newsday
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Over a decade ago, I wrote a creative brief for Newsday, a large metropolitan newspaper covering Long Island and Queens New York, using the insight “We know where you live.” Newsday liked the notion but didn’t completely get the insight. They reframed it and turned the words into their tagline of many years “Newsday. It’s where you live.”
“We Know Where You Live” was meant to provide residents of Long Island – a diverse, but captive audience – with a reason to buy the paper in addition to The New York Times…and in place of The New York Post and The NY Daily News. Many of LI’s hundred thousand plus train commuters buy these other 3 papers every day for world news and sports and “We Know Where You Live” was intended to make them feel a bit out of touch with their local community news and home lives. (Sneaky, but true.) It was also a means to create greater loyalty among current readers.
This brand idea, if properly acculturated throughout Newsday, would have made every employee hypersensitive to providing an editorial experience that only a LI-based paper could deliver.
Fast forward to 2010 and the underperforming Newsday.com. “We Know Where You Live”, though long gone, is still a powerful rallying cry for building online readership and participation. The owners, architects and builders of the website, should be brainstorming how to deliver that experience. Instead, I submit, they are probably in brainstorming meetings chasing the latest social media twist, the next community promotion and the October program intended to build time on site. These are tactics, not strategy. “How” is tactical. “Why” is strategic. Newsday and Newsday.com need to revisit their brand strategy. And let those 34 new reporters they’re hiring in on it. Peace!
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Tags: Its where you live, long island, new york times, newsday, newsday.com, Ney York Post, NY Daily News, tactics and strategy, we know where you live, whats the idea, whatstheidea
I had to look up the word acculturation a couple of months back while writing a pitch email. In fact, at the time I wasn’t sure it was a word. Acculturation is mission-critical to my business and the goal of every brand plan I write. A good brand plan helps employees drink the Kool Aid — educating them as to the unique and meaningful points of difference. By acculturating a company with the brand’s promise and supports marketing in its many forms is simplified and made more effective. Only when a company adopts a brand plan can it truly be extended to consumers. The acculturation of a brand plan organizes employee and consumer minds, removing clutter.
Most advertisers and marketers hate “clutter.” I love it. The more clutter there is in a category the more likely it can be broken. A brand strategy may sometimes sound familiar, maybe even undifferentiated, but if it’s the right one, it will be actionable and defensible and its messages, demonstrations, and deeds profound.
Newsday knows where people (on Long Island) live. The Daily News doesn’t. North Shore-LIJ Health System provides a systematized approach to improving healthcare. St. Francis Hospital doesn’t. Isopure Plus uncovers the taste of pure protein. Milky Ensure doesn’t.
When a brand creates a culture around its points of advantage it becomes a brand. When it doesn’t it remains a product. Peace!
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Tags: acculturation, Brand Planning, daily news, isopure plus, marketing, newsday, north shore-lij health system, st. francis hospital, whats the idea, whatstheidea
NY venture capitalist Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures posted yesterday about how venture firms often follow the herd. If social networks are hot, VCs look for a new good one. Mobile apps? They find someone second to the party, but who tells a fine story. Mr. Wilson believes this is too safe and in being too safe it is not safe at all.
Mr. Wilson is, drum roll, successful. He is because he “fails harder” as Dan Wieden of Wieden + Kennedy says. Or “falls forward fast” as Joe Nacchio used to say. Mr. Wilson is smart, hard working but most importantly unafraid to look to the future. He goes where the herd will be. Where the herd is is a little stinky –albeit an active breeding ground. Mr. Wilson looks for clean air.
Brand Planning.
Good brand planning and good VC investment share this “ahead of the herd” mentality. When I present a great branding idea there is often an odd look in the eyes of the decision maker. It’s part smile, part fear. The smile connotes I get them. The fear can result from a few things but usually it’s the unknown. When presenting to Newsday the brand idea “we know where you live,” they thought it too intrusive, maybe a bit creepy. But it was their differentiator. They added a little water and bought it. For a health care system the strategy “a systematized approach to improving healthcare” felt cold and calculating. Finally they agree as long as we didn’t use the “s” word, we were good. They came to grips with the fact that they were a system. Herds are safe. Bold wins out. Peace!
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Tags: dan wieden, fred Wilson, joe nacchio, marketing, newsday, union square ventures, venture capital, whats the idea, whatstheidea, wieden + kennedy
I am so disappointed in Newsday’s redesigned website I could yak. It looks like they took the old site, put it into a cocktail shaker, added blue dye and poured it into a smaller glass.
Earlier this year Newsday went on record as saying it was going to charge users for its website content. A bold, smart and edgy move. In order to charge, though, it needed to create a site that offered readers and users real value. Because Newsday is owned by Cablevision, it actually has the resources to put together a paid for service of unparalleled proportion. Instead, it acted like a newspaper. Cablevision sells Long Islander more forms of media and entertainment than I can even list here. With a little cross-silo vision it could have reinvented Newsday.com, creating a revenue stream that would dwarf the paper paper.
Not this year. I guess they’ll wait for Rupert Murdoch to do it first. Or, one of his kids. Peace!
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Tags: cablevision, newsday, newsday.com, newspaper business, rupert murdoch, whats the idea, whatstheidea
We know where you live is a strategy I wrote for Newsday over ten years ago. The saying “Campaigns come and go, but a powerful branding idea is indelible” is the basis of my consulting practice. We know where you live is a powerful branding idea.
