What no one is telling you about the media.

We see rumors and conspiracy theories popping up every day and some people believe them because they fit in a particular world view. Just because it sounds true doesn't mean it is true.

There is a phrase that pops up in a lot of blogs, social media posts and general conversation that really annoys me.

"The media is not covering this."

It doesn't matter what the socio-religio-political position of the person making the statement because it is a universal belief among all stripes that something they consider crucial is being ignored by the news media. This article is to describe why your crucial information is being ignored.

1. You don't actually read general news media so you have no idea if it is being covered or how it is being covered if it is. Few people actually read legitimate news sources anymore. More people get their news from click-bait sites or gossip shows like TMZ; partisan blogs and news commentaries; and social media posts than they do actual news organizations. Those people also don't know how news and opinion are two different forms of information. Part of that problem is there is more media investment in the low-information content because there is a greater return on investment. Stating an uninformed opinion takes a lot less work and cost than digging out a news story.


2. What you consider news is actually not true.  We see rumors and conspiracy theories popping up every day and some people believe them because they fit in a particular world view. Just because it sounds true doesn't mean it is true. News professionals are supposed to take their time and research information to report truth. It is the first tenet of the professional journalist code of ethics: Seek truth and report it. Now it is also a truth that many professionals don't do a very good job of the seeking part, especially lately. That doesn't necessarily mean they are lazy, but that they don't actually have time to do their jobs well, which brings us to point three.


3. The news media you think exists died out a decade ago. I've been a media professional for 40 years. I started out as a reporter and branched out into marketing communications, PR, and communication strategy, so I have been intently watching the contraction of the news industry. In the Electronics Industry media alone, less than a third of the publications I used to work for and with still exist and 95 percent of the professional journalists have been replaced by marketing executives and low-level engineers who hated to do engineering. Hundreds of newspapers and broadcast news organizations have disappeared in the past decade. We have more access to media channels than ever before and less than half the personnel to cover actual news. Jobs that used to go to professional journalists at one time are now going to people who can be entertaining rather than good at finding truth. I recently saw a "news" story by a freelancer on a cable news network who I had seen previously doing standup on the Comedy Channel. So if the media is, in reality, not covering a particular bit of news you consider important, it probably because they do not have a human being available to cover it.

So what can we do about this?

• First, maybe you can pick up a newspaper once in a while and actually read the news. Several times a week I read two local newspapers, I subscribe online to Al Jazeera, The Economist, Foreign Policy, The Washington Post and Politico. I also have www.snopes.com in my bookmark bar so I can quickly review if what I’m reading is accurate.


• Second, on Facebook, rather than follow pages like Huffington Post, moveon.org and TMZ you could start following the really boring stuff that may or may not coincide with your theological and political views. Instead of watching MSNBC or Fox and Friends, watch the news programs on ABC, NBC, CBS and PBS... and NOT THE COMMENTARY sections.  Instead of reading opinion pieces on what was said on Meet the Press and Face the Nation, I actually watch them to see what was really discussed. Online sources of information are not all bad. scotusblog.com is a great source of information about Supreme Court news, for example. 


• Third, a good filter for any online source is any that does NOT use the phrases, "What they are not telling you...", "A little-known fact...", and "what the media isn't covering." 


• Fourth, stop listening to people that tell you what you want to hear. Step out of your comfort zone.


• Fifth, don't trust anyone under 30 with an opinion (OK, just kidding about the last one... sort of).

If you follow these guidelines you will not only find out just what is actually being covered, but you will hone your BS meter’s ability to make you properly skeptical.

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State of CORPORATE media

When I started this blog it was dedicated to following the movements of journalists from one publication to another in the electronics world. That was over a decade ago. Now I cover a lot more than that but I think it is fascinating that the movement of journalists is noteworthy not because they are moving to a new publication, not that they are moving to an corporate job, but that they are now moving from one corporation to another.

At the 52nd DAC (where exhibitors appear to be down 15 percent from last year) the news of the acquisition of Atrenta by Synopsys was eclipsed by word that Brian Fuller, editor in chief at Cadence Design was moving to take over content strategy at ARM ltd, and Richard Goering, dean of EDA journalism, was officially retiring.

When I started this blog it was dedicated to following the movements of journalists from one publication to another in the electronics world. That was over a decade ago. Now I cover a lot more than that but I think it is fascinating that the movement of journalists is noteworthy not because they are moving to a new publication, not that they are moving to an corporate job, but that they are now moving from one corporation to another.

