ANA Marketing Maestros

What do E-readers Mean for the Publishing Industry?

By Cara Brooke Schultz

Everyone wants to find the solution for the troubled publishing industry. Recently there has been a lot of hype around the e-reader phenomenon—Barnes and Noble released their version called the Nook, Amazon came out with a larger-screen version of the Kindle, and Sony has a touch screen edition. So what does this mean for the publishing industry—will people flock to the e-readers and begin paying for content again?

According to a recent article by AdWeek, “’There is an optimism among publishers,’ says Roger Fidler, program director for digital publishing at Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri. ‘But nobody is seriously saying this is going to save the industry.’”  

I personally bought my Kindle less than a year ago, shortly after Amazon released their second version, and I have to say I fell in love with my Kindle at first use. I am an avid reader, in fact I’ll read pretty much anything—from advertisements on the Subway to the NYTimes, so I think I fit Amazon’s target audience, however what about the main population? Will the e-reader trend catch on like the iPhone?

Here are a few of the reasons other people might find e-readers to be appealing:

1.    They are more environmentally friendly.

2.    No more lugging around multiple hard cover (or paperback) books. One e-reader can hold hundreds if not thousands of books, newspapers, magazines, even blogs—and e-readers usually weigh around 11 ounces.

3.    You can read multiple items at once. For example you can read the NYTimes on the train and then switch over to TIME magazine in seconds without elbowing the guy next to you.

4.     You can download new material in seconds, almost anywhere.

What do you think the benefits or disadvantages of e-readers are? Will you buy one?

 

Brand Yourself For Career Success

By Irina Skaya

As Bob Dylan once sang, “The times they are a-changin’.” In addition to the acceleration of baby boomers, globalization and the changing media landscape, the workforce’s organization is undergoing reconstruction. For example, emerging technologies such as Blackberry, Wi-Fi and mobile phones, which created a “work anytime, anywhere” mentality are blurring the boundaries between personal and work life. A 9-5 work schedule hardly exists for most people and soon, with the help of social technologies, we’ll be working 24/7. As you continue to work from remote location and for increasing amount of hours, your personal brand must be powerful and strong enough to impact your employers. 

In this increasingly competitive marketplace, personal branding is just as important as corporate and product branding. Personal branding does not mean the shameless self-promoting, where one toots his/her own horn and spends working hours to update their MySpace profile. Personal branding means you will be able to clearly communicate your unique promise of value that you have to offer. With the ad-vent of social media, many employers will, “Google” the prospective candidates or look up their profiles on Facebook, Linked In, and other social networking sites. So, being good or having a great resume is no longer enough to succeed. Now, it is important to have strong search-engine visibility and brand recognition.

What is the secret formula of successful branding? According to Dixon’s and Arruda’s Career Distinction: Stand Out By Building Your Brand, the three C’s: clarity, consistency and constancy are key.

• Clarity – be clear about who you are and what you are not; understand your unique value
• Consistency – continuously expressing your brand with different communication vehicles
• Constancy – always keep your brand visible
 
They also highlight the importance of networking with your targeted audience. Instead of communicating your brand to the entire world, it is crucial to convey your brand to a targeted group of individuals who will help you achieve your career goals. The easiest way to brand yourself is through the Internet. You can use several online identity tools to build your brand:

• Join the blogosphere
• Create a web portfolio
• Prove yourself, not just say you can things: show articles, awards, white papers, video, press re-leases, schedule of speaking engagements, etc.
• Use online networking sites

From politicians and entertainers such as Barack Obama and Oprah, strong branding is crucial for their success. In the age of social networks and user-generated media, self-branding is no longer just for the wealthy and the powerful; it is also important for career-driven individuals.

Technorati tags: self-branding personal branding career development social networks

New Media to Sell Old

by Mark Fogelberg

With all due respect to a certain futurist/CEO, many people - especially the people I would like to converse with - still read books. Perhaps its the portability, the on-demand entertainment possibility, the ability to engage one's imagination.

Books = Still Very Good.

