The outcry over the blurring of lines at the
Los Angeles Times doesn't go far enough.
It's bad enough that the paper insulted the intelligence of its readers with a
front-page display of what dozens of its own staffers denounced as a "phony news story."
Nearly as troubling is the failure of imagination the episode suggests among the paper's sales execs. Is
a badly executed deception really the best the
y could come up with on behalf of the new "Southland" TV show, produced by a well-heeled client like NBC?
The debacle underlines the main point of
a blog post last week by Kirk Cheyfitz, CEO of
Story Worldwide, a content marketing firm based in Manhattan.
"We are in the middle of a crisis in advertising, not journalism," Cheyfitz wrote. "By sticking to the outdated rules of a 400-plus-year-old print culture, the editorial departments aren't helping, either. But the heart of the problem is the narrow definition of what can constitute 'advertising.'"
As the
L.A. Times reported Friday in
its own account of the ad flap, ad revenues plummeted by 17 percent industrywide in 2008. Some analysts have concluded that
advertising on the Internet is beyond saving. And nobody's arguing that advertising will necessarily replace the revenue lost from the order-taking days of help-wanted, real estate and automotive classifieds.
But before we give up on ads completely -- and put journalism franchises at risk by gambling on such shaky prospects as micropayments and pay walls -- shouldn't we at least take a run at a serious reinvention of advertising?
Cheyfitz, a former
Detroit Free Press colleague who left the newsroom more than 30 years ago, wrote:
"Old-fashioned ads are dying fast across all media, even online. ... All these traditional advertising tactics are part of a withering marketing model. In the old model, publishers attracted an audience with engaging stories (news and entertainment) and then marketers were allowed to interrupt those stories with commercial messages."
Replacing the "interruptive model," Cheyfitz argued, is one that stresses engagement:
"Commercial messages must now be attractive, informative and engaging stories (news and entertainment) in their own right. They absolutely must deliver a valuable media experience to the audience -- an experience that informs or entertains or, heaven forbid, does both.
Isn't this storytelling engagement just the kind of thing NBC and
Times ad execs were hoping for with their ad-as-article ruse in Thursday's paper? As Publisher Eddy Hartenstein told the paper's reporters, "Because of the times that we're in, we have to look at all sorts of different -- and some would say innovative -- new solutions for our advertising clients."
Yet advertorial content hardly represents a new solution. The only thing innovative about the
Times' "Southland" ad was its placement on the front page.
Although part of the
custom publishing industry, Cheyfitz said in an interview that his outfit tries to stretch its traditional boundaries. The idea is to serve the sponsoring advertiser by engaging users -- existing or potential customers -- with content that's interesting and useful enough to sustain or create a link with the advertiser. All of that shares a common goal with traditional advertising, of course: increased sales for the advertiser.
At its core, Cheyfitz's business model isn't all that new, either: publication of material that an advertiser believes will help sell more of its products. What appears to differentiate the company's magazines from traditional advertorial is, well, the way they engage readers.
Story Worldwide offers no pretense of editorial independence in the
Lexus magazine it publishes four times a year for the luxury automobile brand. But neither is it promotional to the point of boring or annoying its high-end readership.
Publications such as
The Hair Book, a new magazine for Regis Salons, and
ENDLESS VACATION, published on behalf of the RCI timeshare property firm, do not represent the sort of public interest journalism that news organizations are fighting so hard to preserve. But could such publications -- if produced by news organizations as a separate line of business for key advertisers -- provide some of the revenue it takes to sustain coverage of city hall and the school board?
The scope of the Story Worldwide operation -- more than $40 million in annual billing with more than 200 professionals in five offices in the U.S. and the U.K. -- suggests that some companies find real value in its publications.
As a former investigative reporter, Cheyfitz can't stand the idea of watchdog journalism going away for lack of revenue. He believes news organizations must step into the world of content-based marketing. (Some newspapers have moved in this direction with new niche publications that focus on health or lifestyles, for instance.)
Acknowledging his distance from the inner workings of news organizations, he suggested that most could get started in this business with a modest redeployment of two or three staffers schooled in the ways of storytelling.
Key issues for news organizations include:
- Are there ways of getting into this business that preserve the independence of the news operation?
- Is there enough of a business in it to warrant the required investment?
- Does content marketing -- or custom publishing, if you prefer -- offer better odds than options such as micropayments and pay walls?
I've been poking around this issue for all of a week or so, so I'm better suited to ask rather than answer such questions. But I think my old pal Cheyfitz may be on to something.
While I won't defend the Southland placement, I do like...
