Back in the day, regional media (TV stations and big dailies) were the primary purveyors of content for each Metro area in the US. Back in the day, companies, corporations, and government created big brochures that represented everything about themselves to large, broad segments of clients and citizens. Back in the day, all of these organizations created big web sites that were thick, with zillions of words and hundreds of pages in them.

All that is coming to a close – like a slow-motion implosion that gets smaller and smaller – then blows out into a nova with many, many small pieces scattering everywhere.

Thus, the rise of micropublishing. Not too many years ago, it was all about a bunch of small magazines targeting a range of small user groups. I heard of one that is roughly titled “Coin Operated Laundry Owners Magazine”.  That trend started about 15 or 20 years ago.

Today, Micropublishing has come into its own- especially with so-called “push” e-news products that focus on constituency groups that are as small as a couple hundred individuals. I should know – my firm – MCCI- produces a number of them. There are many reasons why they’re popular and effective – but the three most important principals are 1) readers read primarily out of self-interest, and nothing else; 2) 99% of all other content readers are presented with is irrelevant to their daily working and family lives; 3) consumers are expert at filtering out all but the most important, relevant content.

So….regional content has less relevance than what’s actually happening in the 6 blocks surrounding my home; general business news is not as relevant as what others are doing in my specific business; broad government content is not as relevant as how government affects my specific, personal and business life.

Even now, big web sites are giving way to “microsites”. And digital broadcasters are trying to figure out how to customize content not just to my neighborhood, but to me, personally.

Now THAT’s micropublishing!

I was meeting today with the Sr. VP of Marketing/Communications for a $200M finance firm on the east coast. Like so many others, he just got the order a couple of weeks ago: his body count must go down. He was forced to drop his director of communications and some others. Now the executive has lots of demands, but not enough “go to” people to make it all happen. He’s swamped as it is and maybe even sleepless: the circles under his eyes were so deep I couldn’t even see the color of his eyes or the whites surrounding them.

Though losing a key member of his team was depressing for him and tragic for the guys who lost their jobs, there are some things firms like mine do to lessen the fallout for the executive. In a virtual world, with the help of transparent, user friendly technology, I showed the exec why he doesn’t have to sacrifice his marketing agenda just because his budget is contracting – and he can start getting 7 or 8 hours of sleep a night. Here are my five favorite tips for marketing execs who want to cut budgets and save money:

1) Use a contractor – but be careful about subcontracting services to large  ad agencies: they tend to load up too many bodies on very simple jobs, and their profit margins are often grossly excessive.

2) Use a contractor who is totally transparent in all billing practices – and one who is willing to quote flat costs for specific product development services (brochures, e-newsletters, web design, content development, PR, etc.) upfront while quoting a flat, non-changeable fee.

3) If hourly rate services are required, demand a front-end estimate as to the number of hours for specific activity; if its impossible to estimate, look for a rate of $100/hour, give or take 10 dollars or so.

4) Look for an occasional in-person relationship with the leader of that contractor organization – otherwise, avoid lots of on-site meetings when a phone or video conference will do. A solid organization should be able to give you terrific results with no in-person meetings. (Many marketing organizations love on-site meetings because they can send several people and rack up the hourly bills.)

5) Finally: avoid organizations owned by large conglomerates – their margins are ridiculous (funded by you). Look for a boutique firm that will give you tons of attention at reasonable prices – but beware of boutique names that are actually subsidiaries of large multi-national agencies – they look small, but their cost structures are no different than their parent companies.

It dawned on me a few years ago what a waste of resources it is for communication firms to “load up” bodies on client projects. Some of you savvy corporate communication and marketing directors know exactly what I’m talking about: you hire a firm or agency to develop internet, print or audio/video programming (or even strategic marketing consulting) – and the next thing you know tons of people are assigned to “work” the project, while you’re doling out hourly cash for all the bodies.

Also, for some reason many firms insist that all their people have to be on-site, sitting in the client’s offices in order to prove their “value” to the client. I really think that’s a cover for the contractor’s real motive: chunk up the bill and increase the margin on the job.

So armed with those observations, my firm (MCCI) put much more of its energy into online and phone/video conferencing with its clients – whether they’re in New York, St. Louis, Atlanta, or Detroit. We also decided we don’t need to have designers and writers constantly showing up at the client’s offices, or flying around the country on the clients’ dime just to make an appearance – on their dime, no less.

