In the Wired article, Chris Anderson states that "[f]rom the consumer's perspective... there is a huge difference between cheap and free....The psychology of "free" is powerful." This immediately made me think of those yellow coupons that H-E-B puts in the aisles next to products. The ones that say something like "buy a bag of salad and get a free bottle of salad dressing" coupons. I've definitely fallen victim to these coupons and bought those products just to get the free item, when in reality I don't need either item. So I definitely agree with Anderson that "free" is extremely persuasive.
Anderson goes on to explain free in terms of digital economics, which made me think of our society's addiction to social media. All major social media sites are free to use, but would we be so consumed with social media if we had to pay to use these channels? If that were the case, we would essentially be paying to talk to people, including our friends and family. We would be paying for digital affirmations via likes, favorites and retweets. We'd be paying to have virtual social interactions.
We allow ourselves to hop on these free channels for the price of our data. In a Huffington Post article, contributor Dragos Bratasanu writes "Facebook is free. But Facebook’s valuation is at more than $230 Billion. How can something that valuable be free? It’s simple. You think you are the Facebook user but in fact you are the Facebook product. The company sells you: your data and the advertising that you see."
Advertising has always been a major source of revenue for media companies, from television ads to print ads in newspapers. so the general public can reap the "free." But when that advertising is targeted and knows your personal preferences, personal searches and personal behaviors, is the persuasive power of free still alluring?
Monday, April 11, 2016
Volunteer Journalism
Before I hop into this post, I’d like to share a personal anecdote that touches on this week’s readings in a humorous way.
A few years ago, my family had a garage sale. At the garage sale, we had a box marked ‘Free,’ of items we deemed too worthless for anyone to spend money on. No one took anything from the ‘Free’ box because they realized the items in there must be completely useless. So my mother changed the sign. Now, it was a ‘Buy one, get one free’ box. If you bought another item from the garage sale, you could take an item from that box. Immediately, there was a lot more interest in those items.
I understand that this is the “stuff” economy, where people are more willing to pay for things. But I do think it’s interesting that Chris Anderson writes that the difference between free and extremely cheap is huge, that people are far more willing to take something that is free than buy something that is cheap. In my personal anecdote, I experienced the complete opposite — people only willing to take something when they thought they were paying a little for it.
In this week’s readings, Chris Anderson and Malcolm Gladwell duke it out over the future of digital media. In particular, they argue over the question of this race to free in the digital age, will journalists be paid?
Chris Anderson’s understanding of how the journalism industry could function without paying writers is defunct, in my opinion. In the example he uses to defend his position, he says that there were plenty of people willing to write for his parenting blog for free. That’s awesome for him, but this glosses past what the crux of journalism is. How could a serious story like the Panama Papers been broken by a bunch of part-time volunteer bloggers? Are there a lot of volunteers willing to sit through city council meetings and town halls and do write-ups?
When no one is paying for content, the public will get a poor version of the content, created by volunteers who are too busy with careers that actually support their life to put too much effort into journalism. No one would argue that the average video put on YouTube for free can compete with a film that people pay to see. There are already plenty of volunteer journalists, and while their work is great for sharing their opinion on slice-of-life issues, like parenting or recipes, or even their opinion on a variety of social issues, they rarely enhance the world with heavy-duty investigative or political journalism. At the end of the day, if the purpose of journalism is to inform the masses for a properly functioning democracy, what will a society that is by-and-large dominated by volunteer journalism look like?
But how often do these bloggers conduct interviews and research? How often do these bloggers reach out to industry and governmental leaders who make policy decisions, or to those people who are affected by policy decisions? The answer is hardly ever. But this is where the real work of journalism is.
I’m not saying I completely disagree with Anderson. For people who don’t work in media, he certainly paints a beautiful picture of a world where individuals don’t have to pay for media, and some of what he argued for is already coming true. But I am very skeptical that a democratic society fueled by volunteer journalism could be a well-functioning one.
Investigative Journalism Needs to be Well Funded
Just imagine, one day your boss coming to you and saying, "Hey, you're not going to get paid anymore because people prefer not to pay for things." Of course people prefer free stuff. It's free!
Journalists work and therefore they need to get paid. I'm not just saying this because I'm majoring in journalism and have worked/interned in different news outlets but because I really do think that it's one of the most important pillars in a democracy.
Journalism is not about just sitting and waiting for a press release to appear and then rewrite it. There are so many journalists that go out and conduct shoe-leather reporting, get the story, sometimes endangering their lives, and all to keep us informed and to keep those in positions of power accountable. That's what journalism is for me. It's such an important part of a democratic society that we cannot write of journalists' work as something less than.
So are journalists going to become just contributors like Chris Anderson says in "Free! Why Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business"? No, absolutely not. Journalists need resources, training and tools to do their work. And they also have to eat.
In "Dear Malcolm: Why so Threatened?" Chris Anderson brings up his parenting blog and how he started to need contributors because of how big the audience got. I can see how his "non-monetary rewards" might work for blogs but how can they successfully work in journalism. If people are going to become contributors then where will all the journalists who know the ins and outs of their field go?
Anderson is basically saying that because people are less likely to pay for information journalists shouldn't get paid either. He says "There's never been a more competitive market than the Internet, and every day the marginal cost of digital information comes closer to nothing."
Just think about the information we have gotten out of the Panama Papers leak. This is the biggest leak in history with over a 11 million documents. The Süddeutsche Zeitung received the leak and then handed the information to The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. More than 370 journalists from about 80 countries around the world worked and investigated the information for a year. Those journalists had to have funds, resources and tools to investigate.
In a piece titled "The best job in the world: Gabriel Garcia Marquez on journalism," Marquez says that with the "arrival of technology" that the newsrooms became more like "laboratories." It is important, he says, to have "A well-informed writer" that can "piece the fragments together, adding background and other relevant details as if reconstructing the skeleton of a dinosaur from a single vertebra."
