It's not traditional media anymore

I've been struggling with the term "Traditional Media" recently.

I'm not sure why... maybe it doesn't sound right, perhaps the term just doesn't cut it in a fragmented communications world or possibly I've lost a lot of my nostalgic view of newspapers, radio and even television.

Some traditions are great and are quite rightly upheld. Traditions not only show us where we came from, but also serve as a reference point to remind us what was good at a given point in time. 

But now we live in a new world.  An always-connected one where media is streamed, stored, consumed on demand and mashed together across multiple channels and devices.  The consumer of media is now in control and there's really no going back. My 4 year old daughter thinks it 'silly' that the TV doesn't show all the programs YouTube does (perhaps only because I've not bought an Apple TV box yet) and she laughed when I tried to explain that we once only had a TV with 4 buttons for our television... and one of those was for the power supply.

But we now live with those old paradigms, albeit updated for a 21st Century life. YouTube still has 'channels' and streamed digital radio is still referred to as 'stations'. 

So maybe we should change to term from 'traditional media' to something more fitting for a hangover from a bygone age? Perhaps we need a new way of referring to the old ways of media consumption?

Perhaps we should now call them 'legacy' media instead?

Combining paid, owned and earned media

In a post from earlier this year, I gave my thoughts on the blurring boundaries between paid, owned and earned media http://press20.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/paid-owned-and-earned-blurring.html . I was therefore very keen to read the report from research and advisory company Altimeter Group on 'The Converged Media Imperative'. This paper lays it out clearly, that brands now need to combine the different media channels of paid, owned and earned to get the most from them.
http://www.altimetergroup.com/research/reports/how-brands-must-combine-paid-owned-and-earned-media 

Now to me, this is hardly a revelation and it is great that this report has been published. My post from last April suggested that rather than there being definitive boundaries between the three, there's significant cross-over. And this is the point Altimeter have explained too. In fact our models of this integration are incredibly similar, see below:

My diagram to show the blurring

(The star representing press releases)

Altimeter's diagram showing the convergence of paid, owned & earned

The video generation cometh

I've been speaking to a lot of people these days about the continued modern use of multimedia communication. It's a subject I've posted about for years now and one that I firmly believe is increasingly relevant for all companies regardless of size or market sector.
(Just take a look at my post This time the revolution WILL be televised from 2 years ago)

But one media still continues to captivate more than any other, video (and with this I include television, on demand stuff and any audio/visual streaming combo).

But why use it for online corporate communication? Why not leave it to the swanky marketing types with their dedicated agencies, post production effects and obvious big budgets?

'cos your audience and customers are coming to expect it, that's why!

With every mobile phone now a video recorder, with nearly everyone under the age of 25 having their own YouTube channel (or at least an account) and with Windows PC's & Macs having free video editing software included... there's a new generation of online video producers, and therefore consumers, out there.

Sure, they may not be your current target audience right now.... But for how long can you keep saying that?

It's also not enough to claim you need a huge (but non-existent) video fund to produce top quality stuff. Some of the most popular, genuine and relevant video content has been created on a shoestring.

And don't forget that those teen and 20-something millenials may be consumers now, but they are the next workers and managers in our economy. They will have grown up using cost-effective online video and will consider it just another communication tool to use.

So isn't it therefore time your organisation started using it or at least asking your PR & Marcomms company to use video?

France wants to tax online

This world gets crazier & crazier the more you read ("so read less" I hear you say), but those daft Frenchies have taken things to a whole new level by commissioning a report that proposes a tax on online business. Aready being called the "Google tax", this report suggests that each time an ad is clicked, online firms should be charged a between one to two percent of the revenue generated, thereby raising between €10m and €20m a year.

Said Olivier Esper, senior policy manager for Google France "

We don't think introducing an additional tax on internet advertising is the right way forward as it could slow down innovation"

So what worthy cause will benefit from this taxation? A college, a hospital or some other public-spirited initiative that will improve the quality of life in France?

Errr... no! .The report suggests that this money would be used to compensate media and content owners such as recorded music or print media. So... those mainstream media companies who have not fully found a way to benefit from the Internet are to be compensated by those that have?

