Old Media's Plan To Save Itself? Advertise To The Advertisers!

from the good-luck-with-that dept

There's been no shortage of stories lately about how "old media" companies in the newspaper and magazine business are missing opportunities to get with the new media program -- and are facing a long and difficult battle to win back advertisers. However, it appears those old media types have come up with a way to fight back. Rather than look at why readers and advertisers are jumping on the new media bandwagon, and maybe figuring out how to adjust, the old media types are going to advertise to the advertisers, explaining why old media still had plenty of life left. They're actually hiring ad agencies to come up with an ad campaign to show that it's still worth advertising in newspapers -- which simply smacks of desperation on their part. Meanwhile, some magazines are going a slightly different route by bribing subscribers with rewards for subscribing. It seems like a lot of gimmicks and smoke and mirrors, rather than actually thinking about the future of the media business, and how existing players may want to adjust to keep up.
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  • identicon
    Precision Blogger, 2 May 2005 @ 7:14am

    This is an example of a general business principle

    I've worked on many large computer projects, at various companies, that were obviously doomed to fail. Management, in all these projects, followed reasoning similar to the following:

    "It must be true that this project can succeed; therefore it must be reasonable to do X." Usually X was yet another obviously doomed idea. You're describing a similar case. The old media companies, by assuming that they must be better than the new ones, easily conclude that advertising will prove their case.
    - Precision Blogger
    http://precision-blogging.blogspot.com

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 2 May 2005 @ 8:12am

      ...

      People's pride sometimes forces people to make irrational statements/decisions. They are still making money... just not as much as they used to.

      link to this | view in chronology ]


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