fox News

Meeting an Effing Need 0

I’ve been enjoying a recent issue of , an unusual magazine that has a lengthy feature on companies around the world that are proving that some of the truths we hold as givens aren’t really true at all. The article highlights newspapers that are growing in circ because of great local investigative journalism, small bookstores that are opening and thriving, CD stores very much in the black, and so on. These businesses are doing well because – what for it – they are focused on meeting real wants and needs.
And it got me to thinking about how much we in the media business tend toward lemmingness, in that we draw conclusions based upon the conclusions that others are drawing instead of thinking – really thinking – about how to meet changing consumer needs and preferences.
I think the US newspaper industry is the poster child for this tendency. It appears that many papers saw the success of TV and free online content and determined that the best way of responding to these trends is to make newspapers more like those kinds of vehicles. Shorter articles, more celebritrash, getting rid of many of the local staff to focus in favor of focusing on cheap content spoon-fed to them by companies and political figures.
The challenge, of course, is that what works in one medium doesn’t work in another. Let me pick on TV for a minute. When a 24-hour news channel displays four Twitter posts as if it is totally attuned to the public will and is as fast with trends as social media, it looks beyond pathetic. The whole idea of Twitter is participation and the cacophony of voices that you can choose (or choose not) to follow. And inasmuch as TV wants to be seen as at least a little more concerned about professional journalism than me and my friends mouthing off from our cell phones as we go to work, covering Tweets like they are the equivalent of the Watergate hearings makes them look beyond silly.
Similarly, when a newspaper tries to become more like TV – more of a headlines service – it fails at both what makes newspapers cool and as a competitor to TV. What makes newspaper journalism so distinctive – and dare I say popular with the people who choose to read it – is that it is both broad and deep. You read a newspaper because you want to get more than a headline and 4 minutes of two yutzes on political extremes throwing metaphorical crème pies at one another.
I get it that newspapers and other media need to do what they have to do in order to make ends meet. Fish gotta swim and birds gotta sing, I get that. But you don’t win by losing. You don’t win by trying to be more like things that are patently different from what you offer.
I don’t believe that Millennials who don’t pick up newspapers wouldn’t be interested in breadth and depth. Rather it simply needs to be delivered to them in ways that are relevant to them. That meet their needs. That give them a role in the discussion. All data seem to indicate that Millennials are more socially conscious than the generations that precede them. Given that, it’s nigh on impossible for me to believe that real investigating reporting, for example, wouldn’t appeal to them. It might not be on broadsheet newsprint. It might not be an entirely professional-reporter-class driven offering that would be appealing to them. But there’s a way to touch them and gain their loyalty.
The meteoric rise of Fox News provides an abundant example of how what newspapers do is actually very relevant to millions and millions of people who may not be picking up issues from their front steps. Fox News took the sensibility and approach of what the UK calls “Red Tops” and reshaped it into something that works on TV. By saying that Fox News is broadcast tabloid is not something I mean as an insult to Fox News. A UK tabloid is rather different from the US’s Weekly World News. It ultimately takes important issues and redefines them in the context of what matters to ordinary people in the street. It serves up news with visceral emotion.
OK, OK, and throws in a lot of pictures of Posh and Becks as well. But Fox News proves that the essence of at least one form of newspaper journalism has loads of legs.
Media challenged by the changing environment and the advent of digital need to think less like lemmings and more like Steve Jobs. To focus on transformation rather than a race to the bottom.

Posted on: 10-13-2011
Posted in: Oldest Living Digital Marketer

Start-Up Watch COD: Resonate Networks identifies target customers based upon their values and attitudes 0

It’s absolutely amazing the amount and type of data sources now in use or in development for targeting. One of the most interesting data sets I’ve heard about is information on consumer values, an area pioneered by .

Resonate combines information on values and attitudes with more conventional data sets to more precisely target users. Over the course of an engagement, the network is refining audience criteria to more precisely identify attitudes that correlate to a brand’s specific KPIs.

So what are these unique targeting criteria?

Values
Beliefs
Attitudes
Partisanship
Ideology
Engagement on particular issues

These sorts of info are combined with media habits and geographic indicators to build audience profiles. Then Resonate buys media matching those characteristics direct from pubs, and delivers your ads.