We took it a step further at MCCI: we looked at how many people are really needed in order to have a creative, evocative message, regardless of the medium. No, you don’t need 7 people on a video crew in order to have an award-winning product – try one or two! No, you don’t need three writers for an e-news publication: you only need one strong person with research and writing skills who understands the interactive environment. No, you don’t need 5 people to develop a stunning new web site for a client – try just 2 or 3.

The old agency sensibility says, “if you load up more people, you’ll have a more creative product.” In the interactive age, my firm’s sensibility says, “too many cooks rob the project of its creativity, ingenuity and originality – and they rip off the client financially.”

Doing it our way is GREAT for the client. Better product. More resonant messaging. And a much lower cost.

Here’s a sampling of how technology drives MCCI through a day. I’ve cobbled together real stories of how we work day-to-day into a synthesized 9 hour day:

7:30 am – download client office documents from home computer “dummy terminal” that opens MCCI’s office document filing systems.

8:30 am – Dowloaded documents inform an 8:30am digital tie-in conference call with client remotely hosted from my car. My Bluetooth headset ties into my Blackberry to eliminate distracting background noise.

9:30 am – I arrive at our Southfield offices. One of our video podcast producers in another city emails me a digitally compressed edited video using Bando video hosting technology for my review as well as review by Executive Producer John Owens who is in yet another city viewing it online. 3 minutes later its examined and approved for client review. Client reviews the video online later and approves for distribution.

10:00am – Digital syndication expert Chris Heaton remotely posts a client video podcast to 12 different public video portals (YouTube, Yahoo Video, etc.). He creates key search words for each and posts them. He also monitors the user other 75 videos we created and posted for the same client. Chis tells me the series of videos will be opened by about 1 Million people worldwide by some time later in 2008.

11:00am – Producer/writer Katie Scallen finishes an overseas intranet broadcast interview that she records using a small 4-inch digital box that stores broadcast quality time-coded audio off a simple phone line. The technology allows Katie to interview and record virtually anyone on a global footprint. The interview is part of a regular 5-minute corporate audio newscast that Katie broadcasts online for a Fortune 500 global firm based in New York.

1:00pm – Paul Manzella, who operates our digital video/broadcast editorial operations based at a global automotive client’s world HQ’s, is at the New York Auto Show, finishing a story for the daily TV newscast MCCI produces and sends via encrypted online technology as well as scrambled satellite technology to the firm’s global employee audience. Paul is with Greg Zonca who is taping using digital video. After the taping is finished, he edits the newscast story on his laptop using broadcast quality Avid editing technology.

3:00pm – MCCI’s Senior Producer John Owens is in St. Louis finishing up a monthly corporate videocast that is distributed to over 100,000 members of the largest nonprofit hospital system in America. It is sent online and video hosted through a mirrored, secure server that has flexible bandwidth to accomodate small to very large viewer downloads of the firm’s regular newscast.

4pm – Designer/editor Kristen Miller puts the finishing touches on the orginally designed digital animation for the first of a national “video on demand” cable series of specials being produced and written by Owens. She’s using a compact fully digital design facility with the latest in software that allows graphic product for broadcast or internet distribution.

5pm – Senior Producer Daphne Hughes begins distribution of an e-newsletter and podcasts for a major nonprofit organization’s “key influencer” email list. Daphne uses an HTML format with active links and videos. The video podcasts are derived from an 8-part NBC-affiliate broadcast series on homelessness she produced and wrote a few months ago.

I’ve lost track of the number of ad agencies, creative directors, producers, and designers who swing and whiff when it comes to communicating to consumers. There’s no doubt that packaging a message is very important in today’s convergence communication world – web, broadcast, print, live events, et al. But we’ve moved into an era of folly where so many messages are 99.9% packaging and only 1% – or less – of real content.

I think that consumers are the ones who are most sophisticated, discerning, and educated when it comes to what is effective and what isn’t – more sophisticated than much of the creative community gives them credit for. It doesn’t matter what the age, race, income level, geographic location, or political inclination. The fact remains that consumers pay attention to – and retain – messages that tell them something they didn’t know – or reinforce something they did know.

