Here is the one-page summary of C3 that I gave colleagues at the Poynter/McCormick Big Ideas Conference today.
The central point of my Blueprint for the Complete Community Connection is that media companies need to change our relationships. We need new relationships with our communities and with businesses. Here’s how I explain it in the blueprint:
For consumers, we will be their essential connection to community life — news, information, commerce, social life. Like many Internet users turn first to Google, whatever their need, we want Eastern Iowans to turn first to Gazette Communications, whatever their need. For businesses, we will be their essential connection to customers, often making the sale and collecting the money. We will become the Complete Community Connection.
Examining how this will change our relationship with businesses:
- Old relationship. We sell advertising to businesses. We are a large expense line in their budgets. When times get tough, they cut expenses, just as we do.
- New relationship. We help businesses make transactions. We send them revenue, after keeping a modest cut for our services. In tough times, they seek ways to do more business with us, so we will send them more revenue.
- Old relationship. Advertising is inefficient, charging businesses for people who never saw the ad or wouldn’t be interested in the product or service.
- New relationship. We help businesses connect with exactly the customers they are most interested in.
- Old relationship. Ads are intrusive, annoying consumers who want to read something else.
- New relationship. We become the local search solution, providing answers for consumers looking to meet specific needs.
- Old relationship. We sell classified ads, helping people sell and buy cars, a job most of us do every few years. This leaves us vulnerable to other solutions because no one does this job regularly and has a regular place to go.
- New relationship. We provide solutions (traffic map, gas-price map, repair-service database, discussions) for driving, a job most of us do daily. This gives us new opportunities and makes us the first place to look for buying or selling cars.
- Old relationship. We cover an event such as graduation with news stories, special section with mugs of graduates, display ads congratulating the grads.
- New relationship. We provide Class of 2009 site, with grads and families personalizing, adding gift registries, targeted ads from campus-area businesses, etc.
Here are the Poynter liveblog and podcast on the conference, the Twitter #BigIdeas hashtag and the Growing Audience blog from the Newspaper Association of America’s Diane Hockenberry.
And here are the slides I used for my presentation:
Instead of traveling the country telling everyone of your big ideas, why don’t you stay at the Gazette and implement them? From reading the CEO’s blog, there’s been massive disorganization since last February’s blood-letting of fine journalists. Instead of raking in someone else’s money to tell them how to run their own businesses into the ground, why not stay in Cedar Rapids and clean up the mess you’ve made?
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Knox, I am working on implementation of the ideas at Gazette Communications. I did not “rake in” anyone’s money for the Poynter conference. I was not paid anything above my salary at The Gazette. I did hear several ideas at the conference that I believe will help us here. You are welcome to state opinions on my blog, but future comments that misstate facts will not be approved.
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[…] spoke about C3 across the country and beyond in conferences, seminars and a video presentation. I led workshops and seminars on Twitter and journalism ethics […]
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