The logo’s on A1 but the lede has been buried.

So, you want to build a brand?

The importance of brand in American business can't be overstated. At its core, the marketplace is an exchange of value between a company and a customer. A good or service is exchanged for money based on its utility, quality, the cost to create and deliver it, and its relative value compared to alternatives, which are sometimes competitors.

But that's just the beginning. We know what we pay for things is so much more complex. The cost between a pair of $60 Vans and $600 Golden Goose sneakers is not simply quality, cost of production and comparison. The vast majority in that delta of dollars is brand. It's what wearing Golden Goose says about you as you stroll through Publix. It's you making a statement without saying a word.

Unfortunately, newspapers haven’t clearly and consistently branded themselves for some time. While there are periodic ad campaigns, the real brand of most newspapers was established and defined when it first launched. It was editorially-driven with the mission defined by the founder, and that brand held on as long as there was a clear through-line from those founders to the people in charge.

For too long, the brand of most local news organizations has been fuzzy at best as they tried to be all things to all people, and one of the reasons they've been so susceptible to disruption. In the last 30-40 years, newspapers are more accurately legacy institutions. And institutions aren't brands.

Today, however, with new and innovative approaches to news and journalism emerging, brand is becoming more important. In an environment of fake news, digital disruption, a flood of sources, and the conscious uncoupling of subscribers and advertisers, differentiation in a crowded market is essential.

With this in mind, two news operations have launched branding projects in the last few months focused on using journalists to define quality. The most recent, at the New York Times, is a creative look at their journalists under the banner "The Truth Takes A Journalist," a continuation of their "Truth is Essential" message. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution also notes the role of journalists under the banner "Press On," and reinforces a unified brand across all their content as they continue to deliver it through more channels and platforms.

From Amy Weisenbach, senior vice president and head of marketing at The New York Times Company, “

This campaign celebrates the journalists who create the stories that help our readers understand the world. The focus on the word ‘By’ personalizes who is behind the bylines readers see in The Times every day. These journalists are real people with passion for what they do, and they play a critical role in the pursuit of truth.”

The creative features 30 journalists, across a variety of roles, and will appear across a number of channels, including TikTok for the first time. While the video is compelling, drawing you in and keeping your attention, you are left to make the connection to content yourself. That said, since it is a follow on to the Truth is Essential creative, they have established context for the audience.

At the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the publisher's note explains:

"You now will see a new, single masthead everywhere we publish our journalism. You will find it across all of our products, whether digital or print. No matter where you see our name, you can be confident the journalism you are reading is rigorous, fact-based local news. In today’s media environment, it is vital to know which sources you can trust."

The idea of brand has come up before of course, but really in punctuated rather than sustained ways. Periodically, publishers would realize they didn't practice what they preach - namely advertise their brand clearly and consistently to the public. They sold their products aggressively - by hawking subscriptions through telemarketing, inserts, booths, crews, and as well as merchandising and media to move single copy. But direct sales are not the same as brand building.

As they began to understand branding beyond simple marketing tactics, publishers and companies would seek to articulate a clear point of differentiation, often by noting the breadth of their coverage and community impact with a message that was almost always under the theme of "local."

As the digital era began to ascend, both as a primary competitive force and as the great revenue hope, most of the branding shifted. Now the publisher was a multi-media organization, delivering local news wherever you want it and serving advertisers with a portfolio of services, often including the words "media" and "group" along the way.

Been there, done that, got the faux Moleskine notebook.

But buying into digital content delivery and marketing solutions doesn't do anything to reinforce the value of journalism. And a media group is focused on content more than news, and journalism is a luxury, often narrowed to "investigative" and "enterprise" reporting.

The latest wave is about bringing journalism and its audience back together because to sustain and grow the mission, the margin is made when the readers and subscribers pay more. Now the value equation is more direct - what am I willing to pay for quality journalism when the advertising subsidy is gone (or at least diminished)? How high is the quality? How good is the journalism?

So for the New York Times, "The Truth Takes a Journalist," for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, you can count on them to "Press On," and at the Washington Post, they are the protection because "Democracy Dies in the Darkness."

It shouldn't be lost that these all take their cue from our times - when the era of misinformation and press attacks have benefitted web traffic and subscriber numbers but plummeted credibility. These brands are defined not just as local, or quality, but as truth and light and resistance.