On the show floor was all kinds of rumors about who will fill the gaps at Cadence, which has become something of a model for content strategy under Fuller's direction. Early favorites appear to be John Blyler, recently "liberated" from Extension Media and Dylan McGrath, currently blocking the newsroom exit at EE Times (Yes, I'm being snarky. Tepid apologies).

ARM's decision to hire Fuller is momentous as it may herald an era that they will actually invest in staffing rather than just technology, but it will be an uphill climb, and more than it was at Cadence where some of the trailblazing had been done by Goering and then by the late Anna del Rosario who brought a real vision for modern communications strategy to the company. The foundation she and Fuller laid will serve whoever comes in well.

ARM has a greater depth of subject matter to draw from than Cadence, however, which draws 90 percent of it's revenue from tools (OK, maybe less, but still a lot). So that depth may help Fuller breakthrough the bureaucratic logjam there. It's definitely a challenge that Fuller can take at least two out of three falls.

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A word on competition in the media industry

Wow.  The past few weeks have been pretty intense as I complete a white paper on Media in the 21st Century (gotta get it done because lots of people are aksing for it.) But in the past week, the conversation, from my audio interview with Kevin Morris of EE Journal has started to get a little heated.  It sort of reminds me of a scene from the movie "The Man Who Would Be King."  As Michael Caine and Sean Connery are recruiting followers, every tribe has the same thing to say about the tribe that harrasses them. ""We don't like the people who live upstream; they keep pissing down the river on us."

Nobody likes their closest competitor and it seems to be required that you blame them for serious moral turpitude.  Only the guy on top has the requirement to be magnanimous.

I'm not really a competitive guy.  I have a basic moral code that makes me try to see the good in everyone and everything.  Most of the time it works (except in politics and soccer) and in the world of media evolution it is mandatory.  Footwasher Media has taken a middle ground, which make people on both sides uneasy and sometimes angry.  I was right with one side for a long time.  In fact, I kinda blazed the trail to it back in 2001 demanding that everyone see that it was about to fall apart.  Some of the people who don't like what we are saying and doing now were the same ones who said I was delusional more than a decade ago.

But I do understand the need to be competitive.  The pie has gotten much smaller in traditional media than it was at the turn of the century and conventional business wisdom requires that you establish a moral high ground for yourself over the rest of the field that is still offering much the same thing you are.  It's called differentiation.

But it's all so tiring because there will always be someone pissing into the river upstream from you.  Sometimes you just have to dig a well.

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The final word on UBM Tech... for now

My posts on the changes at UBM Tech have been the most popular on this blog since I started it.  Lots of people have weighed in on whether it is good or bad (most say bad) but I've tried to remain neutral.  I'm maintaining that neutrality, especially after talking to UBM Tech CEO Paul Miller last week.

Miller has said to me several times in the past couple of years that UBM is a marketing company, not a media company.  In last week's chat he took it to another level.  "UBM Tech is, effectively, out of the magazine business.  We are now running online communities."

There have been several comments from people still in the media business expressing doubt that UBM properties can be considered ethical, reliable, trustworthy "real journalism," etc.  But the answer to all of those concerns is... it's not a media company anymore.  Trying to measure the UBM business model against traditional journalism is like determining distance with a measuring cup.

A few weeks ago, Joe Basques wrote that companies need to change their perspective to understand their market.  I submit that everyone looking at the new UBM model needs to change their perspective as well.  Paul Miller said, in essence that UBM was giving up the journalism field of competition to Hearst, Extension Media, EE Journal and all the others, not because they didn't think it was a good business to be in, but that it had become such a small part of the UBM business that it mattered less than the direction their communities were going did.

Paul even wished all his former competitors well and considered them a valued part of the information ecosystem that engineers needed.  But they are no longer what UBM considers competition.  Who are they competing against? Their old foes Reed Elsevier for one, who abandoned the journalism business for the event business as well a few years ago.  What UBM has that Reed doesn't however, is the online communities.

Another competitor you might consider is Google itself.  And here's why.

Google recently changed it's search algorithm to diminish keyword (the core of SEO practices) and focus on engagement: what people are reading, what people are commenting on and what people are sharing.  That means they are actively boosting what the users are interested in.  That is, essentially, the UBM model now.  What was known as the editorial staff are now community managers and brand managers whose primary job is curation.  Armed with a powerful new technology these managers can look at what content provider and content is getting the most play and their job is to feature that content in the community.  The managers will develop content, but that's not their primary job.  Readers who actively comment and make valuable input will be invited to become regular contributors.  Sometimes that will be paid, more often it will not.  The readers will make the ultimate decision as to what rises to the top of the medium, not journalists.

