State of the Media

Without vision, we perish

The problem with marketing in most technology companies is that it isn't marketing. It's sales support. And most marketing VPs are, in reality, sales engineers. Real marketing is a conversation. A marketer doesn't just listen to the customers, but to the customer's customers, and to the the people that influences those people. After he's done listening, he then starts thinking and formulating responses and directions that he believes will open paths for the sales people. Before he responds, he tests his hypotheses with this audience he's developed to establish a reality basepoint and only then hands off to the sales team.

And if he doesn't see any paths open for the sales people at least three years down the line, he arranges for an exit for the company that provides value for everyone involved -- his company, the company's customers, and the acquiring entity.

I've been thinking about all this with the news that another small technology company went away in a "fire sale" of the assets. The good news is everyone kept their jobs and got raises. The bad news is they left a bunch of money on the table a couple of years ago that could have given the investors something back, kept everyone's jobs and given the company an opportunity to make a real difference in the industry and economy. All this came about because they ignored the advice and insight of the marketing team two years ago. They believed their own sales hype. Always a bad idea.

While sales is a crucial element of any company, it isn't the real driving factor of success. Sales is short term, marketing is long term. Sales is reactive, marketing is proactive. Our focus on sales is what drives the irrational swings of the stock market, creates corporate failure, hampers investment in and development of new technology, and puts us in the situation we are now: faltering economies and pessimistic expectations for the future.

Market-driven companies succeed without solid products. Market-driven industries grow year after year. But market-driven corporate philosophies are like eagles. We don't seem to have many left.

Asking the wrong questions

I hear lots of questions about the state of the media and how companies can communicate their messages in our current situation. Most of them are not to good. Here's a few to consider:

What's your circulation? (Asked in reference to New Tech Press)

That's a really bad question, at least if you're honest about what you want to accomplish. Most companies have stopped advertising and supporting B2B media because they claim the circulation doesn't reach their target market and they don't want to advertise to a bunch of people they don't care about. That's why I said "if you're honest." The real reason companies don't support mass media is because they think the can get it for free through PR.

Can you get us into EE Times/Information Week/BusinessWeek? (asked in reference to Pr services)

Again this is both bad and dishonest Companies that ask this question don't spend anything to support the media because they claim it doesn't "reach" their target market, but they still push their PR companies to get the broadest possible coverage in as many magazines as possible. Why? Because the see that as "free" advertising. After all they pay the PR reps very little now adays so it's a good deal for them. the problem is that the media has figured that out and is no longer supporting that model. So the answer to the question is, probably not unless you have a technology that is so stupendous that they can't help but see the value. As Patrick Mannion pointed out yesterday the semiconductor industry hasn't yet figured out why they aren't getting the coverage they used to get. What Patrick didn't say is that there are few companies in technology who have figure that out.

What experience do you have in this technology?

What job seeker hasn't heard this before? It happens to PR agencies, Ad agencies, and even publications when they are talking about reporters. How's this for an answer: Well, you've just said you have no competition, therefore you are either doing something so new that no one has experience in it or it is so useless that no one else wants to do it. At least, that's an answer I heard a VC give a company that told the investor that the company had no competitors.

Let's be very clear about what our situation is. What you remember being the case 10 years ago no longer applies; there are no guaranteed results anymore because everything has to be done different than you've ever done before; and there are customers for your products and services out there that you don't know about and, more importantly, don't know about you. The mass media is the only way to reach them and you better figure out how to work with them and support them if you want to succeed.

New Tech Press lives and everything you know is wrong

Our first article is on the site but still in protected mode at New Tech Press. It goes live to the world on the 14th. If you want to see it, drop me an email and I will send you the password.

If you haven't been keeping up, New Tech Press is a brand new idea in journalism and if you want to know why we are doing it, here's the basic problem we are dealing with, as stated by the Firesign Theater maniacs:

Everything you know is wrong.