It's good to see branding back on the table. It should represent a core purpose and mission, embodied in everything the organization does. It was how newspapers started, and how local news organizations will continue to thrive.

If we don't define "local news," will we know it when we see it?

In June, Politico published an opinion piece by Jack Shafer essentially blaming readers for the problems with local news. As he put it:

"Despite all the impassioned calls from academics and journalists to salvage it, local news’ most vital constituency—readers—have withheld their affections. 

In 2009, just as the apocalypse befell the newspaper industry but while local news was still in relative abundance, many readers gave it an apathetic shrug. A Pew Research Center survey from that year found that an astonishing 42 percent said they would miss their paper “not much” or “not at all” if it vanished. ... A more recent Pew survey (2018) found that only 14 percent of respondents had paid for local news in the previous year."

My first reaction is that the piece suffers from the same thing newspapers have for decades - never bothering to define local news, other than it being, you know, "local." Whether in print or online, too many organizations still look at themselves as covering a wide breadth of topics - local government, politics, education, sports, business, entertainment, and essentially anything that fits under the "man bites dog" ethos.

But that only works when options are limited.

In fact, there is a tremendous demand for local news, it's just that it is no longer delivered by a single source - i.e. the local newspaper. Rather, readers get news from all manner of outlets from the formal (weeklies, business journals, TV, public radio) to the informal (school newsletters, neighborhood sites, your city councilperson, the Google search app on your phone).

The challenge for any local publisher today is to ruthlessly determine what they are going to be known for and consistently work to deliver that in content, user experience, channel execution, and customer touchpoints.

Let's be honest - this is hard for a lot of journalists, particularly those who have spent time in traditional local news organizations. The act of truly prioritizing a few topics is antithetical to the idea of serving the community. Even Lookout Santa Cruz, from Ken Doctor, who has studied the evolution of local news as much as anyone, has a traditional breakdown of topics.

To build a distinct news brand and develop a real connection with an audience is to shed anything that is not the brand. That's not to say it has to be one thing, but it should be a well-defined short list of topics. Sadly, many legacy organizations are now down to just that - a shortlist - not because of strategic planning but rather the result of cuts in staff and resources.

A more narrow focus allows publishers to invest in developing new content, deliver it through the channels most suited to the mission, have a better understanding of and create a deeper connection with the audience, and build out revenue streams that benefit all the stakeholders and generate forward momentum.

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Like so many other readers in the last few years, I decided to give the New York Times a try on one of their cheap introductory offers - $1 a week for 52 weeks. After a year I had to decide if I would continue, and for the last four months, I have. As a subscriber, I got an email with a new offering where I can now share 10 articles with people via email and social that allow non-subs to click through and read, regardless if they've met other paywall limits.

I think this is an excellent idea - if not totally new - for a few reasons. Most immediately, it takes away any hesitancy, which I have had in the past, about posting an article to share. And that posting becomes the simple and effective "word-of-mouth" social media, recommendation engines, and affiliate programs are built on today.

Additionally, it is part of a traditional paradigm that still has value. Even in print, newspapers worked to get issues into readers' hands in a variety of ways - subscriptions, single copy, sampling, bulk distribution, etc. While online subscriptions capture today's headlines, all these methods should be a part of a dynamic consumer funnel to introduce, nurture, and convert readers to loyal customers over time.

Newsletters, it's what's New(s)

There's a lot of news around newsletters becoming the new thing in news even when they're really not new at all.

The current darling of the newsletter world is Substack, where big-name journalists and other creators have decamped to build their own audience and generate direct revenue. While the business case is only solid for the most popular writers, that hasn't kept other platforms from getting into the game, including Facebook and Twitter.

In local news, the headline is the uncoupling of newsletters from a broader news organization or platform. In Nashville, 6AM City had just started sending out NASHToday, one of its eleven daily city newsletters, when I saw a tweet from Axios Local that said Nashville was also on their expansion list for the year.

They join others, including Whereby.us, which currently has five city newsletters and has launched Letterhead, a product for others to create newsletters based on geography or content niches in the same way. These new entrants are not personality-driven, like Substack, and they don't create the news as much as curate it, delivering a more customized collection of content in an engaging format.

“There is a ton of news in Denver, but it’s really fragmented,” said Alayna Alvarez, Axios Denver reporter. “We provide value by being the people that bring it all together and tell you why it matters.”1

We all know that newsletters aren't new to the news and publishing business, but like email itself, it seems to cycle in and out of favor. The popularity wanes as publishers fail to refresh their newsletters and as other channels become shiny objects that distract. Then periodically people remember that email is a persistent presence in our lives and remains one of the most flexible and direct ways to communicate with a known audience.