And if those are not enough reasons to why journalism and journalists should be well funded, here are the words of Mark Ruffalo, who portrayed one of the reporters in the film Spotlight investigating the systemic child sex abuse by many Catholic priest in Boston.
"Why journalism is so important and why it's important to fund it and to have long-lead journalists [sic] stories, is that they can trace down the facts and the truth to a point where it's just inconceivable that can be anything else in what they come upon."
Journalists work and therefore they need to get paid. I'm not just saying this because I'm majoring in journalism and have worked/interned in different news outlets but because I really do think that it's one of the most important pillars in a democracy.
Journalism is not about just sitting and waiting for a press release to appear and then rewrite it. There are so many journalists that go out and conduct shoe-leather reporting, get the story, sometimes endangering their lives, and all to keep us informed and to keep those in positions of power accountable. That's what journalism is for me. It's such an important part of a democratic society that we cannot write of journalists' work as something less than.
So are journalists going to become just contributors like Chris Anderson says in "Free! Why Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business"? No, absolutely not. Journalists need resources, training and tools to do their work. And they also have to eat.
In "Dear Malcolm: Why so Threatened?" Chris Anderson brings up his parenting blog and how he started to need contributors because of how big the audience got. I can see how his "non-monetary rewards" might work for blogs but how can they successfully work in journalism. If people are going to become contributors then where will all the journalists who know the ins and outs of their field go?
Anderson is basically saying that because people are less likely to pay for information journalists shouldn't get paid either. He says "There's never been a more competitive market than the Internet, and every day the marginal cost of digital information comes closer to nothing."
Just think about the information we have gotten out of the Panama Papers leak. This is the biggest leak in history with over a 11 million documents. The Süddeutsche Zeitung received the leak and then handed the information to The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. More than 370 journalists from about 80 countries around the world worked and investigated the information for a year. Those journalists had to have funds, resources and tools to investigate.
In a piece titled "The best job in the world: Gabriel Garcia Marquez on journalism," Marquez says that with the "arrival of technology" that the newsrooms became more like "laboratories." It is important, he says, to have "A well-informed writer" that can "piece the fragments together, adding background and other relevant details as if reconstructing the skeleton of a dinosaur from a single vertebra."
And if those are not enough reasons to why journalism and journalists should be well funded, here are the words of Mark Ruffalo, who portrayed one of the reporters in the film Spotlight investigating the systemic child sex abuse by many Catholic priest in Boston.
"Why journalism is so important and why it's important to fund it and to have long-lead journalists [sic] stories, is that they can trace down the facts and the truth to a point where it's just inconceivable that can be anything else in what they come upon."
Is Free Really Risk Free?
In Chris Anderson’s article Free!, he aptly christens America the “land of the free” (Anderson, 2008). But this name isn’t based on our personal freedoms -- rather it refers to the economy of ‘free’ that has now fully emerged in the US. We now live in a world where the price of a good or service isn’t defined by its actual cost, but by our psychology (Anderson, 2008). This concept was extremely intriguing to me, so I decided to use this blog post to investigate more into the ‘psychology of free’.
When reading these articles I was overwhelmed by the number of situations I could recall when I chose/accepted something just because it was free. Most of the time it wasn’t even something that I wanted -- honestly, when am I ever going to use a plastic draw-string backpack sporting a giant Geico logo? The answer is absolutely never. So why did I it take it in the first place?
The answer, according to Dan Ariely’s Predictably Irrational, is that I took or accepted the free item because it wasn’t scary. Ariely says that the “real allure of free is tied to fear” -- fear that we will risk something and lose (Ariely, 2008). We choose free things when we assign them a higher value because they do not come with the same risk tied to spending money on something that we might decide we don’t like/want/need later.
But is choosing the free thing really risk free? Apparently not. Just because “there is no visible possibility of loss when we choose a free item” doesn’t mean that we aren’t paying for it in either a physical or metaphorical way (Ariely, 2008). According to Ariely, the impact that ‘free’ has on us can lead us to make decisions that are not in our best interest. When I first read this I was reluctant to accept it -- if I’m not paying for it, how is it costing me anything? Well let me tell you. I went to a free high school choir show once, and that’s two hours of my life that I’ll never get back. I borrowed a pair of shoes from a friend and paid for them with some serious blisters. I took the free mascara sample instead of buying the brand I like and ended up with a middle part in my eyelashes. Those are costs and that makes the free stuff not free.
There are definitely more serious situations when supposedly free things end up costing us. When we take the interstate rather than the tollway we risk missing our interview. When we download a movie for free rather than buying it we risk computer viruses (and jail time?). What do we risk when we consume free news? Do we risk anything?
My answer is yes. We all know, or say that we know, that you can’t believe everything you read on the internet. But have we trained ourselves to live that out? Just because it is free doesn’t mean it is better -- and it’s probably costing us in ways that we don’t even realize. Free news is great because it’s free. But it can be not so great if the free news that we assign value to is inaccurate, biased, or irrelevant. What’s the cost of missing out on something you needed to know? What’s the cost of not even knowing that you are missing out?
Sources:
Ariely, D. (2008). Predictably Irrational. New York: HarperCollins.
Anderson, C. (2008). Free! Why $0.00 is the Future of Business. Wired. http://www.wired.com/2008/02/ff-free/
Schiller, C. (2015). The Psychology of Free: Why this One Magic Word is Your Most Powerful Secret Weapon. https://www.blinkist.com/page19/the-psychology-of-free-why-this-one-magic-word-is-your-most-powerful-secret-weapon
Eyes, Ears and Data
Google recently opened a new and enormous and Google-esque, massive office in Chicago, which includes an olympic sized swimming pool for ya know, all the olympians they employ. As Anderson points out in "Free! Why $0.00 is the Future of Business", Google's services such as their search engine and mail service are free, so clearly this $0.00 business model must be working for some. So how do they make money you ask?
