Posts from — September 2009

Even when it is late, I felt curious to read NYTCO 2008 annual report, and I am going to read similar reports for other companies, because, at least the introduction and the softer financial data gives some insight.

The main light they underline is growing audience when considering aggregated data of on/offline. Their unresolved questions are the same, probably, we all have:

- How do we continue to provide the printed products that hundreds of thousands of our readers treasure while appealing to a new generation of consumers?

This question is very right, many people, pure-player minded (like myself a couple of years ago) cannot understand the outcomes of decision making in “traditional” media by just ignoring this simple question.

- How do we get paid for the journalism we provide online?

-How do we reduce our costs while protecting the quality of our journalism?

Then, without answering, it suggests this scheme (can anyone say this is wrong?):

Other identified point is the desire of advertisers of being attached to innovative products:

Our growth depends to a significant degree upon the development of our digital businesses.

- Significantly increasing our online traffic

- Attracting advertisers

- Exploiting new and existing technologies to distinguish our products

- Investing funds and resources in online opportunities

- Strategic relationships to attract more consumers

- Attracting and retaining talent for critical positions

If we are not successful in maintaining or growing revenues from our digital businesses to offset continued or accelerating declines in revenues from our print products, our business, financial condition and prospects will be adversely affected.

“Get me as close to the fighting action at the point-of-sale and moments of truth—on that ground will I deploy most of my resources.” Robert Brazell

By having a look to new ventures, to vouchacha, while there are already some other initiatives out there, it reminded me to the vision of Rob Brazell on how to get media out of the fire.

ccimages by bashed, and Rsms

I had no hope in sustaining contents thanks to donations, and I wish I was totally wrong. Having a look to two references in donation supported models, I see that MIT OCW says to be operating at a cost of 3.6MM $ while wikimedia has an annual expenditure of nearly 6 MM $. When wikimedia reached their target, all funds collected were put into a reserve fund (if media had done this we won’t probably be where we are).  What calls my attention the most is their conservative approach to expenditures following a logic: if you do not have it, do not spend it. A second interesting point is in their budget. No content production costs (of course) and no traffic acquisition costs while technology is, by far, their main cost.

Sustaining a part, a section, a portion of contents of a traditional media by donations would need to be transparent and to give recognizement to donors. It may be possible but it would need a change in many decision makers. Converting a part of our business in a foundation could be possible and these two examples are showing how it could be done.

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Once upon a time, Internet was the place in which everyone could do everything. States did hardly understand what was this about. But, with the time passing by Governments understood it and, of course, made everyone to bring a passport in order to navigate. It is the bad side of the Net getting so important in our lifes, states will start caring about it and will definitely look at it. On the other hand, it will be true that Internet will be critical even for the national security of a country.

We are definitely going to an Internet with compulsory identification. I have no doubt about it: China Web Sites Seeking Users’ Names

The gap that separates the theory from the pratice is something that we assume as business managers. We know that all those things they taught us in our business school are very difficult to implement straight away when landing in an organization. For this reason, if someone keeps on reading theory, white papers or state of the art technological developments and is not the final decision maker but just, and, at most, a “middle manager” then either it is completely frustrating or it is like watching Sci-fi movies. For the sake of our mental health , for sure the dozen of readers of this blog are middle managers at most (if not, we would probably be ”too busy” to read anything) we should adopt the latter attitude.

Reading the PDF behind this form I had again the experience of how obvious it is what is said in that white paper, and how hard is our daily life. We got resources, talent, even money to be closer to the best practice, but we are so far from it. Below, I am just going to copy my summary of ENTERPRISE INFORMATION MANAGEMENT: Strategy, Best Practices & Technologies on Your Path to Success.

EIM (Enterprise Information Management) is the effort to build up an organizational coherent information management so that information is delivered when, how, and to the person who need it. Benefits of EIM are:

EIM is an answer to the unorganized data management that is suffered in many organizations. Middle managers are those who realize it at the beginning because they are using the systems and they are the ones being pushed by objectives. Top management is in a different battlefield. Therefore, it is a middle management responsibility to push this topic in the agenda of top management. Fortunately, some companies have a top management that is able to quickly understand the importance of adopting correct data governance; some others are not.

Before having an EIM strategy there must be a vision. EIM strategy responds to a concrete vision and objectives and change with them, it is also flexible and adpatable. In order to get EIM done it is important:

- IT/Business collaboration, understood as regular and constant communication and cooperation.

- Trusted information. If the information delivered is not trusted, EIM would just be a failure.

- Enterprise-wide standards. Everyone has to talk the same language and use the same tools.

- Data Governance, a corporate agenda for data.

Apart from that nowadays information management must be:

- SOA support. Service Oriented Architecture is a middleware becoming an standard between data and interface applications.

- Centralized data management.

- Complete functionality (it should serve all organizational goals)

- Seamless integration. For each functionality there are world class applications that are able to inter-operate through SOA.

- Easy of use

On the other hand, without data integration it is not possible to build trust.

The purpose is to get information from business processes and to load it to a master data management system. For this, ETL (extract, transform and load) process is key, together  with a data quality infrastructure that should come together with your EIM strategy. To ensure data quality it is necessary to manage metadata (data about data). At the heart of data integration is MDM (master data management) which is more than software, a system of practices policies for data collection.

The article Humpty Dumpty Media by Rob Brazell (there is an interview in EL PAÍS) is an exposure of his vision on media. Really worth reading.

1. my view:

I think,by the language and realistic apprach (maybe) that it is obvious that this article is not written by a journalist, but by an entrepreneur or a business thinker. It is a really inspiring article.

The fact is that, as I was reading it I was surprised thinking to what extent he was putting in words many concepts already in my mind, some of them had already been exposed in this blog: how media is about Popper’s third world, i.e. about the statements; how, by having time as a main filter in order to allow contents (ideas) get through our minds, we need to accept them so that contents are the media, and therefore, this is about values ; the importance of media convergence, and even something I did not honestly think about, the convergence of retail with traditional media (maybe I was too focused on online to observe it); how social media may be over-valued because, as it is said in the article, I believe this sentence is key for all those who live on the faith of a future promised land for social networks:

I follow the headlines with interest as media giants continue to purchase large, growing on-line communities. A lesson already learned is that page views do not equal legitimate advertising impression opportunities. Merely owning the asset of an Internet community does not implicitly afford the owner the right to interrupt the activity that creates the community in the first place. Remember the early lessons learned? The congregation of humans, on-line or in-line does not necessarily translate into willing advertising consumers.

2. summary:

- Traditional Media cannot cheat the market any more.

- Before, it was the structure, not the message, the constraint the limit, to get ideas through (Popper 3 worlds theory?).

- Now, the message is the media (McLuhan)

- Audiences are fragmented, while mass markets are not

- Betting against the “anti-bodies” generated by people against advertising is betting against human intelligence.

- The more we can choose, the better contents we want to consume (of course “better” is a subjective concept).

- Tracking is an increasing must-have. Does anyone imagine to pay Google depending on estimates?

- Advertising will focus in the third moment of truth: when a customer gets further benefits than the mere product’s attributes.

- Out of the shop, ad inventory is chaotic, potentially unlimited, but inside, it is much more defined, limited, and scarce.

- Thus, the new battlefield is inside the shops, where many purchasing decision are made.

- Retail marketing is the natural destination of media.

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