Will the media’s paid-for-model work?

But will anyone pay for it?

I was interested to see NMA has announced that it will be joining Rupert Murdock, the FT and Emap by experimenting with paid-for models online. In a statement on its site it announced that online access to all magazine content apart from opinion will be paid for only:

“Like all other publishers, we’re experimenting with paid-for models online,” said editor Justin Pearse. “While previously lead stories from the magazine were accessible for free, we’re confident this content, together with the analysis our site provides to the industry, is worth paying for.”

I hope Justin is right and I am sure it is not a decision that the team there have entered into lightly. My biggest concern is when I consider how I consume my information online. More often than not I won’t pay for content as it is quite likely it will also appear somewhere else for free – how will they guarantee that the information they are charging for can only be seen on their site? I also generally feel quite negative towards sites that ask me constantly to login to consume information and will avoid them if possible.

The publication has also said that it will not be charging for news until it is seven days old (who wants to read it then?) and some columns and opinion will remain free which leads me to ask….what would I be paying for?

I understand that we are in a recession and that for magazines to survive they can’t keep giving content away but I am not certain of how such a subscription system will work. Readers of magazines like to read their favourite columnists such as Will or Alex at NMA, but how many NEED to? (sorry chaps). Also, on a slightly different note, one of the key successes of Twitter is the ability to share content. As Alan Burkitt-Gray of GTB said when I interviewed him: “Twitter links that I post are the second biggest producer of visits to the Global Telecoms Business site”. Paying for content prohibits the distribution of content so will they inadvertently reduce the traffic to their website?

I think another valuable point to consider is the FT. I would argue that people pay the subscription for the FT because it publishes financial information valuable to its readers, that can’t be found elsewhere for free, and not because of the editorial. It is also interesting to note that as NMA reported just a few weeks ago, FT subscribers had risen but it still saw revenues fall by 14 per cent year on year over the first nine months of 2009.

My biggest concern for publications that are moving to a subscriber model for online content is - will the amount of traffic you will undoubtedly lose be worth the revenues you generate from charging for content? By limiting the ability for users to share your most interesting articles are you closing the door to new readers?

I don’t have a crystal ball and I don’t know what the answer is but I will be watching how this situation unfolds with great interest over the coming months as I am sure it will ultimately affect everyone in the media and PR industries.

Pitching the media

Bill Murray says...

Following a post the other day about a new tool I found online which offered junior or budding PR professionals the chance to have their media pitches reviewed I set one of my team about trying it out. I felt it was a cool concept but didn’t want to just write about it without trailing it. I had initially said that I would show the results on the Berkeley PR blog but decided in the end to not bother.

Why? Well to put it simply it does exactly what it says on the tin…sucks.

After preparing a pitch, my colleague emailed it to them and waited for his feedback. This arrived in the form of an email saying, thanks for the pitch but we no longer offer this service….but we can review it for a fee.
Cool concept but unfortunately not quite the response I was expecting. So if you are a student or someone thinking about how to pitch the media I wouldn’t bother with this site and would instead recommend that you read some of my meet the media interviews. The personal touch always goes a lot further and if have listened to a journalist and know what they are looking for writing a pitch is always that bit easier.

Coverage in Marketing

Marketing Magazine

I often talk to my clients about how the letters page represents a great opportunity to get some coverage in a target magazine or newspaper. This is often one of the best read pages and provides a great platform to respond to an article which you saw the previous day, week or months.

That said, I suddenly realised that I very rarely actually practice what I preach for myself so decided to pen a letter to Marketing magazine after reading an article on brands using Twitter while sat on the train the other day and the evidence can be seen in this week’s issue. It was certainly an ego boost (sorry wife the head is getting bigger) and a nice way to start the day this morning.

How do I pitch the media?

Subtle...

I found a cool idea for a site while mucking about this afternoon catching up on some reading. The site is called Your Pitch Sucks (don’t beat about the bush!) which has been designed by someone who had hit a brick wall a few times when sending out pitches to the media.

He figured out eventually that it wasn’t his ideas, products or service but in fact his pitch. As a result of this, Your Pitch Sucks was born.

The idea behind the service is simple. You join the free member’s community, submit a pitch designed for the media and sit back and wait for feedback from the network. The plan being that by having a few more eyes check your work they will help give you some pointers to ensure your pitch is perfect before you send it out.

I like the sound of the service but I suppose the strength of it will depend on how good the feedback is you receive from the community. As a result I am going to ask one of our execs at the day job to try the service out this week and I am sure they will write up their findings on the Berkeley blog before the end of the week. Follow me on Twitter to find out when.

Do your parents know what you do?

Ma and Pa Stallard

Most people who I know that work in the PR industry always laugh that their parents don’t understand what they actually do for a living. In fact my colleague Helen told me a funny story today that her Gran carries the name of her career on a piece of paper in her purse ready so she can get it right.

My brother is a chef by trade and my parents have always found it easier to understand what he does than my chosen career. So, when I saw a recent Response Source for the Daily Express about an article on parents who were enjoying retired life I thought I would pitch my Dad and he would experience first hand how the PR industry works.

Seeing the published article on Saturday I realised that this might not be the case and it also highlighted to me the importance of carefully briefing someone before an interview. I often advise clients to create a short list with a few bullet points of key facts and figures that can help them during the heat of an interview.

So when Dad described me as his publicist son and my brother a year younger than he actually is I realised I maybe should have helped give him a few more pointers. That said, the piece is great and covers the adventures of the Stallard family since he retired. The only thing it didn’t include was the fact that the two of them also went to the Isle of Wight festival (for the fourth year in a row) and their favourite band of the weekend was the Prodigy. Classic.