This is significantly different than what we know as traditional journalism.  It may fail spectactularly or it will succeed spectacularly.  Whatever you may think of it, Miller and UBM are taking a massive but calculated gamble.  "We're pretty positive about how this will turn out, but it is admittedly very different.  However, when you look at traditional media, the odds for success are not very good. We wish all who remain the best of luck, but something different has to be done.  We think this is one way to do it right."

I am currently working on a white paper that looks at the current state of the media in the 21st centur.  It will be available in a few weeks, but we aren't giving it away free this time.  If you want it, we need to know if you are the right person to get it, or if you can get it to the right person, If you aren't one of those, get your credit card out.  This one is too good to give away.

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You can't hold back the tide. Media is changing.

You are not going to attract customers to your in-house media by stuffing your marketing content into a new bag. You are going to have to invest in content producers that have a perspective outside of your marcom.

We've had some interesting interaction on this site the past couple of weeks about the future of b2b media. There is an old guard that publically espouses absolute separation of editorial and advertising but the reality is very much different.  And today comes news that Open Systems Publishing is taking the leap into custom electronic publishing. Not print, electronic.

From the press release:

ST. CLAIR SHORES, MI, April 19, 2013 - OpenSystems Media has announced the next generation in digital publishing - an all new, dynamic E-mag marketing program, giving clients the chance to create their own branded, lead-generating digital magazine - the Custom E-mag Initiative. The Custom E-mag Initiative, which launches today, is an interactive digital publication, featuring the clients own educational white papers, product and company video clips, display ads, topical articles, hyperlinks to additional resources, social media interfaces, and product announcements (demonstration available at custom.opensystemsmedia.com). Posted online in a web-browser-friendly format, the E-mag's content is gated, requiring interested readers to register. This provides the client a list of interested parties for follow-up.

This is the direction of pretty much every electronics industry media house now, and follows on the heels of more established firms like Forbes, The Washington Post and the New York Times.  Corporations are moving toward being their own publisher.

But here's the point Footwasher Media stands on: It doesn't matter what the vehicle is, what matters is whether your audience accepts it as valid and is willing to engage.

You are not going to attract customers to your in-house media by stuffing your marketing content into a new bag.  You are going to have to invest in content producers that have a perspective outside of your marcom.  Hell, I wish journalists could still get a paycheck by being an employee of a publication, but those that do have a real hard time making rent.  Yes there are a very few organizations that make money the old fashioned way, but they still sell a lot of space for corporate news releases and white papers and webinars.  In fact, it's getting harder and harder to find the independent content in any publication.

Should we sit around and grumble about the change, or should we, as independent journalists, try to adapt to it?  

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Total unique visitors: Who cares?

Been having some interesting discussions with web managers for b2b companies.  All of them start talking about their web traffic and SEO results.  I always step into the discussion with a series of questions that ends up stumping all of them.

"So.  Who are all of those people visiting your site?"

They stare at me blankly for a few seconds and then respond, "Why they're our customers, of course."

"Like who?"

"Well, we don't know who they are specifically..."

"Then how do you know they are your customers?  Maybe they're your competitors."

"They might be..."

Then the stumper:  "So if you really don't know who it is visiting your site, why does it matter how many there are?"

It is possible to determine if the right people are visiting your site, but the problem is that most marketing managers never ask that question and so most web site managers never take the time to dig deeper into the numbers.  They just say how many unique visitors and how many referrals the site got and everyone is happey... except when they look at the sales numbers.

This is not to say that unique visitors and referrals aren't important numbers... if you are an online media company.  After all, a media company is in the business of getting as many eyeballs as possible on the site to make sure they can justify their advertising rates.  But if you are a b2b company the volume on those numbers is meaningless unless you are driving current and potential customers to engage with you.  That's why it is more important to know that the one customer you really want visits your site than the hundreds of thousands of people that found your site through a search.

Save the Date: IMTC 2025 on video and collaboration

I'm going to be a panelist at the IMTC 2025 virtual conference next week talking about the future of marketing.  This is a new organization launching new conferencing technology that is pretty interesting.  Not all the bugs are worked out (like getting stuff to work on Macs correctly but I think it has a future for many applications.  All the speakers and panelists will be broadcast, live, from multiple remote locations.  Those with the proper tools can jump in to ask questions, even on camera, or at minimum can comment and ask questions on the chat screen.