A little background: Newsday serves Long Island, home to about 3 million people – 7 million if you include Brooklyn and Queens – and it’s the island’s only “local paper.” The New York Daily News, New York Post and New York Times are also options but they more city and nationally focused. What sets Newsday apart is its ability to report the local news. People care about where they live so if you prove to them you can deliver you should command an unfair share of readers’ daily newspaper dollars. No brainer.
The branding idea “We know where you live” is a clear, clean mission. As employees leave the building each night if asked the question “Did you bring readers a closer to understanding their home and hometown today?” they should be able to answer. It is a business-building, strategic mission. Different than “Did you sell more papers today?”
Newsday.com is the newspaper’s online property and like most online brand extensions it is still trying to figure itself out. The executives re-creating it have newspaper hats on and, likely, will not get it right for a while. Why? Because they don’t have a branding idea to guide them – to free them up as they think through the property. As news, content, commerce, community and widgets are being developed to drive site relevance and traffic, the developers need to be grounded in a strategic mission. The site and paper need to prove that Newsday.com knows where we Long Islanders live. Peace!
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Tags: marketing blog, new york daily news, new york post, newsday, newsday.com, the new york times, we know where you live, whats the idea, whatstheidea
I write a good deal about newspapers and how that business is changing. I do so because there’s a big newspaper close to home, Newsday, that has great potential, but, as is the case with many papers, is nervous about real change.
What paper newspapers don’t seem to understand is that their online properties are really poised to win the news and local information war. Why? Because they have the content and the ability to deliver it (fact-checked) in near real time across a lot of media platforms: video, audio, pictures, feeds, and written word.
I haven’t looked behind Newsday’s curtain and know there are smart people with money doing innovative things, but at the end of the day I think they’ll take the paper paper, turn it into flash and HTML, and debate the monetization issue. Along with News Corp., Cablevision (owner of Newsday) is one of the few companies with the resources and footprint to reinvent the online news business…but they need to lose the fear and think different. In 10 years online news sites will be the sites of choice. Peace!
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Tags: cablevision, newsday, newspaper business, paper paper, whats the idea, whatstheidea
Gawker Media sales are up 27% compared to the same quarter last year. Those are some pretty serious numbers in a normal economy, but today? Nick Denton, CEO, has been dinged by bloggers who used to write for him for tying pay to traffic. If a Gawker writer posts a story that gets lots of readership, s/he get lots of money. Turns out this American way fee enterprise stuff works. This dude is make some “right” calls.
I’ve always loved Gawker and the way it has helped transform media – just read a mainstream newspaper columnist five years ago and compare the story to that columnist’s style today – but today Mr. Denton’s approach is hitting pay dirt. Advertisers are following. This blogger-portal journalism space is not only viable, there are signs it’s thriving.
Denton is hiring big time writers, ad agency media chiefs are making qualitative recommendations (without reams of syndicated research) and the stuff is pulling. There area couple of reasons why, but the most obvious is that Gawker readers are Posters. 33% of its readers have their own blogs and media that indexes high for Posters is valuable media. A couple of days ago I wrote about the “influence factor,” a concept of Charles Buchwalter, svp at Nielsen. This is a perfect example of influence factor at work and why good Posters should command higher CPMs and rates. Nick Denton is a seer. (Are you listening Newsday?) Peace!
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Tags: blogging, charles buchwalter, gawker media, influence factor, newsday, Nick denton, online cpm, online media, Posters, whats the idea, whatstheidea
When I was a pup, sometime after everyone was wearing fedora hats and the world was black and white, if you went on the subway you saw people with their faces buried in newspapers. Go on the NYC subway today or a bus in Chattanooga and you won’t see a paper — but you will see ear buds. Everywhere. They’re attached to phones, MP3 players and iPods and they are pumping out music.
Earbuds are the new paper. Digital (music), the new media. I’ve been writing Cablevision and Newsday (local Long Island businesses) trying to get them to see that if they marry the earbud with news and entertainment they will take a giant step ahead in the business of news delivery. (They aren’t really taking my call.) You see, making podcasts easy and fast is a major opportunity for original content providers. It therefore is a major opportunity for journalism and news organizations. Someone will win here, I’d love it to be Newsday. Peace!
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Tags: cablevision, earbuds, ipods, long island, newsday, whats the idea, whatstheidea
It’s time for newspapers to fight back. It’s time for them to make readers pay for the online product. The advertising-supported model is just not sufficient. If you subscribe to the paper paper, you should get the online edition free. If you want online-only your subscription should be discounted. If you are a subscriber and a poster (a content creator/contributor) your subscription should be further reduced.
Newsday, who is owned by Cablevision, who owns the NY Knicks (inside joke), is moving to a “paid for” model which will really tork off some people. But now is the time to make the move. The free lunch in online news needs to stop to maintain the sanctity of the product. News is important. People pay for important stuff. Newsday just needs to figure a way to charge while dialing up the value of the online property. It will be a hard road for them, but it’s doable and is the right road. The pioneers take the arrows, as they say. Peace.
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Tags: cablevision, newsday, newspaper business, NY Knicks, whats the idea, whatstheidea
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