THURSDAY, APRIL 17, 2008

THE HYPERLOCAL MARKET ALREADY INCLUDES ESTABLISHED, NON-MEDIA PLAYERS (Terry)
A web application for realtors that's been around awhile challenges the traditional media company role (and anybody else, for that matter) in the creation of hyperlocal information sites. Those media companies trying to execute a hyperlocal strategy will likely find Connecting Neighbors websites already in place in at least some of the communities they're trying to reach. Connecting Neighbors targets neighborhoods and operates 14,000 websites across the country.

In a remarkable example of how anybody can be a media company today, the sites are managed and sponsored by realtors, who use them to mine for potential clients. While declining to provide site statistics, Connecting Neighbors Marketing Manager Lisa Knight told me that the sites do very well, especially with a sponsor who dedicates time and resources to marketing it within the neighborhood. Simple yard signs (like the one picture on the right in Huntsville, Alabama), postcards and word-of-mouth are all it takes.

Connecting Neighbors offers you the opportunity to become the exclusive Neighborhood Expert in your targeted market, while locking out your competitors. Begin building relationships in your market today!

The sites are simple and spartan, but packed with useful information and opportunities for user-generated content. There are publisher disclaimers throughout the site where users interact, just like you'd find with any other media company. Classifieds are free, local news comes via Topix.net (note: your local news is likely being presented on these sites via Topix), a directory, recipes, lots of referrals and links, and the general "feel" of a community site. The difference is that it's run by a realtor whose using it to mine for clients. How terribly smart!

A few sites serve communities beyond just a neighborhood, and the company has experimented with aggregating neighborhoods. Some of the content is provided by feeds, but the quality of the sponsor's marketing is what makes the difference in generating content from residents of the neighborhood.

The price to the sponsor varies and is based on the number (and in some cases, the prices) of homes in the neighborhood being served and the services the sponsor chooses to offer. "On average, our one time setup fee is $1.65 per home," added Ms. Knight, "and on average our monthly hosting fee is $0.09 per home." The Connecting Neighbors website lists the following options:

• A Neighborhood Website that allows residents to connect with one another, read community news, post free classified ads, share pictures, and more.

• A Neighborhood Newsletter that features information specific to the neighborhood and is emailed to residents each month.

• A personal Neighborhood Marketing Coach assigned to help announce and promote the program to neighborhood residents.

• Quickshow multimedia presentations to engage and welcome residents to their Neighborhood Website.

• MLS data integration (where available) to constantly provide up-to-date real estate information.

• Relationship Manager feature (where available) for Members to manage all of their communications with their new prospects!

This provides two important lessons for media companies. One, anybody can be a media company today. Any. Body. I have been harping on this for years, but those of us in "professional" media feel we can take our time in exploring niches, when we really can't. The discovery of a company such as Connecting Neighbors, to me, is like getting to the end of a voyage to plant a flag on some distant land only to discover there's at least one other flag already there. Two, the people formerly known as the advertisers are spending money that used to go to us in order to bypass (expensive) filters and speak directly to potential customers, something about which Steve and I have written in the past.

We may look at these sites and feel a sense of well being, because they're not "up to our standards" or they don't carry "a trusted brand," but in the end it's all about meeting information needs. Connecting Neighbors does that well, and the users (a.k.a. the people formerly known as the audience) could give a hoot if it's sponsored by a realtor or not. Moreover, if a media company did this, they'd likely look to realtors, among others, to sponsor them the moment they were launched.

The message here is loud and clear: certain well-funded advertisers don't need us anymore.   <Link>

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HEADLINE ON A T-SHIRT: CNN's CANNY MOVE (Steve)
CNN has introduced what is, by far, the strangest development in online news offerings this year. It is "T-shirt-enabling" some of its headlines. That's right - if you see a fun headline on CNN and a T-shirt icon next to it, you can buy a shirt with the headline and time-stamp on it. Frivolous? Certainly. But give them this - it's clever marketing. And with the time closing between a news event happening and its appearance on a shirt, CNN is taking advantage of a trend Rex Sorgatz wrote about more than a year ago in WIRED in his story "The T-Shirt Is The Message" - T-shirts as news:

"T-shirts can create cultural memes, not merely follow them. Spontaneous T-shirts for Nintendo Wii accidents and SNL skits have turned your humble Fruit of the Loom into a form of micromedia. T-shirts today broadcast the news: Less than 24 hours after Dick Cheney shot a man in Texas, satirical T-shirt designs were uploaded to CafePress. They predict it too: The STEWART-COLBERT '08 T-shirt anticipates our boredom with an election cycle that has barely begun. In an age of media saturation, T-shirts are a tight-knit nano-statement."

