Why Advertising Boycotts Are Being Conducted By Corporations

Last week we made a prediction about boycotts with a difference -- those conducted by big brands by withholding their ads that support now-controversial media outlets.

This weekend (after we made our prediction), the New York Times wrote about Fox News' top-rated personality, Bill O'Reilly, host of the $100 million-generating "The O'Reilly Factor," in an article with the headline, "Bill O'Reilly Thrives at Fox News, Even as Harassment Settlements Add Up." He's been sued multiple times and has paid out more than $13 million to settle cases -- and there are new allegations him.

Although the Times reports that O'Reilly "denies the claims have merit," this time something's different because advertisers are pulling their ads from "The O'Reilly Factor," according to a Times article, "Fox Losing More Advertisers After Sexual Harassment Claims Against O’Reilly." As of Wednesday, nearly three dozen companies had decided to pull their ads.

According to HuffPost, what's going on this time is:

The O’Reilly boycott seems to have accelerated more quickly, both in terms of advertisers taking the initiative ― some announcing their decisions on social media ― and in terms of sustained coverage online, which wasn’t as much of a factor in 2009, much less 2004. 

Here's another article about the situation: "Advertisers want their Google ads off offensive content" (that appeared in the Boston Globe courtesy of the New York Times).

Social media is playing a role, allowing people to vent about controversies that a decade ago might not have lasted past the initial news cycle. Now, the news covers the outrage -- that becomes the news. 

But that's not the only reason. 

We've had pervasive social media for the last five years but what we think is happening may be that Americans on all sides are already upset (again, this is across the political spectrum) and now more easily and quickly express their outrage. And that's something brands have to take seriously.

So we think top brands will be more responsive to avoid controversies that don't play well to their customers. (Talking to you, Pepsi and Kendall Jenner.) In some ways, these are preemptive boycotts: brands boycott to avoid contact or relationships that will anger their customers so as to prevent a consumer boycott. 

There will be some brands that will decide to take on the controversy, much the way some small companies take a risk by purchasing an ad during the Super Bowl. But we do expect these preemptive boycotts to continue.

Notes from the FutureM Conference

The FutureM conference in Boston yesterday featured an interesting panel on the Future of Advertising, featuring executives from DataXu, Mullen, Localytics, Digitas, Arnold and CampusLIVE.

The panelists agreed that future of advertising will be measurable
-- even as some said there are some things you can't measure.

Yet.

Though one panelist said that "Some things that are not yet measurable may soon be measurable -- and be developed by someone in this room."

Currently what we measure traffic, click-throughs, etc., but that doesn't necessarily capture key factors that marketers need to measure and understand, such as being able to the value of community and other long-term issues, including how do you link content and marketing initiatives to the long-term actions.

One frustration noted by the panel is that organizations don't necessarily want to spend money to measure.

Another question the panel examined was: Is conventional advertising dead?  Some on the panel Some said conventional advertising is dead -- just like some say the press release is dead. I disagree.

The problem with looking at online vs. conventional marketing is that people access info across platforms so you need communicate that way.  It's how you use advertising, a number of panels said. And it's important not to put initiatives into buckets. I remember that a cable client kept referring to the difference between cable and TV, and I pointed out that for those outside the industry, most people look at the TV and their remote, and don't think too much about the differences between cable and broadcast. Now, given the range of ways we interact with media -- via TV/cable, smartphones, tablets, etc., brands must look cross-platform, to enable people to access content whichever way they may want. And how they access content changes throughout the day; during their commute, it may be radio. While grabbing coffee, it may be their smartphone. During the day, it's their computer. And somewhere along the way, it's their tablet. The point some panelists made was that you ignore potential customers if you ignore one platform.

That holds true for those focusing exclusively on social media.  Twitter should not be the only channel. Remember, one panelist said: Twitter is not as pervasive as it is in the room.  Companies need to make it easy for people to connect, whichever way they want to.

That said, a big point of discussion was the need to monetize and measure social media, and not be afraid to experiment.

One of the last questions taken up by the panel is do most brands need a mobile app? The answer: assess the need for a mobile app on a case-by-case basis.  But every brand needs to make sure their sites are mobile-optimized. (One panelist made the point that if Android continues to gain share over iOS on smartphones, optimized mobile sites will be more important that apps, since the app-based approach and app market really belongs to Apple.)

The final question was whether panelists feel we're in the middle of a unprecedented marketing transformation.  One panelist said, "No. I think we're just at the beginning."

