Friday, June 26th, 2009
Mars & Venus
Ogilvy’s Digital Influence team held another Open Room, titled “Journalism’s from Mars, Social Media’s from Venus” and after tonight, I think it’s clear that the problem they have is the problem everyone (businesses, schools, non-profits, the music industry, etc) is having. They were sitting on a model that was working for the last 50 or so years, have been blind-sided by the sudden tidal wave of social media and not only are they not scrambling to catch up, but they’re actually holding on to the old world for all that it’s worth.
As with panels, I was fully prepared for some of the audience to be un-accepting of some young (and even worse, enemployed) punk telling them what the world is like. And it was no different this time, which is fine with me, it makes life exciting! How awfully boring would it be if everyone just nodded their heads and agreed.
I think it was a really interesting discussion. There was as much uncommon ground as there was common, and it’s painfully obvious both sides have to learn from each other. Monetisation is not a dirty word, but neither is trusting a fellow blogger. I think we have to move away from our normal worldviews that content creating is done for passion (for bloggers) or that the man on the street (or the Tweeter on Tweetdeck) is less reliable and/or credible than the journalist.
Thinking about “journalism” from the point of breaking news and real good opinion pieces is one thing. But I think we need to think about where the money comes from. Thinking about subscription models and what not is fine (even though they won’t work), but as Thomas Crampton brought up, mainstream media has enjoyed the monopoly on reaching people and advertising for a very long time, and companies are just beginning to realise that they can bypass the “middleman” entirely, thus crippling the revenue model. Will it provide them the reach? Probably not. Will it provide them the influence? Barack Obama’s YouTube channel suggests yes (yes yes I know it worked in tandem with traditional media).
As a closing comment: someone said that old habits die hard, referring to the staying power of traditional media and being used to opening that Sunday edition of the paper over a slow and leisurely breakfast. Here’s a thought: my “old” habits from the old world started changing by the time I was thirteen, and many were gone by the time I was seventeen. Radio, once a nightly listen for the dedication show, is an afterthought, so are magazines. TV serves my purposes when I want it to, newspapers have flown out of the window, music exists in the form of mp3s, not cds. The only “old world” habit I maintain is the reading of books.
My point is this: as much as old habits die hard, to the new generation, new habits form at an alarming speed that the world has never seen before. When, if ever, has a generation been influenced so quickly and successively like from the transition to Friendster to Facebook? That’s not just the speed of platform change, but the speed of diffusion from half a world away. When and how fast did we take up texting to replace calling? The speed of change is crazy. Geographical boundaries barely exist anymore. And I would ask people who believe in the “old habits” to take a look at their children, their nephews, their nieces or anyone under 20 and tell me how many of their “old habits” they see replicated in them, and ask how different the world will be in five or ten years, and if now’s the time to think about that change, or cling on to “old habits”.
Tags: advertising, barack obama, Books, credibility, dedication show, digital influence, facebook, friendster, generation y, geographical boundaries, journalism's from mars, magazines, monetisation, monetization, mp3s, music, newspapers, ogilvy, old habits die hard, old world, open room, radio, reliability, social media's from venus, staying power, subscription models, thomas crampton, trusting bloggers, tv, youtube
Posted in Blogs, Events, Gen Y, Media, Singapore, mainstream media, social media, twitter | 10 Comments »
Monday, May 18th, 2009
This is a quick overview of Day One of Youth Connect! which I had the privilege of attending and being a panelist at today, and I had a really good time.
For the first time in a long time, I could listen to people who actually knew their stuff go up there and tell us about their social media efforts, demonstrate some form of ROI, and hold up under scrutiny. I admit I was all ready to roll my eyes in cynicism when a speaker went up and said he was well-versed in digital marketing with an advertising agency, but then he actually knew what he was talking about. Very different from some speakers who just talk a lot, but don’t really say anything.
So my highlight was really speaking at the youth panel with four other people from the other universities, and I have to give Graham Perkins (@grayperks)props for really revving up the crowd even though it was the last session of the day. It was by far the most interactive session I’ve had the chance to speak at, and I think the smaller size of the conference helped people get used to one another and ask questions.
One thing that I “feel” intuitively at this conference, is that people understand more about social media than they did a year ago. The types of questions I had to answer a year ago and the types of questions I had to answer today, were quite different, and basic knowledge of what Facebook is, what Twitter is, what iPhones can do, can be pretty much be assumed, which makes a lot of difference when you’re trying to answer questions without leaving anyone behind.
