The Mario Blog

09.30.2010—1pm    Post #1024
Getting those users involved; El Tiempo to launch its rethinking

TAKEAWAY: More and more, it is all about getting our users/readers to interact with us. The days of playing tennis against the wall are over. PLUS: Headed for Bogotá‘s El Tiempo, and a new way of looking at how a newspaper’s content flows

Updated Thursday, Sept. 30, 17:08 Bogota

TAKEAWAY: More and more, it is all about getting our users/readers to interact with us. The days of playing tennis against the wall are over. PLUS: Headed for Bogotá‘s El Tiempo, and a new way of looking at how a newspaper’s content flows

Our pictures, your pictures, their pictures

Reminds me of the old saying about two families coming together thru a new relationship: Yours, Mine and Ours.

How is this for an experiment?

According to a piece in The New York Times, Cosmopolitan magazine is tapping into the ever popular——and getting more so by the hour——social media for its first global, digital ad campaign. “The main focus of the campaign is a video that simulates a photo shoot for a new Cosmopolitan ad. Using Facebook Connect, viewers of the video can download their own photographs and those of their friends, which pop up in the video as it progresses; the viewers are depicted as the stars of the campaign.”

This may be a good strategy for Cosmopolitan, as it already has a global reach with distribution in 100 countries. Its global audience totals 72 million. That may be a lot of photos/videos to process if everyone takes the bait from Cosmo.

El Tiempo: big changes in store

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A preview of what will become a three-section newspaper starting October 3

I will be reporting from Bogotá the next few days and the launch of El Tiempo with its new rethinking October 3.

It is, without a doubt, the most innovative, thought provoking and medium-changing project in which I am involved. Here we abandoned the idea of just doing a cosmetic redesign and went for something more substantial: the very essence of how a newspaper’s content flows.

Stay tuned for more detailed accounts in the days to come.

The newspaper as indispensable source of information

Score one for marketing of the newspaper as the essential medium.

In today’s New York Times, a full page advertisement, singing the praises of newspapers as contributing to more friends and followers.

“I have 1119 Facebook friends and 2651 Twitter followers—-but without my two daily newspapers we’d have nothing to take about,” writes the man in the ad , who, by the way, is President and CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau.

The ad goes on to explain the importance of newspaper advertising for the “economic well being of my community”.

Good thing to see that newspapers are not taking competition lying down.

Print, like any other product, is only going to be eternal if it makes an effort to remain so.

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