The Future of Advertising, Social Media & PR

Earlier this week, Alex Poulos at LaunchPad Media, wrote an op-ed in the Boston Globe that discussed the future of advertising, "‘Mad Men’ of the future: The world of advertising — consumer, beware."  In the piece,
Poulos makes a few points about what the future of advertising holds, which, because of new technologies, will bring about new levels of:

• Intrusiveness.
• Invasiveness.
• Interactivity.
• Integration.

It's this last point that interests me the most. Poulos says that "advertising, marketing and PR will be indistinguishable. Yet words used now to hasten that day -- 'integrated,' 'synergy' and 'holistics' -- will seem silly in the future."

I agree with that -- just as we predicted in the 1990s that so-called "new media" would just be called "media." Until, of course, we got to a new "new media," also known as social media. 

I think there's a chance we'll stop referring to social media even as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and others are integrated more closely into our smarterphones and are embedded in all sorts of devices, including cars.  (For example: you'll be able to enter your friend's location from your contact database to program the address into your GPS.) That convergence will just be the way we live.

And I think the current wave of new media will just be called media by the middle of the decade.

Of course, it will be supplanted by even newer media.  But that's grist for another blog article.

Fast Company & 8 Tips on the Future of Marketing

Ok, so this is not going to be a Valentine's Day post.

The current issue of Fast Company features a compelling article, "The Future of Advertising" by Danielle Sacks that raises some key points for all marketing-related agencies, including PR:

• Marketing can't just be entertaining. It must be useful.
• Marketing can no longer be just glossy concepts perfected before going to the client to approve.
• Digital is incremental, experimental, continually optimized, in perpetual beta.
• Digital will change how you make money, staff projects, price things.
• Digital isn't just one channel -- it's a medium that blooms thousands of other mediums, leading to fragmented audiences via fragmented access points (search, geotagging, iPad, mobile apps, and social networks.
• While there has never been more to reach consumers, it's never been more ways to connect.
• Creating more work for less money -- which means that agencies of all sorts are paying the know ho of being in an industry that doesn't know to protect its own interests, according to Jean Marie Dru, Chair of TBWA.
• The rules will keep changing.
  

Sacks cites an article Dru wrote in Advertising Age, "Endless Pressure on Price Traps Agencies, Clients in Death Spiral," which is also worth reading.

What will the future of marketing be in 2011? It's clear that marketing will continue to evolve, and quickly. We think it's clear that companies can no longer sit on the sidelines of social media as a fad. For more of what we think, check back soon for our annual list of trends.

Three Things That #KennethColeTweets Teaches Us

Clothing designer shot himself in his well-clad foot yesterday with a tweet that was quickly deemed inappropriate:

Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online at http://bit.ly/KCairo -KCless than a minute ago via Twitter for BlackBerry®

He quickly got condemned for being insensitive. And then, in what appears to be a now-standard response on Twitter, someone establish a mock Twitter ID, KennethColePR, posting some amusing tweets the way BPGlobalPR did after the BP oil spill. Today, KennethColePR has more than six thousand followers.

Kenneth Cole later did apologize -- six hours later.

So here's the first lesson: if you have a crisis

1. Be prepared: Register account names that can be used as mock accounts. Yeah, they'll still be able to find an account to mock your corporate response, but you might as well make it more difficult for them.
2. Respond quickly. Companies need to monitor the response any edgy tweets quickly. Fifteen years ago, apologizing just six hours after the fact might have been fast enough to deflate a story. Not anymore. Twitter moves too fast, so that six hours turns out to be a too looong a time. Two hours might be too long to wait and defuse the situation.
   
3. Context matters. What works in advertising might not work on Twitter. Kenneth Cole has used edgy ads for years --"Regardless of the right to bear arms, we condemn the right to bare feet" and Women have the right to be pregnant, but not barefoot" or an AIDS-prevention ad featured a condom along with the tagline: "Shoes aren't the only thing we encourage you to wear." So his edgy comment on Twitter was not without precedent. What's interesting, though, is the gap between what's appropriate for an ad and what's appropriate on Twitter.

People expect ads to entertain, intrigue, persuade, annoy or bore them. Even targeted ads are a bit impersonal (which is not to say some ads don't offend -- as some Super Bowl ads demonstrate each year).

Twitter, however, is different. It seems more personal. We're using it for news and commentary. What might have worked in an ad clearly did not work on Twitter.

