Posts Tagged ‘Apple’
Monday, November 29th, 2010
by Carol Holden*
For me, it’s official – the world has gone totally mobile. The other night a commercial, on a kids’ cable channel my daughter watches, featured a Grandmother giving her little grandson (he looked about six to me) a tablet-reader for Christmas. I’ve been forewarned and won’t be shocked if my eight year old asks for one.
No wonder the rush continues for traditional media to expand to mobile devices, with some innovative apps already rolled out and others on the way:
- The Economist just launched an enhanced version of its publication for the iPad and iPhone. Readers can tweak the layout and graphs so they can receive all the robust content of the magazine, but in a format that makes sense for a small screen. “You’re trying to recreate your print magazine but redesign it to make the most of the medium,” said Oscar Grut, managing director of digital editions for The Economist.
- Oprah’s O, The Oprah Magazine has just released its iPad app to much fanfare. As described in the Marketwire release, “’I love the written word, and I love the iPad — to me, it’s another way to experience the intimacy of this magazine and its part of the future of the business,’ said Oprah Winfrey. ‘It’s a new way to connect with our readers, who are on a path of becoming their best selves.’”
- New Corps’ Rupert Murdoch and Apple’s Steve Jobs recently announced they would be teaming up to create a new iNewspaper. “The collaboration, which has been secretly under development in New York for several months, promises to be the world’s first ‘newspaper’ designed exclusively for new tablet-style computers such as Apple’s iPad, with a launch planned for early next year,” writes Edward Helmore in this Guardian UK article. “According to reports, there will be no ‘print edition’ or ‘web edition.’”
In fact, there are already enough publications with apps (over 700) available to audiences and readers on the iPad that strategic research company McPheters and Company was able to put together a ten best list. “McPheters ranked the print-to-iPad products based on design, functionality and use of rich content.” The list presents an interesting mix of both newspapers and magazines covering the gamut of lifestyle, culture, politics, news, sports, food, fashion, etc. The number one spot went to The New Yorker app, with apps for newspaper circulation heavy-weights USA Today and The Wall Street Journal making the list at number eight and ten respectively. Fashion entrant Net-A-Porter made the list at number five.
Mobile applications are becoming such an integral part of the media landscape that other industry organizations are taking notice. The American Society of Magazine Editors announced that among the changes to the National Magazine Awards 2011, they will include a new award for mobile editions.
In this age of PR 3.0, how are you using mobile apps to connect with your audiences? If you use a mobile device to read newspapers and magazines, what outlets would top your list of best media apps? Please share your thoughts with me and the readers of BurrellesLuce Fresh Ideas.
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Bio: I’ve been in the media business all of my adult life, first in newspapers before going full circle and joining BurrellesLuce, where I now direct the Media Measurement department. I’ve always enjoyed meeting and especially listening to the needs of our customers and others in the public relations and communications fields; I welcome sharing ideas through the Fresh Ideas blog. One of my professional passions is providing the type of service to a client that makes them respond, “atta girl” – inspiring our entire team to keep striving to be the best. Although I have been lucky enough to travel through much of Asia and most major U.S. cities for business or pleasure, my free time is now spent with my daughter, visiting family/friends, and of course the Jersey shore. Twitter: @domeasurement LinkedIn: Carol Holden Facebook: BurrellesLuce
Tags: American Society of Magazine Editors, Apple, applications, apps, audiences, BurrellesLuce, business, cable, Carol Holden, circulation, commercial, content, culture, design, devices, digital, Edward Helmore, fashion, food, Fresh Ideas, functionality, Guardian UK, iNewspaper, iPad, iPhone, landscape, lifestyle, magazine, Marketwire, McPheters and Company, media, mobile, National Magazine Awards, Net-a-Porter, New Corps Rupert Murdoch, news, newspapers, Oprah, organizations, Oscar Grut, outlets, politics, PR 3.0, print, publications, research, sports, Steve Jobs, strategic, subscription, tablet-reader, ten best list, The Economist, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, traditional, USA Today, web
Posted in Advertising/Marketing, Media Industry, Media Measurement, Public Relations | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, September 21st, 2010
Lauren Shapiro*
Rumors of iNewspaper, the new iPad application, have begun taking center stage with Internet chatterboxes. With its new app, Apple would create digital versions of publications by selling subscriptions on behalf of the publishers (and taking a cut of the profit, for sure!). However, the iPad friendly newspaper is not a new idea by any means.
Flickr Image Source: Byrion (Byrion Smith)
The biggest names in publishing have already established themselves on the iPad including the New York Times, BBC News, Wall Street Journal and AP News. Some downloads, such as the Wall Street Journal, are even free; however for access to exclusive content, a subscription purchase is required. According to PCWorld.com, WSJ users can even create a custom “watch list” of their stocks and funds. For BBC iPad readers, you can view articles in several languages including Spanish, Russian and Arabic. But, the real niche of online news subscriptions is the customization options. BBC News allows users to personalize the content they view based on interest. While offline, the application will search and locate stories for the next time you turn your iPad on.