My panel is at the end of the first day (Wednesday, April 7) at 12:40 EASTERN Time (9:40 PDT) For my part, I'm talking specifically about the future of media and will probably take some contrarian positions in conventional wisdom (now that's a surprise).  I look forward to "seeing" many of you there.  Let's make it lively.

Restoration of traditional media

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This week I started noticing something related to entertainment programming.  First, there is a new series called "Who do you think you are?" produced by Lisa Kudrow and underwritten primarily by Ancestry.com.  Second, there is predominant product placement and advertising on Dirty Jobs.  Third, Bertolli is advertising a web program featuring Marisa Tomei traveling around the culinary world of Italy.

These are just few examples of a definite trend of corporations creating concepts for media content.  This is nothing new, of course, but it's at a level not seen in decades, going back to radio programs (Remember Ovaltine and Little Orphan Annie?  Of course you don't.  Neither do I).  It's akin to the concept Brian Fuller calls Vendor as Publisher.

There are those that are going to freak out about this, saying the corporate takeover of media is the death of journalism, but we have to remember that all media is owned in some form by a corporation.  This blog, for example, is the property of Footwasher Media Corporation.  MSNBC is owned by General Electric.  The San Francisco Chronicle is owned by Hearst Newspaper Corporation, which is owned by the Hearst Corporation, which owns Electronic Products and Sunical Land ( a real estate company ).  Corporations have always owned media.  It's just that they weren't as obvious about it for a few decades.

Corporations are the foundation of all media.  Without their financial support, media doesn't survive.  But at the same time, they can't survive without media and as media continues to contract and morph, we're going to see more companies become out front with their support of specific content that benefits their own aims.  It's neither good not bad.  It's just the way it has always been.

Cadence's take on social media

I spent sometime chatting with Jim Price and Dan Holden who are managing the social media program at Cadence Design.  Cadence has  been involved in social media and networking longer than any other EDA company, starting with the online version of CDNLive, and one of the more experimental, including their relationship with Xuropa.  I have to give them kudos for their willingness to explore as well as make a place for traditional journalists in their efforts.  I'll let you listen to this edited version of the conversation (it was 30 minutes long) and will be making some comments in a few days.

Cadence social media

The press was a great idea. No money in it then or now, though.

Last week, I closed with a mention to the invention of moveable type as a devastating technology.  And it was.  It was the beginning of true mass media.  Quoting from Wikipedia:

"Compared to woodblock printing, movable type pagesetting was quicker and more durable for alphabetic scripts. The metal type pieces were more durable and the lettering was more uniform, leading to typography and fonts. The high quality and relatively low price of the Gutenberg Bible (1455) established the superiority of movable type, and printing presses rapidly spread across Europe, leading up to the Renaissance, and later all around the world. Today, practically all movable type printing ultimately derives from Gutenberg's movable type printing, which is often regarded as the most important invention of the second millennium.[2]"

So I'm not the only one who thinks so.  

Moveable type made it possible for the middle class to afford to own a library.  In fact, a personal library up until the 19th century was regarded as a financial asset.  The availability of literature increased literacy and access to universities and began a steady breakdown of class separation.  It was also the beginning of the concept that knowledge and information should be relatively cheap, if not free altogether.  

Here's where we start seeing some real parallels with our current situation.

Yes, the invention of the printing press brought a new level of wealth to many people and changed social structure dramatically.  However, Gutenberg died broke.  He didn't make any fortune with his invention and very few of the people who followed him did.  Printing was a sideline business that helped increase power and influence, but it didn't do much for the people that controlled the technology.  Printers were able to make ends meet, and actually make a profit when they started getting government contracts.  They owned the medium, but the government footed the bill.  That made a clean break from the church as a controller of media.  In fact, the church started to look at media as something demonic about that time and preferred to have little to do with it.

Like today, you had competent communicators and rank amateurs filling sheets of paper with content, but also like today, no one could actually make money without some sort of direct subsidy that would make the monthly nut.  It would actually take 300 years for someone to figure out how to actually make money in the media without government involvement or sponsorship.  Of course, it would have to be Benjamin Franklin.

I started this blog site with an introduction to modern media as founded by Franklin and the Philadelphia Gazette.  Now I've come back to him.  Franklin made The Gazette the first publication primarily supported by advertising.  Other publications in Europe and North America had tried advertising, but it didn't pay the bills.  Subscriptions did.  But Franklin filled the publication with ads and derived enough income that he could sell the paper cheaply on the streets and increase circulation. It was a revolutionary moment in media and started the paradigm we have all been used to.  But it was still a long way from being an "objective" medium.  We will pick that thread up next week.