The question for Kenneth Cole is what affect this tweet will have on his sales. I tend to think it won't have leave much of a long-term impact on his core customers.

What do you think? Are there other lessons?

In Detroit, Separation Between Church and State -- Editorial and Advertising -- Has Blurred

So it's come to this: the separation between editorial and advertising (also known as church and state) at a major newspaper has become blurred. While it seemed like there wasn't always a lot of separation at the smaller trade magazines, there was always a strong separation at major newspapers. Until now.

Check out an interesting Wall St. Journal article about the Detroit Free Press and Humana: "Major Detroit Newspaper Takes Cues From Advertisers; Free Press Gets Idea for Medicare Series From Humana, Defers to Target on Timing of Education Stories."

Given the significant ad slump everywhere, and the lousy economy in Detroit, it may not be surprising that it happened there.

I bet we'll see more of this kind of collabortion. We just won't always be aware of it.

New Survey Finds that "Two-Thirds of Americans Object to Online Tracking"

Effective targeted or customized advertising has been the holy grail for online advertising, but a new study shows that consumers aren't so thrilled.

I'm not surprised. Actually, I'm more surprised someone had to conduct a study to find that out.

I'm also not surprised that of adults, there's one group that consistently responded that they're interested in getting targeted ads, discounts and news. That group: 18-24 year-olds.

So who doesn't like targeted advertising? Respondents 35 and older, who have the old-fashioned perspective of wanting to protect their privacy more. (Click here for a few charts.)

I find it mildly interesting that, 1,000 people were willing to answer questions about their preferences regarding advertising -- especially since two-thirds of them were concerned about their privacy.

What's more interesting, and potentially more troubling for online marketers, is that 69 percent of respondents said they would favor a law that would give people the right to know how much information a web site has about them.

On the other hand, as they become adults, teens may feel the same way 18-24 year-olds feel, and in a few years, the Times could report that most people like targeted ads.

The Prospect for Hyperlocal Continues to Look Good -- But can it capture the ad market?

As print media continues to shed reporters and readers, the hyperlocal continues to show potential. That's because while there will always be sources for national news, people still want local news.

The problem for marketers is that there may be too many hyperlocal sites online and those sites don't generate mass-market traffic, making for a very fragmented user base. Targeting hyperlocal blogs and sites can be a great way to generate coverage, but it takes more effort to reach the many hyperlocal sites, and those sites reach a smaller group than maligned print media.

In an interesting story, "Can Anyone Tap the $100 Billion Potential of Hyperlocal News?," Fast Company looks at the problem from an advertising perspective -- that's the $100B in question.

What's interesting about news by search engine is that it has enabled users to select the news that interests them, which is a far less worthy slogan than the Times' "All the news that's fit to print." (Will the Times have to update its slogan to "All the news that's fit to text?")

While a lot of people consider it to be better, news by search engine (NBSE) actually destroys substantial value. By way of example, the Boston Globe was worth $1.1B when the Times bought it a decade ago. But now the Times can't even give away the paper, despite the fact that it's the market leader, is nationally known, wins journalism awards, etc.

The bottom-line is that hyperlocal should survive, but it won't pick up all the advertising dollars that no longer go to print.

I'm not sure where that money will go, but I do know that's bad news for traditional journalism even as its practiced online. Fully researched journalism takes time, resources and money, and without subscription fees and without advertising support, only a few outlets will be able to maintain journalistic standards.

Some colleagues and clients have been talking about the implications of that. It is in the interest of PR functions that journalism maintains its credibility. I'm going to explore this further in future posts. Let me know what you think.

Would Adverting Agencies, Spending Their Own Money, Buy Ads or Engage in PR?

When it comes to spending their own money, advertising executives may choose not to advertise because that's too costly. Instead, according to a panel discussion, they may choose product placement, sponsorship, and digital PR.

In a panel discussion of "New Idea Agencies" that appears in the July/August issue of Fast Company, Carl Johnson, cofounder of Anomaly, said of marketing their own brands, "One of the most amusing things is, of course, we haven't bought a single ad in support of any of our brands. Not one... Why would we? You can do so much if you know what you're doing with product placement, sponsorship, digital PR. It's that whole 'I haven't got any money, so I'll have to think.' It makes you much better at grinding out media without paying."

