"News, news, news - that is what we want. You can't beat news in a newspaper."

The one thing I always fear with every new brilliant digi gizmo/application/network/invention/etc is that, 9 times out of 10, it provides yet another means for my obsessive need to stay up to date with news, no matter how irrelevant, to take control. The side that screams “check what’s going on out there – just in case”. The side that keeps clicking refresh even though you know nothing has changed in the last 22 seconds.

From my BBC homepage to Google News Alerts; to RSS feeds and journalist blogs; to Digg stories and iPlayer; and, of course, the BlackBerry for that 10 minute walk back from the tube. And then comes Twitter, a constant source of updating news fuelled by community and conversation. News by the second!

Yet, for some reason, I still try and read The Times in its full archaic (alas non-broadsheet) paper glory on the way into the office.

At a basic level a newspaper is “a publication containing new, information and advertising” all of which I can now get more quickly and more of online than I can in physical form. (Admittedly I can’t get online on the tube but there’s always a cheeky podcast.) So what’s it giving me that I’m lacking online?

Extra content and insight? All those opinion pieces, reviews, even obituaries amongst the daily news was my first thought.

Much as I enjoy the non-news elements of a good broadsheet I can certainly get more of them online. In fact, traditional newspapers are starting to get pretty good at providing this on their own online destinations. I can get more football info from thetimesonline than I can in their Monday supplement.

Even more worryingly, some recent stats from Moody’s Investor Services suggest that only 14% of a paper’s operating costs are spent on content with some 70% going towards making it a physical item (printing, distribution, etc).

So if it’s not its contents, what is it?

For me, I think it’s a trust thing. The authority a newspaper brings.

Back in ancient Rome Acta Diurna, or Daily Acts, were carved onto stone and placed in the forum by the local government for all to see. Daily news was tangible, permanent and from an authoritative source. Does a piece of paper with that familiar well-fonted title play the same role for me?

Authority’s an interesting area for news. Personally, I’ll ignore the likes of The Sun when reading football transfer news and take a large chunk of tweets from people I’d never even heard of with a pinch of salt. But if The Times says it, I’ll listen. Eric Schmidt’s infamous quote rings true: “The internet is fast becoming a cesspool where false information thrives”.

Jefferson once stated that “whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government”. I guess this poses the question of who do you trust to keep you ‘well-informed’? The words ‘The Times’ or ‘Guardian’ give me that trust, reliability and authority and are best manifested, like with the Romans, in their full paper form.

You could argue that newspapers could simply take their name online and, indeed, some of them are. But they’re still playing catch up. Murdoch was spot on when he said “Big will not beat small anymore. It will be the fast beating the slow”.

There has been a fundamental shift in the transmission of news. The likes of Twitter have democratised journalism and rendered communities quicker and more agile at providing the news that newspapers once served to them. Until papers find a way to harness this and, in my opinion, harbour it with their own authority they will always be chasing the pack.

(NB I think the BBC is a good example of using UGC alongside their authority with submitted pictures etc, but they haven’t had to hurdle a transition from newsstand to browser.)

This needn’t be a threat to journalism either. Many digital streams actually promote the individual more than the group (I’m more likely to follow Iain Tait on Twitter than I am Poke for example).

This debate will keep rattling around I’m sure. Chat about monetising news online, advertising models, death of journalism, etc, etc. One thing I am sure of though, you might be able to take away The Funday Times, but you can’t take away the place on my dining-table for the papers on a Sunday.




PS As an aside, it’s interesting to see the likes of the New York Times accommodating online behaviour offline by devoting their second and third pages to abstracts of the paper's content.

