Imagine this scene: a peaceful, relaxing beach. A good book and the gentle splash of breaking waves. Seabirds skimming the water looking for fish. A large boat sailing down the beach with giant, flashing neon signs advertising dinner and drink specials at tacky beach restaurants.

Did that last piece in our Bob Ross painting strike you as out of place? It should—and it should remind us that sometimes our marketing and public relations efforts can be a bit over the top to the point of turning off the very people we wish to attract.

Yes, beachgoers need to eat, and many will want some kind of tropical beverage served from a coconut with an umbrella to help cap their day. But it needn’t be thrust into their faces that Capt. Jim’s Shrimp Shack has two-for-one drink specials from 4-6 pm as we try to enjoy a little salt air and sand between our toes.

Marketers and public relations specialists walk a fine line between being effective and being annoying. We’ve all heard various statistics that say a consumer has to hear a message eight or nine times before they act. Well, sometimes once is too many times.

There are solutions to the dilemma of “how much is too much,” fortunately. Marketing can be tested, whether in focus groups or real-world A/B tests. Maybe Capt. Jim could see if sales were better on the days he advertised on the radio instead of the boat with the Jumbotron LCD panels.

Or maybe Capt. Jim should change tactics altogether. Trade press coverage is like that great beach restaurant guide that tourists seek out when they’re hungry. It’s a resource that’s there when the customer needs it—and not when they don’t wish to be bothered. Most business decision makers will seek out their industry’s trade journals because it behooves them to stay on top of trends in the field. However, they may ignore yet another attention-seeking direct mail piece or e-mail in their mailbox.

The beauty of promoting your company in the trade press is that it’s easy to be effective at getting your message out while hard to be overexposed. For more on how your business can benefit from trade press coverage—whether online or in print—call Trade Press Services at (805) 496.8850 or e-mail gerri@tradepressservices.com.

Since Gerri Knilan’s first post on the iPad, the Federal Trade Commisson has decided to launch an investigation into Apple’s policy of not allowing makers of competing devices to gather data from their ads on the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch. This data is considered indispensable, because it reveals how effective the ads are, and by extension how much companies can charge for them.

Gerri mentioned the iPad’s exclusivity—long an Apple business practice, dating back to the introduction of the Macintosh—as a potential reason that the computer and personal electronic giant’s new iPad device might face resistance. And now the FTC is providing that resistance, at least in the form of an investigation to determine whether barring competitors like Google from gathering ad data is unfair.

To me, this is more of the same from Apple, who in recent years has sought complete vertical integration of the user experience for its products. It’s no surprise that they want to restrict competitor’s access to ad data, effectively rendering competitors ad’s worthless and impossible to price.

I just don’t see this kind of monolithic approach working in 2010, when choices for consumers are limitless, and competitors are plenty. Apple has become the talking head from their famous 1984 Macintosh commercial:

Click here to view the embedded video.

What the heart wants

Car and Driver editor-in-chief Eddie Alterman opines on the iPad in the July issue, and makes a good point: no one really knows what the end result will be when it comes to media on the iPad. Says Alterman, “The device’s full impact on the media business won’t be clear for a while…As Woody Allen once infamously and lecherously confessed, ‘The heart wants what it wants.’ Well, media platforms are just as perverse.”

Size doesn’t matter?

More from the pop auto literature: a letter to the editor in the August 2010 issue of Four Wheeler:

I was disappointed to receive only 98 pages with Four Wheeler when my Diesel Power magazine came with 186 pages. That is a ridiculous difference since for the same price of my Diesel Power subscription I am getting half the magazine with you.

The editor’s response:

The actual size if the magazine is dependent on the number of pages of advertising we generate each month. Diesel Power has more pages of advertising, so naturally, it’s thicker than outs. Then again, what’s really more important—quantity or quality?

According to a press release from the leadership of Condé Nast, Hearst Magazines, Meredith Corporation, Time Inc. and Wenner Media, the ads will feature:

headlines such as, “We Surf the Internet. We Swim in Magazines.” And “Will the Internet Kill Magazines? Did Instant Coffee Kill Coffee?” These will be accompanied by iconic images lifted from the pages of America’s best-known magazines. A second phase, which will start appearing in June issues, will embed multiple cover images from widely recognized publications into the ad’s text to convey key phrases.

According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, magazine publishers are buoyed by a recent bump in print advertising sales and data from Mediamark Research & Intelligence showing a 4.3% increase in magazine readership over the past five years.

The press release states the ads will reach 112 million readers a month, while the WSJ story says the total value of the ads is more than $90 million.

One such ad features Michael Phelps:

Another substitutes popular magazine titles for words:

A YouTube video features the CEOs of the five companies explaining in their own words their rationale for the campaign:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Is this a desperate last gasp? A long-overdue statement of the facts? Or are they missing the point about the future of magazines altogether? (And is it a little odd they’re promoting the virtues of magazines to people who are already reading one?)

In my next post: industry reaction, and my thoughts.

You may know what “editorial” means (that’s on the opinion page in the newspaper, right?), and you probably know what advertising is (the annoying stuff that interrupts my TV show!) But what the heck is “advertorial”? And why do you care?

Advertorial content is the Frankenstein monster of journalism. Part news, part opinion, and part advertising, it’s a section of a publication that looks like a story, but it isn’t. It may contain some news, but it doesn’t quite look right. The type style is just a little different than the previous page. The people in the photos seem a bit too…happy. And the author sure seems enthusiastic about a certain brand of products.

Usually, advertorial pieces in reputable publications are labeled “Special Advertising Sections” or “Special Advertisement,” but not always. This is especially true of online publications, where an advertorial section may be labeled “Info Site” or contain no warning at all that this is advertising and not unbiased reporting.

Why do companies pay for advertorial content? First, there are always those people who won’t see the warnings and who will assume that it’s another story—and gosh, Company Y sure must make great products if Publication Z is so crazy about them. Others may recognize the advertorial content as an ad, but they’ll read it anyway—for the same reason that people read long, multi-page letters from charities raising money at the holidays.

Editorial content on the other hand is different. It comes in the form of opinion pieces, news, by-lined articles, case studies, research results, roundtable discussions, etc. It positions the author as an expert and the company as a leader in its marketplace. There’s no pay to play involved.

Advertising is space within the publication that is sold, usually to companies but sometimes to individuals, for the purposes of promoting a good or a service. Content can be completely self-serving. While advertising content increases visibility in the marketplace, editorial content has more credibility. Generally, advertising, along with subscriptions and single copy sales, is how publications make their money.

At most publications, there is a firm line drawn between the newsroom and the sales department. In other words, it’s important to the editors of the publication that their advertisers don’t influence the stories on which they report or their opinions, in order to protect their journalistic integrity. Likewise, they don’t want to write heavily about certain topics or promote certain opinions hoping to lure in certain advertisers.

Bottom line: nothing promotes your company as well as good old fashioned editorial content. You can’t pay for a front-page article in the paper. Really, you can’t. They don’t sell that. You have to make the news on your own merit.

Lucky for you, Trade Press Services is expert at getting your name into the publications that you want to be in. We help you assemble first-rate editorial content and place it in the finest industry publications, where your customers, potential customers or strategic alliance partners will recognize you as the subject matter expert.

Don’t fool around with Frankenstein. Contact Trade Press Services today.