Wednesday, May 2, 2007

Buyer Beware Here is an interesting thought from Ephraim Schwartz of Infoworld (as Infoworld becomes a solely Web magazine now) about marketing pressures for online media. I can sense from some PR people the pressure placed on them by marketing managers at their clients who really, really want to get the company's message out unadulterated or filtered by objective editors. If you are a customer, always be aware of what you read online. It may be a marketing message--just so you know what you're getting. I might not be a typical consumer, but I go to the company's Website for specs, and to editors and user comments to decide on which to buy. ONLINE PUBLICATIONS SHIFTING TO BEING MARKETING-DRIVEN? A not so subtle shift is taking place in online publications that is worth noting and worth watching. Here's a link to a podcast that discusses this very issue, "Journalism and Marketing." In the old days, maybe two or three years ago, the ratio between edit staff and marketing staff was easily five to one in favor of editorial. Probably higher at many publications. But as pubs like InfoWorld try to get their online sea legs, mainly to discover what readers want, a dramatic shift in new hires is taking place. After a round of calls to numerous pubs, I see the story is the same everywhere. The shift away from editorial staff to marketing staff is happening across all Internet publications. This is greatly facilitated by the ability to put up user-generated and even vendor-generated content. One editor who dare not be named told me "vendors want more custom content." "What do you mean by custom content?" I asked. "Advertorial," was his response. The repercussions of this are still hard to gauge. But one reporter I spoke with put it best when he said, "It will take longer to find the truth." In other words, there is so much marketing influence out there, and it is getting so strong, it will take more digging and more surfing the Web to separate fact from fiction. Happy hunting. 4:48:25 PM    comment []

WBF 2007 Day Two One more day at WBF in Baltimore. Looks like a number of really good papers coming up today. Right now, Walt Boyes of Control magazine is giving the keynote. His topics are trends. First is the need to recruit new process engineers. Next is the way companies operate--meaning that the ERP system needs information from the process in order to fulfill its promise of helping managers run a better company. Finally looking at technology and standards advancements. A number of us were encouraging him to say something controversial, but so far he's said nothing I would disagree with. Quoting a lot of Peter Martin--if it doesn't show up on the income statement or balance sheet, then it didn't happen. If you are in engineering or engineering management, this would have been a very worthwhile trip. And, it's not just about batch processes. There have (or will be) presentations on packaging also using ISA-88. Sandra Vann from The Dow Company, a Six Sigma black belt, showed how to use ISA-95 modeling to gather information that makes Six Sigma analysis better--as well as pointing to the right areas for study. I sit in many conferences. Few have as much worthwhile information. Plus, there are a bunch of networking opportunities to learn more. 8:47:36 AM    comment []