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UNBUNDLED | Noah Brier

What Have You Done for Me Lately?

With the commoditization of content, relationships are all that media companies really have left.

December 11, 2005 | RSS | EMAIL | PRINT | 5 COMMENTS

[Editor's Note: This is kind of part three in a series on unbundled media (see part one and part two). Here I take a step back and try to explain the unbundling process on a media-wide level.]

"Revenue isn't the problem; audience is the problem." At least according to Terry Heatona it is. He of unbundled media fame claims that it's the number one thing he tells his clients. It's not that surprising to read Jeff Jarvis echoing the same sentiments in his amazing epitaph for the newspaper industry. In the piece, Jarvis quotes Herbert Burda, a German media mogul a bit more in touch with digital technology than your average publisher. "Printing will not go away, but I do not plan to open a single new printing plant," Burda said. "We now concentrate on using social software to build closer relations with the communities of readers around our magazines."

To which Jarvis replied, "I’ll say it again: Distribution is not king. Content is not king. Conversation is the kingdom. It’s about relationships." His emphatic reply not only summarizes the state of the newspaper industry, but also offers a glimpse to the state of big media in general. The game is changing. Newspapers ruled the roost because they were an incredibly efficient way to distribute a great deal of news daily. Just think about how cheap the paper is: the ink rubs off onto your fingers for goodness sake! Television and radio came along, but neither were direct competitors as it's generally easier to deeply comprehend something when we read it. But then the internet came along, and all of a sudden the newspaper industry's monopoly over the quickly delivered written word came to a screeching halt.

Instead of accepting their shortcomings, however, newspapers have tried to keep stuffing the same product down customers' throats: in the process missing larger trends that were happening. Yeah, people were reading fewer newspapers, but at the same time they were reading more news. They happened to be doing it on via screen rather than an unwieldy gray thing, but they were reading it nonetheless. Those that have embraced the net have seen it help shape their fortunes. The Washington Post, for example, has embraced the web, a factor Jay Rosen cited when he explained, "The New York Times is not any longer--in my mind--the greatest newspaper in the land. Nor is it the base line for the public narrative that it once was. Some time in the last year or so I moved the Washington Post into that position..." In our digital world, where competition is feverish, relationships are all the more important. By avoiding things like TimesSelect, the Washington Post is building relationships that could last a lifetime. The same lifetime, I might add, that could very well see the end of the broadsheet daily and the prestige that comes along with it. At that point, what will The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal be left with?

If I'm a newspaper publisher at this point I'm asking, "what should I do about it?" Well, start by reading Jarvis' article and following his advice, he ends it with thoughts on how to save the newspaper industry piece by piece. Beyond that, though, it's important to think about how you can add value to the consumer. With the net at their fingertips, they're in the driver's seat, not you. Burda explains further, "News has now become a commodity, thanks to the Internet, so we must differentiate ourselves in other ways," Burda said. "Content alone can no longer win. You must build and interact with audiences." That message goes to the media industry in general and brings us back around to Terry Heaton's quote which opened this article, "Revenue isn't the problem; audience is the problem." In a Field of Dreams sort of way, if you build the audience, the revenue will come. So figure it out.

Union Square Ventures partner Fred Wilson suggests following this four-step process:

1 - Microchunk it - Reduce the content to its simplest form.
2 - Free it - Put it out there without walls around it or strings on it.
3 - Syndicate it - Let anyone take it and run with it.
4 - Monetize it - Put the monetization and tracking systems into the microchunk.

I mentioned it last time, but it seems even more appropriate now to talk about the Washington Post Remix blog, which features other people's mash ups using Post content. In the introduction to the blog, they write: "Why are we doing this? Because we want to foster innovation, and because we want to see your ideas about new ways of displaying news and information on the Web."

You're not going to beat the technology, so you might as well embrace it and start developing some real relationships with your customers. Because otherwise, they're just going to find the next guy who will.

Questions to answer in the next installment: Where are the marketing opportunities in all this? Do they lay more on the media or advertiser side? Where does TV and the thirty-second spot fall in? What about online advertising? And I'm sure there are more . . .

