Media vs text-based brand extensions

Last week was a landmark for me and it's worth telling about... I have general low-level irritation at working for a flush, glossy mag which places me a comfort zone, but which turns out to be a gilded cage of editorial bankruptcy. So last week the senior editors meet with this excellent media consultant fellow who reminds me of my sage mentor from M&G days, Irwin Manoim. So I'm taking him seriously, in other words. He's telling us what to do with our web site and he's telling us about brand extensions and organizing online events and users sending in videos etc. and because things are rapidly turning into a commercial smorgasbord of revenue opportunities I stop him and say: "But what is the editorial value of that?". He smiles benignly and says "The editorial rules have change a lot, you see." I say: "So, you've crossed over to the Dark Side". And he says: "Well, you're a brand, you see." His subtle point was that we stopped playing by traditional media rules way back when everything we did was focused into a profit making exercise. We now have so many lucrative brand extensions that the mag increasingly is just a tool for marketing them. Sooo, my point is that if this former editor of a major SA newspaper and all-round media heavy hitter can Transition then I have to get off my embattled moral high ground of editorial quality and Fourth Estate kak and get with the program. Last week I embraced User Generated Content, Facebook, Twitter and blogging as the Way To Go, and I'm much happier now. Soon I will be invited back to senior staff meetings and will be embraced by our directors as having Seen The One True Light. Conclusion: I realise that my calling is to promote this new social media stuff as strongly as possible thereby speeding its demise so that the true media will be called back into existence out of social necessity. Which is how it should be. Which is why I am posting all this to my top secret blog, yeah?
Gavin Dudley • ONLINE EDITOR • MEN'S HEALTH Tel +27 21 408 3858 • Cell - N/A • Fax 021-408 3931
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