Advertising! About 89% of Google's $66 billion (yes, billion, with a "B") in revenue came from advertising.
Unfortunately, journalism has become a commodity, and we have become entitled to content. Yet, we don't value the hours of work that go into finding data, interviewing sources, and crafting a piece of work. Therefore, since people don't want to pay for content, advertisers swoop in to save the day.
My dad always said to me "Hija, en los Estados Unidos nada es gratis" which translates to "in the U.S nothing is free". This can be applied to the internet and this trend towards $0.00. What is in fact selling like hotcakes is data, eyes, and ears. My media professor Lisa Dobias once told my class "your eyes and ears are worth more than what you could physically pay a company". Those impressions and views that we provide advertisers fund the content that we enjoy, or otherwise we would be having to empty our pockets. Additionally, the data that is collected from various platforms is extremely valuable in order to make more targeted advertisement which is more efficient and useful
This is why I find it so strange when people complain about those "stupid" advertisements in front of a Youtube video, or on Hulu. That same sense of entitlement that makes people not want to pay for The New York Times is the same one makes people angry in these instances.
With that anger present people install adblocking services, which in turn hurt the publishers of the content we want to consume because 1. we are not paying money for the service and 2. we are preventing them from obtaining their advertising dollars, which fund their content.
This vicious cycle in which "Information wants to be free. Information also wants to be expensive" puts us in a difficult predicament. Ideally, we would all just revert back to paying for the quality content we receive, but unfortunately I believe we are too far gone. There are going to have to be drastic changes to the way we consume quality content.
Advertising! About 89% of Google's $66 billion (yes, billion, with a "B") in revenue came from advertising.
Unfortunately, journalism has become a commodity, and we have become entitled to content. Yet, we don't value the hours of work that go into finding data, interviewing sources, and crafting a piece of work. Therefore, since people don't want to pay for content, advertisers swoop in to save the day.
My dad always said to me "Hija, en los Estados Unidos nada es gratis" which translates to "in the U.S nothing is free". This can be applied to the internet and this trend towards $0.00. What is in fact selling like hotcakes is data, eyes, and ears. My media professor Lisa Dobias once told my class "your eyes and ears are worth more than what you could physically pay a company". Those impressions and views that we provide advertisers fund the content that we enjoy, or otherwise we would be having to empty our pockets. Additionally, the data that is collected from various platforms is extremely valuable in order to make more targeted advertisement which is more efficient and useful
This is why I find it so strange when people complain about those "stupid" advertisements in front of a Youtube video, or on Hulu. That same sense of entitlement that makes people not want to pay for The New York Times is the same one makes people angry in these instances.
With that anger present people install adblocking services, which in turn hurt the publishers of the content we want to consume because 1. we are not paying money for the service and 2. we are preventing them from obtaining their advertising dollars, which fund their content.
This vicious cycle in which "Information wants to be free. Information also wants to be expensive" puts us in a difficult predicament. Ideally, we would all just revert back to paying for the quality content we receive, but unfortunately I believe we are too far gone. There are going to have to be drastic changes to the way we consume quality content.
Sunday, April 10, 2016
Dear Chris Anderson: No, I won't work for you for free
Whoa. What a showdown of egos. But I'm going to have to side with Malcolm Gladwell's view of things.
Call me a journalist or call me a person who feels it's important to compensate people for the work they do, but Anderson paints a hopeless future for those with aspiring careers in the industry of information. The word "careers" is emphasized for a reason. A career means dedicating a full-time workday (and probably longer, if you're a journalist) to working as a writer combined with the radical notion that they receive pay for their time.
I hesitatingly admit I appreciate Chris Anderson's practical view of the digital media industry and I also understand that his perspective has been molded by a career in both print and digital industries. I also admit I do not know the ins and outs of what it takes to ensure an editorial staff is rightfully compensated and where that money comes from. But I'm still disappointed by the idea that an accomplished media leader is giving up on incentivizing the industry he currently runs. If I were an employee at WIRED, I'd feel pretty insecure working under this guy.
The unsettling part of Anderson's argument isn't in the content of his article "Free! Why $0.00 Is The Future of Business;" it's the fact that he published these concepts, therefore, perpetuating the narrative that newspaper industries are going under and there's hardly anything there can be done about it, (except undercompensating writers and recruiting volunteers). He could instead be using his name and his talents to come up with something much better than that.
That's where I appreciate Malcolm Gladwell's response to Anderson's propositions. Anderson is an Editor-in-Chief and I suppose in that role it's easy to get wrapped up in purely the business portion of a company. But Gladwell chimes in on behalf of all writers, including the writers Anderson is
managing, when he says "If you can afford to pay someone to get other people to write, why can’t you pay people to write?" Gladwell is commenting on Anderson's suggestion that volunteer writers will gladly step in; people who have other full-time professions but enjoy writing for fun.
It's laughable that Anderson's response to Gladwell is titled "Dear Malcolm: Why So Threatened?" Of course, he's threatened—he works for a print magazine, the very industry Anderson is encouraging to be turned over to volunteers. But the fact stands: it's indisputable that people are placing less and less financial value in industries of information—which is why I agree that we can no longer depend on them to fund journalism salaries. But I refuse to believe that media moguls and leaders of the world cannot come up with something better than slashing salaries and caving into the Internet giants who have figured it all out.
Call me a journalist or call me a person who feels it's important to compensate people for the work they do, but Anderson paints a hopeless future for those with aspiring careers in the industry of information. The word "careers" is emphasized for a reason. A career means dedicating a full-time workday (and probably longer, if you're a journalist) to working as a writer combined with the radical notion that they receive pay for their time.
