The Washington Post’s financials provide a good glance at the current status of legacy media struggling with the shift to digital. Unlike others large dailies, the components of the Post’s P&L clearly appear in its statements, they are not buried under layers of other activities. Product-wise, the Post remains a great news machine, collecting Pulitzer Prizes with clockwork regularity and fighting hard for scoops. The Post also epitomizes an old media under siege from specialized, more agile outlets such as Politico, ones that break down the once-unified coverage provided by traditional large media houses. In an interview to the New York Times last year, Robert G. Kaiser, a former editor who had been with the paper since 1963, said this:

“When I was managing editor of The Washington Post, everything we did was better than anyone in the business,” he said. “We had the best weather, the best comics, the best news report, the fullest news report. Today, there’s a competitor who does every element of what we do, and many of them do it better. We’ve lost our edge in some very profound and fundamental ways.”

The iconic newspaper has been slow to adapt to the digital era. Its transformation really started around 2008. Since then, it has checked all the required boxes: integration of print and digital productions; editors are now involved on both sides of the news production and all relentlessly push the newsroom to write more for the digital version; many blogs covering a wide array of topics have been launched; and the Post now has a good mobile application. The “quant” culture also set in, with editors now taking into account all the usual metrics and ratios associated with digital operations, including a live update of Google’s most relevant keywords prominently displayed in the newsroom. All this helped the Post collect 25.6 million unique visitors per month, vs. 4 to 5 million for Politico, and 35 million for the New York Times that historically enjoys a more global audience.

Overall, the Washington Post Company still relies heavily on its education business, as show in the table below :

 Revenue:.......$4.0bn (-3% vs. 2011)
 Education:.....$2.2bn (-9%)
 Cable TV:......$0.8bn (+4%)
 Newspaper:.....$0.6bn (-7%)
 Broadcast TV:..$0.4bn (+25%)

But the education business no is longer the cash cow it used to be. Not only did its revenue decrease but, last year, it lost $105m vs. a $96m profit in 2011. As for the newspaper operation, it widened its losses to $53m in 2012 from $21m in 2011. And the trend worsens: for the first quarter of 2013, the newspaper division’s revenue decreased by 4% vs. a year ago and it lost $34m vs. $21m for Q1 2011.

Now, let’s move to a longer-term perspective. The chart below sums up the Post’s (and others legacy media’s) problem:

Translated into a table:

                  Q1-2007   Q1-2013  Change %
 Revenue (All):....$219m.....$127m.....-42%
 Print Ad:.........$125m.....$49m......-61%
 Digital Ad:.......$25m......$26m......+4%

A huge depletion in print advertising, a flat line (at best) for digital advertising, the elements sum up the equation faced by traditional newspapers going from print to online.

Now, let’s look at the circulation side using a comparison with the New York Times. (Note that it’s not possible to extract the same figures for advertising from the NYT Co.’s financial statements because they aggregate too many items.) The chart below shows the evolution of the paid circulation for the Post between 2007 and 2013:

..and for the NY Times:

Call it the paywall effect: The New York Times now aggregates both print and digital circulations. The latter now amounts to 676,000 digital subscribers that have been recruited using the NYT’s metered system (see previous Monday Notes under the “paywall” tag). (Altogether, digital subscribers to the NYT, the International Herald and the Boston Globe now number 708,000). It seems the NYT found the right formula: its digital subscribers portfolio grows at a 45% per year rate, thanks to a combination of sophisticated marketing, mining customer data and aggressive pricing (it even pushes special deals for Mother’s Day.) All this adds to the bottom line: if each digital sub brings $12 a month, the result is about $100m that didn’t exist two years ago. But it does not benefit the advertising side as it continues to suffer. For the first quarter of 2013 vs. the same period last year, the NYT Company lost 13% in print ads revenue and 4% for digital ads. (As usual in their earning calls, NYT officials mention the deflationary effects of ad exchanges as one cause of erosion in digital ads.)

One additional sign that digital advertising will remain in the doldrums: Politico, too, is exploring alternatives; it will be testing a paywall in a sample of six states and for its readers outside the United States. The system will be comparable to the NYT.com or the FT.com, with a fixed number of articles available for free. Says Politico’s management in a memo:

It is increasingly clear that readers are more willing than we once thought to pay for content they value and enjoy. With more than 300 media companies now charging for online content in the U.S., the notion of paying to read expensive-to-produce journalism is no longer that exotic for sophisticated consumers.

By Edited by Frédéric Filloux

Sourced from Monday Note

You get a lot of people saying that their model is the best and that everyone else has got it wrong. Or they are unwilling to admit what exactly their business model is. Take Paul Carr – I disagree with much of the content of his work, but he’s just a brilliant writer: He never says that nsfwcorp is bankrolled by Tony Hsieh. He doesn’t go out and say, ‘my organization works because a millionaire thinks I’m great and other newspapers cannot necessarily replicate that.’

I can’t tell you how grateful I am to Clay Shirky for saying those words. Not just the kind ones about my writing (although, in point of fact, Clay, I’m not just a brilliant writer. I also cook a mean beef stroganoff) — but also for setting my mind at ease, apropos the Future of Journalism (With Jokes).

To think, for the past few months, I’ve lived the constant near-panic of a startup founder: obsessing over cash flow spreadsheets (which I update sometimes a dozen times a day), tweaking and re-tweaking freelance budgets, agonizing over healthcare options, and waking in the middle of the night from nightmares of having to close down the entire company because of some miscalculation I’ve made during commissioning or hiring.

And all for nothing! Because everything is totally fine. Thanks to our millionaire benefactor, Scrooge McHsieh (John D Hsiehafeller? Bill McHsiehates?), I can rip up those cashflow forecasts, tear down our paywall and pour the team another pint of Krug 1928. Happy days are here the fuck again.