In support of that premise Chris Edwards posted a discussion of the trend among bloggers toward blacklisting PR folk for sending them useless crap. I understand the frustration because the amount of crap the press has to deal with is rising as the media ranks shrink, along with their ability to handle the load.

In the past few months I've been hearing from journalists all over the country; men and women who are consummate professionals, skilled in the ability to research thoroughly and report objectively on the news that affects us all on a daily basis. The are abjectly discouraged.

Their jobs are in jeopardy, there income is shrinking and their workload is increasing. Several have left the profession they love in exchange for corporate communications positions where they can at least make a living.

And on the flip side, I'm hearing from headhunters and human resources in major publications who are desperately looking for qualified journalists who will work for pay substantially less than what was offered 10 years ago.

For the past year I've been talking about how the media isn't covering certain stories, not because the stories are not newsworthy, but because the journalists do not have the time to cover the stories. We are quickly moving to a moment where we simply won't have qualified journalists to research and objectively report the news.

That's the downside.

Here's the upside.

For journalism to survive as a profession, it is going to have to change with the times and journalists are going to have to become professional. I've said this before, but it's becoming even more urgent. Professionals work with each other. They don't compete. The information of the Information Age is too vital to our lives to leave it the amateurs and hobbyists. And that is starting to happen. Through our work in New Tech Press, some journalists are getting to concept of cooperative reporting and dissemination. Virtual trade shows are starting to return as potential distributors of information and individual journalists are experimenting with new vertical forms of online publications.

What we all have to learn is that when we see something in information dissemination that is different from whatever we've seen before, it's probably the way it's going to be.

Media is morphing into something new and the process is really uncomfortable for everyone. Bloggers want the status afforded to traditional journalists but don't want the the work of having to sift through the data. No journalist is getting paid extra for the extra work required of them to adequately blog. Whole media houses are ignoring information once called newsworthy simply because they don't have time write about it. Lots of journalists are leaving their profession and taking it into proprietary communication medium inside non-media corporations.

It's all upside down and inside out. We are in uncharted territory and all of us -- journalists, PRs, corpcomm managers, marketers and even CEOs -- have to deal with it. Mistakes will be made until we actually know what we are going to become, but it will probably never be what it was.

Get used to it. Everything you know is wrong.

Why Paper and Print won't disappear

I've been pondering the conversation I had last week with marketing guy about whether print is viable as a communications medium -- particularly for B2B communications. There were a couple of posts that kept the brain juice flowing.

First, Brian Fuller points out that the changes in Middle East culture and politics are causing a boom in the newspaper business. Second, Rich Karlgaard, did a mini-review of the Amazon Kindle that mentions he can't look at a display for more than 30 minutes at a time.

This brings up two very significant issues that we like to overlook in our inexorable march to a digital future. Number one, more than half of all the internet traffic in the world occurs within a 100 mile radius of San Francisco. Much of rest is split up among the rest of the United States, Europe and Japan. Only a very small amount comes out of the Middle East, South America and Asia where most of the world's population is. Access to digital media is very limited still and that is a big reason that print publications, even the B2B kind, still do well in all those areas. To dismiss print is to dismiss a very significant audience, not only for customers but for potential employees and technology partners.

Second, it has been shown again and again that digital displays are damaging to human eyes and a a significant cause of mental stress. That means that anything you read ion the digital media has to be consumed in 30 minute chunks a day, limiting the amount of time a potential customer has to find information about your company as well as the amount of space available for telling your story. Digital media as a communication medium is well designed for publishing news releases, shopping, marketing blurbs and blogs, but it isn't a world or market change yet. An the closer we get to a global community, the further we get from a paperless society.

Pain brings change

What a difference a few months makes. Back in September, I started promoting the concept of New Tech Press and got very polite yeah-good-luck-with-that responses. Since then several media houses followed the way of TechInsights, nee CMP, and drastically cut editorial staff, sold of properties and curtailed coverage of entire industries.