I hesitatingly admit I appreciate Chris Anderson's practical view of the digital media industry and I also understand that his perspective has been molded by a career in both print and digital industries. I also admit I do not know the ins and outs of what it takes to ensure an editorial staff is rightfully compensated and where that money comes from. But I'm still disappointed by the idea that an accomplished media leader is giving up on incentivizing the industry he currently runs. If I were an employee at WIRED, I'd feel pretty insecure working under this guy.
The unsettling part of Anderson's argument isn't in the content of his article "Free! Why $0.00 Is The Future of Business;" it's the fact that he published these concepts, therefore, perpetuating the narrative that newspaper industries are going under and there's hardly anything there can be done about it, (except undercompensating writers and recruiting volunteers). He could instead be using his name and his talents to come up with something much better than that.
That's where I appreciate Malcolm Gladwell's response to Anderson's propositions. Anderson is an Editor-in-Chief and I suppose in that role it's easy to get wrapped up in purely the business portion of a company. But Gladwell chimes in on behalf of all writers, including the writers Anderson is
managing, when he says "If you can afford to pay someone to get other people to write, why can’t you pay people to write?" Gladwell is commenting on Anderson's suggestion that volunteer writers will gladly step in; people who have other full-time professions but enjoy writing for fun.
It's laughable that Anderson's response to Gladwell is titled "Dear Malcolm: Why So Threatened?" Of course, he's threatened—he works for a print magazine, the very industry Anderson is encouraging to be turned over to volunteers. But the fact stands: it's indisputable that people are placing less and less financial value in industries of information—which is why I agree that we can no longer depend on them to fund journalism salaries. But I refuse to believe that media moguls and leaders of the world cannot come up with something better than slashing salaries and caving into the Internet giants who have figured it all out.
Thursday, April 7, 2016
How to create the future
The present is digital. All forms of analog technology is becoming digital. All digital technology is being created on more mobile platforms. Smart phones are currently the king. Everyone is attempting to create the future. However, no one actually has any idea what the future will be.
If mobile technology has become the norm, as stated in the "Why mobile is the future" article, is time to disrupt it? If businesses don't start to innovate mobile technology will they be left behind? The Harvard article entitled "Disrupting Technologies: Catching the Wave" leads us to assume that if companies don't begin to innovate, those companies will be left behind.
I don't disagree with the fact that eventually the smartphone will be overtaken by a new technology. The main question for me is that if the smartphone surpassed the PC, what will surpass the smartphone?
One would argue that it may be VR. However, VR has been around for the last 50 years! Only now is VR becoming popular. Corporations couldn't have expected the VR boom to happen almost 5 decades after its inception. In fact, in order to "catch the wave" Apple released Quicktime VR in the early 90's. It's safe to say the tool was never used to its maximum capability. I bring up VR because it is a prime example of technology being pushed onto consumers by established corporations for decades, but inevitably it was made popular by "small and hungry organizations" like Oculus.
My argument is that established corporations cannot truly predict the next "disruptive technology." Corporations cannot know for sure what will be successful in the market. They can simply improve the hardware of their current technology. Thus, we have a new iPhone every other quarter. The only other viable option for them to disrupt technology is to eat into their own market. Apple ate into the iPod market with the iPhone. They are currently are eating into music sales with the creation of Apple Music. This is the only way established corporations know how to innovate and disrupt the market. The corporations who fail to do this will get left behind.
If mobile technology has become the norm, as stated in the "Why mobile is the future" article, is time to disrupt it? If businesses don't start to innovate mobile technology will they be left behind? The Harvard article entitled "Disrupting Technologies: Catching the Wave" leads us to assume that if companies don't begin to innovate, those companies will be left behind.
I don't disagree with the fact that eventually the smartphone will be overtaken by a new technology. The main question for me is that if the smartphone surpassed the PC, what will surpass the smartphone?
One would argue that it may be VR. However, VR has been around for the last 50 years! Only now is VR becoming popular. Corporations couldn't have expected the VR boom to happen almost 5 decades after its inception. In fact, in order to "catch the wave" Apple released Quicktime VR in the early 90's. It's safe to say the tool was never used to its maximum capability. I bring up VR because it is a prime example of technology being pushed onto consumers by established corporations for decades, but inevitably it was made popular by "small and hungry organizations" like Oculus.
My argument is that established corporations cannot truly predict the next "disruptive technology." Corporations cannot know for sure what will be successful in the market. They can simply improve the hardware of their current technology. Thus, we have a new iPhone every other quarter. The only other viable option for them to disrupt technology is to eat into their own market. Apple ate into the iPod market with the iPhone. They are currently are eating into music sales with the creation of Apple Music. This is the only way established corporations know how to innovate and disrupt the market. The corporations who fail to do this will get left behind.
Wednesday, April 6, 2016
Staying Relevant
Staying relevant- businesses need to stay relevant to stay alive. Period.
In the article "Disruptive Technologies: Catching the Wave," the authors point out several companies like Sears and Xerox that have faded in relevance because they failed to adopt new technologies quickly. In "Why Mobile is the Future of Advertising and Marketing" the author points out that the digital landscape is becoming increasingly mobile and businesses need to catch on to mobile advertising to stay in any place of prominence. These articles analyze, speculate and predict what business should and could do to remain relevant. As a business student, I feel like I read way too many articles just like this. I am tired of them.
In my opinion, to be adaptive and successful business in any industry you just need to keep your eyes and ears open and be willing to change and innovate. If you define your customer base or your mission to narrowly you are setting yourself up for failure, regardless of the technological changes that occur. It's that simple.
