Amazon Sells More Digital Books than Paper Books

Forget digital paper: Amazon sold more electronic books on Christmas day than it did paper books, according to Information Week. Of course, that's due to the hundreds of thousands of people who unwrapped a Kindle digital reader that day and then downloaded books to the device. Still, this is quite a landmark accomplishment for digital print.

An estimated 3 million digital readers were sold this year. In 2010, that number should be around 10 million. This may not seem like a huge number vs. all the paper books out there, until you realize one device can hold over a thousand books. And the way these things go, we may be looking at a market of 100s of millions of digital readers in a few years.

Advertising Primer 1: Marketing is not Advertising

Many business owners and nonprofit administrators misunderstand the term "marketing." Actually, most of us think of marketing as the promotional side of business, and that's not a bad definition. However, it's crucial to recognize that marketing encompasses much more than advertising a product or service.

Marketing students are taught the "four P's" of the marketing mix: Product, Price, Placement and Promotion. Marketing begins with the selection of a product or service to sell, then deciding how much to charge, how to distribute it, and finally—once all these factors are established—questions about how to advertise the product are considered.

It may seem like a technicality to emphasize this academic definition of marketing, but the fact is most organizations go about things backwards. They think about how they want to promote their product without first making critical decisions about what they're promoting, to whom, and at what cost.

As creative professionals, we start a given campaign with a discussion of the organization. We want to know the history, the people and the stories behind our clients. Then we talk about the products or services our clients plan to promote, who their audiences are, etc. A similar discussion should occur inside every organization on a periodic basis and especially when launching a new product.

It's imperative that businesses find the right product, price and placement before they begin promoting. Albert Lasker, considered the father of modern advertising said, "The product that will not sell without advertising will not sell profitably with advertising." Marketing has to start with selection of a sound product or service.

So with the first three P's out of the way, what then is Promotion? Simply put, promotion involves what we traditionally think of when we say "marketing." Promotion is advertising, public relations, direct marketing, telemarketing, personal selling, etc. It's anything and everything that goes into communicating with the target market about your product or service.

And it's important to note that these tools are simply that: just tools to an end. The end of advertising is to better connect a viable product with a viable audience. Just as you must select a sound product, price and placement, you must also make sure you advertise to an audience that can benefit from the product offered.

If more marketers understood the broader definition of marketing, we'd see more effective advertising campaigns. Because many do not, you can take advantage of the competition by focusing on WHAT you are marketing and not simply HOW you are marketing.

Stage 2 Launches 2009 Campaign for United Way of Mat-Su

Stage 2 Studios, LLC has announced the launch of the 2009 United Way of Mat-Su campaign video. Stage 2 produced the new video which is now being shown throughout the area as part of United Way's annual fundraising campaign.

The video highlights the surprising generosity seen in the face of 2008's overwhelming need. Despite an economic downturn, the United Way of Mat-Su saw more volunteers and more financial contributions than any prior year.

Stage 2 also redesigned the United Way homepage to integrate the message of the video with the website. The site features an interactive flash animation and a link to the video.

Last year's campaign, also by Stage 2, was recognized by the United Way of America.

"I was BLOWN AWAY by their campaign video," said Jenny Palazio, Director of Membership Accountability for United Way of America. "They kept it simple and powerful and told a great story...Fabulous video — one of the best I've ever seen in 23 years."

ABOUT UNITED WAY OF MAT-SU

United Way of Mat-Su has been serving the Mat-Su Valley for over 20 years by providing health, welfare, and other services to the community with local dollars supporting local services. Because we all win when a child succeeds in school, when a family becomes financially stable, when people have good health. For more information visit www.unitedwaymatsu.org or call 907-373-5818.

ABOUT STAGE 2

Stage 2 Studios, LLC is a dynamic media production company based in Palmer, Alaska. Stage 2 specializes in rich-media projects for organizations in Alaska and around the country. A strong supporter of education and community service organizations, Stage 2 provides pro bono media services to several nonprofit organizations.

White House Website Moves to Drupal

The official website of the White House is now running on Drupal, an open-source content management system (CMS). Stage 2 Studios chose Drupal as it's CMS of choice several years ago and now has significant experience with the platform.

Content management systems make creating and editing website content easy for website owners. Nearly every site we build runs some form of CMS. With a CMS in place, our clients simply log in with a username and password and then click an edit button on the pages they want to modify. Editing the text and photos on the page is then no more tricky than editing an email message. And creating a new page is as simple as clicking a link, typing the desired content into a form and clicking a submit button. Changes are instantly visible on the website without the need to call a webmaster or hire an HTML wizard.