You better be what you say you are...

Brian Fuller came out of the blocks today with what I consider devastatingly good news.  Apparently the Federal Trade Commission has taken a look at the state of the media and decided that both bloggers and companies are going to be libel for claims made in blogs and websites when they are not covered in traditional media.  

In the past, companies could use the "buyer beware" defense because it was possible, in the days of a vibrant media, to do enough research to know when companies were ringing the BS bell.  But now, companies and bloggers will have to prove their statements unless they can show that there was objective coverage available to the market.  If they can't and the product doesn't work as stated, the customer can sue.

Can you imagine what this is going to do to news releases?  

Paradigm shifts in mass communication: Nothing new.

We're all dealing with the changing paradigm of mass communication forced on us by economic forces and the potential of the Internet.  No one has an answer to the question:  "What the heck to we do now."  Correction: Lots of people have answers, but none of them actually work yet.

What gives me comfort is my knowledge of history.  I sit back and see what is going on and know that we have gone through it before.  To prove it, I'm going to take us on a walk over the next few weeks on the history of mass communication.  Let's look at ...

Cave Drawings

This might be the first form of mass media that we know.  It predates effective language and was used to record what small communities considered to be historic events and preserve some sense of progress among primitive man.  During this time, individual artists rose up within family groups, not unlike leaders that Seth Godin speaks of, who developed their skills for the benefit of the family group or tribe.  Those skills were passed down from parent to offspring for decades until the advent of ...

The Spoken Word

Think about it.  Cave drawing was an established paradigm until language developed enough to pass on complete thoughts with tense and gender.  The historic context was maintained by those with adequate oral skills and memory to expand on what the cave drawings meant.  Eventually, cave drawing became an anachronism because the oral tradition was much more vibrant and could be made current.  Historic consideration gave way to what is happening now and what could happen in the future (conjecture and superstition).  Art still had it's place in mass communication, but those with vocal skills now surpassed the visual artist as the foundation of communication.  

The importance of the orator within the tribe was paramount for centuries until it expanded to the wandering minstrel/storyteller.  This was a significant paradigm shift because it expanded the world view of primitive man, linked communities, opened dialog between tribes and started the concept of civilization development. As the storytellers moved from village to village, tribes became city-states and the oral tradition became mass media controlled by those who demonstrated skill at telling stories and remembering (or making up) salient points.  In EuroCeltic culture, those storytellers became more than just communicators but the source of knowledge.  They were known as Druids and were considered the priestly class.  We will come back to them, but while the oral tradition served many cultures for centuries, another communication paradigm was emerging from the Fertile Crescent in the Middle East ...

The Written Word

In some oil-lamp lit room, a functionary in Ancient Sumeria about 6,000 years ago was given the task of making an inventory in the royal treasury.  At about the same time, rudimentary hieroglyphics providing an inventory of the Scorpion King were put onto stone  Both are the earliest know examples of the written word.  The latter didn't really catch on (unless you count television and YouTube as the decendants of hieroglyphics) but cuneiform evolved into multiple languages throughout the world.  

Big deal, you say?  Well keep this in mind:  The oral tradition was the established norm for more than 50,000 years before the emergence of the written language.  It took  complete control over the standard of mass communication away from the priestly class and put it into the hands of government functionaries.  We complain about how traditional journalism is dying because of the internet, but you have to realize that traditional journalism as we know it, has only existed for about 60 years.  The paradigm shift caused by the invention of writing is like comparing the Hiroshima bombing with a fire cracker.

Next week, we will look at how control of written language shifted from various power centers over the centuries and how it changed society.

An aside on the quality of "Blogolism"

Just when you think that the paradigm has shifted, you find out that it has fallen flat on its face.

Today, a report comes out of the Associated Press about how a Irish sociology student tested the journalistic integrity of traditional journalism, the blogosphere, and Wikipedia.  Guess what?  Journalism and blogger failed and Wikipedia passed.

Shane Fitzgerald posted phony quote on Wikipedia, attributed the the recently departed French composer Maurice Jarre on March 28.  The fiction went almost directly to blogs around the world and several newspaper websites.

The quote had no form of verification on Wikipedia, which is always a red flag, but the bloggers leaned on their belief that if it is on the web it must be true and lifted the "quote" directly.  In fact, it is still floating around the world as being true, even after being expunged from Wikipedia.