As always, my favourite topic of newspapers came up again (which I will blog about soon), and I did have to answer one question about the effectiveness of advertising, and whether youth actually notice them. The room gave a slightly audible gasp when I told them Gen Y is pretty much trained to “ignore” interruptive marketing and advertising, but I think it’s not an exaggeration to say that.
When one other attendee asked if anyone of the five of us saw a physical ad (print, tv, outdoor) and went online to do research on that product or service based on the ad, the answer was a resounding no. So there you have it.
Lots of other stuff I want to talk about, a few great case studies that I really enjoyed listening to, I hope to blog them soon. It’s going to be Youth Connect! Week on the blog this week, but I think you’ll enjoy reading about it.
I will say this about the organisers: It’s not a big event, but I think they brought in great speakers. Companies who paid money to attend this (especially in this recession), should be very satisfied with the value they got out of it.
Tags: advertising, day one, digital marketing, facebook, Gen Y, graham perkins, ignore interruptive marketing, interruptive advertising, iphone, newspapers, outdoor ad, panelist, physical ad, print ad, ROI, social media efforts, tv ad, twitter, youth connect, youth panelist
Posted in Events, Singapore, social media, social media business | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, May 12th, 2009
Newspaper Fail
One year later from a somewhat controversial post explaining why Generation Y doesn’t read newspapers and if the newspapers can do anything about it, I’ve come to realise more and more how ineffective newspapers are, compared to online news sources and blogs.
Firstly, let’s state the obvious that physical newspapers cannot be searched easily, as compared to bookmarking and saving a link online.
Next, even if there were links online to the news articles, it usually ends up in one of two ways:
1) The link expires when it is transferred to their archive section or some similar movement (Ever bookmarked a page to find it’s not there anymore? That’s what happens)
2) They try to make you register with them after the “free access” period has expired. Whether or not they try to charge is another issue, but registering for news which is essentially free, is ridiculous.
With such a poor value proposition (information can’t be found, or is hard to access), is it any wonder we’re turning more and more away from newspapers? Yes, there are some mainstream media news sources that are doing a good job online as well. That’s fine and good, but the industry as a whole doesn’t seem to be getting it’s act together.
Add in the Associated Press threat of legal action against bloggers who wrote about news and linked to them (which incidentally, actually helps the papers), and you just wonder if newspapers and mainstream media are enjoying themselves walking backwards instead of progressing
Tags: ap, archive, associated press, bookmarking, controversial, free access, generation y, ineffective, mainstream media, newspapers, poor value proposition, register on newspaper sites, search newspapers
Posted in Poor Practices, mainstream media | 5 Comments »
Sunday, March 8th, 2009
My mum showed me this article from the Straits Times a few days ago, with the headline: “Blogs’ reach limited: Study“, stating that mainstream media is still the key source of news and views, at least socio-politically. (Straits Times: It literally took me just about four minutes to find the link to that page. Why doesn’t Google pick up your stuff and why is your archival system so bad?)
So what I want to comment on, is this paragraph:
Mr Tan compared the several thousand readers who tune in to socio-political websites The Online Citizen (TOC) and The Wayang Party Club to The Straits Times’ circulation of nearly 400,000 and its readership of 1.3 million.
Without going on all day, here are my quick thoughts:
- I suppose newspapers being awesome have nothing to do with the numerous newspapers shutting down worldwide. (Here are some Google search results)
- Of the 400,000 circulation, how many people actively care about the “socio-political” commentary?
- Straits Times has a “readership” of 1.3 million, which means the 400,000 circulation is roughly passed along three times. Or in the case of my family, seven of us (including the dog) have access to the Straits Times, but maybe one person reads it regularly. (The dog used to eat it regularly. Talk about consuming the news.)
- I suppose the “readership” applies to army camps where they have one copy of it but it’s shared by 30 people, most of whom don’t manage to get their hands on it
- The websites with “several thousand readers” (why no figures?) are actively being sought out, compared to newspapers.
- The people seeking out that content are particularly motivated and highly engaged in the source material
- If I were in an organisation (non-profit, cause, school, company, government), I’d easily trade 5,000 newspaper “readers” for 1 person actively searching for my content
- Reach means nothing.
What are your thoughts? Are articles like this just plain in denial? Or is there really something here?
Tags: actively seeking out content, Blogs, Google, mainstream media, newspaper circulation, newspaper readership, newspapers, newspapers shutting down, reach, Singapore, socio-politically, source of news, straits times, straits times archival system, straits times archives, the online citizen, the wayang party club
Posted in Media, Singapore, mainstream media | 9 Comments »
