Nancy E King, also blogging from FOCAS on See Change Happen, has a great writeup on Lynda Resnick's push to make Pom successful. It's worth reading to understand how to successfully promote a product in a world that is increasingly indifferent to traditional advertising. From nothing to a hit premium product, with a total ad budget over four years of only $14M. Coke and Pepsi wish they could introduce a new product so cheaply.
At FOCAS, Arthur Suzberger, Jr. (Chairan, New York Times) presented some interesting back of the envelope estimates he did with Dean Singleton (CEO, Medianews Group):
- number of non-Iraqi journalists in Iraq covering the fall of Saddam - 1000
- number today - 50
And the New York Times and AP account for half of those 50.
Arianna Huffinton said something interesting at FOCAS today about why we blog. The Huffington Post's model is that they pay their editors, but not their contributors. So why do the bloggers do it? Arianna said that people don't write New York Times Op Eds for the $150 - they do it for other reasons. The same is true for bloggers. Huffington Post bloggers get exposure, often resulting in commissioned work from news outlets, book deals, etc. The site is their platform, and it serves their needs better than traditional media (and, unlike regular news outlets, the contributors get to keep their copyright!).
In a panel discussion with Arianna Huffington, Michael Eisner painted the internet ("Web 2.0, Web 5.0, whatever") as a form of anarchy that not only challenges existing media, but also lowers the quality of content by undercutting existing high-production sources. Choice quote - American media is challenged by "a society of envy and jealousy."
I'm at FOCAS this week and will be covering the event. The conference is being streamed live at aspeninstitutetv.com.
Jeffrey Cole is the first speaker. He's presenting the results of a large-scale survey of teenagers and how they use the internet. Teenagers (12-24):
- will never read a newspaper (but they are very interested in news - they just get it on line)
- or own a landline
- don't care about the source of info (NY Times, WSJ), use aggregators like Google News
- trust unknown peers (just like me) more than experts
- use IM - email is for their parents. Though this changes with age.
The future of media:
- film, music, and print will be smaller
- but tv will remain popular
- on the web news and mags become more like TV (faster, more timely) and compete with it like never before.
- TV does not continue as a smaller medium, but grows just like mp3s - it will become more ubiquitous. Just like we listen to music everywhere now, we'll do the same with (downloaded / streaming) TV shows
