• Two sides of an argument/book review about the value of unpaid internships in the modern workforce
• Compelling infographics on voice recognition applications, inspired by the launch of the iPhone 4S
• Scott Adams (Dilbert) on creativity, and the stifling thereof
• A press release for an academic article on learning while sleeping
• We’ve posted several entries about publishers moving content online, but here are some folks who are moving in the opposite direction
• On confidence
• The End of the Future
• “Creative Class” around the globe
• There is no evidence supporting auditory and visual learning…(some psychologists say…)
• The back story on Lorem Ipsum
• Tumblr on the up and up

There are varying degrees of scope and sophistication in our wildly different projects and initiatives. Our work is passed to our clients, to internal teams, to executive management, to various partners and outside parties. The names of studies, reports, presentations, tools used in the process, task force teams, strategic plans, products in development, etc. do matter.

Names should be clear and communicative – presenting the topic but also the considering the audience. Names should not be overly technical or detailed. Names should be intuitive, parsimonious, and should be readable (and intelligible) “out loud.” But names should also hold up over time, regardless of how related issues change or evolve. Future researchers should be able to refer back to your work, referencing a name that still communicates something to them. It’s somewhat a lofty challenge, if you think about the implication of the choice of title. The goal is to strike a balance between communication and brevity – if the name simply “fits” in these terms, it will likely carry and communicate as desire.

Interesting little infographic from Newsweek about the differences between books and e-books.

After nearly 70 years, publisher Condé Nast abruptly stopped production of the monthly magazine due to lack of advertising sales and a shift in consumer interest. At the time of Condé Nast’s decision, both Gourmet and its sister magazine, Bon Appétit, were struggling with ad sales. Bon Appétit made the cut. Gourmet didn’t. Bon Appétit was offered as a substitute for Gourmet for the remainder of almost one million subscriptions.

Since then a slight margin (a slim 20 percent to be exact) of past Gourmet subscribers have chosen to switch to Bon Appétit. This seems odd for such highly dedicated and long-term subscribers. The lack of transferred subscriptions poses a hard question. Why did Condé Nast choose not to research the niche market of such an obviously successful magazine like Gourmet in order to keep those dedicated subscribers?

On the cover, the magazines look similar. Both share great recipes. Both feature articles about food, culture, and politics. However, the audiences of each magazine differ greatly. This is evidenced through both magazines advertisements as well as their contrasting takes on good living. Gourmet was luxurious and indulgent. It stressed extravagant travel and an elitist lifestyle. Bon Appétit stresses a comfortable home life, centering on family cooking. It offered complex, yet more accessible recipes.

While many Gourmet readers feel heartbroken about no longer receiving the magazine each month, Condé Nast’s decision makes good sense, especially when considering the economic forecast that sunk Gourmet. Foodies aren’t paying for exotic trips to experience food anymore. They’re cooking at home with their families, growing their own gardens, or buying local food.  Despite a large fan base, Gourmet’s attention to life’s luxuries and hefty subscription fees failed to keep advertisers interested. In the case of Gourmet and many other magazines, ad money trumps readership and loyalty.

But after loosing 800,000 subscribers, it seems that Condé Nast missed a really great chance to study their Gourmet readers. The magazine may have been out-of-touch with the current economic reality, but its subscribers were still writing checks every year. If Condé Nast saw the end of Gourmet magazine in sight, why not find out what it was that appealed to readers and kept some subscribing for decades. That sort of insight would have been exactly what Condé Nast could have used to align Bon Appétit toward the views and preferences of Gourmet’s readers in order to boost the number of subscription transfers and keep those loyal consumers.

Sports Illustrated and Wired also proposed e-magazine concepts recently, but the BERG/Bonnier concept seems to take a best of both worlds approach and suggests ways in which this approach can be easily adopted. The interactive control features and the modern take on presentation of content really add to the reader’s experience – hinting at engagement beyond mere push-button page flipping, pdf scrolling, zooming, and flash animation.

Related links:

BERG article
Bonnier’s MAG+ Blog Post

When we write market research screeners, to ensure research respondents or participants are qualified for our studies, we sometimes craft questions that include misleading “red herring” answer options. The idea is to include some answer options in the set that do not relate to the research topic. We then randomize the presentation of the answer options for each respondent so that it is harder to pick an answer just to continue on towards a participation incentive. This obscures the topic of the research, helping to ensure respondents/participants are truly qualified.

