Monday, April 03, 2006
Multichannel, Cross-Media, Whatever You Call It, For Some Reason the Printing Industry Just Won't Participate
What? E-mail intergrates with other media? It has executives discussing how they use e-mail with other media, most of it print media, like direct mail and inserts! Why won't the Print Council promote this positive article about integrated marketing communications? They're still sending releases as Word documents attached to e-mails, and their site still has nothing that discusses the effectiveness of print in relation to other media. This week, they're at the National Postal Forum. Exciting, huh? I wonder how many e-mail marketers are there. In a prior posting of the membership of the Interactive Advertising Bureau it was amazing how many publishers and agencies were there (I've heard that some of those businesses occasionally buy printing services) and not a single printing organization was listed. We deserve what happens to us. Sorry for ranting... it's the beginning of the month and I want to be sure I hit my ranting quota.
http://www.btobonline.com/article.cms?articleId=27608
Related to this is an audio report up on the Advertising Age site about how media selection is changing. It's quite good. With a title like "PRINT PUBLISHING DECLINE QUICKENS AS DIGITAL MEDIA SOAR" don't you just have to listen to it?
http://www.adage.com/news.cms?newsId=47492
In a related rantable matter, I had a discussion about a year ago with a major exec in a huge agency about the media shift to electronic media. The executive was mainly involved in print production, and was not aware these things were going on. Some other occasions I've chatted with sales and marketing people at major printers who have no idea that their own publishing clients already have digital divisions. It reminds me of about 10 years ago I was at a meeting at a trade shop that had a lock on the high-end catalog business. I asked the sales people "how many of you read Catalog Age?" No one raised their hand. But someone did say that I could have the stack of back issues out in the lobby because no one knew what to do with them. Maybe it's just me, but when a market is in turmoil, doesn't it demand that you have the market curiosity of a hungry pirhana who has just sniffed out the possibility of a meal?
By the way, CatAge as it was called has since changed its name to multichannel merchant and can now be found at http://multichannelmerchant.com/
AA also had an article about the redesign of the NYT and WSJ web sites
http://www.adage.com/news.cms?newsId=48543
Borders will be selling the Sony e-book reader
Press release http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/04-03-2006/0004332159&EDATE=
cNet story http://news.com.com/Borders+to+sell+Sony+digital+reading+device/2100-1041_3-6057074.html
The download of audio and slides of my WTT economic webinar of 3/29, and sponsored by Kodak, is now available.
Files http://members.whattheythink.com/home/webinars/webinar060329.cfm
Press release http://members.whattheythink.com/home/wttnews060403.cfm
PC World has compiled a list of the best free software and free services. I've used lots of them (OpenOffice, AbiWord, PDF Creator, many others) and highly recommend you give any of the items on the list a shot.
http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,124883,pg,17,00.asp
Speaking of free software, an associate of my had MS Outlook crap out on him. No matter what he did he couldn't get it to run right. Before reloading his entire system, I suggested he try Mozilla Thunderbird. He even switched to Mozilla Firefox. So he got rid of Outlook and Internet Explorer. Guess what? All of his problems are gone. My life has been much easier since ditching MSWord for 90% of my work, and ditching Powerpoint as well. Excel is next on my list for extinction. Hooray, OpenOffice!
http://www.btobonline.com/article.cms?articleId=27608
Related to this is an audio report up on the Advertising Age site about how media selection is changing. It's quite good. With a title like "PRINT PUBLISHING DECLINE QUICKENS AS DIGITAL MEDIA SOAR" don't you just have to listen to it?
http://www.adage.com/news.cms?newsId=47492
In a related rantable matter, I had a discussion about a year ago with a major exec in a huge agency about the media shift to electronic media. The executive was mainly involved in print production, and was not aware these things were going on. Some other occasions I've chatted with sales and marketing people at major printers who have no idea that their own publishing clients already have digital divisions. It reminds me of about 10 years ago I was at a meeting at a trade shop that had a lock on the high-end catalog business. I asked the sales people "how many of you read Catalog Age?" No one raised their hand. But someone did say that I could have the stack of back issues out in the lobby because no one knew what to do with them. Maybe it's just me, but when a market is in turmoil, doesn't it demand that you have the market curiosity of a hungry pirhana who has just sniffed out the possibility of a meal?
By the way, CatAge as it was called has since changed its name to multichannel merchant and can now be found at http://multichannelmerchant.com/
AA also had an article about the redesign of the NYT and WSJ web sites
http://www.adage.com/news.cms?newsId=48543
Borders will be selling the Sony e-book reader
Press release http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/04-03-2006/0004332159&EDATE=
cNet story http://news.com.com/Borders+to+sell+Sony+digital+reading+device/2100-1041_3-6057074.html
The download of audio and slides of my WTT economic webinar of 3/29, and sponsored by Kodak, is now available.
Files http://members.whattheythink.com/home/webinars/webinar060329.cfm
Press release http://members.whattheythink.com/home/wttnews060403.cfm
PC World has compiled a list of the best free software and free services. I've used lots of them (OpenOffice, AbiWord, PDF Creator, many others) and highly recommend you give any of the items on the list a shot.
http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,124883,pg,17,00.asp
Speaking of free software, an associate of my had MS Outlook crap out on him. No matter what he did he couldn't get it to run right. Before reloading his entire system, I suggested he try Mozilla Thunderbird. He even switched to Mozilla Firefox. So he got rid of Outlook and Internet Explorer. Guess what? All of his problems are gone. My life has been much easier since ditching MSWord for 90% of my work, and ditching Powerpoint as well. Excel is next on my list for extinction. Hooray, OpenOffice!