Let’s start with the “gimme” use cases. Political candidates, issues advertisers, political parties. Duh. It won’t surprise you to learn that they have offices in Reston VA and DC. But its relevance is much broader than that. Brands can connect with users that share their company values, like interest in “green” or child nutrition, or nature/environment. Now let’s go broader still. Brands highly interested in influencers can identify ideal prospects based upon their level of engagement on particular topics and issues. Hence the office in New York.

From there, let’s talk about more precision messaging. By understanding the SEGMENTS of an audience, you can deliver more precise messages that connect with user groups emotionally. That segmentation could be in the form of design elements, copy, offers, you name it.

As examples, they offer these three profiles to hint at the breadth and depth of consumer insight they can provide:

Consumers who buy brands/products that demonstrate their personal success, are aesthetically appealing & make them feel rewarded

Mothers with children under 16 who support menu labeling & believe childhood obesity is a serious societal issue that brands need to help fix

Influentials who regularly read the WSJ & frequently watch CNN or Fox News, & oppose increasing taxes

Now some of these dimensions might not seem relevant to your brand. But by understanding whether a consumer cares about climate change, you could deliver a messaging featuring a Prius versus an Escalade. By understanding the individual’s desire for prestige, you could serve up a BMW versus a Volvo ad. By understanding a Moms’ level of involvement with child nutrition, you could choose between delivering an ad for Corn Pops versus Honey Bunches.

Let’s play a game. I want you to imagine two people. One an Obama Democrat. The other a Palin Republican. Which do you think would be a better prospect for:

Pesto
Cheese Doodles
Chevrolet
Plantain Chips
Snow Shoes
Old Spice
Surfboards
Countess Mara Ties

We could spend days agreeing or disagreeing on these. And I’m not saying that these items appeal EXCLUSIVELY to one of these groups. But we deal in numbers of a fraction of a percent, and on that level, even a small skew can mean big profit.

The point is that attitudes and beliefs are the rational and emotional underpinning for how we see the world. And we reflect how we see the world in what we buy.

And this isn’t all politics. There’s more to it than that, as we discussed earlier.

Some of these connections are going to be less black and white than others, So Resonate says it takes a more consultative versus transactional approach to client engagements. They know data relationships better than we do, or can develop a testing plan to unearth the relationships between your brands and consumer attitudes.

Will it make a difference for your brand? No idea. But it may well make a difference for some brands. And as we look for new data sets with which to target, this is certainly an interesting one. Certainly not the same old thing with a different logo slapped on it.

Thanks to ad:tech for publishing this first!

Posted on: 05-14-2011
Posted in: Oldest Living Digital Marketer

Start-Up Watch COD: Resonate Networks identifies target customers based upon their values and attitudes 0

It’s absolutely amazing the amount and type of data sources now in use or in development for targeting. One of the most interesting data sets I’ve heard about is information on consumer values, an area pioneered by .

Resonate combines information on values and attitudes with more conventional data sets to more precisely target users. Over the course of an engagement, the network is refining audience criteria to more precisely identify attitudes that correlate to a brand’s specific KPIs.

So what are these unique targeting criteria?

Values
Beliefs
Attitudes
Partisanship
Ideology
Engagement on particular issues

These sorts of info are combined with media habits and geographic indicators to build audience profiles. Then Resonate buys media matching those characteristics direct from pubs, and delivers your ads.

Let’s start with the “gimme” use cases. Political candidates, issues advertisers, political parties. Duh. It won’t surprise you to learn that they have offices in Reston VA and DC. But its relevance is much broader than that. Brands can connect with users that share their company values, like interest in “green” or child nutrition, or nature/environment. Now let’s go broader still. Brands highly interested in influencers can identify ideal prospects based upon their level of engagement on particular topics and issues. Hence the office in New York.

From there, let’s talk about more precision messaging. By understanding the SEGMENTS of an audience, you can deliver more precise messages that connect with user groups emotionally. That segmentation could be in the form of design elements, copy, offers, you name it.

As examples, they offer these three profiles to hint at the breadth and depth of consumer insight they can provide:

Consumers who buy brands/products that demonstrate their personal success, are aesthetically appealing & make them feel rewarded

Mothers with children under 16 who support menu labeling & believe childhood obesity is a serious societal issue that brands need to help fix

Influentials who regularly read the WSJ & frequently watch CNN or Fox News, & oppose increasing taxes

Now some of these dimensions might not seem relevant to your brand. But by understanding whether a consumer cares about climate change, you could deliver a messaging featuring a Prius versus an Escalade. By understanding the individual’s desire for prestige, you could serve up a BMW versus a Volvo ad. By understanding a Moms’ level of involvement with child nutrition, you could choose between delivering an ad for Corn Pops versus Honey Bunches.

