Parenting Mags and Mad Men: Connecting Via Media

Research care of Parenting Magazine notes some interesting findings:

• 76% of moms feel that parenting magazines have less information of interest to them once their children start school.


• 76% of moms would rather connect with moms who are dealing with the same issues they are, regardless of their age or the age of their kids.

This research underlies the larger issues that print media is facing. With the level of interactivity social media offers users, users are coming to expect that sort of interactivity from all media they consume. New media makes one-to-one connection possible. In the mommysphere, blogs and online communities are delivering content that allows people to enter into conversations with other moms. Once a mother experience’s that level of interactivity, the stale articles in parenting magazines fall flat.

It’s not just moms who want to connect. All across the media spectrum, people want ways to connect. The user-generated Twittering of Mad Men characters offers viewers of the show a chance to make a connection with the characters that pre-social media viewers could not have imagined. Expect this type of activity to become more prevalent, not less. While the Mad Men characters are simply fans taking control of the brand, there are no doubt marketers that have taken an interest and are planning ways to harness this for other brands.

How do we feel about this as marketers? This sort of phenomenon raises the bar for content. It urges us to take campaigns down to a personal level. That is not an easy thing to do.

But as the Mad Men Twitterers have shown us, if marketers don’t go there, users will.

New Media Education

Our agency gave a presentation to a little over a hundred business people at the Wichita Metro Chamber of Commerce’s Sunrise Scrambler event last week. I had the privilege of handling the section on new media. A few things struck me about the whole process and initial feedback:

1. Covering new media is not an easy thing. It involves addressing technology. When presenting to an audience where there are people who know boatloads about the technology and others who could care less, it is hard to strike a balance. I hope that I didn’t bore those who are up to date with new media or that I didn’t lose anyone in the tech stuff. I wonder how others that are educating people about new media manage this issue.



2. There are many aspects of new media, so it is hard to touch them all. We talked about the changing role of Web sites and search. We touched on SEO, SEM, online display advertising, e-mail marketing and social media. Honestly, it was so much that we couldn’t go too deep into any of these areas. We really scratched surface and left stuff out. Deciding what to cover and what to leave out was very tough.



3. People want to learn about this stuff. We had initial feedback that the new media was a strong area of interest. Some were trying some of the tactics themselves, while others were just trying to get a better understanding of these new media terms that they had heard so much about. The high interest level gets me giddy, because it means that more and more people are seeing the power of the medium.

Just this week I was also able to attend a local PRSA meeting where a panel of media experts discussed different vehicles. Todd Ramsey was on hand to talk about new media, mainly blogging. It was interesting to see a group of traditional and new media people all talking about the shifts in their business model and how they are all affected by emerging new media.

So, for others playing in the new media sandbox: How have your efforts to educate people on the topic been received? Please comment and share.

Confused about social media?

Think Facebook and blogs are only for your teenage daughter? Can't tell a blog post from an outpost? The good folks at Common Craft are here to help:

Social Media in Plain English from leelefever on Vimeo.