Mark Ramsey knows way more about radio than I do. He points out that the stats I referred to about radio dying (above) aren’t of high quality. Link: Radio Marketing Nexus: Shaky Statistics.
Okay, radio’s not dying. But it’s sick!
PS A friend told me about a interesting cultural distinction at Bloomberg (the media company, not the mayor). At most media companies, corrections are a pox, a bane on the reporter’s (and editor’s) existence. At Bloomberg, though, there’s no shame in a correction. Correct early and often. Sounds like a good policy to me.
May 15, 2005
…people make up a story. They have to. We have no choice.
Consider this story courtesy of Boing Boing:
VANCOUVER, British Columbia (Reuters) – A lazy worker, not a satanic cult, was responsible for severed goat heads that caused a scare at a Vancouver-area school, Canadian police said on Monday.
Police were called in after goat heads were twice found on a bench outside a school in nearby Chilliwack, British Columbia, prompting fears in the suburban community that it had been targeted by a satanic animal killing.
A 19-year-old worker at a local slaughterhouse has admitted he took the two heads with the intention of having them mounted, but then changed his mind and left them at the school in hopes a janitor would dispose of them.
“(Police) want to reassure the community that there were no satanic intentions in relation to these incidents,” the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said, adding that the man “should have known better.”
May 14, 2005
Slashdot | Radio Listening Declining w/ Digital On Its Way Up. Note that the number of listeners (not the hours, the actual number of people) is down 4% in one year. That’s huge. Also note that online listening is up 10 million people.
Once satellite etc. is standard equipment in new cars, that’s the last straw.
People will pay to control their media. They’ll also pay for the long tail. They’ll also pay to avoid commercials. 3 strikes…
It’s easy to get hung up on demographics when you buy advertising. This is probably a mistake.
Consider this insight from Pamela Parker (Lessons from the Cutting Edge: RSS Advertising.) "It turns out
the ads on the site are geared toward an audience of people who are
discovering the content — product information — via a search engine.
Because these folks are at a certain, and very attractive, stage in the
buying cycle, advertisers are willing to pay higher prices. Its feed
subscribers, on the other hand, may or may not be in the same stage of
the buying cycle — they just happen to be interested in that category
of product."
Short version: a person’s receptiveness to an ad changes based on where they are and what they’re doing. Google AdWords are brilliant for just this reason. People are trained to Google in order to go somewhere else. Most sites train people to come and to stay. Same thing is true with magazines.
Thanks to Tom Cohen for the link.
So, the reporter from the LA Times started with this question, “Why do you think the cable TV people are using the Internet to fight the government’s attempts to expand their crackdown on broadcast indency to cable?”
That’s when you know which side has already won the debate.
How can you be against indency? How can you argue against a crackdown?
Would the question have been just as accurate if it had been, “Why do you think the cable TV people are using the Internet to fight the government’s assault on the first amendment as it tries to censor and control what adults choose to watch on paid TV in the privacy of their homes?”
It’s easy to assume that I’m just playing with words here. I’m not. The words that are used in any debate are at the heart of the story we tell ourselves.
One side often tries to rely on facts, on the truth, on what’s right. The other side tells a story that fits our worldview. Who wins?
The storytellers will win every time.
Try for a moment to divorce the way you feel about this issue (personally, I’m sort of ambivalent) and take a look at the tactics. They are precisely the tactics that a wi-fi router manufacturer needs to use, or someone searching for a job.
Yes, it feels Orwellian. It doesn’t seem fair that it’s not just good enough to be correct or qualified or the best value. That’s not even close to what it takes to succeed in today’s marketplace of ideas. Instead, you must frame your message in a way that gives people a story that matches their worldview.
I heard a spokesperson for the governor of Missouri on the radio today. She was supporting the governor’s claim that eliminating Medicaid in Missouri was a moral, socially acceptable act of generosity. She explained how unfair it was for taxpayers to subsidize health care for the poor, and that in fact, eliminating health care for the poor might be quite positive because it would encourage people to go out and get a job. She did this in a calm and reasonable manner, and you could hear the foundation being built. After all, how can you be against people going out and getting a job? How can you be against people keeping their own money… If this story fits your worldview, I’m sure it sounds reasonable and believable. If it doesn’t, the story won’t persuade you. That’s the way marketing works–you don’t persuade people with your story, you just give people who already agree with you the tools they need to persaude their friends.
