John Tantillo’s Winner and Loser of The Week

Brand Winner...	And Loser...

Winner:  The New York Times

Loser:  The Democratic Party           

Winner: 

The New York Times is this week’s winner.

When the writing is on the wall for your industry –whether it’s buggy whips or newspapers— you need to adapt or perish.  For a while, it looked like the Gray Lady was going to do the latter. 

The expensive new building near Times Square and the bloated newsroom staff were all part of the old business model when print advertising could amply support things.  But since all that’s changed, it’s left the Times scrambling for a business model that works and hemorrhaging money.

But this past week, they’re showing that from the top down they’re on the move in the right direction.

Arthur Sulzberger, the long-time publisher, acknowledged that the Times would eventually go out of print and live exclusively in digital format.  Next year they will be introducing something called a “metered model paywall” to its website to increase revenue.

Bottom line, Sulzberger is saying that a huge cost of running the newspaper is going to be eliminated.  This is like GM saying that they still have a product to sell but can cut out the costs of producing a physical model.  It’s huge because what the Times is really saying is that their brand is probably going to find a way to thrive in the new environment.

Fact is, the Times already has one of the most visited websites on the planet.  Combine this with the reduced production costs and you’ve got the potential for a long-term winner.  Times, remember the Gourmet lesson do not gut the content of your brand!

More proof of a rosier Times future: this past week also saw the Times enter the “hyper-local” news market with a joint venture with NYU.  The site will be produced by NYU’s journalism institute but run off of the Times website.  Again, great narrow Target Market focus combined with lower cost content production.

I think we’ll be seeing a lot more from this great brand.

Loser:

Why are my Democratic friends in denial about why they will be losing the house and quite possibly the Senate this coming November?

Last fall, they boasted that the Democrats had the power to pass whatever legislation they wanted and that since they had the power to do it, they should do it.

After all, isn’t that point of political power: if you’ve got it, use it?

Wrong.

The Democrats have been confusing communicating political power with marketing political power.

Let’s call what they have been doing the communications model of politics.  In this model, the politicians in the majority (or in the White House) have an agenda which they believe in with such incredible zeal that they are convinced that everyone else will too –if only everyone else gets the agenda communicated to them right. 

Take health care.  With the communications model, the problem wasn’t that the idea was something that most Americans were against; it was that the idea itself hadn’t been effectively communicated.  That’s why much of the blame in the Democratic camp was about effective messaging and not the message itself.

The communications model has been a mainstay of politics for a long time but it’s limited.  Don’t get me wrong, getting your message out there clearly, compellingly and widely is important, but it’s the crafting of that message that matters most. 

Bottom line, communication is the last step; marketing is the first.

Raw political power without marketing spells disaster.  What do I mean by marketing?  I mean developing a message that actually meets needs and that requires genuine listening, active research, politics that keeps going to the people to find out what matters to them (and what doesn’t).

Had the White House and the Democratic leadership done this instead of using raw political power and the communications model to force through an agenda, they would not now be facing a potential disaster in November.

Americans are historically wary of big government and where was the market research that said that they wanted health care reform of the kind delivered by Congress? 

How could smart politicians with years of experience make such a serious error in judgment?  It was because they made the mistake in believing that one can sell anything to anyone if you have the right communications strategy and communicator in place.   

This is the classic mistake many business clients make: “how do I sell my product to my customers (even though they don’t really like the product)?”  The short answer: you can’t.  You must find out what your customers really want and then design a product around that. In marketing, it’s called “concept testing” and it can takes months and years to develop –but it’s worth it.

In the meantime, the communications model has hurt them because they managed to get a lot of attention for a “product” that no one wants.

In advertising folk lore there is a famous case study of a New York Brewery named Piels that had such a great communications strategy that they actually went out of business. You see an advertisement campaign with Burt and Harry, two animated characters, became so popular that many consumers went out to buy the beer. The only problem was that the beer was so bad that most of those who tasted it never bought it again.

Only now with the November elections looming do the Democrats and our President seem to be shifting the focus to where it should have been all along: the economy.  It is probably a little to little a lot to late. 

And, remember, things are always easier when you keep marketing and branding in mind.