Careful readers will have detected my sarcasm in the lines above. I wonder, though, if my anger and frustration are coming through clearly enough?

In just a few smug words, Clay Shirky, one of our most respected media commentators, dismisses the entire business model of NSFWCORP — our paywall, our print edition, our ebooks, Conflict Tower — as a gimmick, a fig leaf to distract from the comfortable reality: that NSFWCORP is nothing more than a rich man’s plaything. We’re not the future of anything. We’ve solved nothing. At best, we’re lucky; at worst, frauds.

That’s just the kind of cuttin’-through-the-bullshit, tellin’-it-like-it-is statement for which Shirky is famous, and for which institutions like Columbia and NYU keep cutting him checks. And, by happy coincidence, it allows Shirky to neatly slot NSFWCORP into the broader premise of his report: that no-one has yet figured out a viable business model for journalism in the Internet era. But maybe — just maybe — if we follow Clay Shirky’s advice, then one day we might. (There’s actually a name for institutions — media pundits, say — trying to preserve the problem to which they are the solution. It’s called the Shirky Principle.)

Few people are better informed on the collision of media and technology as Clay Shirky, even if he is a little obsessed with the idea that EVERYTHING HAS CHANGED. Likewise, he’s absolutely entitled to have his doubts about the viability of NSFWCORP. God knows, I share many of them (more on that in a moment). But there’s just one problem with his demand that I acknowledge his description of our financial position.

It isn’t true.

In fact, it’s embarrassingly, infuriatingly, dangerously wrong.

Shirky says I should be honest about how NSFWCORP works, that I should “go out” and explain how the company is financed and what exactly our business model is. Well alrighty then…

NSFWCORP has raised a total of $640,000 from three investors, including Tony Hsieh’s Vegas Tech Fund (VTF), all of whom invested on exactly the same terms, as covertible debt. VTF is by far the largest investor, responsible for $600,000 of that total (the other $40,000 came from CrunchFund and Judith Clegg. It’s all disclosed here.) VTF’s $600,000 takes us right up to the maximum amount the fund invests in startups, and the fund’s partners have made absolutely clear: that’s it. Indeed, when I last saw Tony and asked for advice on future funding, his advice was that we shouldn’t raise any money if we can avoid it, but if we did need to, he could introduce us to another possible investor. That’s it. There is no more money coming from Tony or Vegas Tech Fund. We are not “bankrolled” by anyone, except in the same way as any other company that has ever raised a seed round.

(Another important point, and I mean this as a positive thing: since we started publishing I have not once had a conversation with Tony about the content of NSFWCORP. In that regard, he is absolutely the perfect media investor.)

How am I doing so far, Clay? Honesty-wise?

Great! Let’s go on…

NSFWCORP was founded with two goals: 1) to create a brilliant news magazine (with jokes), and 2) to prove that it is still possible to build an innovative, independently profitable journalistic organisation: one that treats its journalists well, allowing them to produce great work which readers are willing (eager even) to pay for.

Journalistically, I think we’re doing pretty great. Earlier this week, the chancellor of Appalachian State resigned, just days after we published David Forbes’ exposé on how the university covers up rape and sexual assault by athletes. On Wednesday, NSFWCORP’s Yasha Levine broke the story of how California parents are being “empowered” by billionaires to destroy public education. Our first print edition featured Mark Ames’ first-hand account of being spied on by the ADL — the same issue in which we published the definitive list of the 100 people most culpable for misinforming the public in the run up to the Iraq war.

How about innovation? Our entire publishing platform was built in-house, including our paywall that allows subscribers to “unlock” paid content for outside sharing. We’ve launched “Desknotes,” allowing subscribers to eavesdrop on our internal editorial discussions, and Conflict Tower to ensure transparency for everything we do. We’ve launched a nightly radio show and a monthly print edition. And that’s just the start: our product road map reaches from here to the moon.

Financially — well, I wish we had a millionaire benefactor. To put our funding in perspective, the total amount raised (converted to/from 2013 dollars) would barely cover the New York Times’ weekly payroll in 1916, or the cost of producing a single issue of Scanlan’s in 1970.

And yet… Our entire business is perilously close to breaking even, thanks to the thousands of people who have signed up for monthly subscriptions ($3 for Web / $7 for Web and print) or our Conflict Towers membership program. (Conflict Towers “residents” can buy a virtual room for anywhere between $3 and $1500 to support our work. Residents get a lifetime subscription to web and print and a public profile on the site. Starting this summer, we’re hosting a series of Future Of… dinner parties for Conflict Tower residents and their guests, in cities across the US and internationally. Buy a damn room already.)

This month, even after paying good salaries to our reporters, paying the hilariously high travel costs required for serious reporting, finally setting up a healthcare plan for full-time staffers and expanding into print, our burn rate will drop to under $25,000. Three months ago it was three times that high. We only need to sell 4,000 more print subscriptions, or a dozen or so more floors in Conflict Tower, and we’ll break even.

That — that, Clay — is the honest truth about NSFWCORP’s business. We, like every other publication since the beginning of time, have raised a relatively modest amount of startup capital, mostly from a fund in which Tony Hsieh is a partner. But what we’ve built with that startup cash is a real, fiercely independent journalistic enterprise, delivering scoop after scoop (with jokes) for a growing audience across multiple platforms (while, by the way, solving the problem of porous paywalls, and proving that print isn’t dead).

So all of the above is why Clay Shirky’s comments make me feel like being sarcastic. Now here’s why they make me feel frustrated, and angry…

As founder and editor in chief, I am terrified, TERRIFIED of fucking this up. The closer we get to profitability, the more terrified I get. We are so close to pulling this off. So close to proving that it is possible to pay brilliant journalists a good salary (with full benefits) to do great work, in a profitable, sustainable way. And yet, with no immediate prospect of raising more money (I mean, what? Is now a good time to ask Mike Arrington for more cash?), I’m acutely aware that we’re going to take this right down to the wire.