How to understand this phenomenon? Are tees the next blog? People won't pay for news on newsprint... but they'll pay for it on 100% cotton? What's happening here?

CNN is cannily taking advantage of the ease of printing customizable tees to help spread its marketing message. It's the era of individualization and customization, and this strange, fun little service enables both. Tees with timely messages are hot. There's an ironic cachet of hip about these. Who would be odd enough to wear a shirt that says "Synchronized swimmers faint in unison?"

Maybe only a few people. Maybe the synchronized swimmers in the audience. But that's the point. Having tons of headlines that a given person may think are "tee-worthy" puts you in the Long Tail T-shirt business. This may not be of any appeal to you - but think about the marketing. We all have station shirts, hats and other stuff with our logo on it. Nobody's buying. But it's a revenue stream - we just haven't had the ability to tap into it.

People love brands and logos. Check out anyone's given outfit and you'll see ads. Sure - there's one for polo, one for Nike, one on a hat for the Cubs, one on a shirt for Apple. We love brands because they make a statement about us. The thing with those brands is that they give us choices - lots of different items of clothes we choose to individualize. Nike wouldn't be big if it sold two different models of sneakers. Polo wouldn't be a hit if it only had a blue shirt for sale.

So maybe CNN has hit upon a way to individualize their brands for the audience and capitalize on the idea at the same time. Locals could do something like this, using services like CafePress and Spreadshirt that make it easy to have lots of products with your logo for sale. CafePress essentially does everything for you, and you get a cut. You probably can't go to the same length that CNN has- but the point is to have some fun with your image and let the audience join along.

(It turns out the CNN shirt page was easily hacked, simply by changing part of its URL, so that you could make the shirt say whatever you want. This led to a wonderful, web-wide bid of inspiration where people were making up their own witty headlines - which CNN wasn't going to make into shirts anyway, but CNN has apparently caught on, and now forwards you to a list of approved shirts. Still, creating pictures of fake headlines on a CNN T-shirt briefly became an Internet meme. You can see my handiwork below. Shame it's not true.)

Audience empowerment. Differentiating your product. Having fun with your own image. Giving people the right to individualize around your brand. CNN's not going to get rich off this. But I bet they have record T-shirt sales this year...

Scariest entertainment headline possible...
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THE CW'S CONTROVERSIAL GAMBLE ON "GOSSIP GIRL" (Terry)
In a decision that raised a lot of eyebrows in the new media observer community, The CW decided last week that it won't be offering it's flagship program "Gossip Girl" online this year in the same way it has done in the past. Variety summed it up nicely:

CW execs seem to be worried that "Gossip Girl" may be too popular online. Skein (mediaspeak for a TV series) is regularly among the most downloaded shows on iTunes and is off the chart in terms of Web buzz.

Despite all those signs of success, CW execs — as well as suits at CW parents CBS Corp. and Warner Bros. — have been frustrated that raw Nielsen ratings haven't been higher. There's also concern that the show's long strike-induced hiatus, as well as its new timeslot, will put a dent in the show's numbers. Net's goal is to make the show a must-watch on the broadcast platform.

Nice, predictable goal, but so far, it doesn't appeared to have worked. Monday's season premiere was up a wee bit from the show's last airing on January 9th, prompting TV By The Numbers writer Robert Seidman to note "Nobody watched Gossip Girl." "Only 2.44 million tuned in, even though there will be no Internet streaming. We can conclude that little stunt accomplished, well, absolutely nothing."

Seidman later wrote that there was a boost in a key demo (women 18-34), so it appears the gamble will continue. The stunt did accomplish something, however. It irritated the crap out of the show's most loyal following, those who paid for the show every week via iTunes. I suspect it will be back in streaming mode sooner than you can say, "What's the best way to annoy the people you're trying to woo?"

The most puzzling aspect of this whole stunt is that Gossip Girl's setting is the Web. The Gossip Girl blog is the focal point of the story, which ideally suits it to a web audience. Wendy Davis wrote for MediaPost that The CW risked much in making this move.

While the network’s move might sound like a logical way to increase demand for the broadcast version of the show, there’s little evidence to suggest that online shows diminish demand for the real-time versions. But there’s certainly been research showing the opposite, that making programs available on the Web increases exposure which, in turn, builds an audience for broadcast episodes.