So when a publisher makes a smart effort to market books differently, there's greater hope for a pulp future.

For the new release, Celebutantes, St. Martin's Press put its marketing dollars behind the creation of video trailers. (Celebutantes is the story of 26 year old Lola Santisi as she narrates her way through Hollywood in the days leading up to Oscar.) The trailers are as well-produced as ones for movies and video games - you know those video screen thingies meant to extinguish book reading. Using video and contemporary marketing channels to market an older product form? Nice.

St. Martin's Press set up a channel on YouTube for the trailers. Since this is PG blog, I'll allow you to find your own way to it.

It will be interesting to see how the book sells upon its release. For those not interested in paper, I am certain that a celluloid pixel version is being shopped round them thar Hills.

Profitable Marketing Communications

by Mark Fogelberg

I read too much. Luckily for me, after stumbling through some recent D-grade business books, I came upon an A+.

Antony Young, the President of Optimedia in the US, and Lucy Aitken, marketing and media writer, created a perfect tome for today's ever present marketing ROI environment.

I found myself dog-earing dozens of pages of this book. Many were based upon 8 investor tips. When I write "investor tips" it's because the authors describe  marketing as a form of loan from a company. How marketers invest (rather than spend) should be weighed against other investment options a company (or brand) might evaluate. You know, it's the I in ROI.

The eight investor tips to profitable marketing communications:

1. Concentrate on outcomes, not outputs
2. Forget consumers, target customers
3. Manage your communication investment portfolio
4. Differentiate any way you can
5. Engagement and experience are the new 30-second ads
6. Apply a focus investing approach
7. Establish a measurement culture
8. Leverage your employee capital

Yes, you might have seen some of these before. But the tips have chapters dedicated to each and within each chapter are more insights and nuggets.

With international cases and examples combined with actionable strategies, this book deserves a place on every marketer's bookshelf. And any agency exec that doesn't digest this book and put ideas to work should dread a premature retirement as they allow their agency to drift into irrelevancy.

Confessions of Rockstar CMOs

by Barbara Bacci-Mirque

What an interesting week in the marketing world.  The same week that an Ad Age article reports that CMOs have minimal impact on sales (!), the ANA and Booz Allen Hamilton release our joint publication, CMO Thought Leaders: The Rise of the Strategic Marketer.

I would like to offer some inside information on the CMO report in Ad Age - the quick headline was CMOs have little impact, but a marketing scientist familiar with the study told me that what the research actually found was that there was little difference in the sales growth between companies with and without a Chief Marketing Officer.

So back to the CMO Thought Leaders reader, I was lucky enough to be part of this remarkable publication and attend several of the one-on-one conversations with the heads of marketing we profiled.  What an education that was!  There is no magic bullet to their success but the overarching traits I observed among these marketing leaders are insatiable intellectual curiosity, lack of complacency – they continually question what they could do better – and team building internally and externally.  They all realized they could not do it alone and so had close relationships with their colleagues who specialized in finance, analytics, and consumer insights.   Some  of the marketers we interviewed are more right brain and some are more left brain but they all are incredible.  If you read the book and absorb the lessons from these marketing giants, I bet you will have more tenure in your own senior marketing role.

My Departure and a Quick Review

By Will Waugh

This will be my last post for this blog. I am moving back to the ANA member side and joining SAS Institute in Raleigh, NC. I love New York but it is time to take my accrued skills and knowledge to a locale that is more tempered to my Southern sensibilities. I look forward to utilizing the vast resources of the ANA as marketers, from the client side in particular, continue to be challenged by this evolving landscape.

I do want to make a brief mention of David Verklin's new book (which he co-authored with Bernice Kanner, ANA author of The Super Bowl of Advertising). Watch This, Listen Up, Click Here was written for the masses and may be too "general" for this sophisticated media audience, but is an excellent summer read on what is going on with the media and marketing world. Due to my new role in the business intelligence field, I was engaged with the chapter titled Data Mining: Why Your TV May Think You're Gay where the authors talk about how the "datasphere" will help companies predict behavior on a grand scale. "What-if modeling" will allow marketers to make even smarter decisions based on data mining and the various tools available. I feel relatively versed in the media business, but was engaged with this book's foresight in to the transformations taking place around us.