And which level-headed and informed individuals did they find to author this report? Why none other than Guillaume Cerruti (president of Sotheby's auction house in France), Jacques Toubon (former French Minister of Culture) and Patrick Zelnik (owner of the Naive record label, which could end up being the very beneficiary of this tax revenue).

Now far be it from me to criticize a government of bias, but I can't help but wonder if Carla Bruni-Sarkozy being signed to the Naive record creates some conflict of interest here.....?

The communication media mix

I hear different perspectives more & more about the best channels to talk to and engage with users. From Nielsen online's recent research that Social Media is the new email, through to Google's Eric Schmidt claiming Twitter is the Poor Man's email system. This was also a subject brought up by Shel & Neville's FIR conversation at the end of last week and is one I'd like to enter.

So, what's my perspective? What's the best channel? Is it....

• Posts to MyBeboFaceSpace?
• Email bulletins
• RSS feeds
• Regular Blog posts
• etc.?

Well my view is... (as is often the case)... it depends. To use one particular online communication channel is no longer the right approach. If your customers are using multiple channels, why aren't you?

This goes for Marketing departments through to PR teams and even further afield. If your customer demographic (or just particular segments) communicates via two main channels (e.g. Email & RSS), then you need to as well. Also, don't forget that as nothing stays the same for very long, you will need to monitor your customer / channel mix and perhaps change this over-time.

Never wrong for long

Happy Birthday to an innovative force in journalism and the TV channel of insomniacs...Sky News is 20 today.

No longer the teenager and now the grown-up, the 24 Hour UK news channel pioneered by Rupert Murdoch has come of age. Its also amazing to see how much TV news has come in the last 2 decades. Previously the news was dished out like my mother's cooking (at regular times during the day, in large portions I found hard to swallow all at once and often more palettable to the server than the target audience).

But now, its news on-the-go; almost drip-fed to the masses in small morsels, delivered constantly, sometimes with little attention paid to quality and with no time to think between servings. This approach often means that mistakes were made, but they are Never Wrong For Long!

However, it works and the format & pace been copied worldwide. Even the BBC followed-suit, albeit almost 8 years later, with their impressive BBC News 24 offering.

But what about the next 20 years?
Well...I do believe the future will be televised! We'll see the gradual convergence of Internet and Broadcast technologies, along with the user/viewer/consumer taking more of an active part.

Perhaps we will eventually see the appearance of 'Gargoyles' as predicted in the book Snow Crash by Neil Stephenson. These are people permanently 'wired into the Metaverse' or in modern parlance: someone with a permanent Internet connection. They are a news agent who records everything around them and uploads this data (particularly audio/visual) for its use by agencies or other organisations. The idea being that they get paid for their news-worthy clips and therefore make their living by recording as much interesting stuff as possible.

Strange? Perhaps. But not impossible!

What is MSM?

MSM stands for 'Main Stream Media' (or mainstream media). In other words its: newspapers, TV and (possibly) radio these days.

But hang on, I thought a principle media these days was the Internet in all its flavours? (Google search, content sites , Blogs, Social Networks and everything else). Its in the top 3 of all media consumed and advertising money spent, as well as the main method a lot of us choose to receive our news and information by.

Surely now there's a justified case for saying that the Internet is now a member of the mainstream media?

Is TV worried by YouTube?

Surely there is nothing better to arouse suspicions like a senior company executive adamantly denying something? Especially when it’s the executive chairman of the UK’s largest commercial TV company denying that YouTube is a threat.

But imagine he went one step further and started to throw insults about?
What if he claimed YouTube is a “parasite”, living off of TV shows produced by ITV?

You’d then have to believe he was worried, especially when he’d seen its share price drop considerably in the last 6 months (Note: before anyone starts saying that its price has recently rallied, I’ll point out that this increase in price is only fuelled by speculation that its due for a takeover).


Its a shame, especially as ITV recently claimed it needed to extend from 2010 to 2012 the date it would reach it online revenue target of £150m.

