I very seldom forward links or emails to people in my office. Something really has to make me sit up and take notice before I’ll inflict it on unwilling victims. But this morning, when I read Christopher Penn’s blog entry, “No longer lend your strength to that which you wish to be free from”, I felt I had to share.
So many times when I’m reading online, the content and comments are so full of vitriol, it’s almost physically painful. Don’t you get tired of all the “nattering nabobs of negativism” yourself? If so, here’s my challenge: read Penn’s blog entry and take it to heart. Social and online media have so much power that they really can make a difference, in peoples’ lives and in the world. It’s a shame to give it over to the dark side.
Remember, all you Peter (and Peggy) Parkers out there: with great power comes great responsibility. Use yours wisely. (And forgive me for mixing my sci-fi references.)
Posted in
advertising,
branding,
general,
interactive,
media,
social media Tags:
online media,
social media
We lost our daily paper paper last July in Ann Arbor. The old Ann Arbor News was replaced by an online product, AnnArbor.com. Like many, I was chagrined. I couldn’t imagine breakfast without ink and newsprint. It just seemed strange to imagine reading the daily news on a laptop across my bowl of fruit. Not getting that dirty ink all over my fingers anymore, that would be good. But spilling coffee on my new paper? That would be bad.
I’m not a total Luddite. I’ve been a heavy online user since the pre-www days of Compuserve and Prodigy. So I’m totally comfortable in the online world. But my daily newspaper? Hmm…
I wasn’t happy about it then. I am happy now. Not with the actual digital replacement product. It’s marginal at best. Maybe because it’s marginal, I have been forced to seek out other sources of local news, information and opinion. What a revelation! I guess I never realized how much filtering was required to reduce an entire community with all of its events, quirks, warts, and diverse personalities into a daily bundle of bird cage liner, packing material and filler for my recycle bin.
Make no mistake, these new sources are not fair and balanced journalism. Most don’t pretend to be. Much is presented as fact that is, in fact, not. Articles and reader comments are often snarky, off topic, offensive, and rude. (I kind of like that part, it takes less energy than polite and politically correct). But you learn pretty quickly who has something interesting to say and who doesn’t.
What used to be twenty pages of news and a quarter page of Letters to the Editor is now snippets of news and screen after screen after screen of Letters to the Editor. I always liked the letters best anyway. The only issue I have with this new order is that the conversation tends to be dominated by an annoying few. Maybe they just have too much time on their hands, or maybe they really do know everything… about everything. You who know it all – and you know who you are – start your own blog.
And then there is the anti-everything crowd. News flash: www.antieverything.com is for sale. And the conspiracy theorists. They think I’m out to get them. (I am, but I’ll blog about that some other time.) There are the mindlessly single-minded. Is that an oxymoron? Or just a moron? Their one pet peeve is somehow relevant no matter the topic. The linkers, they think I really need 100 pages of linked minutiae to learn that the school board spent too much on pencils. And then there those I call the twits. The ones who use that incredibly annoying twitterism of using the @ symbol when replying to another poster.
But, all in all, since I’ve been reading these local blogs, news sites, pseudo news sites, rants, and journals, I certainly feel like I am more informed. I might actually be. It’s hard to tell. It is definitely more fun than the old paper paper. And I haven’t spilled anything on it yet.
Posted in
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media,
new media,
press Tags:
ann arbor,
AnnArbor.com,
online news
Today consumers are bombarded with messages and advertising from the moment they wake up to the moment they go to sleep. You radio alarm clock goes off and a commercial is playing. You make your coffee and put it in your branded to-go coffee cup, get in your car and next to the Sirius Radio logo that is permanently part of your dash. I won’t go through the entire day – email campaigns, banner advertising, television commercial, newspaper and magazine ads – because I’m sure you get my point. There’s even a new technology in Canada that delivers restroom visitors at high-end restaurants a 20 second video that is played in the bathroom mirror when it senses the sink is on.
The real challenge for both media and creative people in today’s world is delivering the message in a way that make it stand out and get noticed above all the other advertising “noise”. The key is to make sure you are talking to your target in a way that relates to them in the media that they are already consuming. As I mentioned in another blog post, if they are a pet owner be in the pet blogs, Animal Planet etc. You also have to sometime think outside of the box, this can mean anything from guerilla marketing efforts to a special fold-out or pop-up in your print ad.
Consumers have gotten really good a “tuning out the noise”, the most successful campaigns are the ones that find a way to reach their target in a way and in a medium that makes them louder.
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general,
media