So as legacy publishers make hard choices about what they can cover, and niche products pop up to occupy a defined lane in the collective attention span, these emerging newsletter-first organizations are seizing an opportunity to create a broad audience by aggregating niche content and delivering it in a user-friendly package.

Within the existing news landscape, there are a number of great examples of publishers doing it right, from large organizations like the New York Times to local sites like the Daily Memphian. For many, however, there remains an opportunity to revisit their newsletter strategy to both support their primary news channel as wells as develop relationships built through email.

With recent experience researching and buying advertising in newsletters from publishers across the country, I have a few recommendations:

• Tap the value of curation - audiences need help finding the work publishers produce, particularly on digital channels. Consistently curating content and delivering it in brief clearly has value in a fragmented and crowded information marketplace, so much so, publishers might even consider linking to content they don't produce themselves.

• Make signing up easy - I'm amazed how often I have to search to see if a publisher has a newsletter, and if so, how to sign up. The best have anchored their ask in key spots like front and article pages, have a landing page to presents all options, and link to examples so people know what they're getting.

• Provide options for delivery - this applies to email subscriptions of all kinds, but providing subscribers a simple tool to choose their preferences, pick their frequency, and pause as well as opt-out, can reduce churn.

• Use newsletters to drive data strategy - newsletter databases have to be integrated with registered users, subscriber accounts, and overall customer communication management. This requires a level of sophistication some might not have, but searching for solutions will pay off as first-party data increases in value.

• Create an effective ad package - the best publishers, and these new newsletter-first organizations, take care to deliver value for the advertisers. This includes creating sponsorships with high profile and regular frequency, display ads that look good and feature the advertiser, and native positions that integrate sponsored posts with content.

Bonus - once your solid advertising solutions are ready, offer them in a self-service platform like Letterhead.

1 - Ad Age, Axios Local Is on Pace to Generate Up to $5 Million This Year.

Creating a future without friction

They say the pandemic isn’t just changing our world, it’s accelerating the trends already happening to our lives and work. Most notably for many businesses - particularly retail and media - it is pushing digital transformation into hyperspeed.

But acceleration doesn’t work alone, it’s often accompanied by disruption. Sometimes one goes first, sometimes the other, but either way we are forced to deal with both at the same time.

In the last year and certainly moving forward, we must embrace the kind of disruption that entrepreneurs have been using to create new products and services while carving out new markets for themselves.

A good place to start - reducing friction. Just like businesses have done during the pandemic, companies can look for ways to make things easier, make processes smoother, remove barriers, and create a seamless path from introduction to adoption to ongoing use.

Take something as simple as Papa John’s introduction of porch delivery. It’s a natural adaptation, designed to create social distance, but once you try it, you might wonder why you’d want to do it any other way. Add the ability to tip in the online payment process - something not everyone does - and somehow friction has been squeezed from an already smooth transaction.

There are many examples of services that have simplified the process flourishing lately - the accelerated use of credit card’s “tap to pay” feature, the increased adoption of telemedicine, the extension of online learning to fitness and other categories, and more.

Time for self-service advertising

As we progress to a new future state, all businesses should ask the simple question, "how can we reduce friction for our customers?” which can lead to ideas, improvements, and innovations.

For media companies to reduce friction, I’d love to see more adopt, improve, and optimize self-service tools for buying advertising.

Google and Facebook have, of course, mastered self-service. Along with superior data and insights as well as massive audiences, the ease with which a business of any size can plan and place media has been central to their dominance.

One would think traditional print, as well as heavily digital publishers, would have widely adopted self-service platforms already. If they had, they could have been continually improving and refining them to be leaders today. Most of the high-profile examples, however, are national media or broadcast.

Companies like Comcast’s Effectv and Hulu have launched self-service platforms for TV. They are also leveraging superior audience data - in Effectv’s case, Comcast’s 20+ million set-top boxes - to automate TV schedules and delivery across their networks and OTT offerings.

In the digital news space, Vox Media has recently launched Concert Ad Manager, a self-service platform to access their Concert and Concert Local networks, including established print brands and local news sites.

