Because it is extinct.
The Telegraph reports “The next edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, the world’s most definitive work on the language, will never be printed because of the impact of the internet on book sales.”
Can you even imagine looking up a word in a printed dictionary ever again? Perhaps while your film is developing to the sound of your favorite records.
There is no doubt that the internet era has been exciting. I have designed, produced and maintained dozens of websites, some that are truly fantastic. The technology, reach and ongoing, living/breathing aspect to websites is very interesting and rewarding. However, from an interactive and design perspective, I preferred making CDROMs in the mid 90’s with Macromedia Director. The biggest difference was that they took over the entire screen like a video game and you had complete control of the design – no browser rendering liabilities. We could use vibrant sound and video with no lag-time, plugins or downsampling. They were beautiful.
I am not sure if web designers will ever have that kind of artistic control again. But maybe tablet magazine designers will . . .
The scuttlebutt is that the Conde Nast, Apple, Bonnier, HP and others are working on a new standard for the display and delivery of interactive magazines. Immersive and animated, these new publications could spell relief for the industry. My money is on Apple to extend iTunes LP/Extras (the tools/environment for album liner notes and dvd-esque menus for videos) to the magazines. Then sell the magazines in iTunes to be viewed on Computers, iPhones and upcoming table (iSlate?). I think all of this runs on Webkit (the rendering engine in Safari, Chrome and other browsers).
So, the magazines never really succeeded in evolving into websites and were crushed by online upstarts. And now they may evolve into digital versions of themselves sold over the web and authored for display in a browser-based technology? What is the difference?
Stubborn Editors and Art Directors.
Web-people have been firecrackers – loose standards, no timelines, typos fixed after the audience catches them and low costs and far reach. Print Editors and Art Directors are control freaks, not because printing does not allow for errors to be fixed, but because they are control freaks; they have integrity, they adore creating something and sealing it shut, something complete and extraordinary. Magazine publishers and creators want to work on one issue at a time, release them one issue at a time and be judged one issue at a time. And soon they can in the new world.
I want in. I see the browser becoming a place where you find web tools and somewhere else (iTunes?) for Media. That is how it is for TV, Movies, Art, Books, Photography, Music and almost every other media – websites do not cut it. I design a great deal of brochure-ware and always feel handicapped – if 2010 means full screen, deep multimedia, single rendering engine and stereo sound are the new aspects of interactive design, color me adrenalized.
A 70-year-old magazine shuts its doors. This was no rash decision, probably bleeding money for ages and no one was interested in buying it. There is a lot to think about, the simplest answer – anyone have gourmet.com bookmarked? Certainly their weak online presence is a big cause – but I think there is something much bigger at play.
In three months we will be “tweening” into the teens: 2010. We are months away from starting many sentences with “Back in the . . .” . . . Back in the what? What is this decade called? “Post 9-11″?, “The Aughts”? “The New Millennium”? We do not have a clue.
It is clear we are bit rudderless when is comes to mankind’s future and there many more important aspects to this reality than brands, advertising and media, but I am caught up. Gourmet is/was an authentic brand and at one time, somewhat brave and contemporary. And while we are witnesses to a great deal of nostalgia in marketing and advertising (Ray Ban’s Wayfarers, BMW and Porsche Coupe’s, etc), our tastes and interests are about the future. The fact is we are scared as hell of the impending super-contemporization of mankind. (Last night I heard about an island near D.C where every plant and animal has been DNA-sequenced, there are several remote-controlled cars on Mars right now and the Beatles have a video game . . .)
I have a point – Progress happens with or without our consent, we may be all dressing like Don Draper and Jackie Kennedy, but we are now making our own Sushi, not Pork Chops. And whether we like it or not, the first 10 years of the new millennium are history. Gourmet may or may have not seen this coming – they chose to remain “pre-unknown” and lost.
Get your brand ready, we are in for a wild ride.
Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.
-Calvin Coolidge
http://goodexperience.com/2009/09/a-lesson-in-strategy.php by way of Swiss Miss
Magazine advertisements are down 28% this year, after several years of being down. The ANA and Forrester Research found that nearly 70% or Marketers have lost faith in the effectiveness of television advertising. Newspapers are literally disappearing as ad sales plummet. And not all of this equates to the web’s windfall. Certainly web advertising has skyrocketed in recent years, but when the baseline is zero, it is easy to get carried away. I recently spoke with a Real Estate marketer and he was disgusted with his ad investments in 2009, he said the best thing in his arsenal was a sign on a building. Ouch.
The real issue is the viewer. The consumer has been pummeled with ads for generations, there is no more excitement in advertising and we have all conditioned ourselves to ignore it. It is almost as if we can instinctively smell a pitch. The graphics, actors, music and editing is no different than film and television. The photography, layout and typography is the same as the editorial – but something is off. We have been oversold and commercialism is starting to rot.
There are always going to be items that appear out of nowhere and captivate us, but in general, and more so now than ever in my lifetime, we are buying things we need and have researched, not just what the store owner put on the counter. This is a sea change. Why does SEO and adSense work? Because your product displays when someone is looking for it, not as an interruption while they are eating dinner in front of the tube. Context seems to be more easily made online. One would think that a Henckles Knife ad in Gourmet would be more effective than in The New Yorker, but it is not always. Mainly due to the fact that reader may have just struggled cutting a tomato before picking up the New Yorker. With the web, we are closer to knowing this than we are with print or television. We can specify the time of day, change our value statement based on what the user is searching for, localize the content to the zipcode and more. And most importantly, we can track the ad all the way to the checkout process – inarguable evidence of success or failure. We react and respond and find the tools to advertise correctly. Try asking your print and television ad sales rep to prove success or failure.
Think about your last few purchases, likely they were necessities and you tried to get a god value, did any ad influence you?
We all need to anticipate the buyer better. We have to imagine where, when and how our buyers come to need or want our products and be there when they do. Some of us sell things that consumers do not know they need, but even then the product and ad will unlikely dazzle the dollars out of the wallet. Finesse and emotions are required. A glossy ad and a primetime jingle are no longer the golden ticket – a deep understanding of your customer, your product and the buying patterns are.
MSNBC reports “Kanye’s comments bring chaos to VMAs”. Almost every news outlet, blog (including here) and water-cooler discussion is about his rant. I think it is pretty clear that this is theater. There was the Eminem/Bruno thing and now this, but how much have we missed? Considering the line between reality and scripted material is pretty blurry, are we to believe these award shows are completely open? Add to that the media’s bloodlust for anyone speaking out of turn or off-color and it is hard to imagine Media Management would allow drunken celebrities an open forum on live TV. But what is most interesting is the net-gain – while these escapades may help in getting us to watch next year, they do not help ratings yesterday. So the immediate gain is the blogs and twitter traffic, which will most certainly result in record sales/etc. If you have ever spent any amount of time working on PR or Keyword advertising for ecommerce, this does not seem over the top. I remain convinced the only reality on TV are sports. Money, Equipment and steroid-enhanced Sports.
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