That's a wonderful tribute to the power of PR. Check out the entire article, "More Creative Shops Are Commercializing Their Own Product Lines: With major advertisers cutting costs, creative shops are increasingly commercializing their own product ideas."

Should Agencies Be Their Own Clients?

Why shouldn't agencies be their own clients -- develop and market their own brands?

Increasingly, ad agencies are considering going into business for themselves: creating a brand, producing the product, and selling the item.

As Ben Maldon, managing partner BBH Labs, told Danielle Sacks at Fast Company, "By creating our own brands, we wanted to make ourselves recession-proof -- or at least more recession-proof than other agencies."

A look at what a few are calling "New Idea Agencies," the article, "More Creative Shops Are Commercializing Their Own Product Lines: With major advertisers cutting costs, creative shops are increasingly commercializing their own product ideas," provides some interesting insight as to why agencies should be their own clients. The article also provides a couple of reasons clients might want to work with "New Idea Agencies."

Here are two good reasons to be your own client:

• You become commercially aware. According Carl Johnson, cofounder, Anomaly, "When I started a million years ago, I almost didn't know money had anything to do with the advertising business. You had a meeting, took a brief, made some work. It seemed enormously detached from selling something to people."
• "You get exposure to the full gory detail of how clients make and lose money," Malbon said.

Here are a couple of reasons why being your own client may not be good or easy:

• It's is a big distraction to ongoing client work.
• Clients may wonder: are they working for me to putting their best efforts into their product?
  
• You may get specialized insight into the category, yet it also prevents you from taking on from competitors in the same category.
• Your partners in the development and manufacturing of your product may represent a conflict with a future prospective client.
  
• Since you're potentially investing not only your own time but also your own money into a product, you could wind up losing both.
• If your brand fails, your people may lose equity they shouldn't have counted on, but did anyway. That's a double loss.
  
• If you need to run your own business to understand the pressures your clients feel, you may need to change how you operate.

By the way, one of the more amusing points made in the article is that one of the advertising executives said they did not spend a dime on advertising:

JOHNSON: One of the most amusing things is, of course, we haven't bought a single ad in support of any of our brands. Not one.

VITRANO: That is incredible.

JOHNSON: Why would we? You can do so much if you know what you're doing with product placement, sponsorship, digital PR. It's that whole "I haven't got any money, so I'll have to think." It makes you much better at grinding out media without paying.

Well, when it comes to spending their own money, advertisers said they did not buy ads, but relied on several marketing disciplines, including digital PR. Very interesting endorsement.

GM's Bankruptcy is Bad News for Media

Detroit's continuing problems, along with government involvement, is going to continue to hurt the media business.

The auto companies are huge advertisers. GM spent $2 billion last year alone, according to TMS Media Intelligence (as cited by the Wall St. Journal).

But it won't reach that level this year.

GM sold Hummer to an obscure China truck manufacturer, and may close or sell other brands, and is shutting down dealerships -- all that will have an impact on national and local media.

Same is true for Chrsyler, which will scale back its ad buy this year.

According to the Wall St. Journal, "GM's Bankruptcy Adds to Pressure on Prices in TV-Ad Bazaar," which put the most interesting aspect of the story -- at least for media junkies -- at the end of the article, the cutbacks in ad buys will result in national networks having to "cut staff and budgets for new and existing TV series. Local stations, which rely heavily on auto ads, have slashed spending on syndicated series, cut staff and, in some cases, filed for bankruptcy.

"Local media, TV stations and newspapers will likely continue to take the brunt of GM's cuts, say people familiar with the matter. But national media will also be hit. Ad executives close to the company say more dollars will be put into digital ads to move unsold inventory, and fewer into big-ticket TV spots for big branding efforts."

This is something we've been telling clients since news of the dealership closings hit.

What this article does not say, but what we've told clients, is that even when the recovery occurs, you can't expect ad spending to return to pre-recession levels. This is the new normal; get used to it. Marketers will spend less on advertising, and try new ways to reach a more fragmented audience.

"Blue Book of Advertising" Has Some Good Ideas for PR

While the media & PR worlds are changing, The Little Blue Book of Advertising: 52 Small Ideas That Can Make a Big Difference provides some useful insight and tips -- whether you work in PR or advertising.

Written by agency veterans by Steve Lance & Jeff Woll, some of the ideas are not new for those who have been in the agency business for a while, but too often people forget them, like:

• Be expert on the benefits of your client's product or service.
• Know who your customers are.
• Read what your customers reads, watch what they watch.
• Quality is the absence of non/quality signals )like misspellings."
• Attention spans will get shorter. Need to make the point/message shorter.
  