In contrast, print and online publishers have a lower barrier to create and deploy ad creative than TV and radio. And while digital advertising units can be purchased for most publishers sites, it’s almost always through third-party networks that sell to the lowest bidder and take a cut of the revenue.

If a local publisher had its own platform, it would not only reduce sales costs but match the quality of its higher-value audiences with the revenue they get for access to it. Add in continual innovation around ad platforms, and they could again gain their share of local advertising, earning it back from Google and Facebook.

Digital to the rescue ... again.

It’s a familiar story … the disruption of newspapers by the rise of digital media, and specifically the industry's inability to adapt the radical change in news consumer behavior. But that story was always more complicated.

As I continue to tell people to this day, newspapers were among the earliest to move online and in the first digital wave had online audiences bigger than most, if not all, of its competitors. In fact, their digital audience remains large today. 

Simply moving to digital was never the entire answer. So it’s with curiosity we see the next group of publishers looking to digital to be the way forward to profit and strong journalism. Here, News & Technology covers plans by the owner of the Colorado Springs Gazette to enter Denver with a pure digital play and Walter Hussman (of Arkansas Democrat-Gazette fame) changing his business model and taking it to Pine Bluff.

In Santa Cruz, newspaper veteran, Newsonomics author, and industry expert, Ken Doctor, is attempting to take what he’s learned and launch Lookout Santa Cruz, an all-digital news site he wants to be the local source of record.

In these cases, they are foregoing print - either entirely, or just delivering on Sunday in the case of the Democrat & Gazette - in order to have a business model that achieves profitability and sustainability. 

Along with many other digital-only publishers, the hope is:

• To more fully benefit from cost savings, not just from consolidating but eliminating print costs altogether.

• To take advantage of "news deserts” created by closed newspapers and reduced newsrooms to find fertile ground.

The Revolution Continues

There really is another revolution happening with local news and information. Some examples include print but many others rely on the lower cost of entry to digital. In the coming years, these ventures will be able to test and adapt what works and define new business models. 

In that quest, I believe it’s important to continue to innovate around the main drivers of revenue - subscribers and advertisers. To be successful, there need to be new ways of thinking and new models to go beyond the limitations of the initial foray into digital.

On the subscriber side, it will be important to: 

• Differentiate their news in some way: by topic, depth, style, or presentation. “Local” isn’t enough of a difference, it has to be truly unique in some other way. For content marketers, Joe Pulizzi has called this a “Content Tilt.” 

  • "Your content tilt is what separates you from everyone else in your market area. It’s your unique perspective on your content niche, which creates an opportunity for you to attack, lead and, ultimately, own the category."

• Deliver a multi-channel experience that is integrated and complementary based on the channel and user experience. Everyone pushes content out on multiple platforms, not everyone does it in an integrated way.

• Add value to subscriptions and memberships which distinguish from what “prospects” get. Make those who are paying feel rewarded for doing so, rather than prize the next click or entry-level subscription offer that makes current customers feel like suckers. 

On the advertising side: 

• Give businesses a chance to tell their story authentically. The power of content and reader relationships is a unique value. It should be available to advertisers as well. 

• Create ad formats that complement other content and increase engagement, constantly iterating and letting advertiser results drive improvements.

• Continue to improve targeting and reporting of audience delivery. Go beyond selling alternatives like FB and Google and start offering something that competes with them.

All this requires a sophisticated approach to data and analytics. Deep knowledge of the audience and their behavior is necessary to serve both the reader with the most valuable experience and ensure advertising messages are relevant to forge real consumer-business connections.

The kids are alright. Parents, however, are feeling a little crowded.

It seems like everyone is at home during the pandemic. Oh sure, you know about the parents working from home and children learning virtually, but now according to Pew Research, it’s more than half of young adults (18-29).  

52% of young adults are now living at home. 

That surpasses the previous peak in 1940, better known as the end of the Great Depression.

There’s nothing new about young adults living at home. Following the recession in the early 2010s, many parents welcomed recent college graduates back home as they tried to get their careers started in a tough job market while also facing rising housing costs. But this jump is more significant, reaching an all-time high in a very short period. 

It's possible these young adults could move out as rapidly as they moved in, but it's also possible there is more at work. 

In the early days of the pandemic, a person on my team asked if she could decamp from Chicago to her parents’ home in North Carolina. My initial reaction was reluctance, influenced by a generational bias, assuming she was “running home to mom” when faced with a little adversity. Luckily I didn’t act on that thought, approving the request, and what both she and I thought would be a couple of weeks turned into a couple of months (at least). 

