As Magazines Go, So Too Do Catalogs

For some people in catalog circles, the news earlier this week of J.C. Penney’s decision to discontinue its “big book” catalogs, could have a lasting impact on them for years to come — “I know where I was when I heard Penney was closing down its big book.”

Most consumers, namely Penney customers, probably won’t notice it all that much. After all, they prefer Penney’s smaller specialty catalogs and are more inclined to shop online anyway.

Of course some will miss the big books, especially since Penney’s was the last of what’s now basically a dead breed. There are still plenty of B-to-B catalog big books, but those only go to people in their trades. And let’s face it: Little kids don’t go paging through B-to-B books looking for birthday or holiday wishes.

Speaking of B-to-B, the death of the catalog big book isn’t all that unlike the ongoing death of the B-to-B magazine. Many B-to-B publishers are trying to get their subscribers to opt for digital editions — files of pdfs of the same pages you can see published in print. In many cases, readers are fine with this, but are they really reading the digital editions?

And will customers give consideration to as many of the hundreds of products that used to be advertised in the Penney big book once they’re all only made available online or in stores? I have to believe plenty of products from the nearly 1,000 pages of the Penney big book won’t be found online. They’ll be there, but it’s doubtful that as many customers who used to find them in the big book will still find them in the 2010 digital big books.

Are catalog companies like Penney going to lose a lot of sales by hedging their bets on the Internet? What about B-to-B publisihers? How many readers will those handy online substitutions lose? I believe quite a few.

People Always Love Their Brands’ Stories

I was riding on the railroad from my Westchester County, N.Y., home to New York City this morning with a fellow who recognized me. Nice guy. I sort of recognized him, but didn’t know (or remember?) his name. But he knew mine, because he used to watch my son play on the high school basketball team. We talked almost the entire hour-long ride about a myriad of subjects. Inevitably, the issue of my forthcoming unemployment came up.

Explaining to people what I’ve done for most of my professional life — editing, writing and reporting for a B-to-B publication/newsletter/Website serving the retail/catalog/e-commerce business — has never been easy. I get a lot of quizzical looks. Sure, they perk up a bit when I say “y’know, companies like Lands’ End, L.L.Bean, those…,” but more often than not, they just don’t get it.

That’s fine. I’d venture to guess that about 30%-50% of the world’s professions can’t be easily explained to the average Joe. But the cool thing about my profession — if there is a cool thing about it, and while it lasts — is people have heard of the kinds of companies I’ve covered over the years.

So this gentleman and I got into a whole involved conversation about our families and he talked about his family’s devout love for skiing and lodging up north. Then he got into some of the brands he’s either bought from over the years or received catalogs from, like REI, Patagonia, Eastern Mountain Sports, and others. He really led the conversation, raving about REI, its service and its cooperative set-up to which he gains annual dividends. I was quick to inject that I wrote up a big cover story on REI just last May (see http://www.allaboutroimag.com/article/the-camping-gear-marketer-has-changed-its-approach-but-not-its-focus-406552_1.html). We had a nice connect.

But he wasn’t done. And keep in mind that this kind gentleman is in the financial world, but has no sort of business connections to the retail world. He continued to lead this conversation. Somehow we talked our way into Abercrombie & Fitch, sharing recollections of the Sharper Image-Meets-Brookstone A&F used to be back in the ’80s before it became a racy teen clothing phenom.

That led him to discuss Eddie Bauer and its latest comeback. He boasted that recently he had these two bags (I think they were backpacks?) he had bought from Bauer some 20 years ago — and what? three or four ownership changes ago? — and the inner lining of both had fallen apart. He decided to try to send them back and see what Bauer would do. Much to his surprise and joy, Bauer gave him a credit for comparable new ones.

It seems as though anybody can tell a good story about a merchant they’ve done business with at some point in their lives. People clammer to favorite retail brands and often get caught up in those brands’ evolution.

