The Corporate Soup We Are All Swimming In
Selling ads for the community newspaper, l contact the Big health providers.
I learn corporately owned means anonymity: the name of head of marketing is not given out to the the public. People like me.
I submit a letter to their info email. I never hear back.
Marketing decisions are made internally, kept secret.
I was surprised to receive an unusually candid response which told me what was happening behind the scenes:
“Our Corporately owned Company rarely does newspaper advertising these days and major campaigns (if any) are handled through a media buy team at our corporate office, who work with an agency, which mainly targets magazines and BIG NEWSPAPER.
Unfortunately, we are seeing advertising budgets grow tighter, despite how much we (in Portland) value our local neighborhood papers.”
The crux of the problem is twofold
- Decision makers don’t deal directly with the customers. That’s what social media managers in their 20s and 30s are for.
- Credibility: Taking cues from social media managers, decision makers decide, that advertising decide local newspapers are not worth it. Newspapers are so 20th century!
Social media managers are not the newspapers readers.
I talked to an electrician that said many of his customers are older, not the generation who reads the menu from a OR code. It’s nice we agreed, to hold an actual menu in your hands. Neither of us are senior citizens.
It’s a knowledge mismatch.
Also, a generational mismatch
It’s the soup we’re all swimming in.
Read this post and more on my Typeshare Social Blog