All it takes is one unexpected expense — a rise in print costs, a story that goes over budget, or any one of a thousand other calamities that I failed to account for — and I’ll have to close the doors and lay off the best team of people I’ve ever worked with, all of whom risked their careers to help prove that great journalism has a profitable future.

It’ll only take a few thousand more subscribers for us to reach profitability, but it only needs a similar number to think “oh, NSFWCORP doesn’t need my support right now… they have their own pet millionaire” in order to doom us. With the stakes that high, Clay Shirky’s blithe, inaccurate claims could become the precise opposite of a self-fulfilling prophesy.

So, Clay, maybe next time you smack me and my business in the face with a velvet-wrapped two-by-four, you could at least pick up the phone first to check that we’re really as rich as you think we are.

Or better yet, buy a Conflict Tower room and you can ask me in person at one of our residents’ Dinner Parties. Appropriately enough, the first one is themed around The Future Of Journalism. I suspect we’ll have a lot to talk about.

…

Update — Clay Shirky responds in the comments:

First, let me apologize for suggesting in that interview that you have access to unlimited capital. I shouldn’t have used the word ‘bankrolled’ to characterize investment in a for-profit firm.

I was trying to make a point about the wild variability of business models among media outlets, but I screwed up in this case. I recognize that you are making a go at running a profitable media business, and I hope it succeeds (I am one of your print subscribers), and I’m sorry for seeming to suggest otherwise.

There’s a longer conversation to be had about that wild variability, but I’ll leave this at an apology for the moment.

…He also adds that he has moved into Conflict Tower. Thanks, Clay! Apology absolutely accepted.

By Paul Carr

Sourced from pandodaily

Andreessen described Google Glass as “potentially transformative for the entire industry. ”

“You put it on and you’re like ‘Oh my God, I have the entire internet in my vision. Where have you been all my life?,’” he said.

“I like to tell people that I’m beta testing the new Google Contact Lenses,” he joked to moderator Ruchi Sanghvi, VP of operations at Dropbox.

He added that Facebook and Google are taking search in very different directions and opined “There’s a lot more to be done with search.”

“New Facebook Graph Search capability I think is one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen…It makes me wish a little bit that I was single again,” he said to laughter.

Andreessen said he switches phones every six months (between Android and iPhone) and he’ll get Facebook Home next week.

Sanghvi turned the discussion to Sheryl Sandberg’s new book, Lean In.

“Before Sheryl’s book, for 20 years, the answer has been, ‘Be gender blind,’” Andreessen said. “’Be gender blind.’ It’s not important; in fact, it’s not to be discussed. It certainly should not be brought into the hiring criteria and certainly should not influence how people manage. And basically have a straight meritocracy and ignore gender. Sheryl has provided a very, very provocative set of arguments that 1) That’s not actually working and 2) That managers, both female and male, actually have to take gender on squarely.”

“We’ll have to completely retrain managers and executives of all kinds to be able to do this,” he continued. “[Sandberg] argues very persuasively that it’s necessary, but it’s like landmine central with the way employment law works these days.”

“I think her book has been a wake up call that the current approach to solving the problem of gender imbalance— number one it’s not working, which is fairly obvious, and number two, it requires a rethink of basic communication and basic management. I think it’s a very good thing to be talking about this and debating this. I think that it’s going to take quite a while,” he said.

“Startups as a general category are probably highly overrated,” he said, responding to Sanghvi’s question about Stanford students graduating and deciding between starting companies and finding jobs.

“Basically its an irrational act,” he said, explaining the right reason for starting a company. “This idea was so powerful and compelling that if I didn’t do it I’d hate myself for the rest of my life.”

“I think that’s the part that’s getting lost,” he continued. “I think the cult of startups, and of course Stanford’s ground zero for this…Those startups are miserable experiences.”

Andreessen argued that far too many entrepreneurs have an “incredible blind spot” to distribution, sales, and marketing in Silicon Valley right now, and shared his thoughts on immigration and innovation.

Sanghvi finished her scripted segment (before an open Q&A period) by throwing out words and getting Andreessen’s reactions to them:

“Mobile: under-hyped

Social: extremely powerful, and people underestimate how powerful it is

Enterprise: being reinvented

Silicon Valley: the world would be much better if we had 50 more Silicon Valleys but we don’t and we probably won’t for a long time

Genomics: largely a disappointment

Big Data: lots of social, cultural, political implications, not yet figured out

Aaron Swartz: tragedy. Absolute tragedy. Hopefully a future inspiration

2020: more people on the planet with smartphones than running water”

By Billy Gallagher

Sourced from TechCrunch

So, amid today’s accelerating technological change and the resulting hyper-connectedness, how do we recognize when our own company is vulnerable – when we’re facing our own Kodak moment? I’ve pulled together  the seven major disruptive forces that have overturned and redefined the way business is done today.

The Google Effect: The separation of humans and information

The last time you Googled something, did you stop and think, “Hmmm, I wonder if these results came from a database in Oregon, Georgia or Virginia, or maybe from The Netherlands or Australia?” Of course not. Through the Google Effect, information and physical location in our personal lives have been fully virtualized and dematerialized.

So why in many organizations are the two (often very expensively) still forced to be co-located?

The Skype Effect: Free communications, death of distance

Remember yesteryear, when the physical distance of a long-distance phone call really mattered? When a call of 10 miles was significantly cheaper than a call of 1,000 miles, and an overseas call was a true luxury? Today, internet -based communication platforms have cost and usage bases that are completely disconnected to distance; speaking to someone around the world via the internet is the same as calling across the street.

