Newspapers

Mark Cuban posted an interesting idea for a way to save the newspapers from their slow collapse. The basic premise is that newspaper or for this matter any content provider would close their content to the general public but provide it to anyone who cable or satellite provider subscriber and they would. The cable companies would pay a nominal fee for this exclusive content. Overall, this is an interesting idea but I am not sure if it is really executable especially with the growing ubiquity of open wifi networks. Also, I am not sure if I want to give cable or satellite companies more power as what content they can or will provide. This week On The Media had a 3 good stories directly related to this topic that are definitely worth listening to:

The first is about a micro payment service called Kachingle that is trying to generate revenue for newspapers by having people willingly make a small payment for the content they consume. This sounds interesting but I am not really sure how many people would sign up for such a service or if they did sign up I am not sure how many people would refill their account:

The second story is about how comcast, the nations largest cable company, restricted what some of their subscribers were doing online under the guise of QOS:

And lastly, the third related story is a discussion about the ramifications of the demise of the newspaper industry and if it is worth saving:

Personally, I do think newspapers especially investigative journalism (on all levels local, national, and international) is very important and needs an outlet. It is debatable if newspapers are the appropriate venue for such journalism but that is, in my opinion, the only reason newspapers need to be saved. The biggest problem seems to be that the newspaper industry has been extremely slow to adopt to new technology and make necessary changes and modernizations in printing and distribution models in order to remain efficient and profitable.

Graffiti vs. Brands

Graffiti artists and Brands have one thing in common, they both would like to be ubiquitous. What happens when graffiti artists start attacking brands' ubiquitous logos? 

The artist attacking these brands is Zevs and his intention is to force the passer by to pay attention and question to these images rather than just letting them slip into our subconscious.

Another graffiti artist attacking advertising here in NYC is Poster Boy, you can read about him here and see his all of his work here. 

Poster Boy slices and mashes 2 or 3 different ads to create a composite image, which still remains brand heavy but adds cheeky irony to it. 

What does this mean for marketers/advertisers? Well we need to be much more cognisant of what media we are buying and where our message will be going. Brands that are socially conscious and accessible for dialogue will get attacked much less than brands that are closed off to 2 way communication and only interested in spreading a message. Social media/application, when done right, can be a great way to foster communication between brands and consumers. A good example is Comcast which was getting attacked for is poor customer service by a rather famous advertising critic, Bob Garfield of Ad Age and On The Media. Comcast started a twitter account in order to be more responsive and to start a dialogue with customers. Marketers need to realize that consumers and advocates have a lot more power to spread their message weather that message is positive or negative is up to the brand.

Enjoy your thanksgiving holiday.