French newspaper must evolve or croak

Well well, one of the last bastions of french journalism has woken up and smelt the expensive coffee of the modern age before it is possibly too late. I understand that French newspaper, Le Monde, has just completed the development of its TV studio somewhere in its offices (in Paris I assume).

This facility allows journalists to produce articles and video clips alongside each other for the different versions of its paper, with the video obviously making its way online to support the electronic version.

Well-regarded print-based publications such as this one have done all they can in the past not to venture down this path, with critics stating this should have been something done in the more media-friendly 1990's. This would at-least have given these publications time to learn their craft and they could perhaps even have taken some of the lower-level TV channels on at their own game back then.

Could it also be a cooincindence that Le Monde is also looking to cut 130 jobs by March 2009, all in the name of cost saving?

Reddit!

Media Fragmentation

The 'Nichefication' of media has not been an instant thing, created by the arrival of a few online services, its been here for a while.

From magazines for everything, exemplified by the wierd guest publications quoted in the TV programme 'Have I Got New for You', through to the insane TV auction channels that I couldn't help but watch when I was sick and home-ridden recently.

As Bob Liodice, chief executive of the US Association of National Advertisers said in 2004:
“The mass media don’t exist any more”.

This presentation from Peter Hirshberg on the rivalry, inter-dependance and evolution of TV & Web, has got me thinking recently:



Hopefully the future of both combines the richness of TV and the interaction of the web. But one things for sure.. its won't just be one single channel of consumption ever again.

Old and new media... what's the difference?

In a previous post, I'd asked what the difference was between old and new media. Although this post was based around the effects of blogging on the USA political system, the "citizen as a journalist" effect is having an impact that is being felt across a wider media playing field than just the American Presidential Race.

However, although there is no doubt that media has changed (and should continue to do so), I would like to consider if 'New Media' and 'Old Media' (in reality the social web) are really that different...

The case for (AKA "yes, of course there's a difference)
1. Anyone can be a blogger or make a comment, you don't need a degree in journalism (or a daddy that owns the newspaper) to write your own column these days. The barriers to publishing are minimal and the rewards are not necessarily financial (see my previous posting on Brand Evangelists)
2. Direction is set by the writer, not the editor, owner, shareholders, etc.


The case against (AKA "no, they're all the same now really")
As pointed out recently by Jeremiah Owyang, There is now a significant blurring of the lines between blogs and journalism. Old Media such as TV and Radio have had to change to be part of the dialogue that is happening out there. Newspapers have evolved so that their online versions are broader in content or material that the restrictive printed page and in some cases these online versions are more popular!


My take on this:
The media landscape has changed significantly in the last few years and potentially forever. The citizen as a journalist has grown from a small seed to a large and powerful movement & industry, including online video. To therefore compare Old Media and New Media is to compare the Old Media before the arrival of the Internet and Social Web. To that effect.... of course there are differences, just as there was a huge difference between the theatre of William Shakespeare and the Hey-day of TV in the 1950's & 60's.

But as all media now evolves at a faster pace, converging and fragmenting along every single axis... surely the challenge will not be to compare them but to understand how each is of benefit in this new media world we live in?

New New Media

Here's a really interesting interview Mark Molaro has with Paul Levinson, Fordham University's Chair of Communication and Media Studies.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqZNGYit3kY

He discusses the way media is still changing and how the academic landscape is evolving in the digital age. He especially covers how consumers have also eventually become the producers and the impact this has.

However he states that Mass (Old) Media has a role in society, but its role is changing and evolving. He believes that here is now a trade off in two competing trends.

• "Gate-kept" media, who check and edit all content
• Everyone producing content, with no checks

He thinks that we have had too long of the first point and that the Web2.0 era has eventually given the second point its opportunity now.

He also challenges Information Overload and states:

"The damage is done when we have too little, not too much information"

Food for thought methinks.

Social Networks ARE the news

I've recently been asked by a potential client where the newly-created 'Social Media Manager' role should sit. Like this role and other emerging jobs like it, it will depend somewhat upon the company's existing structure and process (and significantly upon the individuals that work within them).

So.....