This blog has been a blast and a tremendous personal learning experience. I look forward to following all the great minds and community leaders I have met in this space in my new role. Cheers blogosphere. 

Bookstore News

By Kaitlin Villanova 

As some of you may know we are now successfully operating our ANA Bookstore through print on demand service lulu.com. This is all very exciting because it eliminates us sitting on thousands of dollars of inventory, and having to spend a few hours each week neatly packing up the books so they arrive at your office in the same condition they left ours.

With this transition now in full-effect, we are left with a few hundred books gathering dust in our book closet. We are looking to find a book liquidator or a company interested in purchasing a large quantity of these proprietary insights for a very small fee. These publications are written by marketing practitioners covering key topics ranging from marketing accountability, brand building and integrated marketing communications to issues on advertising law, agency relations and compensation structures. 

Some of the available titles:

Best Practices in Branded Entertainment by Richard Sutton and Barbara Zack

Trade Promotion Marketing by Bob Houk

Inside Advertiser and Agency Relationships by Melvin Prince and Mark Davies

The Power of Nice by Linda Kaplan Thaler

What Sticks by Rex Briggs

And many others.

If you are interested in purchasing a large quantity of these books for your organization, or if you know of any book liquidators please contact me at ([email protected]).

Visit our new ANA Bookstore to learn more (sorry for the shameless plug but I had to do it).

Technorati tags: lulu marketing content

Lulu - Changing the Way We Publish Content

By Will Waugh

I have recently shifted our publications business to a print-on-demand/digital download model. We are using Lulu, an open source technology solution founded by Bob Young (Wikipedia) of Red Hat fame. I love the model - it allows a small publisher to expand their offerings without taking on debilitating inventory and overhead expenses. I will talk more about them later.

The real point is we are selling out our bookstore inventory and offering 2 ANA titles for the price of 1. It only runs until Monday (the end of April). Check it out at our Bookstore or call Kaitlin at 212-455-8004.

Stengel - Communications Specialist in Demand

By Will Waugh

We recently interviewed Jim Stengel, P&G's Global Marketing Officer, for an upcoming publication we have coming out tentatively titled Marketing Thought Leaders: Conquering the Growth Frontier. When asked for his predictions on specialized positions for the new marketing world, he only gave one - a communications specialist role. I thought the definition for this was interesting so I thought I'd share it:

It's someone who is a bit of a consumer researcher and a bit of an advertising agency planner type - someone who is an integrated thinker; someone who understands the communications world. And I think someone who also understands the content world. It's a much more complex planning skill -- strategic thinking you might call it.

There you have it. The world's top marketer on what sort of skill sets a new marketer needs to have. I have talked about content as a killer app  as well as the renaissance marketer and how these traits are neccesary components of the evolving marketing world. The challenge, of course, is finding the talented individuals with a varied skill set across this spectrum. 

Technorati tags: stengel marketing communications

Do You Participate in the Conversation?

By Will Waugh

At the ANA, we conduct a number of surveys on anything from agency compensation to what keeps senior marketers awake at night. We do nothing focused primarily on this world; the "conversational marketing" space our friend Joe Jaffe over at Jaffe Juice is so actively engaged in. Jaffe, the crown prince of new marketing, is preparing a title for Wiley as a follow up to Life After the 30-Second Spot titled Join the Conversation (this link takes you to a wiki on the material). He is looking for brand marketers to participate in the conversation or, more pointedly, to take a survey to develop the framework for his new book.

I encourage all marketers actively engaged or curious about the space to take the survey (Joe is offering some topline nuggets before the book release to those who participate). Though the membership of the ANA are not all believers that the :30 spot is dead and buried like Joe (shameless plug for our TV Forum where we talk about this), there is an enormous amount of interest in the world of social media (or whatever you want to call it Steve). I, myself, look forward to the results.

Technorati tags: marketing social media