Creative Agency Secrets

Steve Moore has launched a new breakfast event, called One Morning, the launch was yesterday at the glamorous One Alfred Place business club.

Steve asked me to help out by chairing the three fabulous presentations - each one answering the question "What Happens Next?" for TV, book publishing and newspaper publishing.  I love doing this stuff… and being in the front row for three articulate and very persuasive presenters was a blast. 

I will summarise their arguments below - but for the New Biz Development readers of this blog, here are some short sharp actions

1 - Have you got any clients in publishing or broadcasting… send them here to read about what key organisations think will be happening in the future

2 - Do you ever put out campaigns on TV, newspaper or book publishing?  Send your account teams and planners here to think about what you will do in the future when those campaign methods no longer work. 

3 - come to the next event.  They are due monthly.  The sign up for this one is here … presume it will be updated.

Jeremy Ettinghausen is Head of
Digital Publishing at Penguin

The publishing world is polarising, books online and videos are leading the charge for technology versus traditional methods.  The scientific/technical/academic press is further along than consumer fiction. 

E-books started in 2001 and they still haven't really taken off 7 years later… but it may happen this year that they join the mainstream.

Books in print are not redundant yet.  But paid for digital content is increasing - the question is how much people will pay.  What is clear is that if your content is entertaining, valuable and drives a good user experience, there is an audience who will pay for it. 

However, reading habits are changing and how we view web pages affects our reading habits.  This is a non-linear process.

Looking forward, what is a publisher? Are they book makers and marketers and book distributors?  No more they are disseminators of entertainment and ideas.

A quote from Chris Heuer of the Conversation Group (at SXSW) "the Best stories will win". 

The vision is for the "integrated" book delivering image, sound, vision in multiple media.  I read, I get into my car and continue the story in audio….

Kevin Anderson is the Blogs Editor
at The Guardian

We are taking the tools that are disrupting our business model and applying them to our business.

New media does not support the traditional business model for newspapers because the young do not read newspapers.  We are not replacing old readers.

A news company needs a new vision and positioning and new audiences - not just for newspapers.

Industries need to identify their core market and focus on new markets in order to survive,  Open source tools enable editorial experimentation.  This is really important because at present it takes us 6 - 12 months for new product development.  We need to lower the cost and time of innovation. 

The business model is eroding advertising and uses outdated distribution and delivery methods.  WE need to innovate frequently and fast and 'fail forward' when the innovation cost is £0. 

Delivering into a community with connection is possible future for newspapers.

Matt Locke is a Commissioning Editor at Channel 4 

Befreo the mobile phone device we had more divisions between our public and private spaces.  Compare a phone box (private) with a mobile phone conversation (private or public?).

ATMs are the ultimate - a private transaction within a public space.  We develop body language to communicate our intention to be private while outside at an ATM.

The personal and social have replaced the private and public.  These are more fluid and the gestures and etiquette is different.  We need to understand this in broadcasting.,

What young teens find hard to understand about the world in 1990 is not the paucity of channel choice, it is the fact that in order to speak out publicly in 1990 you needed permission.  This is not needed today.  Talking in public is easy now.  

Key issues:

Data - being misused or mis-released.

Playfulness - find how technology can help your life and find play within it

Vernacular - what is the new language of who our relationships are with?

The goal for technologies that allow us to make the shift to personal and social.  And do it simply.l 

Came across the review for "Then we came to the End" by Joshua Ferris… a debut novel about working in a Chicago Advertising Agency.

Wonder if it was all true???

If you read books and occasionally think about getting rid of your old ones….. consider selling them not on Amazon but on a site with a purpose (other than profit).
I choose to use Green Metropolis who support the Woodland Trust through their book sales activity. Here’s their latest newsletter.
Have a think about adding your support.

It’s been a busy few weeks for us here at GreenMetropolis.com.

First we achieved our 100,000th transaction at the end of January! That’s around 130,000 books which have been reused, recycled and saved from dusty bookshelves! So on behalf of the environment and the Woodland Trust, we’d like to thank all our members for helping us achieve this great target.

Secondly, as a result of all this recycling, we’ve just completed upgrading and replacing our aging web servers. Our new servers are significantly faster and have a much greater capacity, making it quicker and easier to find the books you want, it also enables us to continue with our enhancement and expansion plans!

Finally, for those of you, like us, who didn’t receive a Valentines card, we’ve pulled together some of our favourite titles on love, life and romance!

Amazing research job done here.  Discount article links
if you want stuff that is 10% off for Home and Garden, click on the 10% link next to the category.

Wow!

Now, how do I find a new lawnmower?

I read this while waiting for an embarassingly long time in a client’s foyer….. glad they provided reading matter.  Well I thought it worthwhile.
Book blurb

For years, managers and marketers have been told that the surest route to
winning and keeping customers was to give them something no one else
could. They were told to innovate, revolutionize, think outside the box,
break the rules, and above all,differentiate or die! But while companies were
busy working on better “bells and whistles,” customers were still waiting
on hold, receiving bad customer service, and dealing with products that
don’t work.  In a world in which customers have more choices than ever,
they are still as dissatisfied as ever. What are companies doing wrong?

Authors Patrick Barwise and Seán Meehan argue that customers have much
lower expectations than we think and that companies have gone so far trying
to differentiate themselves that they’ve often neglected the basics. 

In SIMPLY BETTER: Winning and Keeping Customers by Delivering What
Matters Most, Barwise and Meehan advocate a radical “back-to-basics”
approach that replaces the relentless quest for differentiation with a relentless
focus on basic customer needs. While things like on-time delivery, quality,
and good customer service might seem blindingly obvious, the authors’
research shows that most companies have been ignoring these basics for too
long and that customers care much less about “unique” and “different” than
they do about fundamental needs.

At the heart of the “simply better” approach is a new and controversial view
of why customers buy what they do. Barwise and Meehan argue that
customers rarely choose a product or service because it offers something
unique.  Instead,customers usually choose the brand which they think will
most reliably deliver the basics – the generic category benefits which all the
reputable brands provide but which some provide better or more reliably than
others.   

Using examples such as Toyota, Procter & Gamble, Tesco, Medtronic, Hilti,
and Shell, the book shows how companies can successfully differentiate
themselves by providing the basics "simply better" than the competition.

SIMPLY BETTER
Winning and Keeping Customers by Delivering What Matters Most
Patrick Barwise and Sean Meehan
Harvard Business School Press
August 2004
$24.95 / £14.99 / €21.90

Copies of Martin Cross’ book, Olympic Obsession are gaining value as scarcity kicks in.  A recent discussion on rec.sport.rowing shows Ebay and Amazon to have price discrepencies of over £60.

Martin - get a reprint ordered.  Or do it privately via a digital publishing outfit like Booksurge who do print on demand and also ’self-publishing’.