Everybody has heard the old saw, “I know I waste half of my ad budget, I just don’t know which half.” It’s a great saying because it’s funny, not because it’s true. Advertisers, at least those who spend a high proportion of their budgets on TV, know exactly where they waste their money; they just can’t do much about it.
Until fairly recently…
People who grow up in insular cultures are often more certain than those with wider experience. When I first arrived in Eastern Europe, I was eager to learn about the culture and was intrigued by the novelty of difference. I was very happy to discover that I didn’t have to look far to find people who were eager to instruct me. However, I soon realized that sometimes the locals were wildly off the mark when it came to analyzing their own culture because so few had experienced any other.
As a recent post by socialnomics’ Erik Qualman shows, many people in the Digital World seem to have the same problem as the people I met in the early post-communist world.
Magazine writers are some of the most talented people I have had the pleasure of working with. However, most find it hard adapting to writing on the internet. Many eventually do succeed and find that they enjoy the new medium; some others never really get the hang of it, while still others just accept the reality and plod through.
Whatever a writer’s particular inclination, here are some points that can help:
Can your company be Disruptive? A lot seem to want to be. In the hypercompetitive digital world everybody is looking for an edge and being “Disruptive” sounds like a good way to be clever and beat the competition.
The term is used (or overused) usually to show that one is “thinking outside the box.” Yet Disruptive Innovation isn’t about being wily or cunning, it is about passion and privation. Companies who seek it should be careful what they wish for.
As media companies struggle with their changing environment, they inevitably get bogged down on developing web product strategy. A flash of inspiration leads to intense research, the hiring of consultants and endless meetings with often very little to show for it. If legacy media companies are going to be successful in Digital Media, they will have to learn to change the way they think about strategy.
We’re often consumed by what will change over the next few years, but taking a longer view can be more interesting and instructive. Some of the world’s smartest people are hard at work developing amazing things that will dramatically change the way we interact with technology and each other over the next decade. Here are a few of them: read more…
TV is dead. Print is dead. Radio is dead. Outdoor is dead.
However, somehow the majority of ad budgets go to those four media. Moreover, they’ve been around for 70 years or more and client’s processes have been built up around them. While Digital Media is the future and (increasingly) the present, there is still a lot that “New Media” can learn from “Old Media.” Here are five examples: read more…
Although everyone has been amazed by the explosive power of social networks generally, many have been disappointed that their own foray hasn’t been successful. Moreover, even the most successful social networks with massive audiences have a hard time making money. read more…
One of the biggest challeges facing media companies today is how to transition from the “offline world” to the Digital World. It can be an extremely difficult process, fraught with danger, overdevelopment and underperformance.
Unfortunately, most legacy media companies find little success, despite big plans. Here are five aspects that address the most common mistakes.
read more…
