Barnes and Noble entered the textbook rental market earlier this month and the competition to traditional publishers can’t come fast enough in the eyes of many consumers.  There’s nothing that gets the ire of a college student more than the feeling of being ripped off and then comes the rage against the machine that only teens seem to muster. In my earlier post, I referenced my own son’s experience. Sure enough this go-around  semester tuition to the local community college held steady at $340 but books  for the semester came in a whopping $643, almost double the $667 annual average cited in a recent San Francisco Chronicle article.

This post is less about a rant on textbook publishers and more about information companies creating wonderful experiences– something critical to success in 2010 and beyond and something I’m committed to profiling since it’s so critical to the theme of this blog. In the face of a daunting economy, prices rising faster than a thermometer in the Mojave will send beleaguered consumers fleeing to find solace in great little companies with great services.

Check out Chegg as an example.  You’ll love this site and company. The interface is easy – steps 1 2 3 easily spelled out. They promise to plant a tree (who could argue?) and they show a running total of how much they are saving people which everyone loves especially when they’re upset with traditional forces. Chegg is creating a great experience and it’s not just about the content or business model. It’s about the ethos and spirit of what they’re up to on top of the basics – save money and make it easy. It’s these kinds of companies who will be successful in our new day, new dawn, new decade. As we said in the Outlook, the future belongs to companies who create a great experience and who support basics – save money, make money, or mitigate risk.  Chegg’s got it down right.

Share & Save

While the news industry comes crashing down there are daily examples of new money to be made in the information industry, simply by reading (drum roll of irony here) the news! Two recent articles, one in the SF Chronicle, and the other in the Wall Street Journal, point to new business information opportunities for publishers and providers to take stock of. The US government isn’t going to do either of these well. Heck, the current administration is up to its eyeballs in alligators over health reform but ironically won’t create standards for and measure medical errors. Hmmm.  And there is no chance that standard ratings for international airlines are going to get any attention while Uncle Sam is trying to solve its own intelligence failures focused on passengers who fly on said airlines.

So this leaves good old ingenuity up to the likes of Hearst Business, Vendome Group, Ascend or McGraw-Hill Aviation Group to come up with some good reliable trusted information that it can serve-up and sell. The industry needs new money and the news continues to point to it.  Any takers?

Share & Save

The week and year started off with a bang with Gartner buying Burton and Dow Jones merging two major divisions indicative of two major trends we discussed in our Outlook 2010 – thinking platforms vs. products and more consolidation at the top.  Across and within companies things are being combined everywhere as the combination of technology and the economy accelerate our industry’s moves from product-centric to market-centric. Just yesterday I spoke to one CEO who took over 100 brands and migrated them into 9.

When looking at a user or a market and working backwards to what they need to make decisions, the containers and titles become a barrier. The smartphones, readers and tablets are only going to accelerate this, so look for more change ahead. My mother used to say the only thing that is constant is change. Take good enough, the realities of all our pricing and advertising and information spending research, the notion our recession is not going to be a “V” and “recovery” continues to be jobless and you’re going to see more acquisitions and more integrations.

The result – inside each industry segment and in most companies there are the 2 or 3 gorillas and the chimps – –the big sized firms and all the little ones OR the divisions that make all the money and ‘the other ones.’   The more things change the more they stay the same. Look for more of this same – in 2010.   And we’re off – happy New Year!

Share & Save

I’m back after a few weeks off and probably broke every blog rule in the book but sometimes you just have to stop writing and tend to the home front.  My focus: money and marketing in the information industry this year and I’m also going to sprinkle in more observations about industry companies that we think are doing things right—delivering phenomenal experiences in our era of a new day, new dawn and new decade. We see this as the path to success and growth in 2010 so expect to hear more here on our 30 to watch and other exciting firms who are going to stake a place in the race for next year’s selection.