The piece also showed that if you can get a good human interest story in the national press it can lead to further opportunities. Since the coverage appeared Dad has received a phone call from the BBC who now want to interview him. “Hollywood is our next stop son – watch out” is what he told me this afternoon. Dad, you truly are my hero.

Best of the tech blogs – PR Week

Paul Stallard in PR Week

As I returned to the office after a few days off and the million and one emails this morning (I was only away for a few short days!) I also found a copy of  last week’s PR Week on my desk. In particular, I saw that this blog was again listed in the best of the tech blogs category for my post about phone V email, where it appeared alongside Colin Byrne and Danny Whatmough - both fine blogs and worth adding to your blog roll.

Thanks PR Week for helping reduce my holiday blues.

Hoover’d seen Rooney getting in the spirit of silly season

Wayne Rooney

Working in the PR industry I understand that the summer months can be a particularly slow time for news and this is commonly when agencies often put out non stories. Silly season occurs every year when the newspapers have reduced staff due to holidays so can sometimes be a little less inclined to either investigate a story more thoroughly or maybe use one because they are simply short of content. In the past few weeks I have heard a story on the radio during my commute to work which has highlighted both of these problems. Do you remember them and  can you spot the deliberate mistake?
 
15 July – Wayne Rooney can’t sleep without having the vacuum cleaner on.
 
5 August – Coleen Rooney is being haunted by a vacuum cleaner.
 
Note to Coleen – that is Wayne trying to get a few hours sleep. I suppose this is an example of how celebrity and human interest can get a non story in the nationals but what is it with Wayne and vacuum cleaner stories.? Is he being sponsored by Hoover?

Email or phone – which would you lose?

In the red corner email, in the blue corner phone

I have a simple question for you. If you had to choose which communication device you had to lose between the phone or email what would it be?  When I was discussing such a scenario with one of my colleagues I was surprised to see that we both had different answers. 

Previously, to me this was a no brainer, because I have always believed that communicating by telephone is by far and away my preferred form of communication.  It allows you to build relationships with people, loses the chance of being misunderstood and is obviously conducted in real time whereas email can be fired off and forgotten. At this point I decided to ask a few followers on Twitter who work in the PR industry in the UK “Phone or email. If you had to lose one what would it be?” and was shocked to see how diverse the answers were. Was I wrong to be so pig headed with my response?

Comments like this from my good friend Josie at Phiness PR made me start to think about how this wasn’t as simple an answer as I had first thought “I’d lose the phone. Email provides a written record, so you can always track back through your conversations.”  Helen Farrier at Samsung also provided another angle “I’d have to say I could live without my phone for work, email is vital for a global company.”

She wasn’t alone. Eventually I received a few more answers and before I knew it I had 100 responses. Over one third (35) of the PR professionals who replied to the poll said that they would rather lose their phone than email – a lot higher than I thought it would be.

On the anti-email side, one PRO (they asked not to be named) explained “I’d lose email – an evil tool geared towards structuring work so that it’s reactive rather than proactive. Can you arrange it?”   Ste Davies  continued “I’d lose email purely because I’m not too keen on it as a means of communication. Wastes a lot of time” and Mat Morrison explained his answer “email would go. Am assuming that I can keep Twitter, SMS, Facebook, LinkedIn, IM?”

My colleague Emma Sinclair also made a great point also, “This is really difficult – email is vital for sending documents and confirming details, but I really couldn’t replace the phone in terms of relationship building and honing the art of persuasion, so could I say ‘phone’ but I’ll keep a mobile in my pocket and use it when no one is looking… “

I particularly liked this answer. The art of persuasion or the ability to explain why a story is interesting / why a client should embark on a particular campaign is something that is difficult to do over email as at every stage people inevitably have questions and you are relying on them to have time to write them down articulately and send them over.

Anyway, without meaning to I may have caused a little ripple of debate between PROs around the country, but one thing is for sure, I was amazed by the generosity of the PR professionals who answered so fast and with such enthusiasm. A special thanks goes to @lauraslade who went around her entire team and recruited answers from them all to email back to me.

So what do you think?…email or phone?

Do you still love an ex?

Ian Holloway

I was reading the football gossip column on the BBC this morning and saw the following comment from Blackpool boss Ian Holloway about leading his new side into battle with former club QPR. “If you met your ex-missus in a pub, would you have feelings for her? Of course you would,” he said.

I felt exactly the same this week when I saw a feature opportunity which was more than perfect – almost written for – one of my ex-clients. It is the ex part of that phrase which made seeing the opportunity so painful.

It is a part of life that clients change agencies but when you work agency side and you spend so much of your time working with a client it is hard not to feel an affinity with them. When I saw Ian’s comments I could relate them to my scenario this week and I don’t mind admitting that I was more than happy to contact the former client and present them with the opportunity. Maybe in a hard nosed world which dictates that they are not paying us so don’t bother, I shouldn’t have but I still have feelings for the company and want it to do well. Is that wrong?

The bare necessities of a product launch

My team at the day job have been busy over the past week launching a new range of consumer products to the national, broadcast and specialist media. The results have been fantastic and I am extremely proud of the efforts the team have put in.

As mentioned we have secured a number of different broadcast pieces of coverage but the one which I just think is very funny is this clip from Nuts TV. The product is a kareoke microphone stand but the team at Nuts looked like they had a lot of fun testing it out. My particular favourite is the rendition of Bare Necessities from the Jungle Book. Well done team and keep up the good work.