For an example of being extremely adaptive, look to Nike. Now I may be a little biased because I interned for the company last summer, but just look at their history. Nike was founded in 1964 as Blue Ribbon Sports. Back then it made shoes pretty much just for track runners. Does it now? Absolutely, but it also makes shoes for every type of athlete under the sun. They didn't confine themselves to what their original customer base said they wanted- they expanded beyond that and found new customers and new niches in the market. They keep their eyes open to new trends and technologies and they embrace them. They now have a business that has evolved far beyond just shoes and incorporates nearly every aspect of physical fitness and fitness technology. The company doesn't say, "We serve professional and collegiate athletes." They say, "Everybody is an athlete*- *if you have a body you are an athlete." This literally has expanded their market to every single human in the world.
Now it is completely understandable that every company cannot consider everyone in the world a potential customer, but the point is that Nike was constantly aware an open to opportunities. They always were willing to adapt. Succeeding as a company depends in any industry (even the tech industry) is about so much more than the technology you use. It is about being aware of the market, the climate, the culture and how you can adapt and innovate. If a company is unable or unwilling to adapt, there is literally no place for them in the market and that's okay because new businesses are going to be able to fulfill the needs that those companies aren't.
In the article "Disruptive Technologies: Catching the Wave," the authors point out several companies like Sears and Xerox that have faded in relevance because they failed to adopt new technologies quickly. In "Why Mobile is the Future of Advertising and Marketing" the author points out that the digital landscape is becoming increasingly mobile and businesses need to catch on to mobile advertising to stay in any place of prominence. These articles analyze, speculate and predict what business should and could do to remain relevant. As a business student, I feel like I read way too many articles just like this. I am tired of them.
In my opinion, to be adaptive and successful business in any industry you just need to keep your eyes and ears open and be willing to change and innovate. If you define your customer base or your mission to narrowly you are setting yourself up for failure, regardless of the technological changes that occur. It's that simple.
For an example of being extremely adaptive, look to Nike. Now I may be a little biased because I interned for the company last summer, but just look at their history. Nike was founded in 1964 as Blue Ribbon Sports. Back then it made shoes pretty much just for track runners. Does it now? Absolutely, but it also makes shoes for every type of athlete under the sun. They didn't confine themselves to what their original customer base said they wanted- they expanded beyond that and found new customers and new niches in the market. They keep their eyes open to new trends and technologies and they embrace them. They now have a business that has evolved far beyond just shoes and incorporates nearly every aspect of physical fitness and fitness technology. The company doesn't say, "We serve professional and collegiate athletes." They say, "Everybody is an athlete*- *if you have a body you are an athlete." This literally has expanded their market to every single human in the world.
Now it is completely understandable that every company cannot consider everyone in the world a potential customer, but the point is that Nike was constantly aware an open to opportunities. They always were willing to adapt. Succeeding as a company depends in any industry (even the tech industry) is about so much more than the technology you use. It is about being aware of the market, the climate, the culture and how you can adapt and innovate. If a company is unable or unwilling to adapt, there is literally no place for them in the market and that's okay because new businesses are going to be able to fulfill the needs that those companies aren't.
Traditions Still Matter
Every week it seems as though a new technology is being introduced into the market. Said technology is then pushed as the technology that will revolutionize and change every aspect of a given field. We heard it was going to kill newspapers, they're still here. We heard it was going to kill face to face conversations, and while our face to face conversations are a little more awkward we still communicate face to face.
In the Huffington Post article a graph depicted that there would be more smartphones in use on Earth than PC's in the year 2014. As a business person looking at these metrics it would be foolish to ignore these stats and not start preparing for a potential shift in the marketplace when it comes to web ad placement. However, while there may be more smartphones in use, they are not replacing PCs. People will always want to interact with a "home computer" of sorts that acts as a hub to their smartphone and surrounding cloud.
In this survey conducted, 73 percent of Americans still use a desktop or laptop computer and this percentage has not wavered in about 10 years. Americans are used to certain traditions that are passed down and one tradition is that of a "home computer." If advertisers were to steadily move money from traditional advertisement to more mobile advertisement in a hurry, I believe it would be a mistake.
With this in mind, I encourage the surrounding industries to jump quickly to new technologies because they are popular. It may come a day where the "home computer" no long exist, but like any tradition it will take time to disappear. I think it won't disappear at all.
In the Huffington Post article a graph depicted that there would be more smartphones in use on Earth than PC's in the year 2014. As a business person looking at these metrics it would be foolish to ignore these stats and not start preparing for a potential shift in the marketplace when it comes to web ad placement. However, while there may be more smartphones in use, they are not replacing PCs. People will always want to interact with a "home computer" of sorts that acts as a hub to their smartphone and surrounding cloud.
In this survey conducted, 73 percent of Americans still use a desktop or laptop computer and this percentage has not wavered in about 10 years. Americans are used to certain traditions that are passed down and one tradition is that of a "home computer." If advertisers were to steadily move money from traditional advertisement to more mobile advertisement in a hurry, I believe it would be a mistake.
With this in mind, I encourage the surrounding industries to jump quickly to new technologies because they are popular. It may come a day where the "home computer" no long exist, but like any tradition it will take time to disappear. I think it won't disappear at all.
Is Disruption the Way To Go?
Once again, there is someone who is predicting the doomsday of traditional media. The inevitable rise of digital media, and so forth. Yet, I find it a bit odd that this "disruptive" media is what is being preached about, because this kind of media is what got advertisers in trouble with consumers in the first place.
I believe this new ideology that digital media is going to fix all of our problems, reach all of our consumers, and create immense profit margins. Unfortunately, I don't believe in this way of thinking, much less when we add "disruptive" to the mix.
Consumers go to a website or mobile site/app in order to consume the content that those publishers have to offer. If we, as advertisers, get in the way of that content in order to capture their attention, then we will quickly motivate users to start using ad blockers (like millions of others have already done). I definitely agree with the article, when it says "One effective type of ad for mobile is native advertising" and that consumers "look at native ads 53% more frequently than banners". The reason for that is that those ads are integrated in their content consumption and are not disruptive, annoying, or invasive.
