commbasics

What does this mean? With the DesignWest/EmbeddedSystems/EELive (or whatever it called this week) conference in decline along with all the other high-end, electronic focused conferences UBM sponsors, we can probably expect the publishing arms of the organization focused more and more on the consumer side of the business. Marketing and advertising budgets continue to shrink and large corporations are investing more of those srhinking budgets into being their own publishers. They aren't doing it very well, but they are investing in it. Yesterday I saw the announcement that UBM completed their annual reorganization and about three hours later got an email from Paul Miller that he was shown the door.   Miller was the CEO of the UBM Tech division that has been around for a couple of cycles at the ever-morphing British corporation, and has been a senior executive all the way back to the CMP days.  He survived several putsches and has been central in redefining the organizatio...

Been up to my eyeballs developing content and conversation over at the new launched ARM Connected Community (check it out, lots of cool stuff) so I've been negligent on posting the past couple of weeks.  Then UBM Tech goes and starts blowing up the PR Agency industry earlier this week and it's probably time to do a spot analysis.  As reported in BtoB Media this week , UBM Tech's Create unit is designed to cut out the middle man in marketing services (meaning agencies and third party creative services) and provide soup-to-nuts communication chains between the companies that pay them and the customers of those companies.  In other words, you want to guarantee you will show up in a UBM Tech publication news story? Then talk to one of their sales agents.  And be prepared to pay through the nose because you will be buying event services, graphic and video services, content creation services and a bunch of other stuff.  “Historically our customers t...

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...

UBM Tech  just named Patrick MannionVice President/Brand Director Electronics Group reporting to Scott Mozarsky, President, Media and Partner Solutions. Mannion has risen rapidly in the ranks at UBM Tech after returning from a brief stint as Director of Content for Hearst Electronics Group.  He's been leading the charge at EDN.com since the acquisition of the title from Canon/Reed a few years ago.  He's fully engaged in the UBM Tech philosophy switch announced at the start of the year and he's a posterboy for the position that the company's philosophy is lacking in journalistic integrity.  I've not known many journalists who understand the ethics of the profession better. Mannion will oversee the electronics communities including EETimes.com, EDN.com, Embedded.com and, I assume EBNonline.com (although that wasn't specifically mentioned in the announcement, which gives me cause to wonder how long the title will last).  He will a...

Alex Wolfe, who left UBM Tech a few weeks after Design West in San Jose, has taken a position as director of strategic communications at Oracle.  Most bets were on him moving to Intel, but I wasn't really sure that would have been the greatest move for either Wolfe of Intel.  The chip company already has several journalistic enterprises underway. There's no word on the details of his new position but I think we'll see Oracle jumping into the corporate journalism world with Alex leading the charg. This as a very positive move for Oracle and a good one for Alex.  He seems to think it's "not so dark" being on the corporate side, according to his comments on his Linkedin page. Wonder what SAP is thinking? Related articles The final word on UBM... for now Alex Wolfe is next to leave UBM

Got a call from Rich Nass, brand director of Design News , about an important distinction within the UBM family.  Design News and it's associated conferences are not part of UBM Tech.  Rich works in the division know as UBM Canon, which was originally made up of the print properties that had been purchased a few years ago from Canon Communications , which had acquired the properties from Reed Elsevier , which previously belonged to.... Well, you get the idea, and yes it is hard to keep up with it all. Anywho... UBM Canon is not out of the print game.  Design News is still very much a print AND online enterprise with a healthy circulation (145,000) and online reach of over 300,000 and a boatload of conferences all dedicated to horizontal design industries including manufacturing, medical devices , packaging, pharma, etc. However.... Like UBM Tech, UBM Canon considers itself a "community" driven by the input of it's audience.  Rich says 75 perce...