The demise of Gourmet magazine took me by surprise. It seemed that Gourmet (along with Modern Bride) was working a beat that was meant for print. Sure the index was handy but readers wended this way through this magazine, finding the content that appealed first to their eyes. Argue that content is king if you will, but the photography and design had all the constitutional power. Think of other magazines (Wooden Boat, Fine Woodworking, Architectural Digest, Garden & Gun) that use print to create experiences and evoke emotion in ways their websites have yet to approach.
Conversation Marketing has an interesting take on some of Gourmet’s self-inflicted wounds from an SEO perspective.
I suspect their achievement in print may have allowed management to think–as I did–that they were meant for print. That yes they would commit some resources to an “online version” but that their energy was better focused on what they knew was their prestige product. But perhaps you don’t focus on online because you think it is going to replace your print. Perhaps you focus on online because that is the only thing that is going to allow you to keep printing.
Certainly their lack of attention to online contributed to end of a rich tradition. For the sake of the printed art of magazine publishing, I hope others mark this shoal on their charts.
The real death knell is their keyword count: According to Compete.com, Gourmet.com gets traffic from 355 organic search terms. Epicurious gets traffic from 8,040.
That has nothing to do with brand, and everything to do with SEO. Gourmet has thousands of pages, and thousands of great incoming links. They could have doubled or tripled their traffic with a concerted, ongoing SEO campaign.
Read more: http://www.conversationmarketing.com/2009/10/why-gourmet-died-publishers.htm#ixzz0UDonPlQP
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Mapping a potential pandemic, Google maps includes dates and particulars of confirmed and suspected infections.
The otherwise useful “Get Directions” feature possible uses include irony and reverse directions.
H1N1 Swine Flu – Google Maps
CALIFORNIA Imperial County
Last Updated by
niman on Apr 22
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Transparency and Listening skills….
UniLever CMO Clift Throws Down the Social-Media Gauntlet – Advertising Age – Digital
- Listening to consumers is more important than talking at them. As Mr. Clift said, “We may be ahead of our competitors, but we’re most definitely behind consumers.” The consumer is not a moron, she’s the person defining your brand.
- You can’t hide the corporation behind the brand anymore — or even fully separate the two. Even this editor’s creaking computer only took 0.13 seconds to show that Philip Morris is owned by Altria Group. Welcome to radical transparency, where bad corporate behavior will damage your brands, and vice versa.
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Stephen Brill has co-founded a journalism co-op in hopes of establishing a syndicated model with monthly and annual subscribers.One of Journalism Online’s key value propositions will be negotiating wholesale licensing and royalty fees with search engines and new aggregators.
Journalism Online
NEW YORK, April 14, 2009 – Citing “the urgent need” for a comprehensive, immediate plan to address the downward spiral in the business of publishing original, quality journalism, experienced journalism and media industry executives Steven Brill, Gordon Crovitz, and Leo Hindery today announced the formation of Journalism Online, a company that will quickly facilitate the ability of newspaper, magazine and online publishers to realize revenue from the digital distribution of the original journalism they produce.
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Microsoft has wrapped its arms around the problem; namely that both sides of the advertising equation are having a hard time keeping pace with the administration of all the threads in the tapestry.
MediaPost Publications Integration:Holy Grail
“At first it was Word. Then it was PowerPoint, Access and Excel,” Howe says of the powerful but nonintegrated applications developed by Microsoft’s software team. “Now I can do a graph in Excel and copy and paste it in a couple of keystrokes into PowerPoint. Media planners ought to be able to plan an advertising campaign the same way across platforms with a drop-down menu and a few easy keystrokes. All the friction needs to be taken out of the process.”
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Josh Chasin muses about the value where an ad is seen and then answers his own question two paragraphs on.
What indeed? What happens if the business of advertising becomes so commoditized that it no longer matters where or how you reach an audience, only that you reach them as cheaply as possible? Suddenly, the vehicle becomes irrelevant. Invariably, if you follow this to its logical conclusion, much of the money that has funded the creation of content for the last 150 years will dry up. If it stops being economically feasible to BE the Wall Street Journal online, then there will be no Wall Street Journal audience to reach elsewhere.
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Consumers have relationships with marketer brands, but also relationships with branded media content. The value of these relationships is embodied in the concept of vehicle engagement (as distinct from ad engagement.) The premise of vehicle engagement is that the job of the media vehicle is not just to attract an audience — like a watermelon attracts flies on a summer day — but also to engage that audience in a way that adds value, providing a halo effect to the advertisers reaching the audience within that content. If I am a loyal Wall Street Journal reader (or visitor to wsj.com), exposure to your ad in the Journal or on the digital version makes a difference in how that ad works on me.
MediaPost Publications Does Content Matter? 04/15/2009
The relationship with the brand directly effects the sales resistance a reader has when they are shown the product. Are they browsing through a street market in Tijuana or is a personal shopper demonstrating products in the store lounge while you are sipping wine and chatting with friends.
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