Naughty Me

I’ve been a little lax of late (new job, exams, etc, etc) and given that I’m buggering off on holiday tomorrow I thought I should leave at least a token entry to keep my blog momentum up! So here are a couple of things grabbing my attention at the moment…


The Newton Machine
This one’s hit the blogosphere already (thanks to Alex for the link) but the more I think about it, the more I really like it. Basically, TopShop have installed a ‘Newton Machine’ in their Oxford Street store. This ‘machine’ (invented by the German photographer Helmut Newton) is actually just a camera. However, it is set up in a way that allows the model to take the photos themselves (i.e. no photographer needed). The model stands in front of a mirror and holds a small controller that lets them adjust the camera’s timer and flash thus allowing them to perfect their pose before taking the shot. When they’re good to go they simply press a button and take the picture.

Here's its launch in 1972:

Newton’s inspiration was two-fold. Firstly, he recognised that models were usually better at taking photos than their (more often than not) boyfriend photographers. Secondly, it was a middle finger to the controlled and static fashion shoots of his time.

In TopShop, you’re the model. Try on some TopShop clothes and orchestrate your own photo shoot using this Newton Machine. Your pictures are then posted on an online gallery and you get your own A5 paper copy to take home.

More importantly, TopShop have really managed to embrace Newton’s principles and given up a bit of their brand to their customers. Bo**ocks to the static half-dressed mannequins and the engineered instore posters that we put up every month, you show off the clothes you want to wear however you want to show them off. And have fun doing it in the process.

Newton himself claimed that his job was to “seduce, amuse and entertain”, TopShop lets customers do it themselves all under the TopShop brand. Clever. And, if I am allowed to be a little self-indulgent it brings to mind a previous post on Trust and who we consider trustworthy (i.e. "people like ourselves").

Adidas Football – Dream Big
For me, Adidas really gets football. I’ve given them the nod before and their “Dream Big” online campaign is another great example.

I’m guessing it’s come out of their “Impossible is Nothing” stuff but in this campaign Adidas sends some of its top football stars to random ‘local’ destinations to have training sessions with the local teams, all of whom have ‘written’ to Adidas asking for their help. (They’ve dreamt big – get it?) Gerrard, Viera and Beckham hotfoot it to the smallest football league in the world – the Isles of Scilly (only two teams and one football pitch) – taking their Predator boots and merchandise with them whilst the likes of Kaka, Alonso and Fabregas fly out to tiny Andorra to teach youth teams the art of passing with their AdiPure boots.

Each trip is broken into a set of clips that are drip fed onto the site and, despite initial reservations, I reckon they’re really good. (I even get an e-mail letting me know when a new series is out.) They’ve got a real feel of the classic Nike “Parklife” advert which every aspiring Sunday League Player relates to. Maybe I’m being a bit naïve, or maybe it’s just because I’m one of those aspiring Sunday League Players, but I’m hooked nonetheless.

In fact, I’m going to write Adidas a letter…

Who can you trust? PART 2

I wrote a piece on trust a while back and concluded that companies are more trusted than governments, but the way in which we interact with them is crucial. A couple of weeks later I went to an Acacia Avenue seminar on the topic and decided that I’d only just scratched the surface. Delving deeper was not as easy as first thought.

Even the basic definition of trust is pretty confusing – there are 24 plausible descriptions. But the first (and presumably most read) goes as follows:

“Reliance on the integrity, strength, ability, surety, etc., of a person or thing; confidence.”

This seemed pretty solid and even pays homage to the word’s origin (it comes from a Middle Age game called “tryst” involving one set of villagers chasing a load of rabbits towards a line of club-bearers who, ‘standing in tryst’, would wait for the bunnies to arrive before bopping them dead). However, one key element, featured in other definitions and implied in the game outlined above, is missing – expectation.

This is where trust works for brands. Consumers have an expectation that brands will represent/display certain attributes. They don’t just rely on these qualities, they expect them. Stability from John Lewis (only 4 chairmen in the last 100 years), openness from Pret a Manger (recipes given away online), practising what you preach from Innocent (Fruitstock) and self-confidence from ghd (that one’s from the girls, I don’t actually have any hair to straighten).