For example, we may pose a question similar to the following for a textile category survey:

For which of the following purchases are you the primary or secondary decision maker in your household? Please select all that apply.

• Clothing (continue)
• Automobiles (red herring)
• Groceries (red herring)
• Toilet tissue (red herring)
• Fast food (red herring)
• Laundry supplies (red herring)
• Over-the-counter medicines (red herring)
• Home textiles (continue)

But where does this expression come from?

For a long time, it was thought that the metaphor had something to do with either fox hunting tradition, food preservation on overseas trips, horse training, and/or prison breakouts.  In 2008, the Oxford English Dictionary clarified the etymology of this expression, as explained in this totally mental article in World Wide Words by Michael Quinion.  I recommend clicking through and reading the full article when you have a few minutes and need a weird break in your day, but here’s an excerpt (and a quick answer):

“OED now trace the figurative sense to the radical journalist William Cobbett, whose Weekly Political Register thundered in the years 1803-35 against the English political system he denigrated as the Old Corruption.

He wrote a story, presumably fictional, in the issue of 14 February 1807 about how as a boy he had used a red herring as a decoy to deflect hounds chasing after a hare. He used the story as a metaphor to decry the press, which had allowed itself to be misled by false information about a supposed defeat of Napoleon; this caused them to take their attention off important domestic matters: “It was a mere transitory effect of the political red-herring; for, on the Saturday, the scent became as cold as a stone.”

This story…was enough to get the figurative sense of red herring into the minds of his readers, unfortunately also with the false idea that it came from some real practice of huntsmen.”

Okay, now you know!

In this new, digital world, we’re beginning to move beyond this. Record companies have been pushing for more tiers of pricing on iTunes. Some television shows are free on Hulu. Some only show on premium cable and DVD. Once you eliminate the physical product, distinctions between perceived quality are able to be made.

It’s no longer about supply, demand, and the price of paper. It’s about quality and creativity.

Anyway. This article is worth reading.

Investing attention and energy in these issues has helped in my work life this year as well, as we’ve seen an increase in interest for marketing research and strategic guidance for products and services in the green business realm.  We’re always looking for new information sources – let us know if you have any “green business” recommendations!

Reinventing the magazine

Tattoo publication

At this point, most of this interaction is formatted through blog response comments, which is great, but doesn’t really stretch that far beyond what newspapers are already doing in the online realm.  And as you find on newspaper websites, many comments are so biased, opinionated, or even venemous, that it really brings you down to read through them looking for additional perspective and insight.

There are some fresh and forward-thinking thoughts from readers, though.  In response to the article, “Imagining A City Without its Daily Newspaper,” reader Bill Grady comments, “Let’s keep our news organizations, but in a digital form that saves on our natural resources. Credit card companies and financial institutions are all urging their customers to go “paperless”, so why can’t the newspapers be financially viable by doing the same thing? Surely the minds of the industry can find a way to make money without the final product being on the printed page.”

Print newspapers are dying, in part because they have failed to adapt.  Information from the Pew Research Center identifies a tipping point in print versus online readership in 2008.  I certainly get my news online now, and though I have friends losing jobs in the newspaper industry and I recognize the local and civic impact, I couldn’t imagine paying for most of what I read out there.  I’ll admit my cynicism, but when I have such a hard time finding good writing and  I have to do so much work to read between the lines to inform myself, I lose respect for the writers, editors, publishers, organizations, and channels (online or print) and advertisers that presented the reporting in such a disorganized and misdirected manner.

Chris Anderson’s follow-up to The Long Tail tackles an issue I’ve been curious about for a while – the proliferation of “free” services, content and media. Citing examples such as Google, Skype, Hulu, and Twitter, Anderson seeks to explore the long-term viability of this business model and whether it’s actually that different from the way media has been disseminated for decades. (TV and radio used to be free, right?)

The book isn’t out until July, but it already seems like he’s been promoting it forever. This video has been bouncing around the interwebs since last year when he put forth his basic thesis in a Wired article. Just yesterday, a Wall Street Journal article that takes the concept a bit further.