The Krehbiel Group - Something I Learned Yesterday

We’re losing our industry because we’re not thinking about the long term Dominic Young sent me a very interesting article on the state of publishing. It’s called “How Coca-Cola thinking could fix the news industry,” and I’ll provide a link below. It applies to more than news. The same basic issues are relevant for magazine and special interest publishers, and to B2B to some extent. Dominic’s case goes like this. When publishing was successful, readers were making simple, casual purchases at the newsstand. They didn’t have to give their email address. They didn’t have to subscribe. They just bought a paper or a magazine. They had the option to subscribe, but a high percentage of sales were spontaneous. Here’s Dominic’s portrait of the reader’s mind. “We want to be able to read whatever we want, whenever we want. If we’re going to pay for something, we want it to be worth it, and we don’t want it to be a massive hassle, or a massive cost. We don’t want to subscribe and then have to remember to cancel, and we don’t want to have to sign up separately for multiple titles we might only occasionally want to dip into. “Even if we habitually return to the same titles again and again, we want the right to change our minds every now and then. We want to be able to try new things, and we don’t want to pay for things we’re not reading.” Dominic thinks the answer is to bring back casual sales. Most people call this “micro-payments,” which makes publishers shake their head and move on. Micropayments haven’t worked. They haven’t caught on with consumers, so they don’t address the problem Dominic is highlighting. When you buy a newspaper at 7-11, it’s easy because everybody uses the same money. Imagine how hard it would be to buy a paper if every store used its own money, its own e-commerce system, with its own registration. If you had to enter your phone number so the publisher could track you. Nobody wants that. They just want a copy of the paper and a cup of coffee. Dominic’s argument makes a lot of sense except for one thing. It requires massive consumer adoption of a single way to pay. Like cash at the 7-11. But – in my experience – publishers are famous for two things. They don’t cooperate, and they don’t think strategically, or long term. Media conferences are like, “Hey, look at this great wave I caught.” And the people who are making the waves – the tech companies – are sitting back and laughing. Publishers have been pansies. They’ve allowed the tech giants to eat their lunch again and again and again because they won’t act in their collective interest. It’s happening in real time right now with AI, as I’ve explained many times, most recently in my latest Krehbiel Letter. If publishing is going to survive, there’s going to have to be some cooperation and some strategic thinking. We can’t continue to ride the waves that the tech companies control. We need to look out for our interests. In a way, you could say that publishers need to unionize. We need some kind of collective that represents our interests, and we all need to get on the same page. At least with some big-picture things. Without that, Big Tech is going to eat all three of our meals. I don’t know if Dominic’s solution is the right one. But I do know for certain that if publishers just continue to accept what Big Tech doles out, publishing is over. How Coca-Cola thinking could fix the news industry https://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2023/12/04/how-coca-cola-thinking-could-fix-the-news-industry

Publishing keeps getting more and more complicated Publishing can be a good business model because you can write something once and sell it many times. But as people come to expect things their way, in their preferred format, publishers are facing an environment where they have to write something, then record it, then make it into a video, then a quiz, then create an infographic, then a comic book, and who knows what else. Technology makes this possible, but it’s also because of technology that people have come to expect this sort of thing. Or to put it another way, YouTube, Instagram, and Spotify are great services that consumers love, but that means publishers have to be in all these places. Back when I frequented online discussion groups, it always surprised me how many “lurkers” there were. That is, people who read the board, but never participated in the discussion. I couldn’t do that. When I would see something stupid or wrong, I felt compelled to jump in. I learned that’s not sustainable, and that’s why I’m not on Facebook any more. I’d get sucked into discussions I hated, and it just made me mad. But this aspect of personal preference adds another level of complexity. If I were to list all the complications that face content creators, it might be something like this. Device Desktop Phone Tablet TV Paper of various sorts Format Text Video Audio Infographic Quiz Q&A (like ChatGPT) Platform LinkedIn Facebook X Extroversion Do they participate? Payment options Free with ads Free with registration Subscription Pay per view Even Location can even matter. People do different things in different places. And my friend Scott Janney created magazinejukebox as a way for people to read magazines on their phones when they’re at the barber shop or doctor’s office. What do you do with all this chaos? I don’t have the answer, because I’m dealing with it as much as you are. But here are some simple things to consider. Check your analytics to see what people are actually doing. But realize your results are skewed because your audience has already self-selected based on what you’re providing. To understand what I mean, it would be stupid to ask people on YouTube if they like videos. You can do surveys of your audience, and you can look up broader surveys of the population as a whole. They’re helpful, but take them with a grain of salt. You can also just put a stake in the ground and say “no, this is what we do. If you want that other stuff, go away.” You can do what you’re good at. And that’s probably the best answer. Cast your bread on the waters – try a bunch of things – and see what happens. But – this highlights a big problem I’ve experienced in my career. Let’s say you try something and it fails. Now the CEO is against that forever and always. But times change, and something that didn’t work five years ago might work now. So my best advice is to think very broadly about how people consume content, try what you can, and keep adjusting. Think of it as ready, fire, aim on a constant loop.

When someone says “that’s an edge case,” dig a little deeper. As a general rule, marketers should major in the majors and pay attention to things that make a significant difference. But sometimes an “edge case” can turn out to be more important than we realize. Edge cases occur when … * Someone behaves in a way you didn’t expect * An action takes places in an environment you didn’t plan for * A customer has untypical circumstances * Two different systems collide * There’s a change in regulations or technology * A device is stressed, such as being low on memory Edge cases are usually more of an issue for software and hardware developers than they are for marketers. Software has to work for every user, as much as possible. Marketers are dealing with audiences, and it’s understood that some people will fall through the cracks. Today I’m going to highlight two situations. First, when “edge case” is used as an excuse, and second, then an edge case might be a missed opportunity. Converting unknown to known in a CDP A standard use case for a Customer Data Platform (CDP) is to convert unknown users to known. One way to do that is to append a customer ID as a query parameter to the links in your email. When the recipient clicks through, the CDP can capture that customer ID and convert a formerly unknown web profile to known. But what if the recipient has forwarded the email, or has posted the link to social media? Whoever clicks on those links will now be identified as that customer ID, which will corrupt your data. If your CDP tells you “this is an edge case,” what that really means is that they don’t have a good way to solve the problem. It’s not an edge case at all. People forward emails all the time. You need to press your CDP for a better solution. Don’t accept “that’s an edge case” as an excuse. Funnel analysis The basic concept of a funnel is that if you get enough people at the top, and optimize each step in the funnel, you can get more people at the bottom – where they give you money. It’s a game of volume and percentages. Let’s say some quirk (i.e., an “edge case”) in your system is causing you to lose 3 percent at the top of the funnel. That’s no big deal, right? You just adjust your inputs to compensate. Get a different 3 percent. But what 3 percent are you losing? When you’re dealing with numbers and averages, you’re likely to assume the 3 percent you’re losing is a representative sample of the whole. A cross section. But that 3 percent might be your best customers. For example, what if the quirk is cutting off people who use old iPhones, and that’s a characteristic of your target market. Say, “budget conscious consumers who are late technology adopters.” A failure to investigate this “edge case” will affect your entire funnel. Links Why edge cases matter in marketing strategy https://martech.org/why-edge-cases-matter-in-marketing-strategy/

