Everything New is New Again
by the analogZONE Webmaster
Every week at analogZONE, we get
our fair share of calls. Some of them are the obligatory (but, on the whole,
unnecessary) courtesies by PR agency newbies, to inquire if the editor received
the e-mail, or fax, or FedEx. Each January, we see a flurry of requests
from award-winners for copies of our Product Of The
Year logo, in every graphic format under the sun, and we cheerfully
oblige.
This past week, however, we've heard more than usual of one particular question…and
I wanted to take a moment to "think out loud" with all of you
about why that might be.
The question was: "Do you have an Editorial Calendar?"
Granted, it's a New Year, so the sudden prevalence of this question might just be due to busy interns tasked with filling out the agency's or marcom department's files with complete data on every publication, following up on requests not "pinged" since the initial inquiries were made back in Fall 2005.
But I think it's also a measure of how far the industry has yet to go to embrace the online as opposed to the print paradigm…and of how a shift in that understanding could really help any given company launch a breakthrough product with REAL fanfare.
Let's begin by facing up to a brutal truth - there has never been a natural or logical reason, or one intrinsically helpful to the manufacturer, for a publication in a technical field to have an Editorial Calendar. I mean…who decreed that a particular week or month would be devoted to power management, or video codecs, or networking, or test and measurement? You can bet it wasn't the readers who clamored that they wanted to read about T&M in February, June and October. Or the advertisers who demanded a quarterly networking-focused issue.
No, the categories in Editorial Calendars, no matter what the trade, were a device created by print publications themselves to help balance out their year - to guarantee a sufficient ratio of advertising revenue to editorial space, per issue, to keep the publication viable during what might otherwise be "slow" periods thanks to natural business cycles. So, certain weeks or months would be devoted to a particular product area as a special focus or emphasis (ideally, tied to a relevant trade show, where company profiles as well as display ads could be sold), and manufacturers responded to the pressure like kindergarten parents feeling compelled to bring cupcakes to class for their child's birthday. Be there, or be square.
The fact is…and every marcom manager out there will recognize the truth in this statement…even when you had a major, germane product in one of those areas, you advertised in those particular issues between gritted, unwilling teeth, knowing that you would be conspicuous by your absence if you did not. It was plain that the sheer noise in your product area, chock-a-block with your competitors, would drown out your unique selling proposition quicker than a dump truck of pumpkins at a fruit stand. But you knew your Product Managers or VPs or CEO would go ballistic if "everybody else" was there when those thick, glossy pages hit their in-baskets and your firm was absent…so you made sure your annual plan included those all-important issues.
In terms of real marketing impact, you threw money away when you did that. And, deep down, you knew that's what you were doing.
Enter the Internet. Instant access, 24/7, global, ever-changing, responsive to what's hot and what's not at any 10-minute refresh out there. Suddenly, not only publishers - but advertisers and readers also - had immediate access to the latest and the greatest, at the whim of a few clicks.
How on Earth can you possibly presume to Editorially Calendarize such a beast?
The beauty - and the challenge - of the online medium is that it permits online publications to focus on whatever is most timely and significant at any given moment, and damn the schedule which says that, no, today you must focus on ADCs, because it's the middle of April.
This is one reason that analogZONE staunchly refuses to issue an Editorial Calendar. It's an outmoded method for a medium which is outmoded where timely technical information is concerned: that is to say, print. Working to so artificial a constraint would be unfair to our primary audience, working design engineers who need solutions in a variety of areas now, not in several months; to our sponsors, whose product announcements deserve to be considered on their merit and marketability when they happen, not according to someone else's schedule; and to our editors - because when a product crosses their desks which deserves to be in the spotlight, the absence of an editorial calendar gives them an opportunity to put that standout product in the limelight today. Not three months hence, when the topic is "scheduled" but the announcement is old news, but when it is most timely and most liable to gain broad attention, absent the chorus of industry cacophony.
Online media that are tied to their print counterparts continue to struggle with this issue. Since their content comes largely from articles and analyses "repurposed" from the print medium, their content is artificially hitched to an Editorial Calendar...not unlike an albatross around the neck. What they have available to talk about is substantially constrained by what the print editorial team has already processed, according to an increasingly artificial timetable.
analogZONE, by contrast, embraces the anarchy that is the Internet. Every week, in a spectrum of ZONEs, our editors comb the web - not just of the Net but of their industry contacts - to uncover what is significant and meaningful and timely, without regard to artificial categories or focuses or special editions. Indeed, the site is already structured in a myriad of broad product categories specifically so that it CAN accommodate breakthrough updates in every single area, every week, as they occur.
Imagine a situation in which your groundbreaking product could receive immediate attention and fanfare, in a credible vehicle that would reach across international borders in a matter of hours from publication, without reference to previously-planned schedules or Editorial Calendars. What a boon that would be to designers looking for a solution. What a boon it would be to manufacturers, looking to make a splash with the most possible impact.
In the new paradigm of online publishing, where information is immediate
and analysis should be, too….the question is, in fact, less "DO
you have an Editorial Calendar?" than it is "Why should we feel
it an advantage that you DO have one?"
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