Only The Guardian in the UK has owned up to the research error, while others are blaming Fitzgerald.   Sorry, checking your sources is the first rule of journalism.  If you don't do at least that, you can't call what you do journalism -- unless you own up to the mistake, so kudos to The Guardian (one of my favorite publications when I go to the homeland).

Wikipedia spokesman Jay Walsh said it was "distressing so see how quickly journalists would descend on that information without double-checking it.  We always tell people: If you see that quote on Wikipedia, find it somewhere else too."

My son is in his first year of college and recently finished his first college paper.  He started with Wikipedia for his research, but did his own verification of what was found there.  He did that because he thought it was common sense.  He didn't have to take a journalism class to check his references.  To him it was common sense.  That a 19 year old can figure that out and a bunch of bloggers couldn't amazes me.  It flabbergasts me that journalists wouldn't do it out of habit.

The point I'm making here is that we all seem to be absolutely infatuated by the concept of citizen journalism and getting ALL OUR NEWS FROM THE INTERNET.  It's not as good as what REAL journalism is supposed to be.  Like oatmeal, instant isn't as good as the stuff that takes time and effort.

You might wonder what the fake quote was.  Well, look it up.  It isn't hard to find.  What I will say is I have long admired Jarre's work.  He wrote the score for one of my favorite movies, Lawrence of Arabia, as well as Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, Zefferelli's Jesus of Nazareth, and Dead Poet's Society.  The dude has serious chops.

Broken media equals funding doldrums

About three years ago I attended a financial conference where a big VC stated, categorically, that the reason they were not investing in semiconductor or EDA startups was because there was a lack of informational coverage to validate research.  In other words, because media coverage of the industries had significantly degraded, they couldn't afford to pull the trigger on investment.

This same VC firm has invested heavily in Web 2.0 and green technology over the past three years and you can see why.  There is lots of coverage on those areas.  There is pretty much nothing but coverage on those areas.  The only coverage on semi and EDA is negative.

You might say that that is the media's fault because, after all, the semiconductor coverage is all about the economics of the industry, not the technology so it's naturally going to be bad.  But I would like to point out that the the green Web 2.0 industries has yet to turn a profit, yet the media continues to go bonkers over the technology.  What's the big difference?  Which industries invest more in getting their story out?

I know, I'm a broken record.  But this time I have a case study.

I've been working with a start-up in the semi arena for a few months now helping them craft their message and get a communications program going for them as soon as they get funding.  I've also been introducing them to VCs to get that funding.  We had a lead investor all ready to go.  They got great feedback from current customers.  Dataquest and IC Insights show real growth potential for this particular technology over the next 18 months and beyond  ... but the rest of the players in the market haven't put out anything innovative in five years and they look like they are cutting back even further.  There is no media outreach in the sector so, as a result, the only buzz is negative.  Even with all the numbers lining up for success, negative buzz made the VCs back off.  They still want to invest, but they don't want to take the lead.

There are many similar stories out there.  Investors are lined up and ready to invest in technology outside of Web 2.0 and green, but not as a lead investors.  All because of a a lack of media.

What about all the bloggers covering the semi sector?  Well, here's the thing: the VCs haven't yet come over to the blogosphere, even when they invest in it.  That's going to take some education still.  And education requires some investment in media.  Funny how that works, isn't it?

The real decision makers

There is a common belief among the tech industries that the
most important person to talk to is the engineer.  Magazines like EDN, EE Times, Electronic Design and
Electronic Products are traditionally dedicated to the electronics engineer and
providing "solutions" to the engineer's problems.  They are right, of course, that the
engineer has to be convinced before a product can be sold, but the problem is
that in today's economy, the engineer isn’t the final decision maker.  That decision rests with the CFO.  And they aren't buying anything right
now because no one is telling them what they want to hear.

The CFO asks only one important question and, invariably,
the head of engineering answers that question wrong.  And the reason they answer the question wrong is because the
vendor's marketing efforts are geared only to answer the questions the
engineers ask, so the engineers are not prepared to answer the CFO correctly.

What's the question? 
"Can we you do your job with what you have now?"

What does the engineer answer? "Of course we can."

So the CFO says they can't buy the tool or service.

Engineers always like to have the latest gizmo to try out
and see if it work, so they get
enough budget to try a few new things but never enough to put the new stuff into action.  Engineers believe that they can solve any problem with whatever tools they have already and whatever
they don’t have they can jury rig.  The tech industry will remain in a slump until someone
figures out who the real customer is, because it isn't the engineer.