I’ve seen organizations spend millions of dollars on creative TV messages, resulting in minimal response – while someone else produces a short, thoughtful, message with an extremely low budget, resulting in astounding impact and retention. Guess which one kept the eye on the content ball?

I disagree with virtually every sales book I’ve ever read. When you boil it down, they all basically offer strategies about how to manipulate people into giving you money. I hate that. I actually had an epiphany about it quite a number of years ago. I came face to face with myself, looking in a mirror, and decided that if I can’t be any different with the business people I meet than I am with my next door neighbor, then I’m a phony.

So I decided to change. It was hard, but ultimately one of the best decisions I ever made in my life. Building business relationships is really no different than building non-business relationships. You need to be transparent. You don’t need to talk about business all the time, or even any of the time. You need to say what’s on your mind. You should do no planning – zero planning – in a relationship based meeting (which is much different than a formal business presentation, of course). You never look at the person as being a standing-up greenback. You help in any way you can personally, without asking for money. You listen just as much as you talk. If no money comes, nothing changes. That’s because you never expect money in the relationship.

The result: Authentic relationships that stand the test of time – relationships that are not based on the usual unspoken quid pro quo in business: “I’ll be your friend and ally if you give me money.”

Then, of course, when there’s really a legitimate need, your authentic friends will turn to those they trust. But trust is always proven by actions, and should never be talked about. The moment you say, “Trust me”, you beg the question.

I’ve been on the road, more or less, for three years. I’ve met with over 100 VP’s and Directors of Corporate Communications. All the meetings have been with multibillion dollar firms located in New York, Chicago, Minneapolis, Atlanta, Boston, St. Louis, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Austin.

In those meetings, there are amazing consistencies as to their biggest communication challenges. Here’s one of the biggest:

Their CEO’s often think that simply distributing, emailing, or otherwise publishing a single message is what you do when you want to communicate. They don’t understand that for any audience, you must EARN the right to be heard. Here are the basic things I think you have to do to make that happen:

1. Be very brief.

2. Dice up content. If it takes 5 minutes to read or view something, there should be 5 stories or headlines in those 5 minutes – even if it covers a single theme.

3. Limit the number of communication channels, so people aren’t confused as to where to get their content.

4. If you can, use rich media (video or audio, especially online).

5. Use declarative messages, not passive ones.

6. Get to the point IMMEDIATELY.

7. Be relevant and “connect the dots” to the interests of the reader or viewer.

8. Never be boring.

9. Find multiple creative ways to say the same thing, so your message is retained.

10. …And finally, its all about content. If your content is not strong, there’s no reason to communicate!

Ever wonder why non profit organizations don’t seriously tap into big media to talk about what they know and do? I’m convinced it’s only because they don’t fully understand that media is really interested in causes. And help organizations are all about causes. All you have to do is connect the dots – and voila – serious coverage of your non profit organization’s content.

But beware – shameless shilling for your organization won’t work. You need to establish yourself to major media as what you are: A subject matter expert who can talk anecdotally about the social and environmental challenges of the day!

Reporters are interested first about how what you have to say helps context other big stories they’re working on. Sometimes you can actually be at the very center of that big story if you have successfully identified a trend, new problem, new solution, or major initiative that has high value for a newspaper. However, you need to stay away from things that are big to you but – because of the press of urgent matters of the day – has no value to a general readership or viewership of a media property.

Nonprofit organizations need to control their urge to talk too much about activities rather than real happenings. Give yourself a test: Read today’s paper, while being aware of which items you skip past. I’m willing to bet the “garden club annual meeting” won’t be something you linger on!

In my previous blog I mentioned that Big Media in metropolitan regions tend to spend a lot of cash actually creating product. And advertisers even locally spend a significant amount of cash on spots and print ads. Which is the sixth reason Big Regional Media are freaking out:

6. The cost of production in print and broadcast media far outstrips the cost of production on the web

…which raises another big question: If digital content consumers demand lots and lots of it in short doses, how can Big Media create that kind of content volume – especially in rich video and audio media – at a dramatically lower price? To do so would require a sea-change in the way that video and audio content is produced.