Here are a few ways publishers can use AI in content creation, on their website, and with multimedia and events. For articles and emails Get ideas for new articles on a particular subject. For this use, you might want AI that has current information — not, e.g., the older versions of ChatGPT. Generate summaries of your articles. There’s some indication that providing a summary increases engagement with an article, which seems counter-intuitive at first, but whether it does or not, I think it’s a good service to the reader. Either edit them, or make it clear that they’re written by AI. Create headlines for your articles or subject lines for your emails. You can also toss in some keyword optimization here. For example, write a headline for this article that optimizes for the phrase “marketing technology.” (The headline of this article was written by ChatGPT. I asked for five options and picked the one I liked best.) Create images to go with your articles. I use Midjourney for this, but I think I’m going to try Dall-E, where the process is said to be more iterative. Translate an article into another language. For your website Content recommendations. I’ve wondered if readers should be able to exercise some control over this. For example, whether the recommendations should be based on what they actually read, or on what they say they want to read. Manage a registration- or paywall. One of the big questions about metering is how many articles you allow someone to see before you ask for a registration, or for money. Rather than setting a single rule for the whole site, you could use AI to figure out the right rule for different segments, based on their behavior. Improve your customer service chat bot responses. Most of the chatbots I’ve used are pretty poor. AI should be able to improve them significantly. Use an LLM as the first step in an online discussion. Imagine a Reddit-like board where someone can ask a question, and AI gives the first answer. Your subject-matter experts, or other users, could then comment on the AI answer. For audio, video, and events Create a transcript of your podcast or webinar. The transcript should be edited, but AI can do most of the heavy lifting for you. Create a timeline that shows what topics were discussed at what time index in the file. This is a great service to listeners. They know they can skip forward to the right time to hear the discussion they’re interested in. Write a summary of the content of the recording. Since AI can make a transcript, it can also write a summary, suggest title, or even write an article version of the event. I don’t think AI is ready to write unsupervised copy, and it’s certainly not right to create pretend authors for articles, the way Sports Illustrated seems to have done. If you choose to let AI write articles, you should be transparent about that.

Publishing a magazine is a hard business. But there is hope. James Evelegh wrote an article that Bo Sacks posted on Friday. It’s titled “Large magazine companies – how they can get back to winning ways.” That caught my eye because some of my clients publish magazines, and I want to know how to advise them. I’m going to comment on 3 of his 10 points. I’ll provide a link below to the entire article. #1 – “Empower your workforce” -- reminded me of a story. Daughter #3 was reporting for duty at an Air Force base. I had to wait in the kitchen while she was doing whatever they do. There was a sign on the wall in the kitchen that said "If you see a problem...." Okay, stop right there. How do you expect that sign to continue, based on your office experience? You probably expect something like "report it to maintenance," or "tell the office manager." No. This is the armed forces. The sign said "If you see a problem, <b>fix it.</b>" I laughed out loud. Yes, that's the way you treat adults. You're not training people to complain, or to notice problems for other people to fix. You're training them to take responsible action to make things better. Expect your employees to act. #5 is “See your company as a house of brands, and not as a media or publishing business.” As I’ve said in previous podcasts, the magazine business is very hard these days. The cost of printing and mailing keeps going up, and consumer expectations on price keep going down. However, magazines are very effective as a front for a brand, so one ticket to success is to find a way to accept that the magazine might be a loss leader and to monetize the audience another way. Sell products. Sell events. Sell expensive memberships. Etc. If you have questions about that, give me a call. #8 implies that the word “magazine” is equally at home in print and online. I don’t agree with that. Can you buy a magazine rack for your digital magazine? Can you swat a bug with your digital magazine? Can you put your digital magazine on your coffee table? I’m being a little silly, but there’s a point here. The word “magazine” is associated with a print publication in many, many different ways. But the more important point is that digital does some things very well and print does some things very well, and the intersection between the two is not that large. If you think of your “magazine” as a product that can be distributed in print and online, both versions will suffer. Your print publication won’t be everything it can be, and your digital publication won’t be everything it can be. I think it makes much more sense to think of them as different products and to make each the best that it can be in its medium. Let’s push this a bit to make the point even more obvious. What if you had an audio version of your magazine? What would audio, print, and digital all have in common? Don’t even be tempted to think that way. Make the best audio product you can make. Make the best digital product you can make. And yes, make the best print product you can make. Don’t shackle all three of them by calling them “magazines.” Links Large magazine companies – how they can get back to winning ways https://www.inpublishing.co.uk/articles/large-magazine-companies-how-they-can-get-back-to-winning-ways-22573 Can you swat a bug with that magazine? https://krehbielgroup.com/2022/09/12/can-you-swat-a-bug-with-that-magazine/

B2B purchasers are just people like everyone else. So why do we treat them differently? Yesterday, Bo Sacks posted an article by Chris Adams that calls for a makeover for B2B marketing. He makes some good points, but I think he overlooks some important things as well. He starts by pointing out that B2B purchasers are people. Regardless of whether they're investing in a software-as-a-service platform or buying a new pair of Crocs, customers are individuals with dreams, desires, and personal goals. B2B customers — like B2C customers — shop on Amazon, search on Google, and are motivated by emotional storytelling. They’re just people. Chris also calls for an emphasis on benefits, which is good advice. Although I’m also reminded of Mark Stiving’s argument that a benefits approach is better for people who are new to the market, while a features approach is better for veterans. For example, if you want to get grandma to buy a smartphone, you tell her how she can video chat with her grandkids and keep up with what’s going on in their life. Benefits. But after grandma has had a smartphone for a while, she wants more storage and a faster processor. Features. Chris is right to remind us that B2B customers are human beings with all the feelings and foibles we all have. But we also have to remember that they’re human beings who are acting out a different functional role, and that influences their decision-making. Here are some important differences between B2C and B2B purchasers. 1. The B2B purchaser is often not spending his own money. That can have a substantial impact on the emotional side of the purchase. 2. The B2B purchaser might have to get approval for the expense, or at least to justify it. “It makes me feel happy” is enough when I’m buying a coffee. It won’t cut it when I’m buying a Customer Data Platform with my company’s money. 3. B2C sales often rely on mass media, while B2B sales often rely on personal contact. 4. B2B sales often have a long sales cycle, which makes a personal relationship with the salesman more important. 5. A B2B purchase might have a bidding process, or an annual review. 6. A B2C purchase might be just for fun, or enjoyment, while a B2B purchase has to be related to a business function. 7. A B2C purchaser is probably more likely to purchase something because of brand loyalty. 8. Generally speaking, B2C purchases are at a much lower price. Customers do make big purchases — like cars, houses, and air conditioning units — and in those cases, yes, there is more similarity between the B2B and the B2C sales process. Chris is right to remind us that B2B purchasers are just people who have the same cognitive biases, wants and desires, and penchant for benefits-oriented storytelling as everyone else. Yes. But marketing and sales to B2C and B2B audiences remain very different disciplines in some very important respects. Links There’s no such thing as a B2B customer: Why B2B marketing needs a makeover https://www.thedrum.com/opinion/2023/11/29/there-s-no-such-thing-b2b-customer-why-b2b-marketing-needs-makeover