Take for example, my favorite whipping boy, Electronic
Design Automation.  Just about
every company in that industry will say the same thing about marketing:  There's only 5 to 10 companies that we
are concerned about as customers, we know who they are, so we don’t need to do
marketing.  Let's take a look at
who those companies are: 
Freescale, Texas Instruments, AMD, Intel, Infineon, Nokia, Samsung, NEC,
Toshiba, LSI Logic.

Not a single company in that mix, with the exception of
Intel, is doing anything of consequence in new semiconductor development.  They are only tweaking what they have already developed. Some of them are on the verge of
disappearing altogether. They are renewing licenses of current EDA tools, but
they are not buying anything new because they are not making anything new.  Those small companies that they are
talking to are being strung along with experimental single-license sales, and they aren't giving permission for the
smaller companies to say anything about their relationship, so there is no
marketing advantage in the relationship for the smaller companies. 

 (Yeah, yeah. I've heard of all kinds of wonderful things are being worked on, but nothing of significance has come out for a decade.)

Almost no company in EDA has made a financial case for their
technology to their customers. 
They can give all kinds of reasons about how it makes the design of the
customer's products easier, but that means the customer ultimately needs fewer
engineers to do the job, and they aren't going to tell the CFO that.  (Full disclosure: my compatriots in the communications biz aren't establishing their financial benefit either.  And because I'm one of the few who does, no one believes me.  Sheesh.)

The semiconductor companies have the same problem.  They can't sell the financial benefit
of new products to systems companies because they don't know what that benefit
is.  The systems companies don't
know how much money their customers will save by buying their systems and so
those customers can't sell new products to, ultimately, to the general
consumer, because they can't figure out what good it is.  (Link NSFW).

The way we get out of this financial mess we are in world
wide is to figure out how to sell the financial benefit, not the engineering
prowess.  That is going to take
some investment in the form of marketing, and that still is in the hands of the
CFO.

That's
our bottleneck right now.

Tell them what they want to hear and they will listen to what you have to say

The cornerstone of the VComm program was the understanding
that most companies looking for VC financing really have no idea what a VC
wants to hear.  Two years ago I sat
with a group of investors at a major conference and listened to them complain
about the quality of the material and, in the end, how useless it was.

Understand this: 
There are, at any given time according to Dow Jones, 5000 tech startups
in the US alone that are seeking funding. 
But less than half of those companies have any credible research into
their technology market.  The press
covering those markets has shrunk almost to the point of non-existence.  The VC's are flying blind nowadays,
which explains why so many are having poor returns.  What they need is real information about market potential.

But most companies pitching VC's spend 90 percent of their
time in front of them explaining how great their technology is.  Get a clue!  They know you are doing something interesting or you
wouldn't be doing it.  What they
want to know is, if they invest in you, how are they going to make a return on
their investment.  Drew Lanza at
Morgenthaler puts it specifically: "How am I gonna make a bunch of money
for retired school teachers?" 
(Think about it.  Most large
investment firms are responsible for investing the retirement funds for common
people.  They have an enormous
responsibility.)

So the purpose of VComm, at the core, is to prepare
companies to present the information that the VCs NEED to hear.  Once you have told them that, then they
will be willing to listen about your technology.  Based on the comments we got back from the investors at
VComm, that's exactly what we accomplished.  Lanza even said the presenters were ready to make an initial
presentation before the assembled partners of Morgenthaler.  That doesn’t mean they are going to get
that chance, but how they get to that point is the subject of another post.

What I want to leave you with is another point that I have
been hammering for a decade is: KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE.  If you really have that knowledge you will make progress in
your communications, if you don't you are dead in the water.

VComm/New Tech Press Success: ICEPhone

One of the companies that presented at VComm last week was ICEPhone, who bill themselves with the unimaginative descriptor of "the Swiss Army Knife" of mobile phones.  It is really a neat gadget--a cross between a microlaptop, mobile phone, and portable game console.  I want this phone even though it runs Microsoft CE (and anyone who knows me knows that is a BIG admission).

Among the benefits of being in VComm was getting a New Tech Press video interview and ICEPhone was the big winner in views on the New Tech Press site--more than 200 in the first couple of days after posting.

"Only 200?!?" I hear you exclaim.  Ah, but who was among that 200?  The answer demonstrates the power of the internet, sponsored content, and highly targeted audiences.

