The Daily Peg: Pegasus News, Inc. Founder's Blog

Mobilizing

I know that many, including some members of our group, are very skeptical of mobile marketing and content. Herewith, another attempt to persuade, in the words of Russell Buckley, writing on Nokia's Local Marketing Solution.

The system works by allowing users to set their preferences as to the sort of advertising they'll accept on their phones. Then, when ever they're in range of a special Service Point, they get the ads they're interested in by Bluetooth.

After reading that, I thought about my favorite meme-- but Russell is there too:

The most exciting thing about this for me, if it can be made to work, is the long tail angle. Much of Google's success is via the Adsense and Adwords concepts, that allows small companies/advertisers to place highly targeted ads which work. This has allowed Google to access the long tail of advertisers or make sales to millions of first-time advertisers.

This Local Marketing Solution is the same - potentially. It allows small corner shops and retailers to plunge into low cost, tightly targeted advertising and CRM programmes, for the first time.

And he has a key question:

2.  Who will do the selling?

Let's assume operators are convinced to give it a go. They sign on the dotted line and put up a meaningful amount of service points. Who is going to sell the ads and administer them?

I nominate us.

The human brand (ouch!)

True media brands are always personal and human. How many local newspapers have a "personal and human" feel, particularly in their customer interactions?

Linkprops to Rex Hammock.

Searching the long tail, result 1-1 of millions

Google "gets" the Long Tail. Right now, they're the biggest LT player in search.

Who'll capture it in "browse?" The race is on.

When will those two worlds worlds converge?

Commoditization

Bundled up

Jack Shafer riffs on Phil Anschutz's Examiner strategy in a nice overview of how newspapers have dealt with niche and broad-market competitors. The money shot?:

The moral of today's story, then, is that nobody's niche is safe and all the dancers must keep moving. Which brings us back to the Washington Examiner: Given the history of media, the dynamism markets, and all the shifting technology, does Philip Anschutz know something the rest of us don't? Do rich ZIP codes really need the tightly edited, free read on newsprint that they can already get faster and fresher for free on the Web?

If he commits himself to losing $10 million a year on his Examiners, we'll only have to wait 520 years to find out.

On the Mark Trail

If an erroneous dead tree fell on the doorstep, would anyone notice?

Immediacy

One of the things the MSM really fails on is immediacy. One of the things that everyone's going to need to let go of as the new New Media gets created is the requirement of editing before publishing.

In our model, for instance, reporters will post directly to the live site. Then editors will make their comments/changes/further assignments, noting them on the original story if they are more substantive than a typo.

I've been meaning to mention a great example of how the immediacy of the web can work from
The Frontburner this week:

• On Monday at 9:43 AM, Wick posted about Brooks Edgerton's DMN story on the latest chapter in the Dallas Diocese pedophilic priest scandals, saying:
  This is staggering news. When will the District Attorney finally get off his duff and investigate the Diocese's continuing pattern of criminal coverup?
   
• Then:
  It's now 11:17 a.m. I just got off the phone with the DA's spokesperson and I raised this question: Why hasn't DA Bill Hill gotten a subpoena by now to go through the files at the Diocese of Dallas to find out how many other affadavits of child abuse there are that have not been reported to the police? Now I ask another question: Do we even have a district attorney?
   
• By lunchtime, local TV crews (who may be our closest kin) were covering the story.
   
• Midafternoon, a personal story from someone who had interactions with the priest.
     
• By day's end, the DA capitulates. (I know, the spokespeople said it would have happened anyway. Believe them if you like.)

In almost any other medium, the timeline above would have stretched for a minimum of three days, probably longer. This is going to be the lasting contribution of blogs -- The old "websites" ran on publication cycles like newspapers. They may have been shorter, but they were still limiting. Somehow, this simple piece of technology has made us able to understand that online, immediacy replaces cycles and deadlines.

We all have access to this kind of immediacy and transparency, from the "pajama-wearing bloggers" to the New York Times. Soon, only the ones who take advantage of it it will be relevant.

Feelin' stronger every day

Robin "Googlezon" Sloan provides some insight into the Poynter Web +10 Conference. Sounds like the cluelessness was at a level only mildly below the old-fogie media conference I did a drive-by on at lunch Monday.

VERY like minds

The always-on Tim Porter is prepping for a panel discussion with Philip Meyer, and is reading his new book to prepare. Three posts on the subject are at the top of Tim's blog. I'm generally mixed in my take on Meyer, but here are some high points relevant to our plan (all Porter, unless otherwise noted):

• Meyer begins by reprising much his earlier work on the theory that newspapers are "in the influence business," not the news or information business. He relies on a business argument called the Influence Model (conceived by former Knight Ridder executive Hans Jurgensmeyer) that posits: Quality journalism increases social influence and credibility, which in turn drive circulation and profitability.
     
• ...inundated by wave upon wave of emerging media, [people] are retreating from the mass and seeking refuge in niches that meet a basic need to know about the surrounding world but also satisfy a more specific desire for information about their particular interests.
     
• Meyer: "They can at least try to imagine way to manage a larger newspaper that would yield some of the effects of a smaller community. Zoning is one obvious way. Encouraging citizen participation in the affairs of the larger community, a goal of the civic journalism movement, is another."
   
• Meyer: "If the money comes in not matter what kind of product you turn out, you become production-oriented instead of customer-oriented. You are motivated to get out the gate as cheaply as possible. If your market position is strong, you can cheapen the product and raise prices. Innovation happens, but it is often directed at making the product cheaper instead of making it better."
   
• Meyer: "That's because most industries are competitive, and a price cut is an aggression against the competition. Newspapers, being mostly monopolies, direct their price aggression against their customers instead of each other."
   
• Read Alan Mutter on the erosion of national advertising in newspapers. He reports on findings by Merrill Lynch media analyst Lauren Fine, who says "the majority of national advertisers are 'shifting from print and TV towards cable and the Internet.'"

  Why? Just as Meyer pointed out: Those media are not only cheaper, they also better enable advertisers to measure influence (effectiveness) of their ad buys. Fine says:

  "As advertising shifts from an investment to an expense within organizations, the need to measure returns and/or lower costs has heightened. This has pushed marketers more toward the Internet, direct marketing, sales promotion and branded entertainment [product placement]."

  Mutter concludes: "If the newspaper industry thinks it is controlling ad erosion, it is suffering from a profound case of self-denial. There's just no denying it." 

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Data dummies

How, in 2005, can any company have a multiple sales databases that don't talk to each other, particularly when those databases are customer-facing?  Or a database for a print product that doesn't talk to the database for the web product?

Legacy systems are hard to undo, so I can respect if you're actively working on making it  happen, but I continue to be appalled that this seemingly simple efficiency and customer retention measure is not widespread.

Offenders I've encountered just in the past two weeks:

• American Home Shield (Service database doesn't talk to sales)
• The Wall Street Journal (Online database doesn't talk to print)
• Unitrin Auto Insurance (Service database doesn't talk to adjustors, or to any other rep other than the first one you talk to on the phone.)
• Whomever handles my wife's company's retirement plans.

Unfortunately, these folks aren't a minority. I certainly hope we can figure this out, starting from scratch.