Share & Save

Last week’s article in the San Francisco Chronicle about the evolution of
mobile technology augmenting how we see the world is a must read for any
publisher and information provider. Outsell has been saying we’re
entering the age of experience and this article captures the essence of
new user experiences and where they are headed. Whether reviews and
ratings, preparing for legal briefs, learning, or clinical workflow
information – the ability to see, do, feel, hear, plan, practice and
execute is changing our world of business information. This article
provides a peek into those realities with current consumer apps and it’s
amazing.

Share & Save

Two of our analysts caught wind of this note on LinkedIn this week and it’s a bit startling:

————————————————————————————————————
GARTNER SURVEY

As part of a consulting engagement to understand consumer preferences around mobile PCs (laptop, notebook, netbook); we have launched a web survey across several countries.

In addition, we are inviting Gartner Associates’, their families and their friends to participate in the survey.

————————————————————————————————————-

The survey can be found at: http://www.ciwweb.com/~mobilepc/logologn.htm

As a follower of research firms and as one ourselves it struck us as odd that a respected brand and leader in its space would offer up a survey to its alumni network. And for research for a paid consulting engagement? By doing this (planned or unplanned) they made the survey open to anyone on the open web, opening their response pool to virtually anyone. The approach not only introduces bias into the study because of the group chosen, it also mars how any client could potentially feel about how research is done on their behalf, especially with a firm whose tagline on their website reads “world class research and insights to meet your needs.”  In a world where anyone is an analyst or a consultant – this consultant now being armed with SurveyMonkey and an open website and his social network does his client and the Gartner brand a disservice. Given that Gartner is faced with a lawsuit about its research and client ethics practices, it’s especially poor timing.  And they still don’t appear to have a published ethics and integrity policy on their site or one easily findable, something we’ve advocated for years.
Says one member of the Outsell team – “this reminds me of an old market research story from one of my professors at Babson who was discussing sampling and questionnaire wording . Back when Ford was designing the Edsel they sent a bunch of researchers to ask simple questions, one simple framing one was to describe the kind of car you think your brother-in-law would like.” Turns out Edsel bombed and people didn’t think highly of their brother-in-laws.

Gartner is too good for this and it’s a research moment gone awry.  Let’s hope Gartner’s friends and family like the company sponsoring this research and have good views about mobile PCs.  I think I’ll ask the extended-Stratigos clan to answer our next news-user study too.

Share & Save

This week Facebook launched a new feature called HuffPost Social News which gives Facebook members the ability to see stories friends are taking in and talking about. There’s lots of discussion in the press and blogosphere about Facebook building a universal platform for communication and the notion that third party content like news is becoming part of the ecosystem makes us think about other third party content, especially paid content, and how easy it will be to bring it into a social environment when these users want it. Note we say when, not if. What happens when Facebook becomes the workflow tool of the millenials who spend a decent portion of their “share of day” there and want to use it to collaborate at work. This same generation is dissing Twitter btw (a random sample, non-scientific sample of Outsell teens won’t have anything to do with it. Why they say when you can get that and so much more on Facebook? They also think it’s dumb to simply follow anyone else around). They view Facebook as ubiquitous, seamless, and a place to talk, post pictures, collaborate, read and now comment on the news. Watch for when they start designing products there, creating software code and offering best practices on how to solve problems in their workplace. Third party publishers are going to have to play in this environment and make it seamless with mobile, the other platform of choice for workers entering the workforce. As these workers enter middle management (and likely before) they’ll continue to accelerate the sea change that’s already begun. Ready or not, here publishers go. –

Share & Save

My little indicator of the economy picking up is the amount of junk mail coming to my home mailbox. Just as I was about to go to the DMA and put my name on the ‘do not send’ list the economy turned south and lo and behold
so did the amount of catalogs, promotions, and credit card solicitations that up to that point had been arriving by the ton.

Last week I realized that tonnage was on the rise again and it increasingly is the only thing Uncle Sam is delivering these days. Our bills have gone paperless. People are emailing a lot more than sending
cards and letters and while many like their magazines they are increasingly being read online OR associated w/ environmental disaster and carbon footprint and people are cutting back on those too.