One large barrier that mobile has to overcome is trust and conversions. Below is a graph detailing the trust that online/mobile ads receive in comparison to traditional sources of media.
We see that people are still more trusting of traditional media ads, which hurts conversions and online sales. Another reason for this is because although people enjoy shopping online they do not trust to purchase right from their phone. They might peruse an online catalog, read reviews or watch product videos but they are less likely to actually input their financial information and make a purchase.
As a "millennial" and as an advertising student I do see the digital progression, yet I do not believe this is the end of traditional media, or even the complete implementation of digital media. We need to continue to provide people the quality they want to see, in a format in which they want to see it instead of disrupting their experience.
Tests, Tests, and More Tests
Both of these articles focus on business strategy for new technologies, one relates to mobile and the other to disruptive technologies. Working for a tech company I have some first hand experience with these issues. Not too long ago the company I work for was developing a mobile app for a major American retail company (sorry for being vague but I'm technically not allowed to say much more than that), and I was involved in the user testing. Every 2 weeks the team would bring in two in house people and two external people to do the same test. The basic process is you receive a set of instructions and talk through everything you're doing in the app while being recorded (both what you are doing on the phone as well as your voice). For example the instruction might be "Go to xxJustine129's profile and follow her account," or "add a post to your own account and tag Beanies2go," and you talk through your process of completing that step. Our team did about 20 user tests at different stages of the app, and constantly tweaked their design depending on what worked in the tests and what didn't. When talking to the team who created this app, they all talked about how most companies when designing an app don't do user testing. It's either not in their budget, or they don't have the time, or don't think its worth it. I thought 20 was a pretty small number of user tests but apparently thats huge (especially for a 16 week project).
User testing is a huge part of developing any application/disruptive technology/advertisement. And there's a big difference between a focus group and user testing. This article talks about the importance of user testing in any situation and the best steps to make sure you're getting the most out of your tests. Even with how simple this sounds, tons of companies are still reluctant to engage in this practice. In the case of the app my company was involved in, the major retailer was incredibly surprised about our wanting to do user testing, and at first didn't understand why we needed it. They were reluctant because some of the external people our team wanted to bring in were not their usual customer base. However, our team explained that these people were big social media influencers and were important in knowing what people would or would not want in an app of this kind. Just a real life example of big companies being reluctant to look outside of their usual user base.
User testing is a huge part of developing any application/disruptive technology/advertisement. And there's a big difference between a focus group and user testing. This article talks about the importance of user testing in any situation and the best steps to make sure you're getting the most out of your tests. Even with how simple this sounds, tons of companies are still reluctant to engage in this practice. In the case of the app my company was involved in, the major retailer was incredibly surprised about our wanting to do user testing, and at first didn't understand why we needed it. They were reluctant because some of the external people our team wanted to bring in were not their usual customer base. However, our team explained that these people were big social media influencers and were important in knowing what people would or would not want in an app of this kind. Just a real life example of big companies being reluctant to look outside of their usual user base.
In short, yes: the future is digital
According to the readings for this week, and a slew of others floating around regarding the future of the tech industry, the future is digital, and to keep up with it, these companies must be able to accomplish the completely reasonable ability to predict the future.
And they said sarcasm doesn't translate through text.
Bower and Christensen say companies fail because they provide a package varying from what customers already value in performance needs and/or existing attributes are constantly improving creating the opportunity for other tech companies to invade those markets.
Just look at the poor disk-drive industry Bower and Christensen discuss in their article. Starting as pioneers and caterers to customer needs, it found itself one step behind, leading to its eventual obsoleteness.
But while I read these words, I couldn't avoid thinking about Apple and how expertly it has consistently predicted the future. In Forbes' article "How will Apple stay on top? It must disrupt itself again," the tech giant has managed to surpass other huge companies by just having a sexy design. But here's why the author cautions against hinging on its loyal base for much longer:
"Both Google and Microsoft have recently strengthened their own positions. The Android system and Windows 8 now allow these juggernauts to create their own ecosystems, making it harder to draw new Apple groupies. And let’s not kid ourselves, if Apple is cool Google is at least as cool. Just ask yourself, if you were a 21-year-old Stanford graduate with the world on a string, which company would you want to work for?"There are too many tech players for Apple to keep doing what they're doing, so they must aim to disrupt themselves again. Disruption is the only path to survival.
That goes for mobile advertising as well, according to the Huffington Post article. These same companies, and many others, are adapting too slowly. They aren't excelling at incorporating the four elements that Tom Lowery argues are imperative to business survival: diversity, quality, innovation, experimentation and influence. They're investing in print, rather than diversifying their advertising platforms.
He goes on to say "not having a mobile strategy is a 'recipe for disruption,' with a dash of eventual panic thrown in." Now, if disruption is a catalyst for innovation, this isn't necessarily a bad thing. Tech companies will set themselves up to procrastinate on getting with the program and only the swiftest to adapt will survive.
Brands Are People Too
In reading "Why Mobile Is the Future of Advertising and Marketing," the author makes several good points about how brands can better leverage their mobile advertising tactics and strategies. However, the author failed to mention the most important thing about brand advertising nowadays. Regardless of the media channel or disruptive technology being used, brands can only really succeed in their marketing strategies when they have a clear, appropriate and well-thought-out brand personality.
Maybe I'm a little biased as a PR major, but advertisements, both print and digital, rarely have an affect on me since I know all to well the motives and strategies behind them. The brands that do make me pay attention are the ones that interact with their consumers as if they're a person. They have a distinct personality and are personable in their advertising. They talk with consumers instead of at them. With so much media clutter constantly bombarding our screens, its the brands who make those connections at the human level who can successfully break through.