So why mandate that employees travel to their knowledge work, when instead the work can go to employees?

The Facebook Effect: The virtualization of human relationships

Fundamental to Facebook’s immense popularity is that it allows you to maintain and enhance personal relationships even without regular physical presence.

The same intimacy is available to corporations, where working relationships based on capability and mutual trust no longer need to be physically proximate. So why stick to the high-maintenance, time-consuming and costly methods of the past?

The LinkedIn Effect: The virtualization of specialized knowledge

LinkedIn allows us to map our professional networks, and then to quickly locate trusted expertise. Why can’t organizations work in the same manner? The LinkedIn Effect provides a map of our personal networks; when brought to business, this capability enables the virtualization of expertise, allowing the right person to be brought to the right task at the right time.

The Amazon Effect: The virtualization of customer experience

Amazon knows you better than the manager at your corner store. Yet, when was the last time you met anybody from Amazon? This virtualization of customer intimacy is led by (but not the sole domain of)  new market leaders like Amazon, Netflix and Apple. Yet it is a viable option available to all organizations.

The Pandora Effect: Algorithms building customized products

“How did they know that?” If you’re a Pandora customer, you’ve probably asked that question. You provide Pandora with your favorite artist, or a few songs you like, and suddenly hours of music you truly enjoy is produced. It’s not magic; it’s Pandora’s algorithm at work.

This algorithm, finely honed by reviewing massive amounts of data, creates remarkably accurate musical taste profiles. In knowing just a few things about you – the first few dots if you will – the algorithm connects the rest of the dots to create customized play lists.

From such experiences, consumers are beginning to consider all their other business relationships: “If Pandora figured this out about me so quickly, why is my bank still so clueless? After going to the same ATM for 10 years, it still asks me what language I speak!”

iPhone Effect: The experience is more valuable than the physical product

Customer value is no longer confined to the physical manifestation of a product. Instead, it’s often found in the software. This was central to the recent transition in the mobile phone industry. Ten years ago mobile phone providers competed on hardware attributes – remember the famous Nokia ringtones, or the form factor of the Motorola flip-phone? That was the basis of competition.

Today, winning iPhone and Android models differentiate on the experience delivered chiefly by software. Most of the physical attributes of a mobile phone are now commodity. The experience has usurped the widget.

These seven effects are working together to alter the competitive fundamentals of many industries. With game changers like these, the cost of adhering to an industrial business model is significantly greater than moving to something new.

By Malcolm Frank.

Malcolm Frank is Executive Vice President of Strategy and Marketing at Cognizant Technology Solutions, a global provider of IT, consulting and business process services based in Teaneck, N.J.

Sourced from Gigaom

Pre-revolution tobacco and cigarette ads

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(via catsmob)

Just try to take the chocolate away from me, I’ll show you!

(via ucoz.ru)

Boots ads for Rezinotrest

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Translation: Rainy rain, you cannot hurt me. I would not go out without galoshes. Because of Rezinotrest every place is dry for me. Sold everywhere. (Vladimir Mayakovsky, 1923)

Translation: Rezinotrest is your protector from rain and slush. Without galoshes, Europe is bound to sit and weep. (Vladimir Mayakovsky, 1924)

(via posterpage)

Beer and waters, Karneev, Gorshanov & Co., around 1910

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(via Hotfikser)

Soap and perfumes

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(via Rocky-G/Livejournal)

Cocoa, Hot Chocolate, and Coffee

(via eso-online)

Gunpowder

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(via dv-reclama)

Candies

(via English Russia)

Cognac from S.S. Tamazova Company, Kizlyar, ca. 1900

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(via eso-online)

Creepy faces on a juice and a cosmetic powder ad

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(via Dark Roasted Blend)

By Vincze Miklós

Sourced from i09.com

If they are real marketing pioneers then they may even have learned how to spell Instagram and know that “pinning” is not just something done by the grannies at the weekly sewing club.

The “geniuses” even know that “Vine” is not just something that grows in the fields of France that leads to much glass clinking, bad jokes and wild dancing.

So the power of social media has been identified to assist and even supercharge creating online brand awareness through the leverage of  ”crowd marketing” that is facilitated by customers and fans sharing your content.

The smart cookies even know that unique fresh content that is popular and resides on your website can provide better search results. Key terms that people use to find your product or service may even appear on page one of Google if your content and search strategy is integrated and honed.

That is gold for any brand.

The challenges

But despite the opportunities there are many challenges.

Creating great content takes time and resources and many organisations have started the journey with enthusiasm but have given up in desperation. They drew up the plan but realised it was a Mount Everest. Blogs were designed and launched but are now desolate and haven’t seen a published post for months. Twitter accounts were started but the tweets are missing and followers are few.

This is due to many factors such as lack of inspiration, the sustained effort needed and the persistence required.

I know what discipline, skill and passion is needed. For the last four years I have painstakingly built this blog on the back of content and technology that has taken me to the teetering edge of keyboard throwing, mouse hurling and laptop launching.

But there are some solutions emerging to help in the battle of content creation and being visible amongst the universe of half a billion websites and blogs.

A solution

For the last 18 months I have been involved in a journey to find a solution to those challenges with a company called Shuttlerock.

It provides a powerful easy to use platform that helps you easily create content that keeps your website and blog fresh, relevant and engaging. It enables your customers, supporters, staff and fans to interact with your website.

Here is a video overview of the concept of how the Shuttlerock software works.

Introduction to Shuttlerock from Shuttlerock on Vimeo.

It is a solution that builds great content for your domain and not just Facebook.  It drives views and engagement to the platform you own.

How does it work?

