Content Wise

It's Hard for Brands to Make "Friends" on Facebook

Today's New York Times Digital Domain column describes the challenges and offers cautionary tales in using social media to promote brands:

When major brands place banner advertisements on the side of a member’s home page, they pay inexpensive prices, but the ads receive little attention. Seth Goldstein, co-founder of SocialMedia Networks, an online advertising company, wrote on his Facebook blog that a banner ad “is universally disregarded as irrelevant if it’s not ignored entirely.”

When advertisers invite members to come to pages dedicated to their products, they can attract visitors only by investing in expensive creative material or old-fashioned promotions like prize contests.

The Times report discusses in detail Procter & Gamble's attempts to use Facebook to promote Tide, Crest Whitestrips, and other products.

Prevention Magazine Names Editor to Extend Brand

Rodale has named Leah McLaughlin, formerly of Fitness magazine, its "brand editor" for the healthy lifestyle magazine Prevention. This looks like a smart move. We always worry when the person or department in charge of spreading the brand isn't close to the creative side of the magazine. McLaughlin, however, is an actual editor--meaning that she will be intimately familiar with the magazine's readers, mission, and content.

We also worry about editors who don't see publishing's new reality: that a magazine can't be an island unto itself anymore. But it sounds like they get that at Rodale. Here's how McLaughlin's boss, Prevention Editor in Chief Liz Vaccariello, put it:

"When [McLaughlin] thinks about a story idea, it's not just a story in Prevention. It also might have legs on the website; it may be a book someday. It could be a tent at the walking marathon we put on. But it shows that we're constantly thinking about how to reach out to consumers in a platform-agnostic way."