In 2025 I won’t use my Google newsfeed, and I won’t visit websites. I’ll have something far more tailored to my interests. Here’s how this will work. I’ll have a personalized AI agent that will both collect and analyze my interests. That is, it will ask me what I’m interested in – sports, current events, music, science, religion, all the normal stuff – but it will also observe how I spend my time. It’ll keep track of how well my intentions coincide with my actions. My AI agent will find content I’m interested in – in any format. Video. Audio. Images. Text. Games. Whatever. I won’t be on TikTok or realclearpolitics or LinkedIn or anything like that. I’ll have my own custom interface that incorporates content from all these sources. I’ll set a budget for what I’m willing to spend every month on new content, and I’ll allocate that budget with some sliding scales to show my preferences. For example … * I’d rather listen than read. * I’d rather watch than listen. * I want news in the morning and entertainment in the evening, but I like to listen to music on my walk after lunch. * I prefer stories from my point of view, but I want to be challenged at least 20 percent of the time. * I trust these sources and not these others. * I want to read at least one physical book every two weeks. * I’ll interact with the world under different personas, like my work persona and my hobby persona. Over time, my AI assistant will fine tune my selections with intelligent questions. For example, “you say you want to be challenged in your beliefs, but whenever I show you an article from such and so point of view, you don’t read the whole thing. Shall I continue to prod you?” The AI agent will know my behavior very well, but it will always defer to my preferences and aspirations. How will publishers operate in a world like this? * They won’t sell direct to the consumer. Their AI will negotiate with my AI. I’ll have nothing to do with it. * The publisher will use AI to provide content in a hundred different ways. * The same story might be text, audio, video, or a cartoon. * Most content be digital, but there will be print on demand options. * There’ll be a version for the well educated and the poorly educated. * All content will be available in multiple languages. * The publisher’s AI will respond to the market demand from all the individual AI agents. * Human creators or editors will become brands that people will follow. * Platforms will be irrelevant. My crystal ball fogged up last week when I tried to understand what’s going on in Congress, so I might not have all the details right. But something like this is going to happen. How are you going to plan for it?

Personalization is usually a good thing. For example, lots of testing in many markets over many years has shown that an email that begins “Dear Greg” is going to do better than an email that begins in some generic way. Assuming, of course, your name is Greg. That level of personalization is easily tested. But as you go deeper into personalization, new issues arise. * Too much personalization might make users uncomfortable, and it might raise concerns about privacy. * Personalization depends on having the right data – and using it properly. Are you sure the data you’re collecting is fit to purpose, and that your algorithm is tuned appropriately? * How does your algorithmic personalization interact with explicit user preferences? For example, a reader says he wants financial information, but your algorithm says he prefers sports. Which one gets the upper hand? You have to wonder if you should listen to what users say versus observing how they behave. * To what extent should you disclose how your personalization engine works? Beyond these questions, you have to wonder if users actually want it. Too much personalization might lead a person to believe he’s missing out on something important, or is living in a bubble. In fact, if you had perfect personalization, that seems to be getting into the realm of solipsism, which is the idea that you’re the only mind that exists. Readers might prefer content that’s curated by a trusted professional over content that’s curated by a machine. The trusted professional knows more about the topic than my browsing history. Also, personalization can get icky. As a silly example, it’s one thing for Spotify to say that people who like Jethro Tull might also like Fairport Convention. It’s another thing for Spotify to notice that I was chatting up the redhead at the office party and to tell me what kind of music she likes. A final thing to consider is a strange side-effect of personalization that Bob Hoffman has discussed in the context of advertising. Part of the effect of an ad is that I know other people are seeing it as well. If I see James Bond driving an Aston Martin, and I want to be as cool as James Bond, I might buy an Aston Martin. But the algorithm knows that if I won the lottery tomorrow and had money coming out my ears, I would never spend the money on a fancy car. That’s just not me. So in my version of the James Bond movie, I see James Bond driving a Toyota Highlander, and I know that you’re seeing him driving something completely different. The effect is completely lost. I can’t be “as cool as James Bond” by driving what he’s driving, because everybody sees a different thing. I’m not trying to dissuade anybody from pursuing personalization. It’s a proven effective strategy. But the personalization tools we have now, and will have in the future, might force us to re-evaluate. Links The Risk of Personalization: do people want and trust it? https://theaudiencers.com/decisions/the-risk-of-personalization-do-people-want-and-trust-it/

There’s two sides to advertising. Buying it, and selling it. In terms of selling …. When a publisher is selling advertising, audience is the key. The publisher wants to convince the advertiser that the publisher has access to the audience the advertiser wants to reach. The other part of that equation is the creative, but I’m not going to talk about that today. I want to focus on buying advertising. Back in the days when print advertising ruled, it was understood that the advertiser couldn't make a direct, mathematical connection between an ad and a sale. There’s that famous quote we all know about half your ads being useless, but you don’t know which half. The Internet has led some people to believe that we can know that. That we can calculate the effect of an ad. This is largely because the internet is just lots of computers, and they can track things. We get all this data that we can put into spreadsheets where we can sum things and do all kinds of mathematical wizardry. But this reminds me too much of that old saying that when your only tool is a hammer, everything begins to look like a nail. When you use computers too much, you start to think everything is math. You forget about the real world side of things. In the early days of internet advertising, an ad was considered to have been displayed to a visitor even if it was way down the page and never even seen by the visitor. That’s what you get with the tyranny of numbers. If you can assign a number to something, it seems more reliable. That’s a type of anchoring bias, by the way. Bob Hoffman reports some very interesting cases where advertising stats were completely wrong. Some error in the coding made people believe they were advertising on one site when all their ads were actually displayed in other places. In addition to all this there’s regular, old-fashioned fraud. So just because we can gather lots of stats and put them in spreadsheets doesn’t mean we really know what’s going on. We can see a similar phenomenon in social media. My friend Matt Bailey had a post the other day about this. People want to calculate the return on investment of social media. It’s not just really possible to do that with any precision. I think spending money on advertising and social media is just a regular business expense. We want to quantify it. We want to know if we’re spending too much, or too little. But it’s a very difficult thing to nail down. I think we have to get comfortable with the ambiguity. Resources How the digital revolution led to a greater justification for advertising https://the-media-leader.com/how-the-digital-revolution-led-to-a-greater-justification-for-advertising/ Are Social Media Skills Overrated? https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/social-media-skills-overrated-matt-bailey-t564c Adscam, by Bob Hoffman https://www.amazon.com/ADSCAM-Advertising-Historys-Greatest-Democracy/dp/0999230743

