Media musings

The first-ever video advertisement will be published in a traditional paper magazine in September.

The video-in-print ads will appear in select copies of the US show business title Entertainment Weekly.

The slim-line screens - around the size of a mobile phone display - also have rechargeable batteries.

The chip technology used to store the video - described as similar to that used in singing greeting cards - is activated when the page is turned.

Each chip can hold up to 40 minutes of video.

Josh Adler (@joshprefix) of Prefix Technologies tweeted this a few days ago:

"Digital coming to print rather than print coming to digital. Who knew you could embed a video into a paper!"

Nothing surprises me in the world of media anymore. What is sustainable and what is not, is the million dollar question. But innovation doesn't stand still waiting for the answer. It creates answers, that may or may not be right.

All I can say, is kudos to the advertisers and the media owners for having the chutzpa to go where most don't dare.

As Tom Peters says, "You can't shrink your way to greatness," and yet that's what so many dying businesses try to do. They hunker down and wait for things to get better, but they don't. This isn't a dip, it's a cul de sac. It's over.

Right this minute, you still have some cash, some customers, some momentum... Instead of squandering it in a long, slow, death spiral, do something else. Buy a new platform. Move. Find new products for the customers that still trust you.

Change is a bear, but it's better than death.

Now that I am out of the media business, and can observe from afar, I don't see too much innovation taking place in the B2B media sector. Seth's advice of "Buy a new platform. Move. Find new products for the customers that still trust you." is right on the nail, but the hunkering down of executives as their businesses slowly lose momentum, is the dance of death.

"Change is a bear, but it's better than death."

But its got to be quick. Change too slowly, and you'll die anyway.

My work is to find a subject suitable for what used to be called a 'feature' and produce an article and TV package about it (including a plug for my sponsors). I then put it out on all of the following: my website, a blogspot site, my Yahoo group, an eShot to my own list of subscribers, my YouTube site, my podcast site and iTunes, a subscription DVD, any magazine in that specialist consumer area, and any national newspaper website and local TV news network desperate enough to run free footage repackaged as 'news'. The only income I derive from this is from sponsors.
I used to edit magazines. I just resigned from my last one because this new model is more profitable. I expect what has happened to me will happen to everyone like me over the next ten years.

Charlie Jacoby used to edit magazines. He has just resigned from his last one because this new model is more profitable. He maintains that what has happened to him will happen to everyone like him over the next ten years.

All you eds out there. Take note. Particularly if you're in the B2B space. The model for success is in front of you, but you just need to open your eyes to it, and look a little harder. Particularly in South Africa, where so many 'leading' B2B publishers have their heads buried in the sand.

Vaughan said events make up the largest portion of TechWeb’s revenues at 40 percent. Twenty percent comes from print while the remaining 40 percent come from digital revenues. “The big focus for us is to continue to integrate and be able to grow into new businesses,” he said. “We’ll put people in areas of our business that are poised for growth.”

So global B2B media companies now derive 20% of their revenues from print.

Hmmmmm.

And in South Africa that number is probably closer to 80% or 90% (ITWeb and Moneyweb excepted).

Something's going to break soon.

The short answer is yes. In our estimation, roughly 70% of today's PR firms with their traditional public relations and communications business structures will not survive the fast-approaching social media avalanche. The remaining 30% that need to reinvent their position real fast in their newly morphed industry will prosper, compared to where they were and what they were doing before.

This is one of the most provocative quotes I've seen posted for a long time.

Even more provocative is the author's assertion that "the new social media tools do not mean Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. I am talking about the tools that do not exist yet or are not widely known today. Today's popular platforms will never pass the stage of mass spam tools; their non-existent effectiveness will be proven null before the end of this year."

Of course, the author has a vested interest in raising the FUD factor in the PR community, battered as it is by the disruptive tsunami of social media and the steady decline and influence of its traditional print platforms.

"Why?", you may ask. Well Fuat Kircaali is CEO of Ulitzer, a new media platform with an innovative model, which he suggests will change the game. Forever.

Well, maybe. Maybe not.

What is beyond dispute, is that disruption upon disruption is pretty unsettling, even for the most astute of media professionals.

So when Kircaali suggests that "Tomorrow's (and I mean tomorrow, not the next decade) marketing game will be played on professional corporate blogging platforms. The companies with the largest number of well-read and respected corporate bloggers will win the marketing and propaganda games." ... you get a sense of the sort of changes in store for the world of business.

Kircaali envisages that larger companies will need larger armies of corporate bloggers, suggesting that the new job description of "professional corporate blogger" will be a very popular one.

"To be or not to be, that is the question for the PR firms that will hit the wall at this stage. The ones who are equipped to provide those services whose job descriptions are not yet defined will be tomorrow's brave new PR companies.

Other than that, the day the new SEC, under the White House 2.0 Obama administration, answers the question Jonathan Schwartz asked three years ago, will be the end for most PR companies."

And that, might be the end of the beginning.