Despite this expectation and my previous conclusions a GlobeScan survey on trust in institutions found ‘global companies’ and ‘large national companies’ to score second and third from bottom respectively. In fact, both scored negative ratings whilst ‘armed forces’ topped the table. However, a glance at Edelman’s survey on specific brand trust suggests they are far more trustworthy then the army with Johnson & Johnson, Coca-Cola and Microsoft leading the way!

So what’s going on? The key difference is in the question asked in each survey. GlobeScan measured “Trust in an institutions ability to operate in society’s best interests” whilst Edelman’s focus was simply on “Which brands do you trust”. One concentrates on the community and one on the individual. It pains me to say it, but Thatcher spotted the importance of this difference a while back – “There’s no such thing as society. There are only individual men and women”.

I don’t agree with her sentiments but recognising this difference is essential for the poor performing ‘global companies’. Ultimately people still crave community (think London Marathon, Diana’s funeral, Facebook, reaction to Thatcher’s comment, etc) and it is one of the original pillars of trust. Brands are our bunny-boppers.

So is the trick nowadays to think community/society and not just individual? Perhaps – Coca-Cola and Microsoft are fighting AIDs, HP are saving the forests, everyone's chasing 'green trends', and so on. Maybe we’re not in the age of the individual after all?

Hmm… this may need a Part 3. Until then, I’m sticking with Bob Dylan – “If you want somebody you can trust, trust yourself”.

Who can you trust?

I was following a debate on a football forum this Sunday (about Ronaldo’s penalty-taking style if anyone’s interested) and came across this statement:

“I'm prepared to believe respected newspapers over people posting on an Internet message board”

Although this was merely a rant from a fan whose argument was on the ropes it raises an interesting question – “Who do you trust when gathering information”. This reminded me of a 'trust chart' I came across a while back:


In the UK businesses are actually trusted more than the government (and are only trusted less then NGOs). This seemed like great news for our brands, so I decided to delve a little deeper and checked out ‘Edelman’s Trust Barometer’ (an annual trust and credibility survey amongst global opinion forming elites).

The latest edition confirmed the prominence of businesses on the ‘axis of trust’ but revealed that whilst people trusted our brands and companies, they didn’t always trust how they found out about them.

Sure, the conventional CEO statement, company employee, press, etc sources were all listed but the highest score achieved was "media" with a mere 38% (of people agreeing that it is a trustworthy source).

So who do we trust? It’s actually the third parties – industry analysts, academics and specialists, all scoring over 55%. This makes sense, with the general consensus believing that these sources are less swayed by company propaganda and are hence not as likely to “toe the party line”.

However, there is a final trusted group that beats all of these sources hands down – “people like me”. Out of those questioned across 18 different countries 58% agreed that if they heard information about a company from “somebody like me” they would find it credible.

So who are these “people like me”? Apologies to MOSAIC and Acorn but the overall opinion is that it has nothing to do with geography, local community, demographics or even a common industry. It’s actually much simpler: “people like me” are people who “share my interests”, “have similar political beliefs” and other such logical stuff.

This brings forth the old ‘social networking’ argument. Yes, we’ve been chatting about it for ages now (amongst people like ourselves) but it still holds true.

It’s understandable that brands are unwilling to relinquish control and offer themselves up to the world of social networking – “What if they only say bad stuff?” – but whether they like it or not it’s already happening. More importantly these peer-to-peer networks are proving more impactful than the millions invested each year just to paint a pretty picture of the company.

This doesn’t mean that every brand needs its own social network, more that they have to be smarter and reconsider how and where they talk to their customers. Peer-to-peer efforts need to be incorporated with big budget comms plans. Yes it’s big, scary and seems risky, but there are small steps out there. Think how Innocent gauged customer opinion before deciding whether to enter McDonald's or not. They found people like them (current customers) and asked them.

A final word of warning: if you’re reading this and nodding along thinking that maybe I’m somebody like you, think again – according to Edelman only 14% of people found us bloggers to be trustworthy!