Murdoch's plan doesn't come together

Not long after Murdoch announced his intentions to charge for content, his evening freesheet, The London Paper, closes.

Despite maintaining a regular circulation of half a million, the afternoon free newspaper was making considerable losses of around £16million year after year and the decision to close was announced yesterday.

High operating costs and a competitive marketplace have made survival difficult for the London Paper and London Lite, and are quoted as the reason for the closure, although speculation is that this is first blood from Murdoch’s ambitious scheme to charge for all content across the News International portfolio.

Furthermore, it looks likely that Murdoch will be flexing his considerable media muscles to persuade other titles to follow suit, to fireproof his controversial move. The real stumbling block though, will be the BBC.

Whilst this does not signal the end of free media and content, it does illustrate the fact that content providers are going to have to work hard to invent more revenue channels, without ruining the reader’s experience.

Chris Anderson, author of ‘Free’ and editor in chief of Wired magazine, talks about this three-party system. In this he notes that ‘a third party pays to participate in a market created by a free exchange between the first two parties.’ In essence, the London Paper is not selling papers to readers, but readers to advertisers.

The issue is that they are not generating enough revenue through selling traditional advertising space. Rather than ditch the brand, they should be looking at other non-traditional ways to fund the enterprise.

Ed

ideas, campaigns and all that

There is nothing wrong with the big idea, it gives brand communication clarity, coherence and if all goes well a consistent and unique brand identity. Mark Earls recently argued it's declining in importance as markets and brand communication moves more towards two way conversations, why take the risk on one key insight when we can create content and push numerous ideas and distribute them at a very low cost, he said. We'll soon see what people react to and what resonates - from this we can develop phase two developing a conversation based on the learnings, all the time building relationships.

My thoughts on the matter focus more on the concept of a campaign - the very word seems to indicate a start and end date, a wrap party and a board meeting where everyone is held to account and dealt with accordingly. This is not how the rest of the world operates. People have identities, they morph, get influenced and have idiosyncrasies which we can choose to love or hate. People now expect their brands to operate in much the same way, if a brand invites you to participate, it should not be from date x to date y but instead be seen as a connection that will developed and elevated.

The idea is the most important thing but for me, of almost equal importance is the approach the brand takes to world of individuals it is about to communicate with. Do not put an end date on it, be ready to redevelop that idea having listened to what they're saying, create varieties on it. Show that you've moved beyond 'campaigns' and understand they couldn't care less which campaign you're currently working on. Light fires but only do so if you're prepared to elongate the conversation and understand it's the start of something that might not have a foreseeable end date.

Hugh de Winton

strategy explained

it's nice when you come to the end of a long day and you find a quote that just nails it...

"The Japanese don’t use the term “strategy” to describe a crisp business definition or competitive master plan. They think more in terms of “strategic accommodation,” or “adaptive persistence,” underscoring their belief that corporate direction evolves from an incremental adjustment to unfolding events. Rarely, in their view, does one leader (or a strategic planning group) produce a bold strategy that guides a firm unerringly. Far more frequently, the input is from below. It is this ability of an organisation to move information and ideas from the bottom to the top and back again in continuous dialogue that the Japanese value above all things. As this dialogue is pursued, what in hindsight may be “strategy” evolves. In sum, “strategy” is defined as “all the things necessary for the successful functioning of organisation as an adaptive mechanism."

.......Richard T. Pascale (1984). “Perspectives on Strategy: The Real Story Behind Honda’s Success," California Management Review

exteme sports society

we're loving the new viral from microsoft, you really have to do a double take to realise it's the result of some very clever post production.

Megawoosh
by jeffdu74

Media Salesperson of the Quarter, Q2 2009 - Mind The Curb

Anthony,Ry and Paul from Curb

Hugh from AdConnection presenting Anthony with his prize.

AdConnection says about Curb:
Curb have been great at all stages of the campaign. From initial planning to implementation, there has been transparency, speed and attention to detail. This was all massively important considering it was our first foray into the world of street stencils. Thanks to Anthony and all the team.

Curb says about AdConnection:
We were thrilled to be able to work with AdConnection and wagamama on their first ever clean advertising campaign. The flexibility and highly targeted nature of the media meant that we were able to directly target high footfall areas around the specific locations and as a direct result of the campaign we have planted 120 trees in the developing world."

RIP John Hughes

Freeloading should be encouraged.

'freeloading' is often used to describe someone getting and using something for free. When applied to media, brand communication or advertising in some form the definition is often skewed and misused - usually put in a negative, head shaking context at the lack of money being exchanged.

Going along to an event for free, sampling free music, spending 15 minutes freely viewing something is not 'freeloading'. That content creator is winning the battle in the attention economy, that is, as long as they can work out how to monetise this attention they earnt further down the line.

Participation is the first step, not the horrible vagueness of 'awareness'

'freeloading' is an archaic and outdated term for the days of top down, sales at all costs brand communication.

we're now in a time where we should be actively encouraging freeloading within the right parameters.

digital stuff

new cohen brothers!!!!

Censorship of the web

Following a censorship strategy means creating increased hype around otherwise mostly average content. This happened recently when Nike deleted a rather unremarkable clip of a non nike endorsed player humiliating one of their own, Lebron James. If left up it probably would have had a limited shelflife, once Nike deleted it - this immediately gave the impression that the brand thought it was a big deal and in turn created a herd like stampede to track down the clip.

here it is - all a bit average if you ask me.



and some reaction



The Phonographic industry proved once again to be as archaic an organisation as we all thought recently by deleting one of calvin harris's official videos. This then prompted a twittering tirade from Harris and a number of news organisation reigniting the debate around piracy and the phonographics rather misdirected attempts at stalling it.

It would be a real shame if you tube as an outlet for creativity was thwarted by a few people employed to return us to the years before the music industry changed forever. If they do succeed we'll probably be seeing less of this kind of genius (below) being passed into our inboxes

breaking news...Augmented reality

really feels like augmented reality has taken a big step forward to the front of the stage over the last 10 days with a number of bloggers and campaigns giving it it's well deserved moment in the spotlight.

Here are a few key articles

Let's hope this doesn't jinx it - NMA gets all excited

Trans media mogul Faris Yakob looks at the future potential

BMW / Dare Digital win the IAB's campaign of the month with their rather marvellous Z4 paintbrush

identiyfing value

I'm getting the feeling that Mark Zuckerburg is taking lessons in leadership from Gordon Brown. The lack of consumer understanding has risen more than once as have the embarrasing u-turns on privacy policies.

Here they go for another one...but the facebook users have started cut and pasting this message into their status boxes urging others to do the same. I've seen at least twenty of my friends do it in the last couple of days.