There’s a scene in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back where Darth Vader tells Lando Calrissian to take Chewbacca and Princess Leia to his shuttle. Lando complains that wasn’t the deal, and Darth Vader says, “I am altering the deal. Pray I do not alter it further.” It’s funny that Darth Vader is, I think, the only character in Star Wars who encourages us to pray. Anyway, Darth Vader is able to change the deal because he has all the power. The same is true with Google. When Google says jump, content creators say “how high?” They change the deal all the time — by changing their algorithm — and we just go along with it. But recent changes aren’t just monkeying with the details. It’s a wholesale, radical change. The original deal was this. Google was allowed to crawl our websites and create these incredible indexes (which we weren’t allowed to see) connected to complicated algorithms (which we weren’t allowed to see), and we permitted this because it was the primary means of content discovery. People used Google search to find our sites. Publishers should have asserted their rights. They should have said “you can’t put our copyrighted information in your database and not tell us what you’re doing with it.” But they were, as usual, very short-sighted. It was a bad deal, but it wasn’t that bad. And now, even that bad deal has changed. Can you guess to whose advantage? Remember when Wikipedia dominated the top spots in Google search results? If you were curious about The Battle of Trafalgar, for instance, you could be certain Wikipedia would be the first result. It still is for that search (I just checked), but now it’s competing with a lot of answers that are provided right there on the search engine results page (which the cool kids call the SERP, by the way). This has resulted in a significant decline in traffic to Wikipedia. Why go to Wikipedia when you get the answer right there on the results page? From the user’s perspective, this is a great deal. Maybe all I wanted to know was a couple details, and if Google provides those details right there, that’s one fewer clicks for me, and I don’t have to scan through the Wikipedia page to find what I want. But from Wikipedia’s perspective, it’s a disaster. Google is using Wikipedia’s content in a way Wikipedia never agreed to. The only reason Google can answer the question is that it’s stealing the content from Wikipedia (and others) and using it in a way the authors never intended. This is a fundamental shift in the terms of the deal. Google is no longer crawling content so that users can find that content, they’re crawling content so they can replace the publisher. Did publishers agree to this? Were they consulted? No. Google did it because it’s Darth Vader and it can do such things. It doesn’t need to ask our permission. The problem is even worse with large language models. Pretty soon very few people will “search” in the way we used to think about that — where search was a discovery tool for publisher content. They’ll just get answers — derived from copyrighted material that was stolen from publishers. I’ve singled out Google because Google has been the 800 pound gorilla in this game. They established the presumption that content on the internet was there for the taking, and publishers have foolishly gone along with that presumption. Because of that presumption — that if content is out there on the internet, anybody can take it and do what they please with it — we now have ChatGPT and Bing and a host of other services that are stealing copyrighted information for the purpose of making the publisher irrelevant. It has to stop. Lando Calrissian is, in some ways, a good stand in for publishers. He’s a weak-kneed, go along kind of guy who loves the high life in his city in the clouds. But even Lando can be pushed too far. Let’s see if publishers have even that spark of courage.

The idea of publishing a magazine in the modern world seems crazy to some people. In many ways … it is. Last night at poker I thought I’d try something new and ask my friends (none of whom are in publishing) what topic they would suggest for my daily podcast for publishers. There were some very interesting suggestions, but I chose this one. “In this day and age, why in the world would you make a magazine? Why not create a website?” It’s a good question. I particularly like the assumption that the word “magazine” means print. I don’t like it when people call their digital efforts a magazine. It’s simply the wrong use of the word. A magazine does seem like a bad bargain. Printing and mailing is expensive. Paper has a bad rap in environmental circles. And when you look around, you see everybody with their nose in their smart phone, and very, very few people reading magazines. The question reminded me of Peter Houston’s recent question, “why won’t print just lie down and die?” In addition to all these problems, fierce price competition has pushed the price of a magazine down to ridiculous levels. Publishers struggle to get people to subscribe at just a few dollars a year. It sounds like a bad deal all around. And it is. But let’s address this from two angles. First, is there a market for magazines in this digital world? Second, is it possible to make money with a magazine? In the past, print was the only option. But now, when people have the choice between print and digital, there’s still a sizable group of people who prefer print. Unfortunately, they won’t pay a decent price for it. But they do prefer it. Some publishers who had gone all digital are realizing this and going back into print. As reported in an article recently distributed by Bo Sacks, Saveur magazine is returning to print, and there are many other examples. If you have a print magazine and try to force your subscribers into a digital edition, you’ll lose the majority of them — mostly because digital versions of magazines are pretty uniformly bad. Here are some advantages of print. * It’s relaxing. It’s a laid back experience. * The ads are an enjoyable part of the experience rather than an annoying distraction. * The images are much more vibrant. * It’s easier to skim. * It looks nice on a coffee table. I could go on, but I try to keep these podcasts short. But can you make money selling a magazine? It’s very hard if that’s your only business. As I mentioned above, costs are going up and subscription revenue is going down. The smarter thing to do is use the magazine as the face of the brand, and monetize your audience in other ways. Sell products. Do affiliate deals. Upsell subscribers to more expensive memberships, or to events. And so on. Again, there are a lot of options here, but I need to keep it brief. So the bottom line is this. 1. Don’t be fooled by the “everything is going digital” talk. Many things — most things — are going digital. But there is a still a strong market for print. 2. The concept of the “digital magazine” is an idea that’s failed. Digital magazines are awful. If you’re going to go digital, go digital, but don’t try to make it a “magazine.” Make the best digital product you can, free from any association with magazines. 3. Unless you’re selling a premium product to a market that’s willing to pay a reasonable price — say, more than $75 for an annual subscription — don’t think you’re going to make much of a profit on a print magazine. The numbers are not in your favor. Resources 'Saveur' Magazine Returns To Print https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/391222/saveur-magazine-returns-to-print.html?edition=132371 Peter Houston: Why won’t print just lie down and die? https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-wont-print-just-lie-down-die-peter-houston-3ak5e/

Confirmation emails often contain crucial information – like details about a conference or a meeting. So what do you do when your confirmation emails aren’t getting through? You have to find out why. There could be several reasons. 1. You’re using an unreliable email service provider (ESP) and your messages are getting blocked. The obvious solution is to get a better ESP. 2. You’re using a good ESP, but you don’t have things configured correctly. Once again, this is an easy fix. Talk to the delivery experts at your ESP and get your system set up correctly. 3. Your emails look spammy. Again, this is relatively easy to fix. Look up rules on effective subject lines, how to minimize HTML and javascript, optimize for mobile, etc. The internet is full of advice along these lines. 4. This is where it gets tougher. Your recipients work for companies that have very stringent rules on delivery. Some hospitals or utility companies have email security systems in place that open and scan all emails before they’re delivered to the recipient. Either you or your recipient are going to have to reach out to the IT department at these companies and make the case why your emails should get through. That’s a lot of work. 5. Your customers are giving you their junk email addresses. Everybody has at least one throwaway email address. You need to make a clear and persuasive case to your customer that it’s in their best interest to give you the email address they actually use. This means ensuring your emails are useful, and making it easy for recipients to regulate how much email they get from you. Most people fear that if they give you an email address, you’re going to send them junk three times a day. Alleviate that fear. 6. You don’t have effective calls to action in your confirmation emails. It’s not enough for an email to be delivered, or even to be delivered and read, if people aren’t taking the necessary actions. For example, if you’re selling an event, you need to make it very easy for the recipient to add that event to their calendar. I can hear the organizer complain, “We sent you the details. Why didn’t you show up?” Because your poor customer read ten thousand emails that day and didn’t have the bandwidth to make a special effort to add your information to their calendar. Make it easy. 7. This one is really tough. Your customers don’t read their emails. This is a growing problem. I was in the United Arab Emirates recently and people over there prefer WhatsApp to email, and the story goes that younger people don’t like or read their emails. Some people prefer texts. This seems like an edge case, since everybody sends confirmation emails, including the king of all customer service and market testing – Amazon.com. But I have it on good authority that a lot of people simply don’t check their email. What do you do? You might have to allow customers to choose their preferred method of communication. You can manage such a thing in a customer data platform, but realize that it’s going to be a lot of work. Every communication would have to be sent out in multiple ways – SMS, WhatsApp, Facebook messenger, and who knows what else. That gets complicated, but that seems to be the nature of things these days. Everything’s fractured. When I produce this podcast, I upload it to LinkedIn, YouTube, X, Instagram, Spotify …. It’s a drag. But that’s the world we live in. If any of this resonates with you – if you’re having these troubles and want to chat about it – give me a call.

