I’ve been obsessed for years with understanding how we consume types of media – what’s going on in people’s lives, environment, and heads when they read, watch or listen to the things we write, produce, record, create, publish and whatnot. How do our eyes move when we the page of a book, newspaper or magazine? […]
YouTube videos on paper? Not the best match of medium to message
One of the most perceptive TV commercials I ever saw was for a television manufacturer. “Here’s the demo,” the announcer said, “but remember: You’re watching it on YOUR TV.” That was a long time ago, but it illustrates the futility of using the wrong medium to carry your message. Even Jesus warned against putting new […]
Stretching a tight marketing budget
This time of year, a lot of us are evaluating what we did in the past few months and looking for ways to accomplish more in 2012. This article, which I wrote for the spring edition of the Georgia Auctioneers Association newsletter, suggests ways to get more for your marketing dollar. I figured it might […]
No slowdown for Google in online ad market share
If you’re trying to decide whether to spread your search engine ad budgets beyond Google, the answer may be “not necessarily,” according to some new projections from eMarketer Digital Intelligence. The firm reports that in total search ad spending, Google has actually increased its market share from 70.5% in 2009 to 75.2% in 2011. And […]
Facebook and Twitter: The telephone and the PA system
If I didn’t think it would start a riot, I’d suggest we do away with “social media” altogether. Not the media, but the term. By lumping widely disparate vehicles together on one term, we give people the mistaken idea that they all do more or less the same thing. This seems to be especially true […]
Building Your Media kit: Part 3
As we saw in Building Your Media Kit Part 2, your lineup needs to include media with various characteristics, such as carrying capacity (the ability to carry long or complex messages) and reach. These days, when I see companies build entire marketing programs around Facebook and Twitter, I wonder if they’d try to build a […]
Building your media toolkit: Part 2
One of the best ways to understand a concept is to peel away all the clutter around it so that you’re left with no distractions. So just for the moment, let’s imagine you’re putting together your media toolkit using only tools that were available in 1983 – a year before the World Wide Web appeared. […]
Building your media toolkit: Part 1
To make the most of today’s vast array of communications tools, we have to understand how they relate to each other and which ones we want to use. Trying to figure out every new medium or gadget that comes along will drive you nuts and render you useless as a communications professional. So when you’re […]