There are some good points on branding:

• Know where you want to take the brand.
• Map a clear route of how you'll take your brand to the destination.
  = make sure to communicate that map.
  = establish benchmarks against which progress will be made.
  =establish measures w/client/agency.
  = agree how to resolve issues.
  = establish criteria w/client.

The book is a quick read, and worth picking up as a refresher.

NY Times Reports on "Mostly Gloom for Glossies"

According to the New York Times: "Another day, another closure. Magazines are becoming thinner as advertising pages fall, and publishers are grimly cutting underperforming titles."

But the article, "Mostly Gloom for Glossies," is interesting not because it reports market conditions already well known to the readers of this blog. But because the print version is a static chart that highlights the plights of six glossy magazines while showing lines marking two dozen other magazines.

It's that the online version is much more useful for being interactive. You can click on each magazine, and more clearly see the trend of its advertising pages -- many more were flat than were apparent in the print version of the chart, and flat during this economy is actually good news.
It's an example of what online can do much better than print.

It's also an example of reporting that requires far less actual writing. (This post contains more copy than the Times article.) Even as the article compiles a lot of data.

2009 to Bring Fewer New Magazine Launches -- at Least in Print

Expect to see fewer launches of new magazines, and to see some struggling media to call it quits in 2009. Remember that circulation is irrelevant to the publisher’s decision to discontinue a magazine if its ad pages/revenue drop. Over the past 18 months, some magazines with circulations in the hundreds of thousands closed because the advertisers stopped buying space.

PC Magazine goes online-only + More Bad News for Newspapers

After 27 years, PC Magazine goes online-only, in part because ad revenue is falling. Its last print edition will be in Jan. 2009. What's significant is that "PC Magazine is Ziff Davis' Flagship magazine.

According to the Times, "The change will not require much of an adjustment, because the focus has been on getting articles to the Web first, said Lance Ulanoff, the editor of the PCMag Digital Network, which is what PCMag.com and its accompanying Web sites were renamed on Wednesday. “All content goes online first, and print has been cherry-picking for some time what it wants for the print edition,” Mr. Ulanoff said.

Here's a key point:

• “If you look at the list of the magazines that have gone to online, almost all of them have been magazines in trouble,” said John Fennell, a professor at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. “Magazines in general are going to be dependent on print advertising for a long time into the future,” he said.
• But magazine and newspaper publishers have been contending with a decline in advertising at the same time that their costs, including ink, printing, and distribution, are rising.

And we can expect further bad news: "Advertising pages for the December issues of monthly magazines are down more than 17 percent from the December issues of 2007, according to the Media Industry Newsletter, and that is leading to layoffs and the closing of titles."

Even more foreboding is a report that Harvard Square's iconic Out of Town News will be closing after more than 50 years. Here's how the Boston Globe reported it, "Plan to shutter newsstand pierces heart of Harvard Sq."
:

"It is not the profitable location for us that it once was," said Laura Samuels, spokeswoman for the owner, Hudson News of East Rutherford, N.J.

"The possible demise caused shock and dismay yesterday in Harvard Square, where shoppers took it as a wrenching sign of a rapidly changing world, where print news is dying..."

If people are not buying print newspapers and magazine in Harvard Square, what's the likelihood they will continue to buy them elsewhere?

But here's the real problem even for online-only publications: Costs are down, but they are more dependent on advertising than ever since none of them currently charge for online subscriptions. How will they make money when advertising is down?

Meanwhile, the Boston Business Journal reports that the Boston Globe is losing $1 million a week, which prompted the paper's latest redesign that cut 24 pages each week and latest buyout rounds. (However, the Globe's new "g" section now offers more comics than ever -- is that really what we want or need?) The Globe's problems are impacting parent NY Times' cash flow. No one is suggesting the Times is going under, but it certainly must be considering how to divest itself of the Globe.

NY Times' Stuart Elliott Writes Follow-up Article on Advertising & Hollywood -- mentions two movies mentioned here

In his email to me following his New York Times article about the number of movies or TV shows set in the glamorous world of advertising, advertising columnist Stuart Elliott said he might write another column about the movies and TV shows he left out of the original column. (See, For 60 Years, the Ad Game Has Been Fodder for Scripts -- Why not PR?)