The sad news is that most of the mainstream video producing organizations, Ad Agencies and TV stations have not adapted well to cost reduction necessities. Though newspapers have ironically been quicker on the uptake, they admit their video products still have a long way to go in many cases.

The smart organizations have gotten rid of the $50,000 to $250,000 field videocam packages and replaced them with smaller digital video cameras that cost as little as a few thousand dollars. These same smart organizations no longer staff video shoots with 4 or 5 or 6 people. They use one person, maybe two. Further, rapidly going away are the giant, impressive editing suites that cost several hundred thousand dollars – in favor of laptop or small desktop editing configurations that deliver the same basic result for pennies on the dollar.

So do consumers know the difference? They actually prefer lower production value in local media – while being suspicious of high-end video productions in a local environment. Why? Because they smell marketing when they see slick stuff.

Cost of video production has been overpriced and inflated for years – driven by Ad Agencies. Some of the post-production facilities that cater to the big Advertising gurus charge astounding per-hour fees, while getting the agency producers to give them the business through certain “environmental incentives”. For example:

Catering free, sumptuous meals at all times of the day.
Providing unlimited free beer, wine, et al during the work day in their facilities
One facility built a full service mahogany bar and lounge in their offices, with unlimited hard liquor and snacks – no extra charge, of course.
If prolific video content is going to be evident, the cost to produce it has to be low. Giving away free booze just inflates costs further.

But why do I keep harping about video and audio content on the web? Is it really that important?

It’s far more important than Big Regional Media truly understands. For example, the number of seconds of video downloaded or streamed from the internet in the first 6 months of 2007 was 175% greater than the previous six months. And I’m willing to bet that when the data comes in for the last 6 months of 2007, the number will increase by another 250% to 300% over the first 6 months of 2007.

This wildly growing appetite for online video is fueled by several factors:

Computer technology becoming a commodity. All computers and laptops – even the cheapest ones – now have video cards and huge amounts of RAM with a range of video software, media players, Flash, and what have you, to accommodate video and audio online.
Bandwidth continues to grow exponentially year to year, allowing easy, seamless video playback, download, and streaming.
Video compression technology continues to become more sophisticated and efficient, allowing more video content with larger pictures on your desktop or laptop.
Soooo….its not just about the Internet – but also about video and audio on the Internet. If you’re weak in that area, you’ll struggle to grow loyal, unique visitors.

There’s one final reason (#7) Regional Media are Freaking Out – and ironically, its something reserved for local TV stations – something that they have no control over:

#7. Local broadcast TV stations have been forced by law to invest in digital transmission technology that some argue will be outmoded before it even has time to take root.

All local TV stations have been required to convert their transmitters to digital technology. By the beginning of 2009 all television transmission must be solely digital. That mandatory conversion has cost local broadcasters hundreds of millions of dollars in operating and capital expenses in order to make that conversion.

Going to mandatory digital transmission originally seemed like a good thing to do at the time it was put into law years ago. It was supposed to enable TV stations to split into multiple sub-channels. It could enable them to serve specific smaller user groups in their respective regions with unique programming, rather than the “one size fits all” approach to each station’s programming schedule as they currently exist.

The problem is that fewer and fewer viewers get their TV from broadcast signals. Mostly it’s picked up off of cable. It’s true that cable operations are more or less required to carry local TV stations’ primary signals – but it remains to be seen what the arrangement will be when TV stations start trying to produce digital programming that goes beyond their normal signal.

Some futurists argue that the Internet’s appetite for video is growing at such a breakneck speed that it will eventually eclipse traditional broadcast programming. If that’s true, both local broadcasters and daily newspapers will be well-positioned with their Internet properties – but only if they solve all 7 of the challenges I’ve described over the past 5 days.

The Victors in all the Freakout chaos will go to those who look at content, production economics, and human behavior as one picture – one that is constantly changing. That means Big Regional Media need to be in a continual state of reinvention and experimentation in order to attract people, loyalty, advertisers, and ultimately, profitability and success.

And that, of course, means continual risk-taking with eyes wide open.

Everyone’s talking about content these days. Very few really understand that the one thing that is least valued in the advertising community is the most priceless commodity to the consumers who are moving to digital communication in droves.

So with that in mind, here are Unlucky Reasons for Media Freakout numbers 4 and 5:

#4. Traditional advertising creative messages don’t pass the authenticity smell test because they consist of mostly made up content or redundant cloned messages – not “found” real-world content.

