Tag Archives: Research

March 12, 2013 · 9:04 am

What Do You Wrap Something Fishy In? Newspaper!

You might have heard something about the study that was released yesterday by the folks at the Newspaper National Network.  It proclaimed in large type that “Sports Fans Rank Local Newspaper Sports Pages #1” and that “The Study Validates the Unique Benefits of Newspaper Sports Content to Advertisers.” You can read the study here.

Logo of the Newspaper National Network.

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Now being the open-minded sort of guy that I am, I read through the study with great interest but also with a very large wad of skepticism. You see, it strikes me that everything we read about newspapers has to do with the decline of daily readership. Given the “right now” nature of sports information in particular, I was surprised that the study found that newspapers are still the top source for sports news for sports fans. Let’s see what you think.

Sports news and information is one of the most hotly-contested content areas.  Having lived in it for decades, I know that the competition is fierce.  Other than the big guys – USAToday and Sports Illustrated, I can’t think of a single daily or even weekly print source that can compete for the sports audience.  Still, according to the study:

Wow!  Now I read a couple of newspapers every day but I must admit that I don’t do so for the sports scores.  I’m also out of the demo that was surveyed – Men 18-54.  I was also quite surprised by the second point.  The study shows that 76% of the respondents identified newspaper websites when asked to identify all the places you typically go to for sports news, information, and/or analysis, not including live games or competitions.  Only 65% mentioned ESPN.com and 46% identified either Yahoo Sports or a league website. Given everything I know about traffic numbers in sports, that 76% seems weird, even aggregating all of the newspaper sites (except USAToday) into a number.

That’s when I took the advice I’ve given you here on the screed a number of times:  when the results seem weird, check who was asked the question and how the question was asked.  In this case, half the men surveyed identified themselves as regular sports pages readers (2x or more/week).  Given that the ongoing Pew Study found late last year that only 29% now say they read a newspaper yesterday – with just 23% reading a print newspaper that seems like a skewed sample to me.  In fact, it’s hard to accept that 69% of male sports fans identify the print sports section as the “go to” source when over half of those who read the newspaper do so electronically according to Pew.

The best research is enlightening and can’t be picked apart very easily.  Unfortunately, this does neither.  Do you agree?

Enhanced by Zemanta

1 Comment

Filed under Helpful Hints, Huh?

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

December 12, 2012 · 11:25 am

Click Here

We’ve discussed the disconnect between marketers and consumers here on the screed more than once and I had set aside a research study a couple of weeks ago to do so again.  It’s a document from the Adobe folks called “Click Here: The State Of Online Advertising” and it makes for a brief, interesting read.  As one might expect, consumers don’t exactly rave about their love for advertising.  That said, they do seem to recognize the need for advertising and prefer professionally created ads over user-generated marketing:

Consumers and marketing professionals agree that marketing is valued, strategic to business and paramount to driving sales.  Professional advertising is the most effective form of advertising, but 27% of marketers believe that user-generated content is the most popular form of online advertising.

Of course, 53% agree that most marketing is a bunch of B.S. (the study’s term, not mine).  The key to me is, as eMarketer reported:

Marketers and the consumers they are trying to reach disagreed on the effectiveness of a wide variety of ad types, according to the survey. Though both groups thought the best ads were those created by professional marketers, nearly half of marketers said this, compared with just 36% of internet users. There was large disagreement about the effectiveness of paid search ads (touted by marketers, played down by web users) and outdoor advertising (the reverse). Internet users were also much more likely to say there were no good or effective ads—positions which marketers were extremely unlikely to hold, for obvious reasons.

Why are the senders so out of sync with the receivers?  As the study shows, people prefer to get information from people they trust.  The issue, then, is how does a brand penetrate that circle?  Does anyone believe it’s through fake “likes” on Facebook where we see friends (even dead ones!) shilling for stuff they wouldn’t ever use?  Maybe we need to be less lazy – tell better stories, do better creative – since 68% of consumers find online ads “annoying” and “distracting” and 54% say banner ads don’t work. I suspect this dichotomy has ever been so to a certain extent.  For people in the market for various products, marketing messages are important and welcome.  For everyone else, they’re an annoying fact of life.

Here’s the thing – EVERYONE is in the market for something nearly all the time.  Food and entertainment, for example, are daily “purchases”.  As the research shows, until we on the marketing side do a better job of connecting, our ability to influence those decisions will always be less than it could be.   You agree?

Enhanced by Zemanta

1 Comment

Filed under digital media, Helpful Hints

Tagged as , , , , , ,

December 5, 2012 · 10:23 am

Failure And Feedback

One topic that’s near and dear to me is innovation.

Innovation and Evaluation

(Photo credit: cambodia4kidsorg)

Throughout my time in business the issue of how to do or produce something in a new, better way has always been front and center.  That’s why when I read that the Economist Intelligence Unit had conducted a survey of senior executives to explore the characteristics of companies that are adept at promoting innovation, I checked it out.  You can read the entire study here.  The study was sponsored by the Oracle folks, and not surprisingly it found that most companies struggle with innovation. The report says it’s really hard  to keep coming up with new ideas, particularly ones that people will pay for.  I know what you’re thinking – any of us could have told them that without a lot of research!  It’s what follows that I find of interest.

It turns out that the most innovative companies not only permit failure, but welcome and harness it to come up with more successful ideas. Yet nearly half of the respondents to the survey  say their companies have no system in place that helps them learn from failures.   Highly innovative companies also actively gather feedback and ideas from everywhere they can. Fifty-four percent of the top innovators they surveyed said they pour over customer comments, whether gathered in direct interviews or on social networks, and scrutinize customer data for clues to effective future innovations. They recognize that collecting many ideas is the first step to identifying the great ones.

There’s quite a bit more in the study but those two points are of most interest.  How many of us can truthfully say we work in an environment where failure is welcomed much less have a system in place from which to learn from those failures?  Nearly half (49%) of the companies in the study said their company had no system to deal positively with failure. Among companies that do have such a system (38%), redeploying employees involved in a failed innovation from one business unit to another has been a successful strategy.  Contrast that with the reports we read each day of companies jettisoning employees or products rather than making a pivot of some sort.

We’ve touched on the notion of feedback quite often here on the screed.  I’m a believer that a company can never have enough and we ought to look at every opportunity to get it.  The study confirms this as a key to innovation.

Help your folks to be free to fail.  Encourage them to get feedback in great quantity and with increasing frequency.  Do so and you’re well down the road to innovation, which becomes more important each day.   Make sense?

Enhanced by Zemanta

Leave a comment

Filed under Helpful Hints

Tagged as , , , , , ,