In today's Times, "A Cultural Affinity for Madison Avenue," Elliott wrote his follow-up article that mentioned two of the films I suggested, "Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?" and “Good Neighbor Sam.”

Meanwhile, I am still looking for other movies or TV shows involving a PR executive. In the NBC sitcom, "Mad About You," Helen Hunt's character was a PR exec., but her job was not a sustained focus of the show.

Let me know if you know of other PR-inspired movies or TV shows.

More Bad News about Advertising

According to BusinessWeek (via Advertising Age), some of the biggest blue-chip companies are cutting back their ad budgets. Anheuser-Busch, Coke, GM, Nissan and Procter & Gamble have all announced plans to cut back or to impose tighter financial discipline on their marketing strategies.

This will have implications for PR teams, which are likely to see decreased budgets, too, or increased demands for ROI and metrics -- unfortunately, it often requires additional investment to establish and track metrics.

I'd be interested in suggestions to address that.

Things Get Ugly for Fashion Mags

Check out "Massive Outlay of Ads No Longer in Vogue: Conde Nast Title, Others Sport Leaner Fall Looks as Marketings Hold Back." Aside from the usual clever WSJ headline & subhead, the article is interesting in looking at two things:

• Luxury advertisers are still doing well, and able to spend.
• Fashion books, which had been immune until now, are showing you can be -- at least from an advertising side -- to thin. W magazine (not related to the president) lost 17.67% of its ad pages.

Meanwhile, everyone in the fashion mag sector is expecting a tough 2009. As far as I can tell, red is not the new black. Bet we'll see mid-tier retailers and mid-tier magazines folding over the next few months.

Today's iPhone Release May Be Big News -- But the Continued Drop in Ad Sales Has Bigger Implications

According to major media, along with the social media world like Twitter, today's big news is the release of the latest iPhone 3G.

The iPhone has certainly had a significant impact on the cellphone handset business. But the latest version is an iteration, not a revolution. It will be replaced next year with more of the same -- no doubt cool stuff, but more of the same.

Bigger news, I think, was reported on page 5 of today's New York Times' business section: "In Deepening Ad Decline, Sales Fall 8% at Magazines: The decline is led by automotive and technology ads" by Richard Perez-Pena.

The current business model of magazines and newspapers in the U.S. is based on advertising. Without advertising, a U.S. magazine won't survive -- even if it maintains a high circulation base. In the past year, magazines with circulations of several hundred thousand have folded merely because advertisers had dried up.

That doesn't mean that readers had given up on the magazine. Just advertisers. In contrast, European magazines typically charge higher subscription fees, which are used to underwrite a greater proportion of a print outlet's costs. Presumably, in Europe, a magazine with a high circ. could survive an advertising downturn.

Not so in the U.S., where news and some business mags were hit by the continuing slump. BusinessWeek's ad pages dropped 14.8% and Forbes dropped 12.6 for the first half of 2008, according to the Publishers Information Bureau, which tracks this information.

Even some of the biggest circ. magazines were hit, including Reader's Digest, Cosmo, Ladies' Home Journal and Family Circle.

Things are so bad here that Thomas J. Wallace, editorial director at Conde Nast, told Perez-Pena, "The joke here is, 'Flat is the new up.'" (Translation: that just having flat advertising sales is great in this environment.)

The implications to the news is that there will be more layoffs at magazines and newspapers, which are having an even more difficult time. Many of those layoffs will come from editorial for two reasons:

1. You can't cut the advertising dept., because you people to sell space to advertisers.
2. The decline in ad pages by 14.8% brings with it a drop of at least 14.8% in editorial pages. That means magazines don't need as much content, which means they can cut reporters without much impact.
   

Over the past year, BusinessWeek and Fortune updated their formats. Expect more to follow suit. When they do, a letter from the editor or publisher will say that the new format is designed to better help readers, but don't be fooled. The new formats are designed to convey that the magazine continues to be relevant.

But after cutting reporters and editors and bringing more charts and graphics, that's probably not the case. Skimpier content is not more relevant. Meanwhile, in announcing format changes, a number of newspaper chains have said they will be adding more charts and graphs, as the Boston Globe's business section has done.

Unfortunately, these changes have not stemmed the exodus of readers or advertisers.

The iPhone is great. I would consider getting one if the carrier had better coverage in my area. But the news about the ad declines is unlikely to be cyclical, and means bad news for traditional media.
to attract advertisers .