Custom content and complaining about the weather

Wow.  I've been getting an earful for several weeks about the changes in B2B media,especially in the embedded, semi and electronics industry.  One might think it's Armegeddon.


One PR maven just came out and said that the efforts of companies like Cadence, Intel and Altera to produced independent content is a smoke screen and that they are "clearly" not objective.  And yet when I've heard the same thing from others, no one can produce any CLEAR evidence that the content is anything but objective... at least as objective as a human being can be.


Like climate change, humans have had a significant hand in creating the current environment and, like climate change scientists, there are those who say it needs to be reversed and those (like me) who say we need to adapt.  Why do I take that position?  Because no one knows how to reverse it.


Let me be very clear, here: unless advertisers decide to quadruple their ad buys, like, tomorrow, nothing is going to go back to the way it was.  Why quadruple? Because that's how much the advertising budgets have been cut since 1999.  To make up for that loss, media companies have had to identify new forms of revenue.  Sometimes it's in the form of selling placement of news releases in a box on the online page.  Sometimes it's in the form of selling space for "contributed" articles.  Sometimes it's in events.  Sometimes it's in custom content.


And here's the thing: Marcom and PR folks are MORE than willing to promote companies that way.  They are NOT willing, however, to quit working for companies that prefer NOT to by ad space.


Make no mistake, display advertising is what made journalism, PR and marcom effective for several decades.  But when it became possible to get news releases distributed "for free" on the internet and media companies started accepting brochures in the form of "contributed articles" in pay-for-play programs, the effectiveness of it all became questionable.


So we are faced with two possibilities: either force corporations to start advertising again and let other people be concerned about ethics, or learn how to adapt to the current environment that REQUIRES individual commitment to ethics.


Related articles

You can't hold back the tide. Media is changing.

Old vs. New PR, and What Offers Better ROI

What constitutes journalistic independence?


Comments

  1. Bill BarronJune 10, 2013 at 4:30 AM

    Hi Lou,
    Appreciate you exhausting this subject! I would say that it is not really important if the content coming for a specific supplier is objective or not, although one has to assume it’s not, but rather whether it adds value to the reader.
    Bill

    ReplyDelete
  2. loucoveyJune 10, 2013 at 5:07 AM

    Bill, you've said it more clearly than I. We assume that because information comes in a certain way, it is valued. But we really only know it's value by how the reader responds to it. 20 years ago we could get away with assumptions and guess work. Not so much today.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I'm old and you are not. That's good thing.

Image
I turned 64 this year and have been on the receiving end of scams and offers related to social security, dementia and Medicare for weeks now. I'm also getting offered senior discounts without asking. None of that has bothered me as much as getting dismissed because I'm no longer in my 30s (which bothered me as much when I was in my 20s). Today, however I had a revelation and I'm feeling much better about my age. I was doing a session with the marketing team for a small business back by telephone and was in the process of breaking down their preconceived notions about communication when the youngest member of the team asked me, "How do you know this is what our customers are thinking?" "Because I've been doing this for 40 years," I replied. "Oh." She replied.  Then one of the business owners, well into his 70s asks, "Wait a minute. You said you've been doing this fo r 40 years. How old are you?" "I'm 64....
Read more

Speaking of ethics in sponsored content...

Image
An article today in Forbes on ethics in sponsored content  brought back memories of our recent discussions regarding UBM Tech's methodology changes and the larger discussion about whether corporations can be expected to deliver ethical content. The article points out that Edelman has posted their own set of ethics regarding sponsored content that remarkably mirrors Footwasher Media's position:  That it isn't PR or advertising.  It's something different from what most corporate advocates practice and it must be, by nature, ethical or it loses all value. Many people in the news business have taken ethical standards for granted.  They seem to believe that they are intertwined with the genesis of journalism itself.  It isn't true.  The news business, supported by advertising began in the 1700s with Benjamin Franklin's founding of the Pennsylvania Gazette , but the separation of advertising from editorial did not appear until th...
Read more

Why you don't (or do) like social media, Part Three

Image
When you boil down attitudes toward and execution of social media practices, it's all about leadership.  Real leadership, not the popular definition that rises from the horrific misinterpretation  of Geoffrey Moore's book, Crossing the Chasm .  Let me explain that reference a bit more in depth first. Moore stated fairly simply that for a technology company to be successful, it must attain the perception of leadership in a market niche.  The misinterpretation of that concept is what screws up the marketing for so many companies.  Moore's statement was an indicator of success and a strategy, not a tactic.  If you are the perceived market niche leader, Moore explains, THEN you know you successfully crossed the chasm.  Therefore your marketing strategy must revolve around developing the perception of leadership.  However, most companies believe that saying you are a leader in your marketing documents, even when you are clearl...
Read more