The Marketing Plaza

Newspapers are crashing and burning. I’m not talking about in their own medium — although there’s sad news on that front.  No, I mean in the social media world.  Why?  Because they refuse to modify their message to the medium. It’s an odd commentary for a medium built solidly in the communications world, but one thing newspaper publishers, editors and writers don’t understand is how to use a blog to their best advantage (not to mention Twitter and other social media).

Publishers. Publishers care about publishing. They want the funds to print another day.  Hence, they are concerned with revenue.  Guess what? Blogs are not great revenue producers — at least at first — and publishers are not patient people. They want the ads in today for tomorrow’s edition.  The result?  They are looking for posts that will bring in advertisers. They keep trying to develop content that the Advertising department can sell, rather than content the community wants to read or engage in.  It’s not a good model and it hasn’t worked.

Editors. Editors are a bit better, but also don’t understand the medium.  Great editors understand the need for personality and the public thirst for the news behind the news.  One of my favorite Sunday columns was a local editor’s post on how his reporters got the latest, greatest story — literally the story behind the news. However, the insights were saved for the precious Sunday paper and not posted on the paper’s website.

Another young editor at a different local paper, started a community blog. She inherently understood the need for community voice on the paper’s website, but didn’t understand that community in the blogging world means individuals not organizations.  She approached non-profits in the State with the opportunity to post on a blog set up for local causes. The result is a series of mini-press releases on golf outings and benefactor and grant news rather than insights into the causes.  I can guarantee you that the only people reading the blog are the marketing folks at other non-profits.  The real community isn’t interested.

Writers. Writers understand writing and followings, but newspaper writers are in competition with themselves. They are saving their stories for the paper, hoping to get in the Sunday edition. Their blog posts are bland and again, tend not to tell the story behind the story.  Why was it a difficult story to write?  How did they get a crying mother to admit her son had gone sour? How did they learn about the story in the first place?  Don’t just tell me you wrote a great story. Tell me why you felt it was worthy of the newspaper. Then, you might draw me to your story in the paper, but mostly, I’m not going to bother to read your current blog. It’s not giving me any insight into your craft.

Newspapers are built for blogging.  They just haven’t realized it yet, or approached it in the right way. I wish they would. I’m a news junkie at heart and would eat it up — as would a huge segment of the online world.

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Marketing is like a light bulb. Do it right and the world lights up around you.  Customers come clamoring to you because they clearly see you’re the right fit for them.  The media buzzes about you with little effort.  You’ve got what everyone wants.  It’s a true GE moment – “Bringing good things to light.”

But how to you get there?  Take a lesson from the master himself -  Thomas Alva Edison. “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

If your marketing is not working, don’t give up the ship. Move on to the next concept.  Therein lies the first problem with most marketing. CEOs abandon ship.  That’s never a good sign.

The concept of repetitive testing for uncovering marketing genius was the topic of a recent breakfast meeting featuring Mike Moran, author of the new book Do it Wrong Quickly. His thesis is simple.  Great marketing is based on analytics which can tell you what’s working and what’s not.  If something isn’t working, stop it, but don’t stop marketing altogether.  Instead, quickly move on to the next concept and the next until you finally stumble upon the light bulb.  Voila! Marketing success.

The public will think you’re a marketing genius just as we all now acknowledge Edison’s genius as an inventor.  But, the truth will be marketing peserverance – you stuck with it and tested and measured and refined, and tested and measured and refined, and tested and measured and refined (you get the idea).

In a nutshell: Marketing is about perseverance. Learn from Edison and keep trying new ideas until you uncover the one that really works and lights up the world.

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No matter where I turn, I bump into Charles Darwin.  Today, a friend sent me a link to a New York Times article on how the publishing industry has been affected by evolution. Then, I stumbled on a SlideShare presentation by another Charles — Charlie Hoehn, a recent college graduate making his mark on the world.  He quoted Darwin while providing his peers with job hunting advice.

“It’s not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives.  It’s the one that is most adaptable to change.”

Charles Darwin

Is your marketing Darwin proof?
Is your business?
Are you adaptable to change?

Really?  I kind of doubt it because change requires more than just changing tactics.

Today’s marketing pros have to be true Change Management artists.  I’ll continue to argue that the fundamentals of marketing remain the same, but the techniques have clearly changed.  One by one, clients are finally admitting they have to learn how to communicate in the social media age, and want to go from 0- 100 in Superhuman speed. It won’t work unless the companies fundamentally change the marketing behind the communications techniques not just the communications channels themselves.

A TV ad doesn’t work in print. A print ad doesn’t work on a billboard – -not without some changes. They are fundamentally different medium and require different approaches within a campaign. The same is true of social media. If you are planning on just repurposing existing material on a social media platform, abandon ship before you leave port. The tone, value and approach in social media are all inherently different from traditional mass market messaging.

I encourage you to enter the social media world.  Just don’t do it without changing yourself first – from the inside out.  That includes corporate culture, marketing plans, and studying a bit of Darwin and Marshall McCluhan. After all, the medium is still the message.

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