The Recession Slide

Everyone seems to be using the term these days. Greenspan says we're doing it. Pundits say we're doing it. I understand that those who feel in a position to influence the economy - generally those who make a profit off how the public perceives it - are loathe to use the R word, lest they create a general perception that creates the condition it describes. But people I know have been tightening their belts for some time, now. Gas has been pretty far up for over a year, heating a house in winter is expensive, people fear losing their jobs, foreclosures are at a high, and everything gets more expensive. What the hell did the experts think about public perception? That everything was fine and dandy? People badly want things to be better, and yet see a greater and greater share of the common wealth being held by the relatively few. To play into fear and hope for your own purposes is a dangerous and dirty business. Those who are at the top of the economic food chain should remember that there have been periods of reckoning, whether a depression or heavy-handed regulatory interference, because politicians are even more scared of the public than the well-to-do. You can win for a long time at some games, but eventually your number comes up and you have to pay. Better to deal more honestly with things than to try putting a bright face on for too long.

Getting the New Media Landscape

Although I try to keep my blogs separate, I'm going to point to an entry I did in WriterBiz, which is about the freelance writing business and intended for freelance writers. For those who don't want to make the jump, it refers to a post on Reflections of a Newsosaur. In short, sometimes web sites that you'd swear must be obscure can generate more interest and attention, and direct more readers, than even sites of the largest traditional media outlets - we're talking BusinessWeek, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and so on.

This matters to business because it's about communication - with customers, employees, stockholders, business partners, and so on. Many companies make the enormous mistake of thinking that a mention in major media, or placing an ad there, is going to do wondrous things for their businesses. That may happen, but it doesn't have to. Talk to people in PR, for exmaple, and if they will be candid, they'll acknowledge that prominent treatment in even a publication like the Wall Street Journal might do exactly nothing in terms of driving sales or interest. I've heard the same from some book authors who found that mentions on specialized blogs coudl sometimes get them many, many more sales than traditional media.

The world is changing, and if you want to be successful in communicating, you have to start understanding how the new media work. Send the assumptions out the window and start exploring things without a guide whispering in your ear, "This one is important ... that one isn't." Chances are that the tour master has never been off the main streets and has no idea what the real dynamics are. Forget about the ego trip of appearing in Important Places, and figure out what will actually work.

Lure of Lurid Billboards

The Washington Post ran a piece on how digitally-enhanced billboards have become an advertising powerhouse again, at least so far as billing goes. Most of the article will stand on its own, but one point I thought was interesting:

Though outdoor revenue still is a small piece of the ad revenue pie - CBS Outdoor made less than one-quarter of the revenue of CBS's television network last year - it is growing faster than every other traditional ad medium. At CBS Outdoor, 2006 operating income was up 21 percent over the previous year, the biggest gain of any CBS division.

But consider for a moment the relative dynamics. Television is a heck of a lot more expensive to produce than a client's ad, even if the billboards do have whizzbang effects. So maybe the comparative revenue isn't as telling as the amount of profit that stays in the corporate pockets.