media

In his new blog, Steph Lagrange reports a conversation we had last April about my work:

Proximity (i.e. “always available”) is another key concept to Bruno. Whereas in traditional media the distance between the ad and the store can be miles and/or days away, on the Web the distance has narrowed down to a mere hyperlink (i.e. URL). The call to action and the ability to take action are instantaneous, almost real time.

And this is exactly where most media companies miss the point. Too focused on page views and unique visitors to measure their online ad display revenue, media corporations miss the conversion to action stage.

To get your customer engaged enough to act upon an ad with the intent of following through, remains the biggest conversion whatever the media. And then, what happens?

Stephane is really impressive: there was a lot distractions around when we talked but he didn't miss a beat and he summarizes this whole concept beautifully. Thanks!

Makes me wonder if I shouldn't do like McLuhan: rather than spending months (years!) writing a book, I could just talk and collect the notes of people I am speaking with. :-)

All mass media would benefit from a community of their readers and most are strategically well placed to create one but most of them don't seem to see why they should do it.

Jeff Jarvis writes today about Rupert Murdoch's strategy to attack the New-York Times' brand. Independently from the Times' situation, Jarvis' diagnostic could be applied to any mass media:

I think the Times has to decide on radical reinvention, a new architecture. You can guess my starting points: a networked structure, a distributed strategy, a community plan.

Jarvis also refers to suggestions he made last month to the Times, using a quote from Fred Wilson:

The Times should create and sell quality collaborative networks and expand the brand around its value: reporting. (...) And it has to become the product of collaboration with networks and independent professionals and its audience.

I agree with Fred Wilson here: “I’d make the NY Times all about their audience. Let the people who read the paper have a much larger role in the content that gets published, both online and offline. The best thing about the NY Times is their readers. The only way they can fix their problems is by leveraging them as the other half of their newsroom.”

The tone may sound apocalyptic, but creating a community is not such a gigantic enterprise: MetaFilter, for example, generates 9.9 millions page views per month and is managed by 4 people. In fact, considering the hardship of mass media on the Web, the cost of creating a community is minimal.

It looks like the cultural shift is all that is paralyzing our mass media.

In the last issue of The New York Review of Books, Russell Baker draws a dark portrait of the state of newspapers. It's a fascinating read, if a little depressing:

"The American press has the blues. Too many authorities have assured it that its days are numbered, too many good newspapers are in ruins. It has lost too much public respect."

It's so well written, with all the facts and a great history of the newspapers business and journalism over the past decade. Nevertheless, I think this is much ado about nothing:

- The readership trends don't look good, but newspapers still make tons of money and are not yet in any kind of danger.

- One important question that Baker barely asks is "what is the state of the news" (rather than "what is the state of newspapers?"). Personally, I have never read so many news about so many topics from so many sources. Overall, we are very well informed, with or without newspapers.

- Sure, most newspapers have no idea what to do with the community of their readers. And mostly, they don't know how to make money on the Web. Both go hand in hand: if you don't know how to use the Web with your readers, you won't know how to use it to generate revenues. But they will learn, eventually.

(Thanks Pierre G. from Houston for the link.)