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1barbara

Noah, you inspire me!
I got sucked in with the early reference to it's being all about the relationship (see BRB, 10/20, noahbrier.com :-) and completely captivated by Fred Wilson's four-step process because it's so adaptable to education:

1 - Reduce the content to its simplest form (Teach new information in small, digestible pieces -- never more than 20 minutes of didactic instruction! ... I prefer the word unbundle to microchunk, but that might be a function of my age)
2 - Put it out there without walls around it or strings on it (Give the kids the opportunity to play with the concepts in the ways that work for them)
3 - Let anyone take it and run with it (Let them tell/teach/discuss their interpretation to/with others)
4* - Put the assessment (monetization) and tracking systems into the microchunk (Know and articulate what you want them to know and understand when you give the assignment and keep checking to make sure they're getting it, and know they're getting it [This is the critical metacognitive piece we so often leave out!])
* Of course we don't need monetization, and in either case, I think this step goes both first (formative assessment) and last (summative assessment for continuous improvement), but the concept is right on.

I've been thinking about video games in this context lately because I think it's so obvious to engage kids in learning through a medium to which they're so receptive. Back in '96, inspired by watching you play video games, I wrote in my first student self-assessment grant, "In the world of today's middle schooler, video games are a powerful metaphor for the intrinsic reward of mastering a challenging learning experience. In many ways they mirror the metacognitive process and accomplish the objectives to which we aspire. In addition to the engaging 'bells and whistles,' these games require the incremental improvement of skills to advance to the next level. They are individually paced and at every level, the reward for success is a greater challenge." (Not bad for an old lady, eh?)

It may seem like I've gone completely off-track here, but this is what we in education have been missing all along. After all, what is teaching but the marketing of information? I am captivated by the similarities between consumers of education (learners/students) and consumers of advertising/ marketing because in the end, it's all about the relationship to the information. It's about what the 'consumer' does with what they learn. Mainstream media has to change for the same reasons old-fashioned teacher/lecturers have to change, because information consumers have become too sophisticated to just passively listen to news or advertising. They need to have a relationship with the idea or product; it has to satisfy some sort of need (shades of Maslow!)

So as you said, and in both our fields of endeavor, "you're not going to beat the technology." Embrace it; find the ways in which you can use it to satisfy your customers' needs. For educators, one thing is certain, preparing our students for the future means doing a MUCH better job of teaching them to be thinkers and problem solvers. Video games can be invaluable in that regard (For educators looking for a place to start, take a few minutes to read this paper: http://www.academiccolab.org/resources/documents/learning_crisis.pdf. -- I think I originally found the link on the Eide's neurolearning blog, which offers quite a bit on video games in education.)

But you can't eliminate interpersonal communication. Think classroom discussion and debate coupled with responsive and reflective writing (blogging, perhaps...)

As usual, I digress, but these are big concepts that further demonstrate the concept of connectivity and how essential understandings translate from one domain to another. It is indeed all about the relationships!

December 11, 2005

2kareem

Noah, great series of articles. I've been thinking a lot about unbundling media lately, and one obstacle that I can't figure out how to overcome is educating advertisers about how / why they should change from a branding model to a contextual model. Google is a good example of course, but it seems that some big advertisers are reticent to change, even though changing to spending for context would help them spend the right 50% of their ad budgets, so to speak.

Any thoughts?

December 12, 2005

3Noah Brier

Mom, thanks for the awesome comment, I think there's an article in there, so get working. Also, I think I need to explore videogames more in the next entry. (And let me officially apologize for failing to site your entry appropriately.)

Kareem, I'm not sure that the need is necessarily to change from a branding to a contextual model. Yes, in some cases contextual advertising is far more appropriate, but relationship building is much more branding than anything else I think. I definitely think advertisers need to be educated, but I'm not sure I completely understand the split you've set up. Could you elaborate?

December 12, 2005

4kareem

(a little late)

So Google has pushed companies to look for performance on its ad buys. One reason AdSense is incredibly popular is b/c it works.

It seems (to me, as someone who doesn't know a hell of a lot about advertising) that there are better ways to build a brand than by running banner ads for your company on a site that aggregates the target demo for your product.

I think it was Mark Hurst that wrote that a brand is the story your customer tells his or her friends about you. Assuming this is true (big assumption?), how do we re-educate advertisers & agencies that there are more powerful (and more difficult, granted) ways to tell your product's story to a core group of customers that will spread it on your behalf?

If it's better to make the branding ad buy contextual so that it touches a company's core audience (preferably the influential ones) in a positive way, rather than slapping ad banners up there, how do advertisers learn this lesson? The hard way?

December 19, 2005

5kareem

Here's another bit I ran across tonight that's relevant.

from: http://tinyurl.com/drehm

"When a user initiates the view of video content, the audience is self-selected. The audience for "Seinfeld" clips is the audience that an advertiser covets--regardless of what Web site or device it is on. This fact is missed by most media agencies right now. If they do not understand the new dynamics, they will make themselves obsolete."

December 19, 2005