Thanks to Matt Bailey and the good folks at New Media Academy, I had the great honor of speaking at the Global Media Congress in Abu Dhabi. Here are some takeaways. 1. How to find content ideas. I create this podcast every day, so I’m always looking for new ideas, which is why I really liked Matt Bailey’s presentation on tools you can use to get ideas for your market. Things like Google Trends, Answer the public, SparkToro, and more. I’ve provided a link below to Matt’s page. He says he’ll have a post on this specific topic in a couple weeks. 2. Think outside email. People have been predicting the death of email for a long time, and while I’m not going to get on that bandwagon, it’s definitely true that other services are eating into email’s dominance. In Abu Dhabi, nobody wants your email address. They want to connect on WhatsApp. People had QR codes on their business cards that you could scan to connect with them on WhatsApp. The point is not that WhatsApp is going to take over the email space. I doubt that. The point is that “communication of preference” is going to vary regionally, and person to person. This means you need to keep track of that personal preference with your customers. That’s a fine use case for a customer data platform, so if you’re curious about that, give me a call. 3. Everything’s going video. There was a lot of emphasis on video, and the overall impression from the event was that if you’re not focusing on video, you’re going to be left behind. I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I create and use video a lot myself, but I still want to listen and to read. But I admit that I’m probably in the minority on this, because when I walked around the airplane on my grueling 14-hour flight home, nobody was reading. Ahmed Basyouni had a workshop on how to create great videos. 4. But what’s in your videos? You create a fantastic video, and then, as an afterthought, you say, “Oh yeah, I need a title and a description and keywords, and what happens at what time index, and all that stuff.” MXT1 is a product from newsbridge.io that helps solve that. I had a nice chat with Sebastien Letemple about the product. I’d buy it myself, but I’m poor. If somebody wants to buy it for me, that would be lovely. My birthday is this Saturday. 5. How to measure influencers. There’s a difference between having an audience and having an influence. My friend Jason Falls gave an interesting talk on the need to focus on influence and not influencers. For example, one person might have a million followers, but have no influence in your target market, while another person might have 200 followers who should be your customers. I’ll provide a link to Jason’s page below. 6. The future of X. There’s a lot of skepticism about and hostility towards X right now – which I don’t really understand, and don’t care to – but Marina Karam from Spica believes X is on the right track and will become dominant in that space because they pay influencers. That’s worth thinking about. By the way, Marina knows about this stuff because Spica helps brands monitor what people are saying about them on social media. Link below. 7. Secure AI? When you use a large language model, you don’t know where the data came from or where it’s going. Strategio helps companies solve that and build AI tools that are secure. That’s worth considering. 8. Fight disinformation by looking in the mirror. There’s an old saying that when you point, there are three fingers pointing back at you. There was a lot of talk about “disinformation” at this event. I don’t mean to cast aspersions on this particular crowd, because I don’t follow news in the places that were represented at this meeting. But my experience is that the people who speak the most about disinformation are the ones you need to worry about. Just keep that in the back of your mind. 9. Merging the physical and digital realms. I wrote a speculative science fiction book on that topic a long time ago, but now it’s becoming reality. That can sound scary and spooky, but it doesn’t have to be. For example, you can upload your image and “try on” a suit or a pair of glasses. That’s a nice service. I had a lovely conversation with Irina Safiullina from Phygital District about this. You should check them out. 10. Train to retain. My friend Monique Russell wrapped up the conference with a talk on upskilling. It’s tough to attract good talent, but you can attract and retain top talent by giving them an opportunity to grow. Think of it this way. You want to be able to give a pitch like this to a prospective employee: “You should come work for my company because we have weekly lunch and learns on a wide variety of topics that are designed to help you be successful – not only in your work life, but in your whole life.” Of course you have to follow that up with promoting from within! So there you have it. Please drop your questions or comments below. Resources New Media Academy https://nma.ae/en Matt Bailey – Internet marketing speaker and trainer https://www.sitelogicmarketing.com/ Strategio https://strategio.io/ Phygital District https://phygitaldistrict.com/ Jason Falls is flipping influencer marketing on its head. https://jasonfalls.com/ Ahmed Basyouni Spica – monitor what people are saying about your brand https://www.spica.media/ Monique Russell and Clear Communication Solutions https://www.linkedin.com/company/moniquerussell/

If you’re providing a good service, charge for it. Right? The town of Meeker in Colorado’s Rio Blanco County has a local news source called The Rio Blanco Herald Times. Like many local papers, it was struggling, so the owners sent out an “email cry for help” to keep the 138-year-old newspaper from going under. I heard about this in an email from Bo Sacks. The residents replied favorably and the paper was saved, which is quite nice. "If a town loses its paper, it's less of a town.” That quote is attributed to Al Cross from the University of Kentucky. This raises an interesting question. If something is a public good, maybe the government should fund it – like roads, and libraries, and things like that. But isn’t the media supposed to serve as a check on government? Aren’t they supposed to be an independent voice? How can they do that when they’re getting money from the government? I think government-funded media is a horrible idea, but there’s still the question of “public” funding. Not government funding, but … just people. That’s how the Boy Scouts and the local house of worship get along, and they’re also public goods. But we don’t generally believe these things should be supported by taxes. Still, there have been efforts to ask for donations. I’ve seen campaigns to “Support local journalism,” and some sites simply hold out the hand and ask for some money. I’m not sure this is appropriate for all media companies, but if citizens believe in the mission and usefulness of a media brand, why shouldn’t they pony up a little extra to keep it in business? There’s a network of podcasts that does this. The podcasts are free for everybody, but they ask for donations from people who believe in what they’re doing. The Guardian asks people to fund independent journalism. So does ProPublica. And The Intercept has something along those lines. There comes a time when it’s appropriate to hold out your hand and ask for a contribution. It’s a little humbling, but … that’s okay. So as you consider revenue models for your media company, don’t forget to consider donations. Links An email cry for help saves this 138-year-old newspaper from extinction https://www.editorandpublisher.com/stories/an-email-cry-for-help-saves-this-138-year-old-newspaper-from-shutting-down,246552

Maybe it’s time to think of customers as creators rather than consumers. Today I watched a TED talk about a woman who studies prehistoric cave art. It was pretty interesting. I’ll provide a link below. In some cases, people tens of thousands of years ago – that’s before flashlights, by the way – crawled their way through narrow tunnels to incredible depths and then scribbled things on the wall. Who did they think was going to see that? But they did it anyway. Art of various sorts – representative and non-representative – goes way back in our history. And we don’t know what sorts of songs and stories people told around the fire. That stuff goes deep into our collective memories. Have you ever heard of a misericord? It’s an intricate pattern carved into the underside of a choir seat, usually in a monastery. Most people don’t even notice them. So why were they made? We’re creators. We like to make things. And it’s not all utilitarian stuff. There are lots of examples of people making art for art’s sake. What does this have to do with publishing in the modern world? It’s easy to think of AI as the world-ending comet that’s going to destroy everything. Publishers have it really bad, because they’re generally in the business of selling things that AI will make for free, or close to free. Don’t give up hope. The human desire to create is very deep and very strong. We can – and we should – view AI as competition. It will definitely disrupt jobs and business models. But we should also look at it as a tool. What kinds of amazing things will humans create with the help of AI? What could Handel have done if he had AI to help him? But this is a podcast for publishers, so how does this relate to the business of publishing? Maybe it means that you need to shift your view of your customer from consumer to creator. Maybe you need to find ways to help your customers use AI to create amazing things. Because the desire to create is deeply entrenched in their brains. Whatever topic or specialty you focus on. That’s a passing thing. It’s yesterday. It’s trivial in the context of the long history of our species. But creation? Somebody crawled a third of a mile underground to scribble some stuff on a wall. The desire to create is an enduring fact about humans. So – how can you fit that into your business model? Resources Why are these 32 symbols found in caves all over Europe | Genevieve von Petzinger https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJnEQCMA5Sg

