Are Newspapers Brands?

Why newspapers need less news and more brand

This was a sad week for newspapers in Toronto.

The Grid, a Toronto Star run weekly, formerly known as Eye Weekly, which had, over the past two years, grown into a trusted source of insider info on the culture and food goings on in the city, is no more. It's dead. Kaput. The plug's been pulled!

Like most people, I was shocked. Why? Why? WHY???

Well, money of course.

Though the Grid was one of the best designed newspapers in Canada (beautiful, in my opinion), and had won a number of awards, it simply wasn't making enough money. Print revenues were down, online revenues, for lack of a better word, sucked, and so TorStar shuttered the business unit, not bothering to give the Grid more time to develop new sources of revenue.

I was shocked, but not surprised. Newspapers (and magazines) have been struggling with the decline of advertising revenue for years, and more papers than ever are using online paywalls to ask their readers to make up the difference.

(Yeah, right. Read your news incognito for free, people.)

Paywalls won't make up the difference. People don't want to pay for news, because news is a commodity. You can get it anywhere and everywhere. We're inundated with news. In my opinion, people won't pay to read specific columnists either, or for special "premium" articles that can only be accessed by subscribers. Columnists come and go, and switch papers more often than not. Those premium articles aren't necessarily better than the regular ones, and I'm not quite sure people can judge the difference enough to pay for them.

So then what?

Is there anything newspapers have that make them valuable?

Well, yes. Their brand.

Just as Kraft Peanut Butter is more than just peanut butter, and Lululemon is more than just a store with yoga pants, newspapers are more than just news and columnists. They're brands. And those brands have value. They mean something to people, which makes them valuable to people.

Take the Grid. What does the Grid's brand mean to you?

I'd say:

• indie
• cultured
• hipster
• foodie
• insider knowledge
• snarky
• young and trendy

The Grid knew this. According to Marketing Mag, they were in the process of exploring brand extensions that could grow their revenue, like sponsored events and custom content. In fact, they'd explored it already: events like Burger Week united beef-lovers and burger restaurants across the city, and you can bet those restaurants had to pay to be a part of it.

The Grid is (was?) a great brand, with all of the qualities I listed above, and it's a shame they didn't get the time they needed to grow that brand even more.

What about a magazine like MacLean's, Canada's version of Newsweek? What does the MacLean's brand mean to you?

I'd say:

• informative
• liberal
• integrity
• in-depth
• critical
• Canadian
• authoritative
• trusted

MacLean's knows this. In fact, they do a fantastic job of treating MacLean's as more than just a magazine. In addition to the weekly print edition, iPad edition, and website, MacLean's offers:

• in-depth, long-form e-books (on topics such as the Shafia killings and the Queen)
• special edition guides and tabloids (like their guide to Canadian universities and their Newsmakers and Year in Pictures editions)
• special events that cover everything from politics to food tasting

And all these brand extensions are featured in, and work in concert with, the magazine. MacLean's thinks and acts and operates like a brand.

Other newspapers and magazines that act like brands:

• Vice
• WIRED
• Fashion
• Any more?

So... I'll repeat: paywalls are not the answer. People don't value individual articles or columnists or news in general. They value the brands and the overall promise and experience that comes with them. Newspapers evolve, their content and brand extensions can change, but their brands will always be the same.

Is Augmented Content the Future of Advertising?

"People don't need advertising."

So began the presentation by Nick Parish of Contagious Magazine fame at an event hosted by the Institution of Communications Agencies on May 14, 2012. Despite Nick's candor, the audience full of Creative Directors and Account Execs didn't flinch at his words. They listened as Nick gave his central thesis: the old way of advertising—of influencing behaviour—is dead. It's disruptive and it interrupts the content that people truly want to consume.

His alternative is a shift in the way we think about marketing to people: from disrupting the content that is being consumed to augmenting it. By intersecting the worlds of technology, communications, and culture, advertisers can break through the zeitgeist with content that's useful, relevant, entertaining, and that ultimately enhances the current experience. Augmented content, as opposed to advertising, isn't about views or impressions, it's about engagement and reactions.

Where will most of this engagement with augmented content take place? The living room, of course. It already has everything set up to be the key venue for this type of activity. It's got:

1. Content (ie. TV shows, video games, tablet apps)
2. Platforms (ie. TV)
3. Technology (ie. Wifi)
4. Infrastructure (ie. couches, coffee tables)
5. Behaviour (ie. media consumption)

Here are the best examples of brands building specific campaigns around augmented content rather than traditional advertising...

(1) Coca Cola's Polar Bears Watch the Super Bowl

Designed as an experience that would stay open on your computer screen or iPad during the entire football game, this website featured the brand's well-known mascots reacting to live footage as it happened. They even reacted to the Superbowl Ads—getting particularly upset during a Pepsi ad.

The objective of this augmented content experience is purely to entertain.

(2) Red Bull's Snowboard Cam

The brand, a sponsor and facilitator of many extreme sports events, including snowboarding, created a multi-dimensional experience when watching taped footage of a snowboarding event. Using the Shazam app, viewers could watch a "helmet-cam"-style POV video stream on their smartphone, synced up with the bird's-eye perspective shown on TV.