1. advertising has news
(banners now have feeds with product updates, branding sites that want to create repeat visits provide regularly-updated content and don't get me started on 'Advertorial')

2. news has adverts
Although news sites on the web find it quite hard to monetise their content (and the newspapers find their business models dying off), many are still supported by paid-for-advertising. On some sites the news and adverts are becoming hard to tell the difference between and even some news feeds come with integrated adverts now.

3. social media has news
News about what your friends: are doing (status), find interesting (notes), are buying (Beacon) or any number of other things they find interesting enough to tell you about.

4. adverts have social media
Even the Doritos advert in the middle of this year's Superbowl was a UGC-sourced production

..... With the lines between news, adverts & social media are so blurred, its become difficult to tell them apart any more. This blended mix of journalism, marketing and networking changes the relationships between companies and consumers/individuals.

It therefore changes the inner working of companies who are getting their heads around this. It consequently makes the question about where the Social Media Manager sits in the organisation that much more difficult!

What does Press2.0 really mean?

I've been asked by some readers of this blog to explain a little more why I have called this collection of articles Press2.0 ....

Recently I have tended to focus on the subject of corporate & influencer dialogue and I continue to think that there is a big issue concerning the way companies communicate with their consumers, shareholders, etc. But it is also obvious that there has been a shift in how companies communicate with individuals in recent times. They are engaging in a more collaborative conversation and facilitating 2-way dialogue to create positive influence.

However the media has probably shifted the most...

In the past company communications were usually done via 'The Press', which in general meant the media who would cover this sort of information (evolving through: print, radio, tv, internet news sites, etc.)

I thinkthat the media is now so broad (encompassing social media) that 'The Press' (although originally referring to those that had a printing press for making newspapers) now really means anyone with access to publishing technology... in other words, anyone with connectivity to the Internet.


I'll make my case with the following points:

1. The old journalist model is dying
If you don't believe me, take a look aroud the web.
e.g. Your Report enables the user to become the journalist.
http://www.youreporttv.com/

Bill Thompson at the BBC, put its nicley:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7338238.stm

"They [newspapers] also seem to have realised that anyone who wants to break into professional journalism needs to have some sort of online presence beyond a Facebook profile

Indeed for several years now newspapers and TV now look to bloggers as the source for news stories: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/4696668.stm and there are almost daily articles about how newspapers are dying: http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/30/1828252

According to Bill Keller of The Times:

Newspaper companies are losing advertisers, readers, market value, and, in some
cases, their sense of mission at a pace that would have been barely imaginable
just four years ago.

Perhaps this is not just because the internet is now so many people's primary news source, but that people just don't trust media companies anymore?

2. The power of publishing is no longer in the hands of the few
With free blogging tools and the ability to reach anyone out on the web, you no longer need to own a newspaper or synicated TV programme to reach across the globe and gain an audience.
Perhaps the naming of one of the most popualr blogging tools http://www.wordpress.com/ is the most obvious giveaway....


3. The commodity of the mainstream press is no longer content, its attention for eyeballs.. yours
Your attention is a commodity every major media want, as this brings with it the advertising revenue. Media owners will apparently publish anything they like if they think they can sell potential customer attention as inventory to a product owner.

Blogs and other social media don't necessarily crave that attention or revenue. They are created out of passion and need, or often just as a way of diarising or commenting on what happens...

.... as I have just done

Make your content portable!

Think about all those assets that you produce and would like a bigger/better audience for:

• Your company introduction video that you have spent a fortune on
• The company press release that you would like circulated to a larger number
• A set of product images that you paid a professional photographer to take

Please realise that all sorts of users will:

• Copy, lampoon or just ridicule that video (e.g. Chevy Tahoe)
• Mis-quote your press release
• Alter your photos from your website (or make their own)

However, although this is a challenge for brand managers to track, let alone 'police'... it is also a significant opportunity. By selecting ways of making your content more portable, quotable and re-purpose-able... you provide assets for your influcencers to use and hopefully keep coming back for more.

Just remember that they will use your content whether you like it or not. Its therefore better if they use it with your permission and on your terms isn't it?