Bo Sacks sent me an email about an article in The Guardian regarding the death of a 21-year old water polo coach. Microsoft created an AI-generated poll that appeared with the post. The poll asked readers "What do you think is the reason behind the woman’s death?” and they were offered three choices: murder, accident, or suicide. People got pretty upset about that. It reminds me of the beginning of the movie "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel," in which a woman gets a marketing call, mentions that her husband had just died, and the call-center person just went on with the script as if nothing had happened. In other words, the problem of inappropriate or distasteful responses is not limited to AI. Any system that mimics human response without human sensibilities can create the same issues. You could get a similarly inappropriate situation with an ad placement. My friend Lev Kaye says you almost always want a human in the loop, and I agree. But since every individual on your website could be getting a different ad, or a different survey, how do you monitor this? How do you put the human in the loop? We hear a lot about the potential of "disinformation" from AI, but "distasteful" might be the bigger threat to many brands. It's easy to say that you'll review everything from generative AI before it goes live, but is that really possible? I don't think anyone could have reviewed the technology that created that Microsoft poll. It was probably something like ... when a story’s about X, look up other stories about X and see what people talk about in the comments. Make a poll out of that. What do you do? Here are some ideas. First, let's take the obvious. Review things that can be reviewed, like images or static text. Second, when something isn't static, have a "worst-case scenario" brain-storming session. It might be a fun exercise for your employees. Then ask if dynamically generated content is worth the potential risk. AI is going to start taking over things like customer service call centers, and that promises to save a lot of money. But is it worth the risk of a horribly inappropriate comment? Consider this. Maybe we shouldn't try to make these AI replicants sound like humans. If ChatGPT makes a silly mistake that a human wouldn't make, you don't get mad -- you think it's funny. But that's because you know it's ChatGPT and not a person. If you disguise AI -- and try to make it sound like a human -- you might be creating more problems than you're solving. You might be better off owning up to the fact that a computer is answering the phone and making your automated customer service system sound like a computer. Let's take that idea back to the poll. What if the website said the poll was generated by AI. Would people have been as offended at its distasteful question? Maybe not. Maybe that’s the safer path. Resources AI Ire: 'The Guardian' Blasts Survey Run Next To News Story In Microsoft https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/390797/ai-ire-the-guardian-blasts-survey-run-next-to-n.html?edition=132221

For starters, it’s “e-newsletters,” okay, and that’s the way I’ll say it. “An article on theaudiencers.com says e-newsletters are having a serious (and very lengthy) moment in the limelight for digital publishers, not only as a valuable engagement tool but also for monetizing audiences.” The article asks, “What is it that’s so special about e-newsletters?” And the answer is that people who subscribe to an e-newsletter and then subscribe to their premium product are 50% more likely to still be a subscriber after 12 months. That’s an interesting answer, because it frames the value of the e-newsletter in the context of its value to the publisher, not to the reader. You could argue that retention is a proxy for value to the reader, but I still think it’s worth noting. The article highlights the importance of regularity – to become part of the reader’s routine. That’s a good point, and I ought to learn that with this podcast. Sorry that I’m somewhat irregular in my daily posting times. Reader surveys show that many people start their day reading the newsletter in bed. Which is … great, except – people – you shouldn’t have your phone in bed. E-newslettters can be a chance to develop a more personal relationship with the reader. The editor can establish a voice for the whole letter, and make room for replies and interaction. People like to say that “being human” will be a differentiator in the world of AI, but I suspect it won’t take long for AI to be better at being human than we are. So, take advantage of that while you can. One paragraph about The Edinburgh Guardian jumped out at me. “The whole concept grew out of the horrible user experience of having to file through the adverts on publisher’s sites to find the news that’s worth reading. I do this work so readers don’t have to, putting it in a short, curated digest.“ Yeah. Reading on a mobile website is usually awful. The page is so full of ads and pop-ups and distractions that half the time it’s not worth it. Getting readable content in an e-newsletter is … quite relaxing. One thing that fascinates me about digital content is the funnel. It used to be so easy. The top of your funnel was visitors to your website, and the bottom of your funnel was one product – like an e-newsletter. Now we have Substack and Whatsapp and TikTok and who knows what else, and you might not be driving them all to one email newsletter. You might deliver the content ten different ways. If your e-newsletter is only in email, it makes metrics a little easier, and on that score, clicks are probably your best metric, since opens don’t mean so much any more. My Krehbiel letter goes out in the mail, in email, and as a LinkedIn newsletter. And I could easily add an app, a video version, etc. It gets a little exhausting – both in terms of production and in terms of measuring results. It’s clicks over here and views over there and likes in this other place. What I like about my letter, and about e-newsletters, is that the publisher can establish a direct relationship with the subscriber that X or YouTube or Facebook can’t mess with. Most e-newsletters are used to sell people on subscriptions to premium products. I do my newsletter so you’ll hire me to solve your tech problems. I’ve picked a few of the interesting insights from this article, so if you’re interested in e-newsletters, I suggest you read the whole thing. Resources How to make newsletters valuable in a reader revenue model – The Telegraph & The Edinburgh Guardian https://theaudiencers.com/operations/how-to-make-newsletters-valuable-in-a-reader-revenue-model-the-telegraph-the-edinburgh-guardian/

Dominic Young says Google is playing chicken over AI. Bo Sacks distributed the article the other day. I’ll provide a link below. Google wants individuals and organizations to use AI, but there’s a looming threat of copyright lawsuits. Google wants to reassure people that they can use AI safely, so they’re offering to cover people’s legal costs if they get sued. Why would they do this? Dominic points out a few possible reasons. They’re confident they’d win in court, and they want to calm the jitters. They’re confident legislators will smooth the way for them. Since both of those possibilities seem rather remote, Dominic says it’s just a game of chicken. All of us are on mopeds, and Google is driving an 18-wheeler full of bricks. Of course we’re going to swerve first. That’s a good perspective. Google is a bully, and they get their way because they’re the gorilla. But I think there’s another reason to consider. Google is inherently against copyright. Their mission statement says they want to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. That mission is a direct challenge to publishers in two ways. First, in monetization. Second, in copyright. I recently asked Bard some questions about this, and here’s what it told me. Google stated in its 2019 Annual Report that "everyone should have access to the information they need, regardless of their income or location.” The report was published on February 12, 2020, and can be found on Google's website. (I couldn’t find that exact quote, but I did find similar things.) … Google states that it believes that "information is power," and that it is committed to making information accessible to everyone, regardless of their background or circumstances. I also asked Bard about Google and copyright, and it said … Google stated that copyright law "provides incentives for creators to produce and distribute their works, and it ensures that they are rewarded for their efforts." Google has also argued that copyright law can actually promote access to information by allowing creators to control how their work is used. I then asked Bard whether it – and other LLMs – aren’t a direct threat to copyright, and it didn’t give me a very good answer. But of course they’re a threat to copyright. They’re taking copyrighted material and using it in a way that the creators didn’t authorize. So my answer to why is Google promising to indemnify AI users against copyright claims is that they realize copyright is a huge barrier to their business model. They want to kill it. Or at least amend it. Resources Why Google’s generative AI gamble is a game of chicken it could lose https://pressgazette.co.uk/platforms/why-googles-generative-ai-gamble-is-a-game-of-chicken-it-could-lose/