At the same time, my niece, who grew up in my Michigan hometown and moved to Nashville in 2018, also decided to return to her parental home for an extended period. While these two examples don’t actually count in the numbers above, since they didn’t actually move home, they were surely not alone in this "return to roots."

The question now, how many won't return?  

One factor fueling the growth in cities - and indeed in Nashville - has been Millennials moving to urban areas. If the youngest among these are spending extended time in home towns, how many will decide to make the move permanent? For those simply making an economic decision, will this stunt new household formation and have longer-term effects on population and economic growth?

In the short term, renters and first-time homebuyers in Nashville and elsewhere may have a long road back to normal. That lull, however, could become a boom in 2022 as the economy regains its footing and these adults emerge older and ready for something new.

For Nashville, all indications are that growth will continue. The area’s size should continue to be a benefit in the near term - big enough to offer amenities yet small enough to provide a little space. It also likely means continued growth for the surrounding counties who are likely to be the benefit of those moving from bigger cities.

Read more about the data at the Pew Research site here.

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An opportunity for publishers in the self-improvement category?

A clear trend during the pandemic is the desire for self-improvement. Whether driven by the need to find a new job, concerns of long-term stability, or a desire for more fulfillment, people are looking to a variety of sources to upgrade skills and credentials. 

This post by the newsletter MediaLyte details a great opportunity for publishers to create educational content to add value to their subscription and membership models.

As publishers have tried to generate more revenue from paying subscribers, there is more pressure on the value they deliver. Many have started by packaging their content in new ways to reach new audiences - email newsletters, podcasts, and use of video. With the interest in self-improvement, publishers could now look to create educational assets - in person and online - to have a more direct revenue benefit. For example, in Nashville, what if The Tennessean or the Scene offered a four-part series on music criticism with current and former writers? Not only can these assets help attract and retain regular subscribers, but they could also be offered in a premium tier or as standalone products. 

Additionally, this approach can be used for lead generation, offering some for free in exchange for contact information, and if properly tracked, add to consumer behavior data to help develop new ad solutions and improving advertiser targeting.

The Pandemic Doesn’t Care About Your Brand Loyalty

A lot has changed about the way businesses go to market during the pandemic. Yes, there are the obvious delivery and curbside pickup options from restaurants to retail, not to mention masks, hand sanitizers, and plastic shields. But there are less obvious and more substantial changes as well.

For example, according to a recent study done by McKinsey, "75% of Americans have changed brands during the pandemic.”

In what they call a “shock to loyalty,” it turns out that consumers have “changed their shopping behavior and tried new brands and retailers,” including 20% who have changed their grocery store. According to the study, these changes have been driven by a focus on value, availability, and convenience. For example, where brands weren't able to keep up with consumer demand, people were forced to choose something else. In other cases, prioritizing value or convenience provided the motivation to establish a new product relationship.

In short, “the amount of market share that is up grabs is unlike any time.” No matter what business you're in, and regardless of whether you're in an industry that is benefitting right now, you have the opportunity to gain share. 

A second major shift is what they call the “Homebody economy,” driven by people not feeling comfortable returning to “normal” even as restrictions ease. Think of this as the “nesting” concept previously identified with new parents. There is more time spent in the home so spending follows on things that enhance that experience.

Now, rather than a life stage phenomenon, image a sustained way of life across all demographics. Yes, some of the at-home focus will change over time, but how many have learned to fundamentally live a different lifestyle, and how can you respond to that?

See the rest of the article as well as a video interview here.

And remember, like all major challenges, there is ample opportunity for those willing to make adjustments.

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Find out how Parnassus has adjusted

As you may know, Parnassus still isn’t open to the public, instead opting to stick with online sales and curbside pickup. In this Q&A, Ann Patchett shares more about how they’ve been adapting and why they have adopted this strategy.

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You don’t have to be a musician to weigh in on the local music scene

Did you know the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce is working on a new study to understand the pandemic’s impact on the local music economy and what the future may hold? And they want your opinion … yes, even if you’re not a musician or in the business (and by the "business," I mean the "industry"). Check out the survey here if you want to add your voice.

Tell me what you think

Do you have observations about the local economy, consumer behavior, or marketing during and after the pandemic? I’d love to hear about it. Or feel free to give feedback on anything else. 

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