Last summer, AdWeek published an article called "10 Brands Doing an Amazing Job on Social Media." The common aspect among these brands in their strategy lies in the fact that they understand who they are as a company and how to personify that into a person-like profile online in order to connect with their primary target market. Successful brands have been doing this for ages. The platform or technology used to advertise a brand does not matter unless the content and context of the message resonate with the consumer.
Maybe I'm a little biased as a PR major, but advertisements, both print and digital, rarely have an affect on me since I know all to well the motives and strategies behind them. The brands that do make me pay attention are the ones that interact with their consumers as if they're a person. They have a distinct personality and are personable in their advertising. They talk with consumers instead of at them. With so much media clutter constantly bombarding our screens, its the brands who make those connections at the human level who can successfully break through.
Last summer, AdWeek published an article called "10 Brands Doing an Amazing Job on Social Media." The common aspect among these brands in their strategy lies in the fact that they understand who they are as a company and how to personify that into a person-like profile online in order to connect with their primary target market. Successful brands have been doing this for ages. The platform or technology used to advertise a brand does not matter unless the content and context of the message resonate with the consumer.
Tuesday, April 5, 2016
How Advertising Makes and Breaks Journalism
Advertising plays an important role in my field of journalism. In fact, after doing a bit of research, I believe advertising plays a more fundamental role in how those in journalism understand its purpose in society than I ever before realized.
Most journalism majors at UT have taken a class with Bob Jensen before, so we are very familiar with the idea that advertising can influence the content of a news publication. Publications might be unwilling to cover an advertiser in a negative way. In basic reporting classes, we are taught that we should avoid covering advertisers if we can, so we can’t be seen as having any biases in that coverage.
When we think about what ideal journalism looks like, words like “neutral,” “independent” and “impartial” might pop into our heads. Those who are familiar with the history of journalism in this country will know that this ideal of journalism has not always existed. Randolph Hearst, for example, sensationalized conflict between Spain and the United States to start the Spanish-American War in 1898 and sell more newspapers. And during the colonial era of American history, the vast majority of newspapers in the colonies were funded by political parties and other organizations.
According to this post by the Center for Ethical Journalism at the University of Wisconsin, newspapers in the United States began shifting to being independent during the 1800s because newspaper owners realized there was more money to be had in advertising than in being paid by an organization. The ideal we associate with journalism today — neutral and unbiased reporting — came soon after.
Fast forward to the modern era, and advertising revenue has begun to dwindle. This raises important questions about journalism’s current business model and how it can be improved.
In recent years, the controversial advertising method, native advertising, has entered into the world of journalism advertising. Here is a clip from the Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, where he describes what native advertising is and why it’s so controversial.
There are two main points from this video that I want to emphasize.
The first is that little tags on stories labeling them as sponsored content does not justify native advertising. The purpose of native advertising is to blend into the rest of a publication’s content. The average consumer does not often recognize what the labels mean.
The second is that publications are turning to native advertising in desperation, as other forms of revenue dry up. It does not solve the problem to point fingers at journalists. If the public consensus was that native advertising is wrong, the public could start paying for journalism to stop it. However, I’m not sure if I see that consensus among the public.
Oliver points out a specific example of native advertising from the New York Times, where the newspaper took the sponsored content from Orange is the New Black and used it as an opportunity to report on women’s prisons.
I have been seeing more of this sort of serious native advertising, different from the sillier native advertising that Buzzfeed is famous for, more and more recently. Here are some examples:
This raises some questions for me. Is there potential for real, serious journalism in native advertising? Is this type of journalism something that the public can ever learn to trust? And does native advertising signal a shift in the business model of journalism and potentially how we understand its purpose in society?
Monday, April 4, 2016
Ads You Ignore, Ads You Share
I am not an advertising student, but rather a
consumer. This blog post will be about how I look at ads and well… consume
them. A while ago, I lost the quick release to my tripod. So I did what most
people with access to a computer and internet wouldn’t do – I called the store
where I bought it and asked if they sold the part separately. After being
transferred and waiting on the line for quite some time, I got a hold of a
woman who didn’t know the answer to my question.
I went online and I found the part after a few clicks,
but held off from buying it. I stored the quick release
in the back of my mind, where it did not stay for long. About two days after my search I saw an ad in
my email account. It was the quick release.
“They know,”
I said.
According to Tom Lowery in “Why Mobile Is the Futureof Advertising and Marketing,” ads don’t fit in the print one-size-fits-all
model, but instead work in the web which has “evolved into an internet
revolving around individual needs.”
I agreed with Lowery when he said, “Click on a hotel
website one minute and I’ll bet you see an ad for that hotel on Facebook later.
It happens to me all the time.” That’s
exactly what had happened to me with my quick release. I was not only getting
ads on my email account but also on social media.
I don’t have to look at ads on TV, because I don’t
have one. It’s different online, and advertisers have found a way to know what
I’m looking for and then remind me that I may want to purchase it. Which is
fine for them. They have to make a living, too. I just want to turn away from
ads. Not all ads (which I will get to). Ignoring them is
a feat because they're everywhere, physically and digitally.
In the article "Disruptive Technologies: Catching the Wave" Joseph Bower and Clayton Christensen say that managers have to know what type of product there are dealing with, the
markets that are emerging and who they are selling to. I see it this way: ads opened up the market for ad blockers when they started going online. Advertisers
then needed to find a way back to their target audience. Bower and Christensen say that “companies
must give managers of disruptive innovation free rein to realize the technology’s
full potential – even if it means ultimately killing the mainstream business.”
TV ads are no longer than maybe 20 or so seconds and people just pick up the remote and click away. It’s
a different story online, where they can last three minutes or more. You still have the option to click away, but if you get hooked in you will most likely stay. TED recognizes ads that “people want to see and share.” I like watching ads with a story.
If an ad is able to catch my attention, I will watch the entire thing before
moving on to my YouTube video. After all, not all ads are trying to sell a
product. Some are meant to bring awareness.
