Don’t Assume When Planning Communications

Where people get information about local news varies by age, but don’t assume one type of communication will work for each age group. Reviewing CFM research results for several clients shows that regardless of age, people use a variety of media sources to get information.

Assumption 1: Newspaper readership is for an older market.

Newspaper readership does increase with age. People age 55 years and older (84%) are more likely to read the newspaper than those under age 55 (63%), but a significant portion of all age groups still read the newspaper, including those age 18 to 34 (52%). When it comes to local news, newspapers are still top dog.

Assumption 2: Digital communication is for the younger market

Getting news online declines with age, but older residents are not computer illiterate. Websites and other online media are among the most important information sources for those age 18 to 34 year (53%), but one in four of those Medicare eligible go online for news.

Perhaps this puts digital media into perspective. Apple was founded in 1976. If you were age 30 and bought one of the first Apple computers, you would be 67 years old today. A lot of time to get computer savvy.

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Learning to Fail

We may be short-changing today's students by not letting them fail, says Tony Wagner, a former high school teacher who now focuses on innovation in education.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman's puts Wagner's message another way — we need to move beyond teaching students skills to get a job and prepare them to invent their own job.

Teaching students to become the next Steve Jobs is a tall order. "Few young people will become brilliant innovators like Steve Jobs," concedes Wagner. "But most can be taught the skills needed to become more innovative in whatever they do."

Trial and error, a tried-and-true hallmark of success, isn't on most school curriculums, Wagner claims. "In most high school and college classes, failure is penalized," he says. "But without trial and error, there is no innovation." Wagner points to Amanda Alonzo, who teaches at a San Jose, California high school and has mentored two Intel Science Prize finalists and 10 semifinalists. Alonzo says, "One of the most important things I have to teach my students is that when you fail, you are learning."

Wagner adds, "Students gain lasting self-confidence not by being protected from failure, but by learning that they survive it."

Emerging teaching models, he explains, now center on exploring problems or opportunities, often in team settings. Classes are more hands-on, where students are creators, not passive consumers of facts.

Learning facts remains, but takes more of a secondary role. "We teach and test things most students have no interest in and will never need, and facts that they can Google and will forget as soon as the test is over," Wagner says. "Because of this, the longer kids are in school, the less motivated they become. Gallup's recent survey showed student engagement going from 80 percent in fifth grade to 40 percent in high school."

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Shrinking Newsrooms an Opportunity for Self Publishing

As traditional media declines and reporting staffs shrink, there is pressure and opportunity to publish your own stories. Now the news media and their subjects are on a parallel quest in an online universe to cash in on their original content.

A new study from the Pew Research Center paints a startling picture of how the news media is continuing to shrink. Not only have the number of reporters and news outlets shrunk, so have budgets.

Some companies have adapted to the change by using more dubious techniques, a few going as far as to offer vacations to reporters in exchange for coverage. However, many companies filled the void by providing factual information through legitimate means.

One example the study sites is Kaiser, which now produces Kaiser Health News. Articles by the organization are published everywhere from NBC.com to the Washington Post. By providing content that is factual and interesting, Kaiser has created a way for it to talk directly to consumers using traditional media as its megaphone.

We’ve mentioned before the importance of self-publishing online and this study confirms our recommendations. Companies more than ever need to tell their own stories.

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The Pseudo-Science of Bracketology

Bracketology, the process of picking the winners in the NCAA men's and women's national basketball tournaments, has attracted a lot of scientific attention — and a lot of dubious science.

University of Maryland quantum computing students have created a sophisticated, hard-to-fathom bracketology system that boils down to using a ytterbium ion like a coin flip to pick winners. Its ion coin flips predict the University of Pittsburgh, the eighth seed in the Eastern regional, to win the Big Dance. Unfortunately for the Panthers, they lost their first tournament game to ninth-seeded Wichita State.

Nate Silver, the legendary numbers cruncher in the world of politics, predicts Louisville has the highest probability of any of the 68 teams in the tournament to win at 22.7 percent. Indiana is next at 19.6 percent, followed by Florida at 12.7 percent, Kansas 7.5 percent and Number 1-ranked Gonzaga at 6.1 percent.

Silver has street cred because last year he predicted Kentucky would win the Big Dance — along with just about everybody else who follows college basketball and noticed the starting five were likely to be top picks in the NBA draft.

Because March Madness is a major national distraction that saps productivity from America's offices and factories, marketers sniff an opportunity. A number of brands have created their own bracketology to engage consumers. One investment analyst compared picking stocks to picking NCAA tournament winners, which may not have been the best of ideas.

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A Lounge Act Dedicated to Potty Humor

Here's a challenge. Figure out a sparkling marketing plan to sell a bathroom cleaner with bleach. Clorox resorted to potty humor. 

In a great piece on Ragan.com, Michael Sebastian describes how Clorox used "comic relief to entertain moms during their 'potty breaks.'"

Toilets are places people often desperately need, but cannot wait to escape after flushing away their day's toils and troubles.

To combat this banal reality, the folks at Clorox Toilet Products created The Clorox Lounge, a social media hub that Sebastian says featured contests, giveaways and coupons, as well as dispensing, literally, some potty humor. There were 10,000 registered lounge members, he noted.

In a bit called Last Comic Sitting, mom and dad comedians squared off with their best bathroom zingers. Viewers voted for the best tasteless jokes, culminating, Sebastian said, in a live comedy event hosted by Sherri Shepherd, who is co-host of "The View."

Another gambit was called Ode to the Commode, a reworked Facebook page that featured humorous (though hopefully not scandalous) pictures sent in my Clorox users, infographics on potty-related topics such as the Toilets of Government and ongoing conversations about subjects such as the pros and cons of toilet seat covers. Sebastian said Ode to Commode drew 200,000 likes.

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