Shuttlerock is a white label photo and content sharing platform embedded on your website. It allows you to generate, curate and publish photos and stories. It means that your website is no longer one dimensional; it’s now multi-dimensional using customers, staff and partners and their social channels to bring your site to life.

What are the key benefits?

The platform was born out of the frustration of creating content, watching Facebook nabbing all the good photos and not being able to create engagement and content curation at scale.

Here are the key benefits that highlight how it it will assist you with the marketing of your business on a social web that craves fresh unique content.

1. More high quality engagement leading to more sales. This is created by the generation of ‘real’ content from ‘real’ people. This “is” content marketing.
2. Better interaction with customers AND their friends: a social platform on “your” website. And more control of the customer relationship, content and conversations.
3. Creates an on-going source of fresh content which you can share to your company’s social channels.
4. Higher search engine rankings. Search engines require fresh content and they rate the social conversations that Shuttlerock encourages.
5. Helps you build a valuable email list of your customers and their friends

The key features

The ShuttleRock “software as a service” platform has some powerful features to help you tap into the power of your fans (if you are a sports brand) and followers or customers that love creating content, whether that is a tweet, a photo or other media.

Here are the key features.

1. Content board

It takes minutes to create a content board and you decide whether it’s open to the public or staff only, whether it’s open to voting or not and where it appears on your page.

2. Easily add photos to your site

It’s simple, two-step uploading from a range of sources. No more messing around with cumbersome content management systems or resizing images.

3. Search engine optimisation

Photos are renamed using pre-determined key words to help with SEO.

4. Automatic onsite content creation

Automatic content generation including the hash tags from Twitter, Instagram and Flickr and geotagging.

5. Mobile apps

Content collection doesn’t have to wait to be sent from your computer but content collection can be from a smart phone including Android and Apple.

6. Content publishing control via moderation

Moderation is provided which allows you to accept or reject photos, edit comments or change which board the image appears in before publishing.

7. Prompted sharing

Each time someone shares a photo your brand is centre stage and each share encourages people back to your website.

8. Update multiple social networks at once

You no longer need to chase several channels. Shuttlerock lets you update multiple social networks at once. Create a schedule of posts to your company Facebook pages so something is posted every day even when you have the day off.

9. Demographics and statistics measurement

Demographic information and statistics are presented in an easy to view graph for quick analysis.

10. Integration with 3rd party platforms

Integration with 3rd party platforms including Facebook, Mailchimp and Instagram.

11. Easily create and run a competition

The Shuttlerock content boards create a reason for your customers to send a message to their friends about your business – and drive them to your website.

Some results

The Shuttlerock platform has been added to the marketing toolkits of companies in a range of industries including sports teams, retailers, travel & tourism, real estate and many more.

Some results.

1. Progear photography generated 770 shares in the first month getting their brand in front of 77,000 of their customers’ friends.
2. Black Cat Cruises created 850 photos in 6 months and lifted their user sessions and online sales by 50% year on year.
3. The Queensland Reds football team generated 233 images from 7 content boards in their first 30 days.
4. Jucy car rentals increased their Google rankings for ‘Christchurch rental car’ from the second page of Google at #13 to page one at position 3.

What about you?

Could you use a content curation and generation platform for your business to increase engagement, sales and search engine rankings?

Look forward to your feedback and comments. You can contact Shuttlerock to find out how they can help you with your content marketing.

Disclosure: I am a director and shareholder of Shuttlerock and this platform was created to overcome some of the challenges marketers and companies face every day creating content, optimizing for search engines and building fan engagement at scale.

Want to learn how to create great content that engages?

My book – “Blogging the Smart Way – How to Create and Market a Killer Blog with Social Media” – will show you how.

Written by Jeff Bullas

Sourced from www.jeffbullas.com

Well, it is essentially some sort of ‘rechargeable ice’ that will not dilute your drinks with unwanted water, and this particular project has found its way to uber popular crowdsourcing site Kickstarter. Pucs has been machined from solid stainless steel, where it will be offered in sets of half a dozen, and will arrive in a solid Maple or Walnut case for that added touch of class. This would make the Pucs project ideal to see action in any drink, delivering the perfect chilling experience at all times.

If you are interested, the Pucs can be yours eventually – if you have placed a pre-order on Kickstarter, with the starting “investment” of $35. David Laituri, Founder of Onehundred, said, “We like to think of Pucs as ‘rechargeable ice’ – all the chilling benefits of a traditional ice cube without the added taste of that month-old fish at the bottom of your freezer or adding all the unwanted water at the end. With a strong commitment to sustainability, we bake a high level of environmental thoughtfulness into everything we create. Pucs was created by using sustainable sourced wood, renewable energy and local manufacturing.”

After all, I am quite sure that everyone out there has their favorite chilled drink, whether it contains any alcohol or not, but when it comes to making sure that they end up chilled with ice cubes, eventually, the ice cubes will melt, and whatever you have in your glass will be watered down. I guess this affects all your juices and hard liquor, but not if your favorite “poison” of choice would be mineral water.

Since the material that Pucs are made out of is stainless steel, it works as a gradual conductor, chilling steadily and evenly, where it will stay cool for quite a while. A room-temperature Puc will take the edge off of a mug of piping hot coffee for sure!

Press Release

By Edwin , sourced from Coolest-Gadgets.com

But it’s also vital to move beyond the standard logo and tagline and take a holistic approach to evoking emotions among potential customers across all of your marketing channels — including social media sites. You can use color to your advantage.

Color is a form of non-verbal communication and an important part of our daily lives. The underlying emotions that colors evoke have been cultivated since birth and vary depending on age, geographic location, and gender (e.g. blue for boys, pink for girls). Color affects our moods and feelings, and research suggests that it has a physical effect as well, influencing the hormones that control our emotions. Applying color theory is one of the most powerful methods of creating customer appeal.

