Media Armageddon Has Silver Lining

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.

Comments

[Cindy King]

Joe,

I listened to your recent webinar on MarketingProfs - and really glad I signed up there.

I also enjoyed reading both of the articles mentioned above.

...your comments on the future of journalists/story tellers is still with me

As a cross-cultural marketer using content marketing to develop international markets, I'm also following the Obama effect on ethnic marketing in the US (I'm based in France)... and this whole notion of segmentation of marketing.

And, it was great picking up the American vocabulary on content marketing by listening to you today ;-)

[Cindy King]

Joe,

I listened to your recent webinar on MarketingProfs - and really glad I signed up there.

I also enjoyed reading both of the articles mentioned above.

...your comments on the future of journalists/story tellers is still with me

As a cross-cultural marketer using content marketing to develop international markets, I'm also following the Obama effect on ethnic marketing in the US (I'm based in France)... and this whole notion of segmentation of marketing.

And, it was great picking up the American vocabulary on content marketing by listening to you today ;-)

[Joe Pulizzi]

Thanks Cindy...appreciate the comments. Keep me posted on the ethnic marketing impact.

[Kirk Cheyfitz]

Thanks for citing my postadvertising.com post. As you know, we at Story keep talking about the collision of marketing and media — that both are becoming the same. Years ago, when I was at The Interpublic Group's McCann (speaking of hopeless dinosaurs), I attended a gathering of execs in Miami and the guest speaker was NBC's then-chairman Bob Wright. So after he was done with his pretty boring speech, I asked him when NBC was going to buy IPG so it could actually serve brands or, conversely, when IPG was going to buy NBC so it could actually create great branded content. Wright had no idea what I was talking and gave some bland response about the need to keep advertising and programming separate. And McCann's boss, John Dooner, chided me (playfully, I have to admit) for being an unrepentant journalist and trouble maker. Now, with TV ad spending falling off steeply, both of them might be singing a different tune. Who knows? But what I know is that the rapid changes in advertising mean even bigger and faster changes in ad-supported media.

[Joe Pulizzi]

Kirk...great story. Thanks for sharing. Love that statement - marketing and media are becoming the same. I don't know of any marketers that really look at it this way. Guess that's why we are seeing a lot of "deer in headlights" marketing right now.