The guy running PR for ICEPhone in the UK is a young college student who has been playing around with viral internet applications.  He took that NTP video and sent it to a few key media people.  The result was CNET, PC Magazine, and TMCNet decided to do their own video report on the device in the CES reports.  The resulting coverage created a huge surge of interest in ICEPhone that resulted in close to 200,000 hits on their website and a call from USA Today who is running the ICEPhone in their review of smart phones in April.

New Tech Press doesn't boast a large audience in itself.  What it publishes is free to any other publication for use.  More importantly, it is free to the companies to use as they see fit to raise their own profile.  In the case of ICEPhone, they used their NTP coverage to leverage the interest of really BIG media houses and it worked REALLY well.

Too much of our marketing efforts today is passive.  We throw out almost identical press releases to the identical short list of editors and the identical wire services and release portals and think it makes a difference.  The ICEPhone flack took something completely different than anyone else and went aggressive.  

NTP made ICEPhone different from everything else at CES.  THAT's what I'm TALKIN' about.

More to come...

Paul Miller looks at the 21st century media

It's been a while since I did a podcast ... at least on this site.  Been doing a ton of video for New Tech Press the past couple of months.  But this is one I've been waiting to get done for some time.

Paul Miller at TechInsights sat down with me just before the Christmas break and talked frankly about the state of B2B media, where it's going, how it's going to affect his own company and EE Times specifically, and endorsing the use of content from sponsored-media sites like New Tech Press in its website and maybe even pages.  For those wondering when media was going to come back to the way it used to be, get ready for disappointment.  But according to Paul, the future is getting clearer and brighter. 

Social media is what you make of it.

Back in my salad days, journalism students were required to
read Marshall McLuhan's the Medium is the Message, and understand the
difference between hot and cold media.

Today, I can't find a single communicator under the age of
50 who knows what I am talking about. 
I find that mildly amusing because that understanding is crucial to
being able to "get" social media.  Especially if you are between the age of 30 and 50 and are
trying to figure out what social media is "for."

Let me explain: 
A cool medium is something that requires an action on your part.  Print is a cool medium because you have
to physically pick it up and put your brain into gear to absorb the
information.  A hot medium is
something that allows you to sit, disengage your brain and let the medium fill
your head.  Movies are hot.  TV is hot.  Radio is kinda lukewarm because at least you have to imagine
what is going on.  Podcasting,
however, is cooler that radio because you actually have to search to find the subject
matter you want and, at times, input comments.

But social media, for the most part is a cool medium because
it requires an enormous amount of interaction from the audience to have any
value.  If you are waiting for
social media to "be" something all on its own, you are going to be
disappointed.

Twitter, blogging, Facebook and all the other incarnations
of social media are going to be whatever you make them to be.  Do you want information?  Then engage in the online community and
have them feed you information, but you are going to have to give them
something that they need,  Do you
want to sell your product?  Then
you need to engage in the online community, find the people that need your
product, and then tell them about it, often on a one-to-one level.  Do you want leads?  Then engage the community and find out
who is looking for what.  Sometimes
you may have to direct them somewhere else.  Sometimes, you may have to talk about something other than
your business to get your business attention.

But social media is not an end in itself and that may be why
some people have difficulty getting their heads around it.  It used to be that the media and other companies did all the work for you.  Other companies took out ads,the media dug out the stories, agencies threw parties for networking.  Maybe you did a little direct mail, set up a couple of booths and berated your own agencies but you got a result of some
sort.  Now, you start a blog or a Facebook account and you stare at the screen and say, "now what."   Well, that's up to you.  You may actually have to contract with someone to help you.

We have to get used to the fact that nothing is automatic
anymore.  Relationship requires
work and social media is all about relationship.  It is going to take more effort and thought, give and take
and … guess what?… more investment to make this work.

See, media doesn’t work without some sort of revenue
stream.  The ONLY reason
traditional media is dying is because it's revenue stream dried up long before
the recession.  People still read
print.  People still watch TV.  People still listen to AM radio (fer
cryin' out loud).  But fewer and
fewer companies are supporting it. 
Right now, social media is being supported primarily by the venture
community and other corporations. 
When they don’t see a profitable exit potential, that will dry up too.

Merry Christmas. The present looks pretty good

JL Gray tweeted yesterday about a pet peeve -- ex-journalists who complain about the death of media -- and wondered if they didn't have anything better to do.  Of course, if the verification industry was going under, JL might be wondering what to do with his time, but he has a point.  It's not all bad news.  And in that light, this is for JL and all my homies.

Merry Christmas to all.