Let’s play a game. I want you to imagine two people. One an Obama Democrat. The other a Palin Republican. Which do you think would be a better prospect for:

Pesto
Cheese Doodles
Chevrolet
Plantain Chips
Snow Shoes
Old Spice
Surfboards
Countess Mara Ties

We could spend days agreeing or disagreeing on these. And I’m not saying that these items appeal EXCLUSIVELY to one of these groups. But we deal in numbers of a fraction of a percent, and on that level, even a small skew can mean big profit.

The point is that attitudes and beliefs are the rational and emotional underpinning for how we see the world. And we reflect how we see the world in what we buy.

And this isn’t all politics. There’s more to it than that, as we discussed earlier.

Some of these connections are going to be less black and white than others, So Resonate says it takes a more consultative versus transactional approach to client engagements. They know data relationships better than we do, or can develop a testing plan to unearth the relationships between your brands and consumer attitudes.

Will it make a difference for your brand? No idea. But it may well make a difference for some brands. And as we look for new data sets with which to target, this is certainly an interesting one. Certainly not the same old thing with a different logo slapped on it.

Thanks to ad:tech for publishing this first!

Posted on: 05-14-2011
Posted in: Oldest Living Digital Marketer

The Shift Towards Paid Content Online (Mediapost 3.30.11) 0

For the last 17 years, the web has been driven by advertising and content has been free, but if you pay attention to trends emerging in the marketplace, that’s going to end sooner than you think.

Over the last few years there have been a number of publishers who’ve placed their content behind a pay wall, and most recently The New York Times is implementing that tactic.  Of course, the overwhelming majority of websites still offer their content for free on the web, but the most important trend is actually that mobile devices (phones and tablets) as well as other devices like your television set are all integrating more of an “apps” model and most of the premium publishers using apps are implementing them on a paid subscription model.  Even iTunes has gotten into the game by offering subscriptions to content through their store.

If you connect the dots, you’ll notice that as more publishers engage users through apps, they are potentially cannibalizing their audience from the “web” proper, and consumers are paying for the ease of access.  I didn’t uncover too many publishers sharing data on paid subscriptions, but that which I did uncover seems to point to the fact that there is a feasible business model to be had.  The most interesting development in that space is The Daily, Rupert Murdoch’s iPad news publication.  At first pass The Daily seems like an old-world attempt at creating a new world publication and it’s easy to poke fun at, but if you dig deeper you do see a solid model that could take hold, albeit over time (it takes time change a habit for consumers).  Their success will be based on their ability to generate a unique point of view that an audience can relate to.  Think of it as “what if you could only access Fox News through a paid iPad app”?  It wouldn’t be me, but a large number of people would pay for it because that is a point of view an audience really wants to hear!

The paid content model in digital is definitely going to become more pervasive over the next 2-3 years.  I’m sure we’ll see a few important publishers either go paid, or establish paid walls for certain components of their content.  That being said, I do hope that premium publications who already have a strong subscriber base offline find a way to translate that to the online world as well.  For example, but not to name any names, I subscribe to a number of magazines in the offline world, but that doesn’t necessarily get me access to their online subscriptions for my iPad.  They want me to pay again for access to that format, even though I know it’s the same content.  Additionally, they want to charge a premium for that vs. the printed version, even though we all know the printed version costs them more than the digital version.  That seems greedy and shortsighted to me, but what do I know.

Advertising is the missing link in all of this.  If consumers become accustomed to paying for content online, can they also set the expectations that they do not want 5 ads per page?  I think they can.  If I’m paying for the content, I can reasonably request fewer and more relevant ads in the publication, thereby ensuring a positive, less cluttered experience.  Of course, the two operative words in that sentence were “request” and “relevant”.  I can request anything I want, but this is a business and I don’t make the decisions.  Also, relevance would imply that cookies will still be around to make my experience tailored to me, and that is still up for discussion.

Ahhh – this business is fun, isn’t it?  I get the feeling that we will all be looking back at this in about 3 years and laughing at ourselves.  Where do you think we’re headed in regards to paid vs. free content?  Let me know on the Spin Board!  

 

Posted on: 04-2-2011
Posted in: treffiletti.com

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