Will the iPad subscription based model help drive revenue to electronic publications? The answer is, probably, yes – especially as free views of online articles become more limited by publishers. But the momentum and accessibility of online publications will likely urge readers away from the classic hard copy publication (e.g., commuters who rely on a good paper to read while taking a bus or train to work).
The trend toward an iNewspaper product is a sign of the times as the world becomes more reliant on the Internet than ever. Apple seems to have found itself at the forefront of this technology and has placed itself comfortably in the middle (as publishers learn how to better monetize their content) likely allowing Apple to earn quite a few pretty pennies in the meantime.
As a communications professional, do you think that e-publications will ever take the strength away from hard copy publications? How do you think this will impact your public relations, marketing, and advertising efforts? Please share your thoughts with me and the readers of BurrellesLuce Fresh Ideas.
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*Bio: Soon after graduating from the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, in 2006 with a B.A. in communication and a B.S. in business/marketing, I joined the BurrellesLuce client services team. In 2008, I completed my master’s degree in corporate and organizational communications and now serve as Director of Client Services. I am passionate about researching and understanding the role of email in shaping relationships from a client relation/service standpoint as well as how miscommunication occurs within email, which was the topic of my thesis. Through my posts on Fresh Ideas, I hope to educate and stimulate thoughtful discussions about corporate communications and client relations, further my own knowledge on this subject area, as well as continue to hone my skills as a communicator. Twitter: @_LaurenShapiro_ LinkedIn: laurenrshapiro Facebook: BurrellesLuce
Tags: advertising, and Arabic, AP news, app, Apple, application, articles, BBC news, BurrellesLuce, content, custom, digital, download, efforts, electronic, exclusive, free, Fresh Ideas, hard copy, iNewspaper, interest, Internet, iPad, Lauren Shapiro, marketing, New York Times, newspaper, offline, online news, PCWorld, personal, Public Relations, publication, readers, revenue, Russian, Spanish, stocks and funds, stories, subscription, subscriptions, Technology, views, Wall Street Journal, watch list, WSJ
Posted in Client Services, Media Industry, Mobile Media, Public Relations, Technology | No Comments »
Monday, September 13th, 2010
Image: www.aftermathnews.wordpress.com
In March 2009 I wrote my first blog post, here on BurrellesLuce Fresh Ideas, about how emerging technologies and platforms were changing the way we consume news – supported by input I gathered from a media summit I had attended that featured panelists such as Joe Scarborough from MSNBC’s Morning Joe and BBC’s Rome Hartman.
I wrote, “And with the rise of ‘citizen journalism’ and this ‘Pro-Am’ partnership that is developing with media, the panel agreed that consumers will have a stronger need for trusted brands, filtering, and editing to help navigate the media.” A year and a half later, the cream seems to be rising to the top in this fragmented media universe.
Today the “trusted brands,” such as The New York Times, are beginning to abandon the old business model of offering free content in exchange for paid advertisements. They are instead looking to generate additional revenue by putting their text, audio, and video behind pay walls or by offering their content as an app for a small fee. “I think we should have done it years ago,” said David Firestone, a deputy national news editor commenting on the NYT’s decision to put some of their content behind paywalls beginning in 2011. “As painful as it will be at the beginning, we have to get rid of the notion that high-quality news comes free.”
The Times Co. Chairman and publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. added, “This is a bet, to a certain degree, on where we think the Web is going…This is not going to be something that is going to change the financial dynamics overnight.”
In fact, no one is sure where the web is going; this undeniable shift away from free content will certainly make life more difficult for the Googles of the world who rely on free content to fuel their search engine. Consumers may turn to company’s like Apple for their media, who adopted the “paid content” model early on by making content available for small fees through iTunes and more recently showing consumers how convenient it is to access a magazine or newspaper digitally for a small fee on their iPad.
Fox News this week launched its new iPhone political app, available through iTunes for 99 cents. “The idea is that this is your essential guide to daily political news,” says Chris Stirewalt, Fox News digital politics editor, “to put power into peoples’ hands to give them the opportunity in this history making, nation shaping election, to have the tools at hand so that they can really understand and add to the depth of their experience.”
With more people opting to have their media pushed to their smart phones and iPads rather than retrieving information over the Internet it will be interesting to see how this affects web browser traffic. As free content slowly disappears, news websites and aggregators such as the Drudge Report and the Daily Beast may have a tougher time filling their sites with the hyperlinks that contain the raw material that drives much of their sites traffic. Instead the eyeballs will be looking in other directions – with more people willing to pay for content this may ultimately prove to be the antidote that saves a hemorrhaging newspaper industry.
It appears we are on the verge of coming full circle on how we get our news. We’ve gone from relying on newsstands and subscriptions to searching and accessing free content online, only to return to paying the publishers directly once again for their content through app fees and online subscriptions.
Paperboys and newsstand operators may be on the verge of extinction; however, content providers like newspapers, network, and cable TV and movie studios may have the final say in how their product is consumed after all.
As public relations and marketing professionals, how are you getting your news? How do you think the evolving media landscape will affect your ability to successfully conduct media relations and assess the value of your efforts?