Why do you feel like clicking and browsing on some websites and not others? What makes you feel like purchasing from one online merchant vs. another? Could it be because of your emotional responses to their color palettes? Choosing the right color scheme is crucial to how your brand is viewed.

Studies have shown that color:

• Increases brand recognition by up to 80%
• Improves readership as much as 40%
• Increases comprehension by 73%
• Can be up to 85% of the reason people decide to buy

Some brands become so closely associated with their color schemes that we recognize them even when their company names aren’t visible. Use the two infographics below as guides to creating your online identity.

What kind of emotion do you want your brand to convey?

This infographic from Logo Company looks at the color choices used by major brands. Do you want your customers to feel that you’re trustworthy and dependable like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn? Blue might be a good choice. What about giving visitors a sense of youth, excitement, or boldness like Coca-Cola, Virgin, or Nintendo? Red may be for you.

How do colors affect purchases?

Web analytics firm Kissmetrics created this infographic to describe how color psychology influences purchasing. Visual cues help drive buying behavior, and color is the most persuasive element: 85% of shoppers say color is a primary reason why they buy a particular product.

By Pam Dyer

Sourced from Social Media Today

Who in advertising doesn’t love a good trend? I certainly do and in January each year it feels like Christmas, Easter and my birthday all rolled into one. Every agency and their mother pops out a trends deck and the world is full of thoughtful and often insightful thinking.

So why bother pulling together a trend list in April? Surely the boat has sailed. Maybe it has or maybe the air is just a little clearer now.

In my opinion any prediction worth its salt is based on a quantifiable behaviour that is happening now. It works for the weather and it can work for communication, which is why, just like the Bureau of Meteorology, I have based my future views on data accessible today.

1. Marketing goes real time

The first trend is a push towards real (or near real)-time marketing. Globally, real-time targeting and buying technology is advancing at quite a pace while instantaneous data processing and decision-making systems are helping to put the right information in the hands of the right people, at the right time. This combination of increasing knowledge and capability only leaves us with a question of ‘when’ not ‘if’ real-time marketing will disrupt our industry completely. In terms of what’s driving real-time marketing forward, we firstly have the accelerating investment in programmatic buying technology. Although not ‘new’ – the first demand side platform (DSP) was launched in 1999 – the technology didn’t really find traction until 2007 when five of today’s major DSPs were founded and ad exchanges became hot commodities with Google, Yahoo and Microsoft all acquiring smaller players. Today Australia’s real-time bidding (RTB) market is the fastest growing in the world with 30 per cent quarter-on-quarter growth, according to Emarketer and The Rubicon Project RTB Report Q4 2012. Although it will likely temper slightly across the rest of 2013, we’ll still see the market ending in substantial positive growth.

In addition to media agencies buying and refining digital in real time, marketers are exploring ways to pull through real-time data streams to turn in-market observations into in-campaign optimisations. A topical example of this in action was the power cut at the Superdome during this year’s Super Bowl. As social conversation grew, the likes of Oreo’s, Calvin Klein, VW and Audi all used the event as a platform to share highly relevant and timely messages. In fact, the recently published report, InfoGroup Targeting Solutions 2012 Social Analytics, suggested that 53 per cent of senior marketers would be looking at social analytics to help provide real-time feedback on campaign activity.

However it’s one thing being able to market in real time but if we can’t measure its contribution in the same way then is it worth the investment? Unsurprisingly brand research organisations have taken notice of this emerging trend and are releasing or developing products that answer this question. Millward Brown, for example, recently launched AdIndex Dash, a specially designed brand tracker that analyses the impact of digital comms on key brand measures in real time.

However it’s important to recognize that any shift towards real-time marketing comes with its own set of challenges.

Firstly there will be a significant resource impact. Programmatic buying technology is a fantastic innovation but over time it will commoditize. Therefore the most valuable element of any trade desk will continue to be the man or woman behind the tools. However to truly deliver on the promise of real time, the trade desk will need to be resourced appropriately to ensure every marketing opportunity is capitalised on in the most effective manner. This comes with an increased operational cost and potentially a higher staff requirement. Both of which would put pressure on current agency/client commercial relationships.

Secondly, existing agency and media/publisher relationships, or terms of business, would need to be changed. Complete flexibility and transparency would need to be built into each engagement along with an agreed set of measures to monitor in-campaign performance. The idea of a long-term deal or a volume trading arrangement would certainly encumber the ideal of true real-time marketing.

Thirdly, creative agencies will need to be ready to adapt inefficient creative on the fly. As campaign insights and consumer feedback filter through social channels, there is a real opportunity to optimize the creative voice mid-campaign. This may extend beyond tweaking in-market creative to developing new collateral to amplify a behavioural response and generate additional word-of-mouth around a brand. Lastly, agencies will need to invest in data management and visualization platforms. The sheer volume of data available to process will require a central data nerve centre to process and visualise, ready for interpretation and action. Without it, the value that lives in the data will always remain one cell away from discovery.

2. The web leans back

The second trend is that of a more relaxed web audience. Since Apple launched the first iPad in 2010, internet behaviour and consumption has changed dramatically. In fact, tablets are the main driver of this trend. In the fourth quarter of 2012 tablet sales accounted for 35 per cent of all computer-related shipments worldwide and it is predicted that tablets will overtake PC volumes this year. A quite staggering statistic considering the market is less than three years old. Australian tablet penetration is also predicted to grow to as much as 48 per cent by the end of the year, certainly scale enough to push the digital marketing industry in a new direction.

That said, tablets are also by and large an inert device with 79 per cent of usage occurring in the home and on the couch. This lean-back consumption is predominantly a new form of usage and not a cannibalisation of another screen. This is an important distinction to make and one that has driven tablet households to spend an additional one and three-quarter hours online. The impact of these contextual and behavioural changes are likely to be more profound than many are anticipating.

