Newspapers as Brands

One of my personal heroes has been Seth Godin. In a recent blog posting he calls out the difficulty of newspapers to do what they are best at. He states that the Times needs to write about things that are true and important. In essence, he's saying that they need to be true to their brand and do it well.

As an insider, I can't even begin to explain how hard this is for the paper. Their commitment to serve EVERYONE is exactly the opposite of what a good brand does. They want to target the average, and thus think they will be serving everyone. I call this a diaper solution.

The nomencature doesn't derive from how excretive this notion is, but from the fallacy of targeting the average. It turns out that the average age of a diaper wearer is around 32. If you wanted to build a diaper for everyone, some people would try to make a product for the average user. You could make a more fashionable diaper for the average user and then put ads up on VH1. Clearly this would be doomed to failure, since common sense tells us there are two very distinct groups of diaper wearers - very young and very old. Brands and products have to choose, but newspapers have refused to.

It takes real bravery to spike an article that has little appeal to a targeted reader, especially given the climate of declining readership. However, competition is now article by article and each and every one has to have an appeal. If it doesn't its just a diaper for a 32 year old.