The objective of this augmented content experience is to enhance the existing content.

(3) Heineken Star Player Football App

For the other football (aka soccer), Heineken took their sponsorship to the next level with an app that allows you to play along with the game, make predictions about plays and the score. It was based on two insights: (1) 80% of those who watch the game do it alone at home; (2) When you watch sports, you really do feel like you have an influence on the game.

The objective of this augmented content experience is to go beyond entertainment and enhancement, and truly engage people as they're watching the game. Very cool!


In conclusion, augmented content:

• Complements existing behaviours
• Uses the brand as an interface
• Can ultimately create networks of the unacquainted

What do you think about augmented content? Is it the future of advertising, or an expensive fad?

Will Apps Forever Transform Advertising as We Know it?

You've heard these terms before. "Web 1.0," or the Internet in its original form, a series of hyperlinked, informative web pages. "Web 2.0," or Social Media, the emergence of social networking sites, consumer reviews, consumer generated content, and digital collaboration. But what about "Web 3.0"? 

The latest cover story in Wired Magazine, titled "The Web is Dead," outlines how the Internet has vastly changed since its emergence as Web 1.0. To read the piece, click here. The Internet, the article posits, is maturing, both in terms of its content, how that content is delivered to consumers, and how consumers are consuming it. As the argument goes, the proliferation and growing adoption of always-connected smartphones has meant that more and more, consumers are choosing to access the web via a mobile device. And because their smaller screens aren't optimized for viewing and browsing the Internet like we usually do on a desktop, apps have become the dominant way of getting the content we're looking for. Think about it - when is the last time you went to a sports website to check the scores, a movie website to check the show times, or even a newspaper website to check the latest headlines? You don't. You use apps.

The Apps of the Web

But the emergence of apps has not only changed the way content is delivered and consumed on the mobile web, but it has also changed how we experience the Internet on our desktops, as well. And this is the part of the article I found the most mind-blowing. If you think about it, apps are surfacing all over the Internet as we knew it, or "Web 2.0," and transforming it into a different beast all together, which we'll call "Web 3.0." This is the app-based web. Here's the killer stat::

In 2010, 75% of the traffic on the web was generated by the top 10 sites. 

Incredible. That means that 75% of all of our time on the web is spent on a few core sites. And you know which ones they are. Facebook. Google. YouTube. So much time is spent on this sites that they have literally become the lens through which we view and access the web. Better yet: they ARE the web. But guess what: they've grown so big that they aren't websites at all. They're apps.

Nintendo Wii Channels

Let's take this idea a step further. Apps are all around us. They're on our cable boxes (OnDemand Television), on our video game systems (the X-Box Live, Wii, and PS3 networks), even on some of the latest and greatest TVs (Yahoo! Widgets). One could even argue that the increasing fragmentation of TV into an enormous number of hyper-specialized channels (Food Network, Court TV, Leafs TV) actually represents the emergence of apps.

The fact is, there are just too many channels, too much information, too much content out there for us to sift through, or "browse" through, like how we used to in the past. Couch surfing is dead. Web browsing is dead. Apps are in. Anything you need, "there's an app for that." Apps are organizers, tools, and deliverers of what we need when we need it. Want to watch a certain TV show right now? Done. Want to call up a coupon for an item you're about to buy? Done. And soon, their development won't just be limited to specialists. Remember when making your own websites and blogs were all the rage? In a few years, we'll all be making our own apps, if Google has anything to say about it. Check out this article from Marketing Magazine.

"The basic idea was to make it really easy for pretty much anybody to make applications for your mobile phone, it might be that you want to do it for fun, or you want to learn a little about programming, or you want to personalize your mobile experience and make things for your friends and family, there's all sorts of reasons." -Hal Abelson, an MIT professor working for Google

 The bottom line: apps have forever transformed the web (and the world) as we know it.

So what does this all mean to us, as advertisers?

(1) The content consumers are looking for has changed. They are looking for content that is simple, relevant, and useful beyond anything else.
(2) The way that content is delivered has changed. Consumers are looking to apps to organize, deliver, and activate content.
(3) The way that content is consumed has changed. Consumers are looking to consume content when they want, where they want, and at the time when it is most useful to them.  

This means that apps - whether through your smartphone, desktop, TV screen, or iPad - will become the dominant form of media consumption.

Kraft's Big Fork Little Fork iPad App

Futureshop's iPhone App

Pampers' "Hello Baby" iPad App

This raises a major question: if apps are the dominant form of media consumption, how does that affect advertising? When families gathered around the TV cabinet to watch hours upon hours of television, advertising came to them via videos that took into account the dominant form of consumption. With families now separated in the different rooms of a house, each consuming media on their own through an app, how will advertising respond, and become contextually-relevant again? You guessed it: through apps. Imagine a creative brief where the deliverable is not a TV script, or even a media-neutral "big idea," but an app. An creative, engaging, and most importantly, utilitarian app that builds brand awareness, familiarity, affinity, and engagement at the same time.

It could happen...