Everybody loves a story, and in retail or mail order or even e-commerce, they’re looking to be part of newer stories. As retailers and businesses of all types continue to tighten their belts, they shouldn’t lose track of the stories they tell – past, present and future.

The Media/Marketing Blur Gets Blurrier

Last week, I blogged in this space about how the lines between media and marketing keep blurring (see http://paulmiller1960.wordpress.com/2009/11/11/how-the-marketing-media-lines-keep-blurring/). Since then, I’ve experienced this first-hand, as it pertains to me, my skills and my background.

Having taken a very aggressive approach to job hunting since I heard of my impending layoff as editor-in-chief of All About ROI magazine (allaboutroimag.com) a couple of weeks ago, I’ve zeroed in on these two industries. Media being the one I have the hands-on skills and background in; marketing being the topic I’ve mostly covered throughout my career.

Now the opportunities are starting to roll in on both fronts. Some people showing interest in me are coming from the marketing field. I’m getting job descriptions that clearly call for people with a lifetime (and appropriate college degree) spent in marketing and its related fields. And we’re not even talking the public relations side of marketing; we’re talking hard-core marketing, the stuff people learned about in business school, while I was studying writing and editing in J-school.

What do I know? I’ve played the role of an outsider all my career being a journalist — a mere observer of these people’s businesses. Yet most conversations I’ve had so far have gone great. So I’m encouraged that they’re open to a cross-over type of situation here.

I’m also confident that if/when one of them hires me, I may need to hit the ground crawling a bit, but soon enough I’ll be able to run and execute. I’m a firm believer that most jobs can be learned on the spot, and if you have the background knowledge, you can not only prove your worth, but be a slam-dunk for whomever hires you.

In the media and marketing worlds, in particular, this appears to be far more doable than in other fields. The kind of B-to-B journalism I’ve spent my entire career in is becoming far more marketing-driven. Heck, that has a lot to do with why I’m being laid off. Neither myself nor my colleagues on our editorial staff at my current company bring home the bacon to our company’s CFO. But now I can take my skills and show real ROI at another company. And given that rare 2009-2010 opportunity, I’m more confident than ever this can become reality.

P.S.: One of my favorite rock bands is Blur (http://blur.co.uk/), but I swear I’ve exorcised no conflict of interest in the headline or theme of this article!

Assessing the Value of Networking in Media and Marketing

Since I’m now aggressively in the job market for the first time in years, I’m learning first-hand why it’s so important to network. The main reason I started this blog was for networking purposes; to get into peoples’ searches, make new contacts, get in my LinkedIn contacts’ faces, etc. And part of why I titled it “Paul Miller on Media & Marketing,” was to combine my two greatest strengths and assets: I’m a media veteran and a veteran of reporting on marketing. And although networking is equally valuable in both of these industries, the more I analyze them from the perch I’m now in, the more similarities I see.

For one, I’m discovering that the old cliche “it’s all about who you know” really rings true in both the media and marketing businesses. That doesn’t mean you can be an incompetent loser, but assume that just because some people know you and like you that they’ll still hire you. I’ve developed my journalism craft quite extensively for more than 25 years, and for most of the last 23 of them, I’ve developed my knowledge of how the marketing business works.

Not looking to boast about myself here — and God knows, when you’re job hunting you have to boast all you can. I’m just seeing more and more how closely aligned media and marketing are in a lot of areas, including networking. Throughout my tenure as editor-in-chief of All About ROI (formerly Catalog Success) magazine and particularly over the past year, I’ve received many resumes from people in the marketing field who had been recently laid off from their positions. They’re all doing the same thing I’m now doing – networking.

Those I didn’t know very well I told I would certainly keep them in mind if I heard of anything — admittedly, something of a blow-off line. Most of those who contacted me, however, I knew well and I really did keep my eyes out for them and made a number of intros when I saw fit. In fact, I was instrumental in helping at least two people land jobs and I’m not even a head-hunter.