#5. Traditional media only “presents” a small menu of homogenized content because it’s structurally and economically impossible to do otherwise.

The word “content” has been severely bastardized because it has been put in a box and limited. If you have a 30 second commercial that an advertising writer made up out of the clear blue in order to be imaginative and unique, that would be called “rich content” by writers, producers and agency chiefs hawking their wares.

But that is far from the kind of content that attracts the new kinds of readers, watchers and users on an ongoing basis. Why? Because 30 seconds of one message or a singular ad becomes useless very, very quickly, and for a number of reasons. Let me list them:

1.      Our capacity to absorb volumes of content in a multitask environment is much, much deeper and broader than it was twenty years, ten years, five years, and even one year ago. Think about how it feels to be going 75 on the freeway and then being forced to go 5mph for even a small period of time. You get frustrated and even surly. Same deal with limited, uni-dimensional content.

2.       Same holds true with print advertising. Though print advertising can still be very effective in some venues, the print venue has even more severe challenges. First, the so-called “read-through” rate in print publications has been a huge problem. In some daily publication there’s a 30% to 40% drop in readership when you go from Page One to Page Three. And that’s not even talking about advertising messages – that read-through drop-off even includes editorial content in most places.

3.      The second print problem goes back to that pesky “filtering” issue. Many readers easily and seamlessly scan through newspapers, focusing only on the headlines that are most important to them. These days many are not only ignoring ads, but are not even consciously aware of their existence in many cases. That’s how sophisticated the filtering instinct has become among readers.

4.      The advertising world today thinks of itself as sort of a miniature Hollywood culture. Movies. Movie Stars. Celebrities. High-priced commercials. Or “creative” ideas pulled right out of someone’s…er….imagination.

The problem is that consumers know the difference between Hollywood made up stuff and commercial made up stuff. More and more consumers just aren’t buying it when you’re trying to sell them something.

That doesn’t mean that commercial messaging is dead. Far from it. It’s just that it will eventually be dead if advertisers don’t get on the content bandwagon. The problem is that most Ad Agencies are ill-equipped to find authentic content spontaneously, while having that authenticity regularly interact with their brands.

A number of firms have tried it with entertainment programming – and with few exceptions, they’ve failed miserably, while spending a ridiculous amount of money. Some of the automakers have done it. Go ahead and ask them how it all turned out.

The key is REAL, not contrived. Spontaneous reality, not manipulated like the mind-numbing reality shows that are pandemic today. Low production values – not Hollywood. Stuff that really IS the way it really is, while spontaneously reacting to and interacting with the retailer or product or what-have-you. It takes a journalistic sensibility to do that – not an Ad Agency sensibility.

You have to produce or create lots and lots of that kind of content, using primarily rich media (audio and video) in a digital distribution environment. Instead of a bunch of 30 minute episodes of reality, consumers like boatloads of 90 second to 2-minute episodes of serialized content.

So that brings me to a fundamental weakness traditional TV and Print publications have (Freakout Reason #5):

5. Traditional media only “presents” a small menu of homogenized content because it’s structurally and economically impossible to do otherwise.

Local TV only has 24 hours of programming, in real-time. Though you can easily Tivo any of the programs you want, the stations only acquire and produce enough programming to fill 24 hours. And most of that is off the shelf syndicated stuff, network material, and infomercials. News and special events occupy the rest. Never mind that today there is maybe 4 times the amount of news on a given local channel with a new reporting and producing staff that is generally 40% smaller than it was 20 years ago.

The fact is that the demands for increased profitability from TV’s mostly publicly held conglomerate owners as well as prohibitive labor agreements make it extremely difficult to meet the local demands for more and more and more content. Much of it on the air is simply repeated, which again fails the smell test for new information consumers.

Newspapers have even more obvious problems. It costs money to print papers. It costs money for ink. The bigger the paper, the more it costs to publish. Newspaper size is driven by ad revenue, period. No ads to fill those pages, and suddenly the amount of news content permitted in the paper shrinks dramatically. Limited content, again, smells bad.

But there is hope amid the challenges! Stay tuned for my last two Media Freakout Reasons in my next and last blog…