Firstly there is what I call a ‘gesture gap’. The vast majority of brand and campaign experiences are built with mouse-based navigation in mind. Point, click and consume. It’s treated us well for many years. However, more and more Australians are accessing the web via touch-screen devices, using their finger to navigate and interact with those same brand and campaign experiences. At what point do we flip the paradigm and stop offering a substandard touch experience because of our focus on the mouse?

Secondly, brands and agencies need to think harder about the content that sits behind each device, and not just treat each screen simply as a gateway to a standardised web. If tablets drive a lean back, desktops a lean forward, and mobiles a lean-free experience, then how does the content need to differ to deliver the most relevant experience?

Lastly, since tablet growth is driving incremental usage and not necessarily cannibalizing desktop/laptop activity, the cross-device measurement conundrum only grows in importance. Without a single user view, the idea of true omni-screen marketing remains out of reach. Until this puzzle is cracked, brands and agencies will still feel a sense of insecurity when it comes to managing campaign activity, frequency and investment.

3. Brands take user-generated data seriously

The third trend focuses on user-generated data (UGD). The ongoing big data conversation can often spiral out of control, and although enterprise data is a rich seam of intelligence, it’s the largely unstructured and chaotic world of user-generated data that is of most immediate value to marketers.

In fact, 70 per cent of the world’s data is currently being created passively by individuals and their daily digital and social actions. Facebook is unsurprisingly the biggest beneficiary of this with its 1bn-odd users creating 500 terabytes of new user data each day. In isolation, each of these seemingly small data points (a like, check in, photo tag etc) is principally inconsequential but combined, they build a rich audience picture. Interestingly, in comparison, the number two social network, Twitter, generates just 12 terabytes of new user-generated data each day. The value of this UGD is starting to find traction with traditional and emerging organisations alike. Nielsen recently bought Social Guide, a social TV analytics platform and have shifted their entire social media strategy to focus on analytics as opposed to monitoring. Twitter, on the back of creating the Nielsen Twitter TV Rating, has also acquired social TV analytical technology in Blue Fin Labs, so expect more movement in this space as it continues to mature.

As the value of UGD is more thoroughly explored we’ll start to see its impact felt in different ways.

Firstly, brands and agencies need to invest in increased data rigour and processing. With up to 60 per cent of the social signal categorised as noise, UGD will need to be subjected to the same level of cleansing as other sources.

Secondly, the increased level of data confidence that will come with this rigour will help drive a shift in campaign measurement. Traditional media currencies will come under pressure as more insightful and meaningful alternatives emerge.

Lastly, the UGD set will grow in prominence and value to brands as they look for an immediate source of insight and feedback to power the real-time marketing trend mentioned earlier.

4.  The conversation changes from mobile to mobility

2013 will definitely not be the year of mobile, but it might be the year of mobility. After all, the behavioural statistics are compelling with 15 per cent of Australians’ total media attention directed to their mobile screen. Yet the medium only commands 0.4 per cent of all advertising investment. Why? What is broken?

Consumption and usage certainly isn’t heading backwards. In fact, in the next five years mobile data demand will grow 13 times to 11.2 exabytes per month. Yes, you may be wondering what an exabyte is. To try and put that in perspective, in 1999 the University of Berkeley concluded that every single piece of information ever created in any form by humanity equated to about 12 exabytes. So soon, roughly 2000 years’ worth of data will be consumed every month just through the mobile screen.

Consumers will increasingly use their smartphone in a lean-free way, accessing information on the go and using it to make decisions on the fly (95 per cent of smartphone owners use their device to find local information with 88 per cent taking action the same day). Brands and agencies need to get to grips with this third (location) contextual dimension or risk seeing their upper funnel activity become less effective as customers make more decisions in the moment.

Mobility has also been recognized by one of the established cornerstones of the web. Google’s recent refresh of AdWords and the rollout of Enhanced Campaigns blends deep contextual insight with the power of search intent to create a hyper-relevant screen experience with mobility front and centre, and if anyone can make mobility work, it’s Google. As a result we will begin to see the conversations we are having evolve.

Brands will begin to embrace the idea of mobility over mobile. This means moving beyond a device or operating system towards creating a truly location-neutral experience that adapts based on the context it is being consumed in.

There will be a significant lift in hyper-local marketing, albeit off a low base, as brands (especially retailers) offer solutions to some of the market’s bigger problems. We will see brands successfully and consistently bridge the physical/digital divide, retailers will conquer show rooming, agencies will unlock the power and pathway of mobile analytics delivering increased accountability and insight and we’ll see brands find additional value streams for their customers which can be delivered on the fly.

5.  Content management becomes a business priority

The last trend is that of content management becoming a business priority. As the ‘community’ fascination and ‘like’ race that burned through our industry 12 months ago continues to calm, we’ll see more brands begin to realise just how valuable fresh and timely content is. That realisation will extend beyond the walled garden of the Facebook page and the confines of the company blog to permeate the entire business.

That said, the primary driver of this shift will still be social. As social customer service continues to flap in the wind, a recent study illustrated that only three per cent of customers prefer to use social media as a service channel, brands will need to change the conversation from one of ‘if you DM me your details I can help’ to one of brand interest and engagement.

We’ll also see the current search vacuum of decreasing CPCs driven by mobile collapse courtesy of Google’s Enhanced Campaigns. This will again force brands to invest in content to build out their organic presence in a drive to better balance their paid and owned programs.

The growing importance of prospect and customer comms – a hot topic in many boardrooms – will further accelerate the branded content need. As marketers look to personalise content and communication, agencies will be forced to supply a steady stream of fresh and relevant content.