Tags: Apple, apps, Arthur Sulzberger Jr, assess, audio, BBC, brands, BurrellesLuce, business, cable, Chris Stirewalt, Citizen Journalism, consumers, content provider, Daily Beast, David Firestone, digital, Drudge Report, editor, efforts, fee, financial, Fox News, free content, Fresh Ideas, Google, Harry Grapenthin, hyperlinks, information, Internet, iPad, iTunes, Joe Scarborough, magazine, marketing, media, Media Relations, model, movie studios, MSNBC Morning Joe, national, network, news, newspaper, newsstands, online, paid advertisements, Paid Content, panel, paperboys, parternship, pay waylls, platforms, Pro-Am, Public Relations, publishers, revenue, Rome Hartman, search engine, searching, sites, smart phones, subscriptions, success, technologies, text, The New York Times, traffic, trusted, TV, video, web, web browsers
Posted in Advertising/Marketing, Industry Events, Media Industry, Public Relations | 5 Comments »
Tuesday, April 13th, 2010
by Stephen Lawrence*
The iPad was released last Saturday. Until last week coverage of the iPad was limited by Apple’s press embargo, which restricted the potential
Flickr Image: lighthack
consumer’s access to both imagery and analysis. For the online Apple enthusiasts, this may have been an unavoidable hindrance, but it did little to quell the enthusiasm for all postings iPad-related. While social media circles were abuzz for weeks prior in anticipation of the April 3rd release, the coverage in the traditional (print) media was more subdued in the buildup.
The first images of Apple’s tablet computer were revealed, along with its name, in late January. Outside of tech circles, the public (online or offline) saw precious little imagery of the product in action until the release weekend. And again, for that dedicated market segment, that was of minor impart as their purchasing decision was set. But for another segment of the populace the coverage of the iPad by the traditional media in that crucial introductory weekend window would be their introduction to Apple’s revolutionary platform. What did the readership see of the iPad in their weekend newspapers? What did or didn’t they encounter if they happened to read that self-same article online?
Analysis of the coverage drawn from 60 major U.S .newspapers, for the release weekend of April 3-5, reveals a familiar pattern of content and coverage that we have seen in previous postings.
April 3
Out of 45 iPad-related articles which ran that day – the day of the iPad’s release – 33 were accompanied by an image of the product. The majority of these graphics were reproductions of the official release photo of the iPad. When compared with their corresponding web versions, only eight articles published the original image. The remainder consisted only of text. Only one out of a dozen syndicated articles could be located online.
April 4
Sunday sees a doubling of articles and imagery as the focus shrifts to local iPad frenzy. Newspapers in all major markets published a combination of syndicated and original content typically datelined from an Apple retail showroom. Photos of campout lines and of the lucky first purchaser accounted for nearly 100 images found in print that day. While some corresponding sites did contain a wealth of extras, such as video and interviews, the overall ratio was only slightly higher than from the previous day. Only 44 of those valuable images transitioned from print to web.
April 5
Less than 40 of the major papers ran an iPad article in their Monday editions. Many of them took a business news angle, reporting sales figures from the previous weekend. And, quite interestingly, only half of those were accompanied by a graphic of either an original or syndicated flavor. While this may have been related to either the news cycle or typical Monday space limitations in print, on the web-side a mere 10 of the 40 ran with graphics.
The release of the iPad was a huge event and not only for Apple. Application providers and traditional media outlets are betting on the iPad for the delivery of multiple layers of content and increased revenue. Thus, more than a few industry watchers have commented that the iPad’s release was simply “too big to fail.” Even with all of these factors in its favor, though, there was a considerable loss in content for the iPad’s coverage when transitioning from print to corresponding web coverage.
I’ve heard it said that “some people will read your story and some people will read part of your story, but EVERYONE will look at the picture.” If this is the case the accompanying image is vital to measuring impact. If the picture isn’t there could you be losing a prospective buying audience? If you aren’t evaluating the whole story with pictures, where they are included, is your marketing team able to properly evaluate the impact of your brand? This study again leaves me with a lot of questions and one answer: the image is a powerful component to have in your PR and communications arsenal.
If the release was for a lesser known product or a launch of a new brand, what kind of impact do you think the lack of consistent translation from print to online coverage or lack of image would have on reception? Please share your thoughts with me and the readers of BurrellesLuce Fresh Ideas.
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*Bio: A native of Mesa, Arizona, I graduated from the University of Arizona with a major in Near Eastern Studies. I began my career with BurrellesLuce in 1997 as a reader. As with most readers, I developed a special relationship with my assigned papers – those small town dailies and weeklies of the same flavor that my family had been employed in for two generations. Currently, I hold the position of quality assurance specialist, troubleshooting daily production issues. Outside interests include woodworking, and keeping my wife and dog happy. Twitter: BurrellesLuce; Facebook: BurrellesLuce
Tags: Analysis, Apple, BurrellesLuce, communications, evaluate the impact of your brand, Fresh Ideas, image is a powerful component to have in your PR and communications arsenal, imagery, iPad, marketing, newspapers, PR, print versus online, Social Media, Stephen Lawrence, traditional media, U.S. media
Posted in News Coverage, Public Relations, Technology | No Comments »