Now, days away from the official launch of New Tech Press, I've been called in to meet with several companies, organizations and even European government agencies regarding the state of the media and what might be done about it.

What's the difference? A new year began and the silence from the technology press scared the crap out of several industries and even several countries.

As I've heard several times, no great change without pain. The potential "pain" of the loss of the media considered last year is now a reality for many technology niches. The good news is there are real industry leaders who looking at and creating new options for reviving the marketplace conversation.

It would have been nice to see it happen a few months ago, but the future looks bright.

Asking the right question

In the past 24 hours I've had an chance to experience the polar extremes of marketing savvy in the technology world. On one side was the CEO of a pre-funded biotech firm looking for PR representation. On the side, was Milan Lazich, vice president of marketing for Magma Design Automation. What made this remarkable is that the biotech guy, a member a the hot new tech niche, was clueless, and Milan, representing a significant member of the brain-dead EDA industry, is a voice of sanity and reason.

I was recommended to the biotech guy as an out-of-the-box communicator. He was supposed to be disappointed in the PR firms he'd already approached because, number one, they gave him "cookie-cutter" approaches to communication and, number two, they were "to expensive."

So he opens up the discussion with the question, "How can you help me?" Now I could have played the game and given him the stock answers about the value of communication and ROI, etc. etc., all of which would have created another form answer that he would have dismissed. Instead I said, "I have no idea."

I had looked at his website when I was alerted that he was going to call and it said nothing of value. I did a couple of searches on his name and found virtually nothing. There is no history, no message, no apparent value in what he or his company does. And yet he wants me to tell him how I would raise the perception of his company.

His question can only be answered by a rote response, which he was tired of getting. So I ignored his question and told him what he needed to do. I told him to get funded first and stop wasting his time talking to PR firms until he had done that. I told him to establish a budget that he is willing to spend on marketing (not just PR) and be willing to share that with the consultants he talks to. I told him when he did that, call me back and we'll have a meeting so I can determine if he has what it takes to represent his company to the world or if he or a member of his team needed to be trained.

He didn't like any of that, but that was the right answer to his question. Right now, I'm pretty sure this guy is going to underspend on marketing, spin his wheels with an inadequate program with a consultant he won't listen to, and be out of the business inside of three years. I could be wrong… but I doubt it.

The whole thing depressed the snot out of me. Then I had coffee with Milan today.

I've mentioned him before calling him one of the few real marketers left in his industry (a compliment he prefers to qualify as an overstatement.) He has some new responsibilities in the industry since his CEO, Rajeev Madhavan, got elected to the industry council board a few weeks ago. Milan's now the chairman of the communications committee of the council, charged with getting the word out about how "wonderful" the EDA industry is. That's a job akin to explaining how well the surge is doing in Iraq (it may be doing well, but no one believes you.)

We talked about a lot of stuff, including Brian Fuller's the company is the medium is the message" concept. During our time, Milan gave this great statement about the cost of marketing. He said "if you only have enough budget to print up fliers at Kinko's and pass them out at street corners," you still have to figure out why that material would be important to the audience … and what is important to the audience is not going to be your product.

In other words, the most important thing you can say is what the audience wants to really know. Wow. An EDA guy that gets it. Of course it had to be Milan.

What's going to happen is that a group of people are going to conspire on how to fix the image and messaging problems of an entire industry. I damn well expect that it will benefit Magma if Milan has a say, but it will also benefit everyone else who gets with the program. A rising tide lifts all boats.

Viva la revolucion!

Alix Paultre and Advantage Media work the web

I ran into Alix Paultre at the Embedded Systems Conference and had a chance to catch up on what he's been doing since I reported his move from Hearst. As usual he was full of good news an optimism, which always an interesting departure from the normal doom and gloom in the publishing industry. The nice thing is he has numbers to back up his optimism. Most publications use their website to drive readers to the print publication, which has always seemed to be a bass-ackward approach. Alix has Advantage using the print publication driving readers to visit the websites and boost readership there, making the print publication a promotional tool for the web. Listen for yourself here.

