Archive for the 'New York Times' Category

06
May
11

New York Times backed News.me looks to flip Flipboard users

By Mark Plumb 1 Comment
Categories: Advertising, Apps, Flipboard, iPad, Marketing, New York Times, Social Media, Tablet and Twitter
Tags: , , , , , ,

A competitor to the news aggregator application Flipboard launched last month. The New York Times partnered with the creators of bit.ly to find links that are being widely circulated and have aggregated the news in their new service called News.me.

I adopted Flipboard the same week I got my iPad (Side Note: You’ll Flip for Flipboard) and it is one of my daily stops. I love the layout, the vast array of news sources and access to Twitter content from newsmakers and reporters.  Best of all, it’s free! This brings me to my biggest complaint with News.me, they are charging 99 cents per week for free Twitter content.  Also, News.me only allows me to follow the Twitter stream of other News.me users. Flipboard allows me to follow those same Twitter streams for free.

It appears that the biggest advantage to News.me is that you can read full articles from The New York Times without advertising. Although, I found it funny that one of the bit.ly links I found today on News.me (during my free trial week) announced the two Webby and two People’s Voice Awards won by Flipboard http://bit.ly/k4Nkee.

So, I don’t expect News.me to survive in its current form, there are three things News.me can do to encourage me to give it a second chance.

  • Timely news – The majority of Flipboard is relying on sources I’ve selected to update news. So, my news feed is as timely as my friends speed to post news.
  • Diverse sources – I follow BBC News, CNN (love that app too!), USA Today and the The Denver Post. If News.me will provide information from these sources and more instead of the Twitter feed of other News.me users, my interest would be piqued.
  • Prioritize my news feed – News.me needs to develop an algorithm that will give me the most relevant news first instead of whatever was the most recent post.

I don’t know if I would pay 99 cents per week for these improvements, but I know as my free trial ends today, it’s so long, farewell, goodbye to News.me.

Tell us if your keeping News.me and please tell us why. Share your thoughts with us on Facebook at Weise Communications and follow us for free on Twitter at @Weise_Ideas.

27
Aug
10

Spend a Day in These Shoes – The Power of Testimonials

By Heather Horsey Leave a Comment
Categories: Endorsements, Marketing, New York Times, Political, Public Relations, Publicity, Shoes and Yahoo!
Tags: , , ,

Forget the days of the power suit, for many female politicos – it’s the day of the power shoe. When Reshma Saujani, a democratic congressional candidate from New York, mentioned the shoes she wore to pound the pavement of New York, she starred a flurry of politico shoe shoppers into motion.

A story in the New York Times claims Saujani heard of the shoes from someone on the Hillary Clinton team. Saujani wore the Kate Spade three-inch, round-toe, black patent wedge heel called the “Halle” and caused one-day lookups on Yahoo! to spike 625 percent. Politico show lovers voted for the Halle to be the “it” shoe with phrases like “Kate Spade wedge,” “Kate Spade wedge shoe,” and “Kate Spade Halle wedge.” The Huffington Post has even covered this hot topic.

These pantsuits for the feet are practical, or as practical as a high heel shoe can be, because they wear-well yet look polished. Unlike the lauded Jimmy Choos and Manolo Blahniks of Sex and the City, these shoes can be worn to pound pavement.

So, what does this tell us about marketing?

Customer testimonials have a lot of power, especially when it comes from someone well known who actually uses the product.

It also tells us that marketing to your target audience is very important.

Had the Kate Spade public relations team worked to get Sarah Jessica Parker to wear the Halle, the shoes would have come off more soccer mom than political chic. By getting their shoes on the feet of a woman who had a very practical use for them and was seen as fashionable and chic herself, the shoes came off as super stylish and a must have item.

We’d love to hear what you have been done to reach your target markets?

21
May
09

Are “news cafés” the solution to the newspaper crisis?

By Beth Hardy Leave a Comment
Categories: Hyperlocal, Journalism, New York Times, Newspaper, Newspaper crisis and Newspapers

1114925_lazy_morning_coffeeNext month PPF Group will open several coffee shops adjacent to local newsrooms in the Czech Republic in an attempt to make newspapers more accessible to readers and advertisers, reported The New York Times last week.

“As they sip their drinks, visitors will also be able to surf the Web, get help in building social networking profiles or even chat with reporters working right next door putting together their local newspaper,” explains Eric Pfanner of The Times. “The newsrooms-cum-cafes are part of a new venture in so-called hyperlocal journalism, which aims to reconnect newspapers with readers and advertisers by focusing on neighborhood concerns at a neighborhood level…”

PPF’s media strategist says that “there is no option to close the door” between the cafes and the newsrooms. He believes this will give the readers the feeling “that you can touch your editors and tell them what you want.”

So the question on your mind, I’m sure, is, “Is this going to work?” According to PPF, it is and the company is even expanding.

To begin, PPF is planning to publish seven weekly newspapers and 30 Web sites. If the newspapers are a success, they plan to add several more throughout the Czech Republic and possibly even in other Central and Eastern European countries.

This plan doesn’t seem to be foolproof – they may pick up more readers, but will the advertisers jump on board as well? However, it is an interesting concept. I’ve always thought that local papers may be the ones that survive in the end, and the idea of making them hyperlocal just ads to their appeal.

My other question is – and this is a bit off topic and comes from the publicist side of my brain – how will these “news cafes” affect PR in their areas? If I were a PR person working in the Czech Republic, I’d be drinking my morning coffee with the local editors on a weekly basis!

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