Alas, I can tell you first-hand that networking not only works across both of these fields, but it works quite similarly. And I admittedly used to think it was all a bunch of B.S.!

Keep Up With Social Media’s Rapid Advances

I saw a report on CBS News last night that focused on a company (don’t know which one) that not long ago cracked down on its employees’ personal use of the Internet during work hours. This company has I.T. people who monitor how much time employees spend on all Websites during the days and concluded that lots of employees were using many work hours for Facebook, among other non-work uses. In fact, the CBS reporter claimed the company could monitor every keystroke on every computer, though I think he may have gotten that wrong: It can monitor every action, every site visited, but I don’t believe every keystroke.

Anyway, in that same report, this company said that it had recently reversed its policy, especially with regard to use of social media sites.  Instead, it’s encouraging employees to use them, especially for business purposes. In fact, an executive was interviewed and right in the middle of the interview, he could be seen keying in a response to a customer comment on Twitter or Facebook right on his smart phone.

The nature of social media and its assorted uses, both in business and personal, will continue to change and evolve. This report only goes to prove that it’s changing super fast. Since I got word that I was about to be laid off, I’ve done a complete overhaul of my LinkedIn page; next up, I need to get going on my Facebook page, then Twitter. Both of those I’ve all but ignored to this point, but I can no longer afford to.

So my message du jour is this: Whether you’re in the media, marketing, advertising or whatever else, if you’re not active in these sites, you may want to start doing so. They’re permeating everything we do in this society and their impact is only going to increase in the future. Don’t get left behind.

What Kinds of Ads Will Work in the Future?

For those of you non-sports fans reading this, I apologize in advance for another sports reference, but I’ll keep it very short. I recall the days no more than 15 years ago when baseball stadiums only had a few ads beside the scoreboards, and the boards around professional hockey rinks were all white. Nowadays, of course, that’s all changed and there are big billboard ads everywhere.

Newer kinds of intrusive big ads, like the in-your-face in sports billboards, and the subliminal ones you see in the bottom corner of your TV set, and the video ads that began springing up on subway street signs and in malls, keep emerging every day. Like the more traditional space advertising, TV commercials or highway billboards, consumer response from any of these forms of advertising can not be accounted for.

And with business so awful all over, many advertisers are retreating as their budgets are being stripped. “Go Web Young Man!” could eventually prove as productive as “Go West!” once did. But for now, although Web advertising is often accountable, it remains quite limited in scope.

What’s needed is for all the emerging social technologies, some as simple as this blog, to reach a point where they can satisfy the needs of advertisers’ promotional accountability. But for now, as we hopefully soon emerge from The Great Recession, what forms of advertising will work best? Nobody (I’m exaggerating, of course) views TV commercials now in the age of the DVR. Newspapers are going out of business every day. Fewer people read magazines. Catalogs remain a viable medium for getting in consumers’ faces, but a growing number of catalog companies can’t afford the high cost of postage anymore (eg: the near-daily dose of Victoria’s Secret catalogs are long gone, guys).

I’m not an ad agency guy. But I’d love to be a fly on the wall at some agency pow-wows these days. The brainstorming going on must be quite intense.

How the Media, Marketing Lines Keep Blurring

If you’re a sports fan, do you ever watch one of those broadcasters — not the retired professional athletes, but the career broadcasters — who hound players after a game, inject their opinions into their interview questions, and get all palsy with the pros in the process? Ever ask yourself, “Who do they think they are trying to look so in-with-the-in-crowd when they never stepped foot on a field or court or the ice?” Certainly there are some great sportscasters who never played ball earlier in their careers. They’ve accumulated an enormous wealth of knowledge about the sports they cover. Plenty of the players who know them admire them for all their knowledge.

My point is,  I feel like one of them. I’ve spent the majority of my 27 years in the professional workforce following the marketing and advertising field, interviewing executives on such matters as how they calculate their return on investment, why they contact some customers more than others, when the right time is to offer free shipping deals, how they cut costs, even how they go about laying people off, and so forth.

