Tag Archives: business thinking

November 6, 2013 · 10:43 am

Newsflash: They’re Alive! Newspapers Are Alive!

The folks at comScore released some information about newspaper readership the other day that might just be of interest.

Newspaper colour

(Photo credit: NS Newsflash)

The interwebs are filled from time to time with headlines blaring about the death of newspapers.  As it turns out, not so much.  As Media Post reported:

September was the busiest month ever for newspapers in terms of digital traffic, with 141 million U.S. adults visiting a newspaper Web site or using a newspaper mobile app.That figure is up 11% over June and represents 71% of the country’s total online adult population, defined as the total number of adults accessing any type of digital content.

I’m a believer in the “content is king” theory.  Great newspapers are content generation machines.  Besides developing their own reports on events of the day they commission other content – reviews, feature stories, etc. – that can be what’s lovingly called linkbait here in cyberspace.  That content is often circulated beyond and by the initial audience, furthering the reach.  What crappy newspapers do is cut and paste wire copy after gutting their content-generating capabilities.  I don’t know that those sort of newspapers are dying; it sees more like suicide.

What’s also suicidal is an insistence by any business on preserving a business model that is ceasing to work.  We saw it in the record industry and in many cases we’re seeing it with newspapers.  Smart newspapers jumped into digital with both feet.  Admittedly, many of those are still struggling with the appropriate business model: subscription vs. metered pay wall vs. ad-supported vs. some hybrid.  The formation and implementation of whatever the right model is get slowed down by the constant shift of technology and platforms.  As content consumption shifts to mobile – and the total mobile audience for U.S. newspapers was 77 million U.S. adults in September, or 55% of the total audience – the model needs to be thought out again.

What this research demonstrates again is that we need to emphasize business over tools.  Newspapers do an excellent job of using all the latest tools.  The best ones continue to produce great content, the core of their business.  What still needs work is the business model, which was stable for almost 200 years and has changed forever.  They’re not alone:  it could happen to your business in a relative instant.  Are you ready?

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November 4, 2013 · 11:29 am

Will Rogers

Let’s start our week with a business point from the great American humorist Will Rogers.

Will Rogers

Will Rogers

For those of you unfamiliar with him, he’s best known for saying (in reference to Leon Trotsky) “I never met a man I didn’t like.”  I’ve always considered him the successor to Mark Twain in many ways in that he often made very pointed remarks in a gentle, funny manner.  That didn’t make his humor any less barbed, however.

You might think that I want to use that to make a point about business behavior.  That’s not a bad notion but not where we’re heading today.  Instead, let’s think about something he said that was brought to my attention via a fortune cookie.  A reader sent me the contents of the cookie (and I do hope that you will feel free to send in ideas, questions, or even rants) and when I read it I just knew it had to be a topic.  It said:

Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.

For a man who died even before commercial television began, Will certainly gets business today.  No business can afford to rest on its laurels.  Market conditions change, consumer preferences change and of course technology has changed everything.  Take, for example, a huge company like Microsoft.  They built up large, profitable markets for their operating system and their Office products and those were cash cows.  Sure, there were constant upgrades but mostly they just “sat there” enjoying the stream of profits.  Suddenly, Google and Apple are cleaning their clock and those cash cows are in danger.

I take the statement on a personal level as well.  We all need to keep learning.  Much of what I do today is built upon the base of 35 years of business experience but it also requires me to have kept up with changes in the media and tech worlds.  I submit that none of us can be effective at our jobs or personal lives if we don’t make a constant effort to keep growing, no matter how successful we’ve been to that point.

Any thoughts?

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October 29, 2013 · 10:05 am

Lou

How can I write about anything this TunesDay but Lou Reed?  He passed away the other day from liver disease and it’s a huge loss to any fan of rock music.  Lou was a founding member of The Velvet Underground, a band most of you have neither heard nor heard of.  As with several other members of the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame (they’ve been in since 1996), their influence goes way beyond their commercial success, and Lou’s went even beyond that.  He also points out a few things that are relevant to business too.

First, a little Lou to get us energized:

Lou’s efforts with The Velvet Underground were a bomb.  Not the bomb – a bomb, as in commercial failure.  While the world is littered with businesses (and don’t kid yourself – no matter how artistic the band, it’s a business too) that fail, we sometimes don’t recognize that contained within that failure is a ton of success.  Obviously, since they’re a Hall Of Fame act, the artistic side of the venture was working.

This isn’t an unusual phenomenon, by the way.  Two examples that pop into my head are Galileo and Thoreau.  Galileo, the father of science, was locked up as a heretic and looked upon as a failure in his time.  Thoreau’s works were mostly ignored for 100 years and his influence on many folks in the latter part of the last century is undeniable (check out Civil Disobedience and Walden if you don’t believe that).  Smart businesspeople look in the ashes of “failures” for embers of success.

Back to Lou.  I chose the song Rock And Roll because it too makes a business point.  First, the music.  It’s a very familiar chord sequence.  Slow it down and you have Sweet Home Alabama.  Add a droning lead guitar and you have Sweet Child Of Mine. We don’t always need new, innovative or unusual chord sequences to make magic either in music or in business.  Second, the lyrics:

Then one fine morning, she turns on a New York station
she doesn’t believe what she hears at all
Ooohhh, she started dancin’ to that fine fine music
you know her life was saved by rock ‘n’ roll
yeah, rock ‘n’ roll

Anyone who has had that experience – feeling as if they had their life saved by music – knows how powerful an emotion Lou is tapping here.  That’s a business point as well.  Lou describes a typical young adult who can’t relate to her parents or situation in life and yet finds hope and salvation in music.  Using subjects to which the target audience can relate and expressing yourself in honest, simple language are good thoughts to keep in mind as well.

Finally, Lou didn’t have classic rock looks nor a great voice yet he was able to succeed.  Many of us tend to dwell on the obvious shortcomings our businesses may have instead of focusing on how to use the assets we do have to grow.  In Lou’s case, those assets were a fantastic vision, fearlessness, and  his intellect. While we’re all a little worse off for his departure, we have his music and the things he showed us through it.  For that, I’m appreciative and glad.  You?

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