The Catalyst Code

U.S. media employment in December fell to a 15-year low (886,900), slammed by the slumping newspaper industry. But employment in advertising/marketing-services — agencies and other firms that provide marketing and communications services to marketers — broke a record in November (769,000). Marketing consulting powered that growth. (Data from Advertising Age)

Now here’s an interesting trend. As Steve Rubel speculates, the content folks that were once cranking out content for your favorite newspaper or magazine may now be increasingly reinventing themselves as content mavens for brand-specific portals interested in cutting out the middleman – aka the content platform - and going direct to the consumer. Brands have figured out that content brings in eyeballs and eyeballs bring in dollars and are slowly but surely building portals that provide relevant and targeted content that keep visitors sticky – to them -without having an intervener do it on their behalf (and pocket a lot of their money along the way).

Wal-Mart is just the latest example of a brand that has “gotten it.” Their checkout blog is “a blog, simply, about a team of experts at Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club who have really cool jobs working with gadgets, games, sustainability and more…centered around helping people save money and live better.” It provides relevant information related to shopping and buying a host of items that, you guessed it, can also be purchased at Wal-Mart.

As more of these targeted portals emerge, it is possible that instead of relying on a single publisher to aggregate relevant news across a variety of topics – like the role newspapers or magazines were initially organized to serve – we will go to trusted sites to get information on topics of interest, build those relationships and monetize them through advertising as well as the direct sale of their products.

I am seeing this play out in real time. As a breast cancer survivor, I saw a need for a site that allowed survivors to tell their stories via video, offering hope and inspiration to the millions of women who are newly diagnosed, in treatment or with family members who are affected. The site also evaluates resources – research, books, videos of doctors and providers – that is up to date, accurate and from trusted sources. There were lots of sites out there that aggregated information about cancer and even about breast cancer but none that offered the level of content that my site was designed to address. Mine is not a commercial endeavor, it is entirely self-funded and I don’t accept advertising or sponsorship monies, but the traffic I see supports the fact that my community is hungry for a source that aggregates information that is relevant, reliable – and trusted.

For many of us, that used to be the newspaper or a magazine. As the talent that once made them such a trusted resource lands at places that want to reinvent the rules of the catalyst game that once propped up their profits, it will be harder and harder for these content sources to maintain their once vaunted status in the minds of consumers.

Thoughts?