I’ve long since become an expert in the e-commerce/retail/catalog/direct marketing fields — thoroughly knowledgeable on how the trades work. But with a brief exception when I did a little freelance consulting work for a few companies in the field in between jobs in 2005, I never took part in a single “play” on their fields.

I know my stuff, but as I look at some of the want ads for positions like “e-commerce marketing director” or “VP of marketing” and see such requirements as “10 years of marketing experience,” I figure that rules me out.

But does it or should it rule out people like me? Maybe not.  Since I was informed of my impending layoff as the editor-in-chief of All About ROI (formerly Catalog Success) and since I informed all the people I (think) I know in the trade, many have come to me and suggested that that requirement is changing.

Now that it seems like every Tom, Dick & Harry is a journalist today, with the easy ability to do what I’m doing right now on a free service like this one, WordPress, all these marketing companies need people with writing and editing skills. They need to get in their customers’ faces with blogs like this one that subtly pitch their wares. They need to be on Facebook and Twitter and even LinkedIn. But they need people to do all this writing and editing. The people who run retail-related companies have never had to focus on this kind of editorial work before. They need this kind of help.

Although I’ve been pretty depressed over my upcoming layoff, deep in the back of my mind, I get the sense that I’m going to be more marketable than ever once the Great Recession lifts. A writer/editor with marketing knowledge. I still have no hands-on marketing skills of course. But that may no longer matter, as the lines between marketing and us in the media keep blurring.

My intro blog – shot down, rising up

Hello all you out there in read-whatever-I-can-find-on-the-Web-land. I’m entering the blogosphere to share my own views, useful information and tips on the subjects of media and marketing and of course to network with you all.

Although my subsequent blogs will focus on the trades mentioned in the title I just chose for this thing, for my first one, I figured, I’d give you an idea of where I’m at right now.

Last week I received the distressful news that my job was being terminated as editor-in-chief of All About ROI magazine (formerly Catalog Success), a unit of North American Publishing Co. in Philadelphia. It’s very upsetting, because my nearly-four years on this job have been an utter joy for me.

When my layoff becomes official on Dec. 1, 2009, I’ll have enjoyed a tenure that enabled me to set up in my home office in Westchester County, N.Y., with twice-monthly trips to the Philly HQs. Ain’t nutin’ better than that. I’ve worked with some absolutely wonderful people, hired three who worked out beautifully, and have made good friends with most everybody there. I just told a good friend/colleague that having this job yanked out from beneath me is like having a four-year-old dog you bond with, then suddenly someone takes your dog away or the dog suddenly dies. Just horrible.

Anyway, enough whining. The moment I got the awful news last week, I hit the ground running. I figured for my first blog, I’d spill it all out, lay it on the line for all to see. So first, here’s what I want to do:

1. Because I’ve spent most of my career as a business editor/writer, if any such positions at existing B-to-B journals, magazines, newsletters or websites come along that are right for my experience, living situation, money, I’d certainly pursue them.
2. I also realize that the whole journalism field is changing drastically. There’s an increasing number of corporations needing help in getting the growing amount of web content out – content in the form of whitepapers, blogs, promotions, marketing materials, and the like. It’s a field that essentially connects journalism with marketing and public relations, and that’s what I’m looking for. I want to create saleable content.
3. I’m also interested in pursuing a position in conference planning; conceiving sessions, tracking down speakers, creating conference marketing materials.

Those are the full-time jobs I’m searching for. Along the way, I’m also wide open to taking on freelance writing (articles, blogs, social sites, etc.), editing and research projects.

In my future blogs, I promise to do less whining, and to talk about the fields I know the most about: the field I’ve followed for the past 23 years – the retail/catalog/e-commerce trade; direct and catalog marketing, search, digital media, as well as the whole journalism/media trade. For now, however, I thought I best set the stage of where I’m at.

Always feel free to contact me directly at p914m@aol.com or via LinkedIn or Facebook.