November 20th, 2005, 12:15 pm
When content is for sale …
… what are newspapers supposed to do? And more importantly, what happens to journalism?
Ellen Degeneres is a bad dancer. It’s the trademark schtick on her talk show, “Ellen,” and it’s the subject of her American Express commercials. The business relationship between the credit card giant and the comedianne is obvious in the commercials themselves: she’s dancing for dollars. Personally, I was kinda happy for her … “You go, girl! Way to make lesbians marketable!”
But the co-branding extends much further. On the show “Ellen,” there is a segment called “Spend or Save,” in which an audience member chooses between “saving” the money she’s just won on a giant American Express card, or “spending” it by choosing a prize of unknown value. (Wait … that sounds familiar …) If you’re a media savvy consumer, it’s evident that this segment is part of her deal with American Express … that giant floppy credit card bought and paid for its screen time … and most likely, the idea for the segment originated deep within the bowels of some nefarious marketing company.
Embedded advertising, product placement, content produced solely to satisfy some marketing promotion … yadda, yadda, yadda; it’s old news in the entertainment industry.
But those mediums are changing dramatically with the expansion of on-demand viewing … TiVos and DVRs are making traditional advertisements kinda bunk. (Translation: no one watches ads they fastforward through.) I think it’s no stretch to predict that ad dollars are going to gravitate to embedded advertising, where the promoted product becomes part of the content.
Especially because with future on-demand viewing, streamed from some giant server, product placement will become interactive … instead of madly Googling “carrie horseshoe necklace,” for example, 2001 fashionistas could have clicked directly on Ms. Bradshaw’s neck to be lead to a site selling such a necklace …
So, OK, great. What does this have to do with journalism?
Well, journalism for the most part is stuck in the traditional advertising-alongside-content model. We’ve got strict rules — and no one is a more strident defender of them than myself — about keeping advertiser influence way, way out of our content. When some of our flock bend these rules even slightly … the infamous single advertiser New Yorker issue comes to mind … we jump up and down, squawking and fussing.
From a marketer’s standpoint, us prissy journalists are dead wrong. Our business model is kaput … no more subscribers, no more classifieds. As television and movies evolve into hyper interactive advertisements with co-branded celebrities … the best we have to offer is full page ads. Banner ads. Sponsored photo slideshows and searches. How long can these compete with a dancing Ellen waving a giant AmEx? And how long before giant newspaper corporations cry, “Enough is enough! Our content is now … for … SALE! “
November 25th, 2005 at 7:19 am
Hi Laura! Interesting post. While the blog vs. journalist debate rages large and certainly can’t be captured in a single comment, what I would like to argue is that the two will eventually settle into perfect harmony. My belief is that there’s an absolute need for both. Readers need the well-researched, edited, high-integrity, costly-to-produce journalist stories. These pieces are conversation anchors. Blog posts then focus those high quality pieces into a million sub-markets. Triathlete bloggers analyze a national story from their perspective. Lesbians from theirs. Republicans from theirs. Dems from theirs. You get the picture. The focusing makes the anchor story more valuable and the anchor story makes blogging possible. Without the anchor stories blogs are just a bunch of rambling. Without the blogs anchor stories are not as relevant as they could be. While there’s a lot of buzz about the blog and new models these days, the ultimate reality is that readers need what newspapers provide… Journalism… the capital J. There may be a period of rough times, but in the end readers will always value that research and high quality content. Some of your concern is over format. That paper isn’t sexy. But it is. Just ask Hewlett Packard’s printer toner division. They know that even though people these days are digital this and digital that, they print the heck out of all of it. How many times have you seen people find an article online, print it and then read it with a cup of coffee? I see and do it all the time. There’s something better about reading from paper. That value won’t go away. Anyhow, I’m diverging a good bit. I believe you’re correct in highlighting some of the current challenges, but I don’t believe that these challenges are anything more than transient.