Which means that increasingly all that’s left is junk. And increasingly publishers who send magazines in print and direct mail in print are going to be associated with junk. In marketing they call this ‘brand association’ and increasingly it’s not a good thing for publishers to be associated with junk mail and the detritrus filling our mail boxes.

Case in point. Last Tuesday here’s what we received: one survey from the Republican Party with lots of questions clearly slanted to the right followed by a donation request, a solicitation from the Sierra Club and
local police officers association, a credit card promotion from Delta Airlines Skymiles program in partnership with American Express, a promotion for Invisalign dental products, coupons for Costco, and one
request to participate in a class action lawsuit (that turned out wasn’t relevant to us.)  This does not make for a happy mailbox or home owner who proceeded to send this all to the recycle bin.  Having magazines arrive in
this heap is, I’m afraid to say, increasingly a brand experience nightmare, waiting to happen.

Share & Save

The premier issue of Afar launched this summer and its founder Greg Sullivan and co-founder Joe Diaz are working examples of our 2009 theme “No Guts, No Glory.”  They perceived a gap in the travel magazine market and against all odds launched a print-only publication whose website won’t be launched until next year. Yup, a new consumer, print-only magazine in 2009. Gotta love it.

Right up front they target people interested in experiential travel, those who go to new places to “connect you with the authentic essence of the place and its people, deepening your understanding of the world, its cultures, and yourself.” Their founders’ note talks about the spirit of this type of travel and the people who don’t want to “acquire places” but fold into the fabric of them. No more glitzy resorts, fab fountains in flagstone trimmed pools, and candelabras and gilded lobbies in tropical surroundings or golf-course-covered deserts.

They are targeting a psychographic and the advertisers might have a tough time grasping the concept but pick up a copy of the magazine and you’ll realize this is no Travel & Leisure. Their mission statement pretty much encapsulates the spirit of the publication and brings the “MINI lesson” of my earlier post closer to home in publishing. Michela O’Connor Abrams, President & Publisher of Dwell chairs their board of advisors and you can see the Dwell influence in the publication. It is well targeted, well designed and narrow and nichey…the kinds of things that aren’t for everyone but will bring a certain audience and marketer together to everyone’s content.

Self-funded, we’ll be watching and waiting to see how the property does in this environment and no matter what the outcome, there are great lessons for any publisher, starting w/ our mantra, no guts, no glory and marketing experiences and feelings around your content.

Share & Save

In mid-August teens here in sunny CA were dragged back to school lamenting that the tradition of returning after September’s Labor Day holiday is now a faint memory from kindergarten. To add insult to longer-school-year-shorter-summer injury my son, a college student, enrolled in the local junior college and came home outraged that his books cost more than his tuition by almost double. On top of it he was forced to buy new books because the professor insisted on their doing homework online, requiring a CD, ultimately to make it easier for the teacher to grade online. The used book version didn’t come with the now requisite CD ROM, which of course needed to be purchased from the college bookstore in order to be sold-back as used. I think he referred to it as a racket which isn’t great PR for an industry in trouble. He also thought it was ludicrous to be forced online not only for a professor’s convenience but for an advanced algebra course where it is actually harder to do one’s work. Typing algebraic formulas doesn’t exactly come naturally to the typing rhythms these kids were taught. They are, after all, text-based. He saw absolutely no benefit to any of this and frankly I can’t say I did either. A shame. Oh and I did I mention that he said the school was teeming with students, some standing in the back of classrooms trying to get in. A flood of students from state universities, along with folks who are unemployed trying to re-educate themselves arrived into the junior college system at the time California has had a budget melt-down and cut classes and capacity. A perfect storm. Our younger son, soon applying to university, was told this week that 40,000 applicants won’t get into the California state university system fall of 2010. They’re preparing us for 5 and 6 year educations which we’re told to expect. I guess this means we can also expect textbooks that cost more than classes for even more years to come. Perish the thought.

Share & Save