Drupal is a particularly powerful CMS platform. As website developers, we like Drupal for the deep level of control it gives us when building a website. Some CMSs limit how much you can edit the layout and functionality of your site. Drupal has thousands of modules that offer nearly limitless ways to extend the functionality of a website. And features not offered by an existing module can be custom-coded by our developers.

A CMS like Drupal allows editing of more than just typical web pages. We've deployed CMSs to manage online stores, classified ad subscriptions, interactive content, photo galleries, business directories and more. If you can imagine the content, we can provide a CMS solution to make it easy for you to edit and organize.

While the White House website is obviously the highest profile government site to run Drupal, it's no surprise Drupal was chosen. The CMS is one of the most popular available today. Last year we launched a new website for the Procurement Technical Assistance Center of Alaska. This government agency is a branch of the Department of Defense and the website we built runs on Drupal.

Newspaper Readership Drops to New Lows

Average daily readership for newspapers plunged 10.6% versus last summer according to the latest reports. Newspapers like the New York Times reached new subscription lows. The Times daily readership dipped below 1 million for the first time in years.

However, it's important to note that we're talking about print readership here. Online news readership is exploding, even for the same newspapers that report such gloomy circulation numbers. The question remains whether print publications like newspapers can maintain the revenue levels they've enjoyed with their print editions.

Early indications suggest online ventures don't bring as much revenue for newspapers as traditional print products. Some efforts to charge for online content do little more than drive online readers elsewhere.

A few papers reported growth in the most recent period. The Wall Street Journal has edged out USA Today as the nation's most popular newspaper, illustrating the point that content rules. Readers are finding limitless free alternatives to national news on the web, but specialty financial news is less readily available. Thus, WSJ can attract a following while the more generic content of USA Today is less competitive.

Art is for artists. Design is not.

I took drawing and painting lessons for years as a child. When the time came to pick a career path, I considered art and illustration. Deciding that the common phrase "starving artist" didn't bode well for an art career, I sold out for graphic design. Here was art for commercial gain. I could be creative and make a living at the same time.

In reality, fine art and graphic design are not distinguished by commercialism but by objectives. The artist creates purely for personal expression. The designer creates to communicate a specific message to a specific audience.

Sometimes designers select their messages and audiences, but usually they do not. In any case, artists are free to express themselves as they like. Their works may communicate any message and evoke any and every emotion. But a designer must communicate a select message to a select audience, or their work is a failure.

Now, a designer may use art or even personal expression to convey a given message, but the primary goal is to communicate a unique message to a unique audience. This puts inherent restrictions on the works created by the designer.

Design is about problem solving. The problem is taking a unique concept and communicating it through as simple a means as possible so the concept is understood as easily as possible. This is not to say a particular message may not call for confusing, confounding, or angering an audience. But most will not. While art is often expected to be provocative or evocative, design usually communicates, and those communications are typically messages of informative, educational, or inspirational character.

Sadly, many designers don't see their role as communicative. They see websites (or videos, or print advertisements, etc.) as creative outlets and experimental spaces. They see their role as mostly creative and rarely consider accessibility. For them, function follows form.

The result is website designs that showcase the creative whims of egocentric designers instead of making content available for as many people as possible.

Let me be clear: this definition of art vs. design is my own. Most dictionaries--and many readers--are likely to disagree. But regardless of what terms you use, I believe the broad roles I describe are accurate distinctions. And I think it's crucial for every artist--or designer--to understand their role and the underlying motivations.

The Supercali- fragilistic- expialidocious Email Test

Several years ago a web hosting client came to me with a request for a new and exceedingly long email address. There's nothing more annoying than listening to someone spell out each letter of a thirty-five character email address over the phone. Having to be the one slogging through reciting all those letters is no fun either, so I knew I would do my client a favor if I could convince him to shorten the requested address.

But how to point out the obvious blunder of such a long address without using the phrase "obvious blunder"? My solution was what I have coined "The Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Test."

I sent an email to my client that compared the number of characters in his email address with that really long word we are all familiar with:

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
TestUserLongEmailName@yourdomainname.com

This simple visual explanation was all I needed to convince my customer to go with a shorter email address. And it's worked many times since, as well.

Of course, this test works for more than just email addresses. Believe it or not, you'd be surprised at how many times clients have suggested website domains that are nearly as long as the "S" word.

So next time you are considering a long email address or domain name, try to err on the side of short and sweet--or you might not pass the test.