Rumors and the sounds of crickets

The Embedded Systems Conference was an exciting place to be this week. It's been a while since I;ve been to a trade show where there was positive buzz from both the editorial and the vendor side. Technical content was great, there was good activity on the floor, the editors said the interviews were interesting (and I had to agree since I was wearing my New Tech Press hat this week). If you want to see some real innovation in electronics, it's going on in the embedded world.

For full disclosure, I did meet some people at booths who were not happy about ESC. They didn't like their booth placement, they weren't getting any good leads and they didn't like San Jose. But most of those people were also very disagreeable. I watched a couple from a distance and saw them ignore people waiting to talk to them as they fiddled with cell phones, utter single syllable responses to questions and actually heard one of them turn away a prospect because he was "going to lunch."

Conversation, however, was positive where ever I went, even in the media center... until the conversation turned to the state of the media or ... EDA.

Lots of rumors around that woebegon industry, most surrounding the fate of DATE and DAC, the two big conferences in Europe and the US. None of the rumors could be sourced so I won't repeat them. But every time I heard the story is was consistent, so you have to wonder. What is real is that many US editors are not planning on attending DAC this year. The redoubtable Freddy Santamaria won't even be there because there is no European press planning on attending. We already know what TechInsights thinks about the industry so maybe Gabe Moretti will be there for EDA Designline. Reed has cut back its plans to cover by pulling Ann Mutschler from the team (you can expect Ron Wilson to be attending sessions but he doesn;t take meetings) but John Blyler is sure to show up as is Dave Maliniak ... maybe.

Dave sent out a second plea for content for his pre DAC story. One deadline has passed so he's set a drop-dead date of April 25, but he's said the "sense of deadness in EDA is palpable." That aptly describes the sentiments of at least a dozen editors talking about the industry in the ESC press room.

Does that mean nothing is happening in EDA? No, I know of several interesting companies and technologies. the problem is, none of them are investing in the market conversation. The entire industry is so impressed with itself that it thinks the fact that they exist is enough to warrant attention, and it is sulking right now because no one has asked for a date.

To paraphrase Sting, Roxanne, you need to put on that red light.

To end on a positive note, I'm restarting the podcasts with the ever effervescent Alix Paultre coming next week. The guy has ideas. Tune in next week.

Episode IV

I'm at the Embedded Systems Conference this week wearing the New Tech Press hat. TechInsights has recognized this blog as legitimate media so I'm back from the dark side of media (kudos to anyone who gets the reference in this post's title.)

It's an interesting and gratifying contrast to see the reception of new ideas in journalism, compared to what it was 6 months ago. Only a few, recent refugees from the B:B death spiral were willing to give thought to doing journalism different. Today I've had multiple conversations with journalists I haven't seen in months, all still employed in the traditional press, asking about opportunities in the new way of doing things. We're fielding more calls from PR reps and start-ups asking for meetings, than we've been making. It seems like a tide is turning and there are those who see the next wave starting to crest.

Speaking of new ideas, New Tech Press will be publishing its first article, authored by the estimable Brian Fuller, on an up and coming display technology from Europe. Stay tuned. The dawn is coming.

Ziff Davis bloodletting

Sam Whitmore's podcast announced what could be a 20 percent layoff at Ziff Davis, mostly affecting eWeek. As many as a dozen editorial personnel, including Lisa Vos and Renee Ferguson. Insight Venture Partners is apparently unhappy with the financial progress of the ever dwindling publication, now all online (remember how well that worked for Electronic News?) and decided to make sure they got rid of the deadwood. Hey, as long as there is advertising, everything is OK, right? After all, that's what people go to publications for. Advertising. Isn't it? Hello?