This will bring changes to the way content is viewed within the campaign mix. Content will infiltrate campaign planning as the conversation shifts from one of ‘content is king’ to that of ‘content is currency’. As a result, campaigns will include their own content long tail to help extend the life and depth of the message(s) in market.

As a result there will need to be a re-evaluation of the current content production model. Campaign shoots, client commercial arrangements, talent contracts, post process and delivery methods will all need to be rethought. A process of optimisation will need to be agreed – one that embraces flexibility and feedback that allows for inefficient creative to be altered mid campaign.

So there we are. My two cents on what will affect our industry in the coming year or years. The final point I’ll leave you with is that these trends rarely happen in isolation so if one begins to accelerate the others are likely to follow.

By James Collier

James Collier is the head of digital at marketing and communications group Bohemia.

Sourced from Mumbrella

FOIA Machine | (@FOIAMachine)

Requesting government documents can be a lengthy process. FOIA Machine, a free service now in testing and run with help from a Knight Foundation grant and the Center on Investigative Reporting, is a website journalists can use to file FOIA requests and other global transparency requests. The organization makes sure requests are filed properly and tracks requests filed through the website.

Public Insight Network | (@publicinsight)

Searching for sources can be easy — or it can bring reporting to a full stop. The Public Insight Network, run by American Public Media, is a database of first-person accounts and a network of people willing to be public sources.

Newsrooms can use PIN to find sources for community-level stories, or for stories that have a very specific audience in mind — such as Marketplace Money’s report on people who have been unemployed longer than six months. Over PIN’s decade-long existence, it has amassed 130,000 registered sources and recently created its own newsroom to report on stories using sources who have joined but haven’t been contacted by other organizations.

Ushahidi | (@ushahidi)

It looks like crowdsourcing for news is here to stay; reporters can turn to crowdsourcing sites such as PIN and Ushahidi for first-person accounts of events. Ushahidi was created in the aftermath of the 2007 Kenyan election; it mapped (via Google maps) reports sent in via text and email from people on the ground during the crisis.

Ushahidi still is used for “crowdmapping,” or putting pedestrian reports on online maps. The site runs Crowdmap, which “allows you to set up your own deployment of the Ushahidi Platform without having to install it on your own Web server” and creates some interesting visuals. Ushahidi was used during bombings in Mumbai in 2011 to determine where help was needed. It’s a tool for managing crises as much as reporting on them.

Data compilation and resources: Datasets and social media backlogs can be intimidating for any reporter; these resources help share, gather and handle large shares of information.

The PANDA Project | (@pandaproject)

The PANDA Project allows journalists to share data within their newsroom or organization. The project serves as a Google Drive-like database by allowing publications to share data online and work with the data within the program, with search and archive functions. While there aren’t tools to publish the data from within the program, it can still be a valuable reporting tool to encourage collaboration.

Census.IRE | (@IRE_NICAR)

Partly funded by a Knight Foundation grant, Census.IRE is a tool to help organize and view data from the 2010 Census. It can help journalists separate data by location and then segment that data further through metrics such as age, race, gender and more. Using census data in stories can add depth to analysis, and the data can sometimes be a story unto itself. Here’s a Poynter.org piece about how journalists can mine census data for stories about their changing communities.

iWitness | (@AdaptivePath)

Created by Adaptive Path through a Knight News Challenge grant, iWitness helps curate relevant social media based on date and geographic parameters. Specify a time and location on the website, and iWitness will pull relevant posts from sites such as Twitter.

The program makes it easier to examine backlogs in social media and lets you set limits by the minute. The tool is especially helpful when reporting on breaking news stories and can be used in concert with Storify, particularly when looking for specific social media elements from a national news story.

Data presentation: These tools can help process and design otherwise-cumbersome data sets in a way that makes them easily accessible for stories.

TileMill | (@TileMill)

Graphics and images can help readers understand concepts and stories better than text alone. Journalists can use TileMill to create interactive maps that show how data are spread over a particular area. It’s an especially useful tool for stories that have a strong geographic component.

Popular apps such as Foursquare use parent company MapBox’s maps to visualize check-ins and collect data. USA Today also used MapBox to chart election returns in the 2012 elections. Quartz used TileMill to graph how local commerce increased in New Orleans during the Super Bowl, and InfoAmazonia uses TileMill to map out deforestation in the Amazon rainforest.

Tableau Public | (@tableau)

Charts and infographics help make data-heavy stories easier to comprehend and analyze. While programs such as TileMill require knowledge of computer coding, Tableau Public uses a drag-and-drop method to help compile graphs, charts and other data visualizations.

Journalists can use Tableau Public to create straightforward graphs, such as Wisconsin Watch’s chart of milk productivity in cows in a story about Wisconsin’s milk industry. It can also be used to create less-traditional data presentations, such as this map of college football recruitment.

Social Media and storytelling: Putting together a final project of text, images and data can be a lengthy task; these sites help with compiling and promoting stories.

Popcorn Maker | (@mozilla)

Designed by Mozilla, Popcorn Maker adds interactive features to videos, such as click-through links, maps, social media and articles from other websites. PBS NewsHour announced a partnership with Popcorn Maker in 2012 to create interactive content. Journalists can use Popcorn Maker in online videos to link to related content on their own websites, or to outside content such as a source’s Twitter feed or website.

Atavist | (@theatavist)

Using Atavist, you can compile various elements, such as text, video, audio and animation, in an in-depth enterprise story. You can also group related stories, photos and resources in a single app, e-book or magazine. TED uses Atavist for its TED Books App, as does the Paris Review. Publications such as The Wall Street Journal use the site for reports, such as this one on prescription painkillers.

By Taylor Miller Thomas

Sourced from Poynter