Take for example “The Clock is Ticking” ad
by the Girl Effect organization with the goal to bring awareness of the potential harms
poverty can have on adolescent girls. And I bet many people have seen the
public announcement “DumbWays to Die” by Metro Trains in Australia promoting rail safety.
Some ads have evolved from just appearing in front of
you to actually getting you to share them because of their content and story.
The Mobile World
It's pretty obvious that Mobile devices are taking over the world. Statistics have shown that out of the world’s estimated 7 billion people, 6 billion have access to mobile phones. Far less than the number of people who have access to a working toilet which is only 4.5 billion people. Joseph Bower and Clayton Christensen explain their theory of disruptive innovation describes a process by which "a product or service takes root initially in simple applications at the bottom of a market and then relentlessly moves up market, eventually displacing established competitors." Examples of these include the Ipad, disrupting the the PC computer, and challenging the idea of a portable computer; the google apps, like google docs and such that challenge the conventional word processing and spreadsheets. But the biggest one yet, has been the dramatic increase of mobile phones that have disrupted the any form of pc's, desktops, and tablets. Mobile phones these days come as a portable mini pocket computer given anyone and every access to the world-wide web. So what does that mean for the word of media and advertising. It means that according to the disruptive theory that "Managers much beware of ignoring new technologies that don't initially meet the needs of their mainstream consumers." That means that advertising companies need to be aware of the opportunity and take advantage of the mobile world of advertising.
And from what I can see they have taken full advantage of this.
This article bellow talks about mobile marketing trends to look out for in 2016!
http://mobilemarketingwatch.com/top-5-mobile-ad-trends-for-2016-52942/
And from what I can see they have taken full advantage of this.
This article bellow talks about mobile marketing trends to look out for in 2016!
http://mobilemarketingwatch.com/top-5-mobile-ad-trends-for-2016-52942/
Tuesday, March 29, 2016
The dark side of the digital age
Ghana: Digital Dumping Ground (documentary, 2009)
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/ghana804/video/video_index.html
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/ghana804/video/video_index.html
Buy or repair? Recycle or donate? What are the greener options? Follow the FAQs and expert links for some answers.
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/ghana804/resources/faq.htmlMonday, March 28, 2016
"Good Enough" Products Often Die a Quick Death
The Wired article "The Good Enough Revolution: When Cheap and Simple is Just Fine" focuses a good part of its argument on the Flip, a bare bones video camera with easy sharing capabilities. It came out around 2007, was purchased by Cisco in 2009 and by 2011 it was dead. Surpassed by the easy and simple video sharing capabilities of smart phones like the iPhone, Cisco discontinued the product. Was the product still useful? Sure. But people increasingly had the same ability to take the same low-quality video with superior products they already had in their pockets.
The Wired article also points to netbooks as an example of a good enough product that was enormously successful. The article says, "On paper, netbooks might seem like crappy toys. They have almost no storage, processing power, or graphics capability. What they do have, though, is accessibility: Cheap, small, and light, they let you connect to the Internet from almost anywhere. Netbook shipments were up sevenfold in the first quarter of 2009." But where are netbooks now? Gone. As this Bloomberg article from 2013 puts it, "The Netbook is Dead. The iPad Killed It." Tablets with their high graphics capabilities, better storage, decent processing power AND internet accessibility gained popularity, became less expensive and thoroughly dismantled the netbook's place in the market. The netbook's only redeeming factor was it's ability to go online and nowadays all most all technology can access the internet.
The article also mentions Hulu as an example. While Hulu is still up and running, its business model has changed enormously. In 2012 its viewership dropped 58 percent and since then Hulu dropped free viewing but it still has ads. Is this good enough? Probably not because consumers can pay around the same price per month for Netflix and receive no ads. Additionally many networks offer free day-after viewing on their own websites now.
"Good enough" products, especially good enough products that are technology based, are placeholders - temporary fixes. These products' business models start to fail when quality products emerge that incorporate the same features (plus better features) and they die completely when quality products become comparable in price.
There is nothing wrong with being "good enough," but good enough is not enough to build a sustainable business on. As a person I value simplicity, but as a consumer I am wary of products that claim simplicity but are really just of low quality. Usually this means you are just not getting enough bang for your buck.
Simplicity is the New Quality
In the article on Wired.com titled "The Good Enough Revolution: When Cheap and Simple Is Just Fine" Robert Capps essentially states that while technology is getting better people settle for lesser version of it because they function as needed in a faster moving world. His analysis of how technology has changed the camera and music industries, among other, is truly insightful into how consumers are acting in a more technologically developed society.
I'm am not an avid photographer, but as a Journalism major I've had experience handling a wide range of camera, including SLR and DSLR. I understand the camera markets shift through my own experience with these cameras as opposed to a simple point and shoot camera. Point and shoot cameras take options away from the user. The user is generally confined to the normal manufactured settings that allows them to take the what the user believes is the best picture possible. While a SLR or DSLR camera may be able to take a better picture, an inexperienced and indifferent user will not take full advantage of the it's settings thus making it as useful as the simple point and shoot. An avid photographer may complain about the quality, but the normal consumer does not analyze a photo as passionately. Besides, if the consumer is happy about the photo, the photo holds a high quality in the eyes of the consumer even it's photographic value is low.
Cheap and Simple has become the new wave of satisfaction because it grants consumers the quality they're most looking for: instant gratification in a simple, swift manner. According a 2008 article on Engadget.com 95 percent of returned gadgets work and an executive the consulting firm Accenture blamed it on the complexity of gadgets. This coupled with the general practice of not reading the instruction manner creates a consumer base that is not looking for quality, but rather quick usability that leads to quick satisfaction.
Downloading a mp3 file to your phone is much faster than driving to the store to buy a vinyl album (if the record company even prints one). Quality is now defined by ease and quickness of use.
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