There’s this thing called “last-click attribution” where you assign a sale to … the last click. If you think about your buying behavior, you’ll quickly realize that model probably only works for a very small percentage of your purchases, and that it gets less and less valuable as the price of the product increases. A lot of touch points are required to sell a higher-priced product. The idea that you can attribute the sale to one particular touch point isn’t sensible. As Michelle Tresemer says, in a YouTube video I’ll link below … “Most of the time when I see marketing teams trying to get attribution it’s because someone above them is asking for something ridiculous.” Michelle Tresemer from Foundations First. Absolutely. The reality is that it takes many touch points to close a deal, and there’s no way to track them all. It’s simply impossible. Marketers should be measured by revenue, and management shouldn’t be getting in their stuff about it. However, marketers still need to make some decisions about where to invest their money. They can’t just throw up their hands, say “I don’t know what’s driving sales,” and spend on everything. Or on nothing. Or … and I’ve seen this … base it on what their kids are doing on social media. Don’t do that. There are several different ways to view attribution, and some of them can give you hints about specific things. For example, first-touch attribution helps you understand how people are exposed to your brand in the first instance. Last-touch attribution might be helpful in measuring certain calls to action, the effectiveness of your landing page, or your store. But all the interactions are having some effect, and it’s very hard to tease that out. Unfortunately, the push towards “data-driven marketing” can have a tendency to simplify cause and effect, which can lead to erroneous conclusions and bad strategic decisions. My advice is to look at the data, for sure, but to be skeptical about what you think it means. Pay attention to your own buying habits, and imagine what kinds of false conclusions the seller might be making about your own decision-making process. Try multiple different types of models, but have some humility about it, and realize that “the data” might seem to say one thing, but when you act on that conclusion, you might not get the result you expect. It’s a tough job! Resources The Myth of Modern Marketing Attribution https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mtZC_Bjy-8 TikTok measurement head: industry needs weaning off ‘last-click attribution’ https://the-media-leader.com/tiktok-measurement-head-industry-needs-weaning-off-last-click-attribution/ What is Attribution Modeling? A Quick Explainer for Marketers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfnJwYuFWVM

The purpose of copyright is to encourage people to create new works by providing a mechanism for them to profit from them. This is good for society because it fuels innovation. If authors know their work will immediately be stolen by AI, there is less chance for profit. But copyright isn’t forever. At some point is enters the public domain, and there are legitimate arguments over how long a copyright should persist. Rule governing AI need to take into account public domain vs. copyrighted works. Copyright varies country to country, but the internet is international. This complicates the matter. Solutions There has to be a way to calculate the proximity of one set of words to another, and the extent to which copyrighted material is used in a chat response. Rules could be set around this. For example, within a low range of proximity, the LLM doesn’t need to cite its sources. Within a medium range of proximity, it needs to cite and link to the source. A high range of proximity would illegal if copyrighted material makes up a certain percentage of the response. Creative commons licensing might offer another option. This allows the author to specify how their content may be used. Creative Commons licenses were created to work internationally, so that avoids some of the shortfalls of copyright. Publishers should continue to pursue copyright challenges to LLMs, but they should also consider using the Creative Commons path — that is, to specify the terms under which their content may be used.

I was peering into my crystal ball to discover what content creation, discovery, and consumption will look like in 10 years. Here’s what I saw. First, we have to think of content in a few different buckets. Or, to put it another way, why do people seek out information? Generally speaking, they have one of these goals. Update Me Educate Me Give me perspective Divert Me Keep me on trend Inspire me All of those things will be done by AI. Everyone will have a 24-7 personal assistant plugged into their ear and their eye, and when they need something, they’ll just ask. The vast majority of the public’s interaction with information will be through AI. People will still read books and magazines, but the books will be customized to the individual. For example, when my grandson picks up Sherlock Holmes, his version will be annotated to explain dog carts, Lascar sailors, calabash pipes, and coal shuttles. That is, all those things I didn’t understand when I was reading the books. He might want an illustration on every page. His book will be different than mine – customized to him. The role of human creators will be greatly diminished. Great minds will continue to contribute to the body of knowledge, but there won’t be any need for the average editor, writer, reporter, commentator, blogger, designer, singer, or speaker. AI will manage all of that. But the AI will be monitored. Scholars will conduct daily classes to train and fine-tune AI. Speaking of classes, there won’t be many teachers. Students will learn from AI, and the AI will learn from its interaction with humans, with other AI, and from the scholars. There won’t be any such thing as a publishing company. If you want a leather-bound edition of Lewis’ Space Trilogy, with art in the style of Bruce Pennington, AI will figure that out and send it to a print-on-demand facility. Manned by robots, of course. Same if you want a guide to what to plant in your vegetable garden. It’ll be customized to you. All this generative AI will be monetized with ads, and by providing business intelligence to the few corporations that still need to exist. Like the print-on-demand vendor. Scholars will train the AI – to make sure it doesn’t get any weird ideas – but the scholars won’t have the final say. Politicians will. If some position, or point of view, or perspective, is required to be believed, the AI will adjust everything to make sure you get that point of view. And it will report you if you seem to kick against the pricks. Oh, by the way. People will still have jobs. In 10 years we will have recovered from the disastrous attempts at “universal basic income,” where 90 percent of the population was addicted to drugs and porn. That wasn’t sustainable, so the AI figured a way make people think they were doing something important. But none of that was in publishing, unless you were one of those scholars who spent all day debating with AI bots.

The challenge that artificial intelligence poses for publishers is pretty simple. If I can get an answer from ChatGPT, why do I need to go to your site, or read your magazine? In a year or two, the idea that I would enter a search and be content with a list of homework to do to find the answer to my question will seem as outdated as the stirrup cup. The fact that AI can provide answers to questions is only a threat to publishers who provide answers. If you provide comedy, or drama, cat videos, or something like that, …. Oh, wait. AI does that as well. Nevermind. It’s a challenge for all publishers. In response, I’ve encouraged all publishers to take four steps. 1. Change your robots.txt file to politely ask the AI bots not to slurp up your content. 2. Since that’s not good enough, also get your IT people to deny such requests at the server level. 3. Change your terms and conditions to make it clear that your content may not be used to train AI models. 4. Start training your own AI models with your own content and your own voice so you also can answer people’s questions. I have two new things to add to this list. 5. Start characterizing the answers from AI as misinformed, erroneous, unprofessional, untrustworthy, etc. If publishers follow my advice, and if we’re lucky, that will turn out to be true as informed, professional, trustworthy content will no longer be available to train their models. They’ll be stuck with tin-foil hat blogs and such. 6. Further amend your terms and conditions to say that users may not upload your content to AI chatbots. Unfortunately, that latter point is likely to be a losing battle. Consider this. You hire professional editors to carefully research and explain the latest development in whatever subject you’re expert in. It’s great stuff, and ChatGPT couldn’t hold a candle to it. Then one of your subscribers uploads your report to ChatGPT and says “please summarize this for me.” There are even browser plugins that will do this automatically, so that all your carefully researched content is fed to the AI monster. I don’t think there’s a technological way to keep your content from getting into the maw of the AI chatbots, so you’ll have to try to stop it legally in your terms and conditions. And I guess in lawsuits, regulations, and legislation. Sorry. I don’t like it either, but when I look into my crystal ball, that’s what I’m seeing. Or you can just roll over and give up. I suppose you could do that as well. But I’d rather you didn’t, because then I wouldn’t have any clients.