May 13, 2005
I do.
It’s a horrible habit, I admit it. But do I have any other choice? With 95,000 books published every year (in the USA alone), how on earth are you supposed to spend the time to read books with bad covers?
Of course, it’s not just books. We judge magazines, restaurants, even people by their covers. (and especially web sites!) And as a result, we end up skipping great meals, not getting to know terrific people and missing all sorts of terrific opportunities as a result.
So, here’s what I do about it:
1. I try to find things with lousy covers and go out of my way to check them out. If the herd is drawn to the obvious, flashy cover, then I’m not going to find insightful, rare information where everyone else is. The unique stuff is hiding.
2. I try to make covers that don’t sabatoge the work. It’s astonishing to me how many packages, jackets, labels, signs and outfits are chosen because they’re safe, boring and invisible instead of for the only reason that matters–to sell the prospect on finding out what’s inside.
May 12, 2005
I hope you’ll do two things.
First, wait patiently until Monday when I show you my new ebook about web pages and conversion.
Second, don’t wait even one minute before checking out: Call To Action: How to Improve Your Conversion Rate. The authors sent me a copy a few weeks ago, but I was too busy writing my ebook to read this. A shame, because I could have stolen countless ideas from them. It’s filled with all the facts and details and case studies that I was far too lazy to include in my ebook.
Despite the godawful cover, this book is an astonishing bargain. The book is straightforward and gives you direct, clear insight into what’s wrong with your site and what to do about it. No fancy metaphors or engaging banter. Just the nuts and bolts and the facts to back them up.
I can’t conceive of a website that won’t benefit from the ideas inside. Still reading this blog? Stop! Go check out this book.
In March, Fred Wilson (a must read) posted an essay on companies that are either "we" or "they". You can find it here: A VC: Apple Becomes a "They" Company.
The post created a lot of comments and trackbacks, and it just dawned on me what was missing for me.
I don’t think We and They are absolutes. For example, if there were just one Starbucks in the world, and it was just down the street from you, you’d likely feel differently about "your" Starbucks than you feel about the entire chain. Why? "Your" Starbucks would be identical, but your feelings would change.
Same thing happens when Apple starts litigating against websites or bullying people writing add-ons to iTunes. It doesn’t change your Mac, your user experience.
What changes is the story you tell yourself.
As everyone in the world becomes a marketing expert and a blogger, we’re spending a lot more time thinking about the brands we deal with, the purchases we make and the we and the they. I want to argue that there’s no such thing as we and they. What is really going on is that companies take actions that have nothing to do with the truth of your experience and everything to do with the way you feel about the experience. These actions (like Apple’s suit against thinksecret.com) are the hood ornament, not the car.
And more often than not, those actions are somewhat trivial and very inexpensive. Once companies (and non-profits, for that matter, like churches or government agencies) become more aware of how important these hood ornaments are, I’m betting they’ll get better at telling the story.
Hugh Macleod posted gapingvoid: how to be creative (long version). It’s worth reading again, especially if you missed it the first time.
The other day, I found myself sitting next to Robert Klein at Spamalot. When I was a forlorn teenager, I would spend hours listening to his comedy albums. I memorized his ad for "every record ever recorded… we drive a truck to your house." I resisted temptation and did not recite it for him on Saturday (though I still know it by heart. "Lithuanian Language Records!")
For a long time, I figured that the inevitable was just about to happen. That every record ever recorded would find its way online and if you had a big enough hard drive, you could have them all.
Mark Fraunfelder at Boing Boing: A Directory of Wonderful Things points us to THE TOFU HUT where you can find a painstakingly created directory of hundreds of sites pointing to almost a million mp3s. All free.
I no longer believe you can have every record ever recorded. I now know for certain that by the time they drive a truck to your house, a thousand new records will be made.
When everybody can make everything, the amount of clutter reaches a whole new level. When everybody can make everything (Handmade custom Pez dispensers) then the whole idea of clutter at this level changes the way you need to think about supply and demand.
Warner Records is such an anachronism in a world with too much music.
May 11, 2005
