Okay. I am confused by this.
The owner of Seattle Pi is Hearst Newspapers ( http://www.hearst.com/newspapers/ ). A not insignificant company.
On top of that, Porche is a luxury automobile, whose advertising budget in 2009 was over 300Million Euro, with 10% being specifically set aside for digital advertising. It wasn't possible for me to find data that was more recent, but the value of Porche's parent company has been generally the same since then, so it stands to reason that budget is the same or higher.
So, why then is this such an ungodly mess?
It is a common problem. Overload. Many websites, especially ones that are interested in as much publicity as possible will present at least five social media links, so you can "share this article with your friends" or what have you. This isn't a bad thing, but it can be done without taking up nonsensical amounts of space. The disorganized and jumbled mess that is shown is not a place I would want to advertise anything, let alone a luxury car like a Porsche 911.
When I look at a news story: I want to SEE the news. I want to ABSORB advertisements.
I learned a long time ago that I am vulnerable to advertising. I am not vulnerable to having someone desperately try to shove an advertisement through my eyes and into my brain. Just go slow, take me to dinner first and I'll put out... my wallet and buy whatever is being sold.
I won't say that Seattle Pi is uniquely guilty where other local news outlets are not. I was only shocked because of the client being advertised. Porsche is a luxury automobile, with their lowest cost vehicle still sitting just around $50,000. That means they have a vested interest in not appearing desperate. They need to look prestigious to sell the idea of porsche.
I worked as a PR intern last summer and I found something out that I kind-of but didn't-really-quite know: news is advertising. So let me pose an alternate option for porsche. Instead of spending the money on ad space at the seattle pi. Porsche could have created an event. Be it an exhibition race between their various product lines, or a more subtle event such as sending a dozen or so of their cars out onto the streets of seattle with either give-aways or some sort of "special" incentive for people to look for Porsches and pay attention to them -- Events like these are news worthy, low-cost and would be an effective hook for a local news source like the Seattle Pi.
I assume what happened was that someone at Porsche looked at numbers for Seattle, including the median income and the number of Porsche sold Vs. other areas with similar income and decided Seattle was lower than what they wanted. Then someone was told they needed to fix this, which resulted in this ad space being bought from the Seattle Pi.
I assume what happened was that someone at Porsche looked at numbers for Seattle, including the median income and the number of Porsche sold Vs. other areas with similar income and decided Seattle was lower than what they wanted. Then someone was told they needed to fix this, which resulted in this ad space being bought from the Seattle Pi.
That sort of nonsense is ineffective, especially when a luxury item like Porsche is forced to compete for your attention against Twitter, Facebook, RSS, Buying Seahawks gear, or The Daily Deal! I am decidedly less likely to ever want to buy a porsche because of this advertisement. That's not good for porsche or for the Seattle Pi's online service.
If the Seattle Pi, or any local online news outlet, wants to be truly successful and not just limp along through their advertising sales then they need a change. Most importantly, they need to reduce the amount of "Overload" on their sites. Then the practice of standardizing all sales of advertising by size, depth, frequency and duration of run needs to go away. No one style of advertising is right for every product in the world.
I don't want to see local news outlets die. I really don't. I hope that the online side of papers like the Baltimore Sun, the Washington Post and even the Seattle Pi realize they need real and innovative change not a bigger bandwagon to hop on. I also hope they realize this sooner rather than later.
-James
I'm guessing you've seen the Oatmeal's take on web design:
ReplyDeletehttp://theoatmeal.com/comics/design_hell
While this is referencing a specific site maintained by and for a company themselves to advertize their products, I think this is a universal phenomenon.
Also, as advertizements in "news" articles go, that's relatively "tasteful". A website I used to like (Lemondrop) was acquired by Huffington Post, and this is the result:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/women/
The multicolumn design is a little too much info all over the place for me (and each of the three main info columns is punctuated with ads-designed-to-look-like-content.) Their social reader box design I like a little better than Seattle Pi's.
I hadn't seen that feature from the Oatmeal. When I worked for commonvision, UMBC's design and print firm, they had the same sort of problems.
ReplyDeleteWith the Huffington Post site, there is not any of the "cheeze" that I saw while I was looking at the Seattle Pi. To my tastes I think you were right when you said, "...is a little too much info all over the place for me." http://www.vol1brooklyn.com/ - I looked at this site earlier today. Content aside -- it is super pretentious, and I love it, but I digress... -- I loved the look of it. Simple without being empty.
I wish that businesses would let social media handle social media. By that I mean, I'm getting very sick of a million and one little square bubbles that try to remind me to share what I like with my friends. Facebook has sharing down cold. Drop a url in, and facebook formats it in a way that is appealing and easy. Perfect. Why should I click a button, hit agree to let an external site try and throw me around the web, contend with a poorly coded sharing box, hit yes about 5 more times and then decide who I want emailed a text-transcript of my every action in regards to my decision to share an interest.
Exaggeration, I know, but not that much.
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