As the media digs their own grave, is there a growing challenge from independent journalists? Trust in “the media” is very low, and the lack of trust is richly deserved. The most recent example is how the media fell for Hamas disinformation about the hospital bombing in Gaza. It’s quite a black eye. However, as bad as the various news brands are, saying that you get your news from X or TikTok makes you sound like a weirdo, despite the fact that there are a lot of credible sources who use other channels like that. Bari Weiss, for example, who is a reputable former New York Times journalist is now on substack and such. She has her own thing called The Free Press. There are a lot of journalists who are going out on their own, getting out from the constraints of the major networks. Imagine that several of them started to band together. They could form their own brand, and then you wouldn’t say you got your news from X or TikTok, you’d say you got your news from that brand. X, TikTok, YouTube – whatever – would simply be channels through which you connect with that brand. That could be an important part of the future of media brands. You already see it in fits and starts. For example, there was a group of podcasters who dubbed themselves “the intellectual dark web.” That’s like a mini brand. So if you had a collection of independent journalists who agreed to some basic principles, and organized themselves around a brand, that would be pretty interesting. It sounds like a good idea, but there’s the problem of ego. A lot of these people are prima donnas, and they like working on their own. Let’s be honest, a lot of people end up working on their own because they don’t play well with others. But this is a nascent challenge to the major media brands. In a way, it’s more closely aligned with the original (somewhat naive and idealistic) promise of the internet. We were supposed to be able to talk to one another, and get information straight from the source without the mediation of some brand. And then reality struck, and we discovered that the platforms themselves became tools of censorship. YouTube takes down videos that they arrogantly decide are “disinformation.” But despite the challenges – censorship by the platforms, and the ego of the players – I think there might be an opportunity here. Independent journalists could group together under a common banner and offer a substantial challenge to the incumbent brands.

Successful operations require aligning disparate systems toward a common goal. Sometimes those “systems” are people or groups of people. Krehbiel’s Razor is a mindset that breaks down barriers between people and helps find a way to solve problems and finish projects. Sometimes the only way to solve a problem is to see it from someone else’s perspective. You’ve probably heard of Occam’s razor, which says when there are two competing explanations, the simpler one is more likely to be true. That’s because for the more complicated explanation to be true, more unlikely things have to happen. The simplest explanation isn’t always right, but it’s more likely to be right. Less well known is Hanlon’s razor, which says “Never ascribe to malice what is adequately explained by incompetence.” (Some people say stupidity instead of incompetence.) Napoleon is supposed to have said something along these lines. Hanlon’s razor is a remedy for the unfortunate habit of assuming people have ill intent. Often they don’t. For example, when you’re not invited to the meeting or the party after work, it doesn’t necessarily mean the organizer was slighting you. There are other possibilities that don’t require malice – like they were using the wrong distribution list, or they simply forgot. I read about Hanlon’s insight and thought it could be taken a step further. Krehbiel’s razor says “Don’t assume malice or incompetence when it might be a matter of a different perspective.” For example, let’s say Joe wants to get the attention of some people on a Zoom call, so he starts waving his hand. He gets very frustrated when two people keep talking and don’t recognize him very obviously trying to get their attention. Then he realizes they might be on “speaker mode,” and they were only seeing the person speaking – not his hand waving. IOW, they had no idea he was trying to get their attention. They weren’t being rude, they simply had a different view. Don’t assume other people are seeing what you’re seeing, or seeing it from your perspective. Krehbiel’s Razor also applies to the conflicts between marketing and IT. When IT says they need a requirements document, it’s very easy for marketing to interpret that as “go away, kid, you bother me.” No, they really do need a requirements document. And when marketing keeps changing what they want, it’s easy for IT to assume they’re hopeless flakes who don’t know what the heck they’re doing. In reality, they might be testing new concepts. They might be responding to customer input, or they may have a new directive from management. Better communication would certainly help in both cases, but you also have to assume the other person might have a valid but different perspective on the problem. IT has concerns marketing might not be aware of, and vice versa. Krehbiel’s Razor also applies to how we talk about political or social issues. My preference would be that we didn’t (in professional settings), but if it has to happen, remember that other people might not share your point of view. It’s rude and inconsiderate to speak as if everyone agrees with your perspective on a complicated or controversial issue. In summary, Occam’s Razor says to prefer the simple explanation, Hanlon’s Razor says people might be stupid rather than vicious, and Krehbiel’s Razor says you might be assuming malice or stupidity when you’re the stupid one. The other person is just seeing the problem in a way that you’re not.

Media is about a promise of personal transformation A recent episode of the “People vs. Algorithms” podcast titled “Chris Kimball Says Screw the Algorithm” provides some very timely and important lessons for publishers. You can skip to 6:51 if you’re in a hurry. Chris wanted to build a new kind of media business. He was publishing a magazine in the 80s. He was competing with Conde Nast, etc. The whole system was based on giving away the subscription to get the eyeballs to sell to advertisers. That undermines the value of the content. He relaunched his cooking magazine – I think it was Cooks Illustrated? – as 32 black and white pages plus cover. He thought black and white would make people feel that the content itself is more valuable. I.e., if you’re not selling pretty pictures, you must be selling useful words. Brian Morrissey said stripping away all the frippery of media gave it more credibility and authenticity. Chris says at the heart of any successful media company is the idea that the subscriber will be personally transformed. Everybody wants to be somebody else. If you can help transform somebody, that’s the highest perceived value you can offer. For his brand, if they can transform the reader’s cooking, they’ll transform the reader. He’ll be a happier, more confident person. Chris’ brand goes beyond the magazine. They have a TV show on PBS, a store, cooking classes, and other things. Troy Young says for most media companies that start on an e-commerce business, it will either be a rounding error, or it will fail. But Chris got it right, and I think part of that is that they’re not relying on the content to sell the products. As Brian pointed out, when people are reading a recipe or an article, they’re not in buying mode. That’s a mistake many companies make. You need the content and the products to mesh, but don’t expect your content to sell your products. Chris also said that the way to make money with e-commerce is to create and manufacture your own products. You need your cost of goods to be 20 percent or lower so you can afford advertising and still make a profit. Then the store becomes the top of the funnel for membership. After someone has purchased some pepper and some knives, they might sign up for the magazine. Content doesn’t act as a funnel to the product side of the business. They’re two very separate businesses. But creating the content puts them in touch with people and concepts they need to know what kinds of products to create. Chris also says a media company needs a point of view. In the context of cooking, it’s not about having lots of recipes, it’s about having the right recipes. In the social media world, that recipe or cooking concept has to be intriguing and deliver a memorable story in about 60 seconds. If you look at YouTube, you can see that everybody follows certain practices. E.g., all the thumbnails have “surprised guy face,” as Brian put it. But Chris says screw the algorithm. Do something different. You’ll never survive in a “me too” environment because there are too many options out there. You need to be different. The chances of being successful in a copycat environment are almost zero. The last point I want to touch on fits with what I’ve been saying in my last couple of videos, which is that the volume of viewers has nothing to do with how many people are attached to your brand. That’s what I meant when I said that the advertising model – where you pursue reach and volume – leads you down the wrong path. Resources Chris Kimball Says Screw the Algorithm https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/chris-kimball-says-screw-the-algorithm/id1642958293?i=1000631082016