The decision to pull "Gossip Girl," of all shows, is especially ironic considering that the characters on the show — like many tweens and teens in its audience — are themselves Web-centric. Gossip Girl is her/himself an anonymous blogger, who drives the plot forward by posting news tips and cellphone pictures sent in by other characters.

Regardless, Hollywood should know by now that it can't completely control how people will access media. If Web-savvy teens aren’t able to watch the show during its air date, many will inevitably figure out how to download a pirated version — and The CW will lose out on whatever ad revenue it was garnering from the free streams.

Agreed, and the real lesson for all of us here is yet another illustration that the command and control days of the mass are over. The network believed that withdrawing downloads would "force" people to gather at the appointed time — or record it with their DVRs — in order to create a cumulative mass that would validate ad rates. I don't care how you build it, this kind of thinking conflicts with a world where the people formerly known as the audience are in charge. The best that The CW could hope for is some way of combining the program ratings with program downloads, but that would require giving the program away for free with the same ads included in order to create an apples-to-apples, sellable mass. This is the reality of the marketplace.

A new study by Accenture underscores the importance of this kind of thinking. 83% of consumers surveyed expressed discontent with watching "live" (e.g., broadcast or cable) TV, and the study concludes "that consumers are more loyal to the content they want to watch rather than the branded distribution channel to which they may be accustomed." This is especially true with young people.

"People are experiencing new consumption opportunities and moving away from traditional, linear programming," David Wolf, a senior executive with Accenture's Media & Entertainment practice. "And age has become the leading indicator of these new behavioral preferences with consumers under 35-years-old clearly the best indicator of these impending changes and future broadcast consumption patterns. Today's youth are more dissatisfied with the traditional television experience and increasingly excited by the availability of new choices."

"The under 35-year-old group is more likely to watch content on alternative devices, more likely to be familiar with On Demand TV, prefers watching content on demand and is more willing to pay to download content," Wolf observed.

Clearly, there are still events that will draw a crowd, so I'm not suggested an end to mass marketing, but those types of blockbusters (major news events included) are few and far between. Everyday life for media cannot function on the blockbuster model anymore; new models that exploit the long tail are what's required.   <Link>

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JOURNALISTS SEE END TO NETWORK NEWS, DISLIKE LOCAL TV NEWS SITES (Steve)
We're used to the cynicism of the web audience predicting the demise of the nightly news. Now, it seems, our fellow journalists are joining in that sentiment.

A survey from Pew Research asked national, local and internet journalists how long they thought network news and newspapers would be around. 42% of national journalists think nightly news broadcasts have less than 10 years to live. Compare that to Internet journalists, who are supposed to be the more cynical of the bunch - 39% of them gave the same answer. That's right - Web journalists are actually slightly more optimistic about national newscasts than are the national journalists. Local journalists are the most optimistic - but probably because they're hoping to get one of those national nightly news jobs.

The survey has some damning numbers for local TV news sites. It asked respondents to evaluate news sites and give them a letter grade from A - F. Remember - we're asking other journalists what they think. Top of the list? National newspaper sites. Bottom of the list? Local TV news sites. In fact, bloggers who write about current events scored significantly higher than did the local TV news sites. Here's the chart

Now, you can have a little fun with the numbers to see the internecine spats that go on in news. 40% of local journalists gave an A or B to local TV news sites. (17% of national journalists and 25% of Internet journalists gave the local TV sites an A or B.) 50% of bloggers like blogger sites. Only 21% of local journalists gave those marks to bloggers. Everyone likes the national papers - and they're the ones in the most trouble.

And there's this, really telling response: most people think their own news organization, regardless of what it is, deserves a high grade. Interesting, isn't it? 85% of national news reporters think "their" organization deserves an A or B. But they won't give that mark to any other category, save for newspapers. Translation: "My network news is great -- it's just everyone else who stinks." If you think yours is the only news organization doing it right, chances are you're not honestly evaluating your own product.

The alarm in all of this is how poorly local TV news sites fare. If there's something the survey respondents can tell us loud and clear, it's that they're not impressed. Look how well online-only sites and news aggregators are doing. Aggregation wins. Funny how you can take a bunch of low-graded news organizations, aggregate them, and suddenly you've got a better grade. People factor in choice as a part of their overall evaluation.

Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and the Project for Excellence in Journalism conducted the study from Sept. 17 - Dec 3, 2007. The survey was conducted among 585 reporters, editors and news executives.   <Link>