Media Armageddon Has Silver Lining

By Joe Pulizzi | Published: December 11, 2008

This post by Kirk Cheyfitz over at the postadvertising.com site is truly compelling. Here he summarizes the current media environment:

“The global depression is accelerating this macro-trend [drop in traditional media], but it isn’t the driving reason. What’s happening is that the BIG categories of traditional ad spending are falling off a cliff while much smaller categories of non-traditional advertising are rising like rockets.”

If this is at all a surprise to you, you haven’t been paying attention. We’ve seen this trend since the late 90s, and finally we are seeing big marketers take some serious action, causing havoc to the media world.

But right now, I would argue that there has never been more opportunity in media, particularly for non-media companies.

In my last post, I made the recommendation that large marketers look to buy up vertical trade publications. Non-media companies can (for a reasonable price), buy up the trades and online media sites that make sense with who their customers are. You may disagree with the fairness of this, but buying out talent and brands – and bringing on true content and editorial expertise into a corporate environment makes too much sense today (and without the bad media business model to hold them back anymore).

Rick Barnes had a great post today about how important “filters” will be in the media. What a great opportunity for marketers? There’s lots of content out there, but not enough people making sense of the noise. Could that be you?

Talented journalists are getting canned or leaving the media. Talent like this just doesn’t appear all the time. Act fast.

Technology is cheap.

Let’s be certain about this. Nothing is wrong with “media” itself. Consumers are engaging in more content through traditional channels, online resources and social media sites combined than ever before. Buyers are hungry for great information that can help them live better and be more successful at their jobs. The problem is that the traditional media models don’t work in today’s environment and must be changed.

This problem is the smell of sweet opportunity for marketing professionals. If you can position yourself as a trusted information provider today, sales and profit growth will be there tomorrow.

Sweet sweet content marketing.