Average monthly unique audience figures for newspaper websites grew by more than 3.6 million in 2007, a record year for the industry and an increase of more than six per cent over 2006 numbers, reported the Newspaper Association of America (NAA).

Monthly unique visitors to newspaper websites averaged 62.8 million in last year’s fourth quarter, a record number in itself and the largest in any quarter since NAA began tracking online usage in January 2004.

According to the data, which is part of a new report by Nielsen Online for NAA that takes into account home and work Internet usage, unique visitors in the fourth quarter represented a nine per cent increase over the same period a year ago (57.6 million).

It’s proof newspapers are venturing outside their traditional means and Internet users are keenly receptive.

Webcopyplus recently had the pleasure of participating in a creative session with Canadian marketing communications consultant Brian Follett, who ingeniously demonstrated the value of branding.

He talked about a plain, white Styrofoam cup on one end of a line, followed by several other cups, each more elaborate than the prior. The last cup was a Starbucks cup.

“Each one’s filled with brown liquid,” he said, promptly pointing out few would pay for the first cup, but many pay upwards of $5 for the last cup.

Without a doubt, branding has the power to shape our perceptions, heavily influence our buying decisions and inspire loyalty.

But is the Starbucks brand flawless? Not by a double shot, suggests branding consultant Rob Frankel, noting the coffee giant’s value has dropped by almost half in the past year. He claims it’s because Starbucks has no “genuine brand,” and asserts it never did.

Frankel argues “Fivebucks” (coined by Jerry Seinfeld) fails to make people understand why the brand is the only solution to their problem.

He stated: “To this day, there is not one person who can accurately and consistently articulate why Starbucks is preferable to other competing brands. Not the average yutz in the street . Not the vice-president of their ad agency. Not even the CEO of Starbucks himself. And you can bet that if they can’t articulate why Starbucks is ‘the only solution,’ nobody else in this great land of ours can, either.“

Some weeks ago, Sharon Zackfia, an analyst at William Blair & Co. in Chicago, commented: “Investors are going to have to digest the fact that there’s no sacred cow left in retail.”

Will the Starbucks stock continue to leak? Not if its brand can help it.
 

Clever entrepreneur and author Seth Godin posted an interesting piece on editors today. His point: the easy route for editors is the safe route, which avoids trouble – but also eliminates success.

“Sometimes, a great editor will push the remarkable stuff,” stated Godin. “That’s his job.”

I wholeheartedly agree editors often take the trouble-free route, which can result in lame material. However, it’s often not the choice of editors, but rather the suffocating layers of policies and bureaucracy enforced by the poor soul’s boss, department or company. Editors are, frankly, politicized and homogenized into submission.

Only once during my 16-year career as an editor and managing editor of two international corporations, both with 20,000-plus employees, was I supported to take a chance – with a feature highlighting several clients and communicating point blank what they valued, how they perceived our services, and what could be done to increase their satisfaction.

Out of the thousands of articles I wrote and edited over the years, that one received the most enthusiasm and recognition in the form of dozens of letters and calls by employees who were otherwise uninterested in company news. It created a buzz, got people talking about opportunities and generated genuine interest in the company and its future.

But that was one time. Otherwise, ideas and articles were pushed through endless approval processes involving directors, VPs, legal departments, marketing teams and even the CEO. In one case, I sat in a boardroom for three hours having a feature article dissected by 13 committee members. More often than not, the end products turned out to be dull, if not useless.

I recall pitching a unique newsletter concept to grab employees’ interest when there was a push to bring “fun” into the workplace. It was a format and style mimicking tacky tabloids with ridiculous headlines, complete with attention-grabbing photos of frontline staff and fun-filled captions.

The response from headquarters: “We’re wondering about you.” Not a speck of interest. Ironically, two years later, another company produced a very similar tabloid-type publication, which won them all sorts of acknowledgment and awards.

It brings to mind a quote from Tom Peters’ Essential Series book titled ‘Talent’. During a seminar in Sydney, a successful businessman stood up and said to Peters: “Reward excellent failures. Punish mediocre success.”

What a powerful philosophy – one that organizations should embrace.