Thursday, February 03, 2005
Dangerous Quote of the Day
Big Guns Debate Business Model at M&A Conference
Dangerous quote of the day: "Ancillary is now central to our business," says McCurdy. "Print remains vital, but the (non-print products) are what drive transactions."
I don't know Charles McCurdy, except by reputation, and I wasn't at the DeSilva Phillips conference, so I'm not clear on the full context of this quote. But something that's ancillary can't be central to your business--it's ancillary.
Perhaps the problem is in thinking about print vs. non-print, as opposed to the core driver of what we in media do, which is to build an audience around a common interest (charging them money and/or time for their participation in the community) and then to sell access to marketers who want to sell their products or service to the community. That seems pretty medium-neutral. And it's more focused on the value of the community we create, rather then the array of 'core' products and 'ancillaries' we produce.
I continue to worry about the temptations of ancillaries. (See my screed on b2b trendiness.) We need to be careful not to forget the central reasons why audiences gather around our media, because we might just end up losing them, no matter how many highly profitable ancillaries we produce for the short term.
Comments
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Dangerous quote of the day: "Ancillary is now central to our business," says McCurdy. "Print remains vital, but the (non-print products) are what drive transactions."
I don't know Charles McCurdy, except by reputation, and I wasn't at the DeSilva Phillips conference, so I'm not clear on the full context of this quote. But something that's ancillary can't be central to your business--it's ancillary.
Perhaps the problem is in thinking about print vs. non-print, as opposed to the core driver of what we in media do, which is to build an audience around a common interest (charging them money and/or time for their participation in the community) and then to sell access to marketers who want to sell their products or service to the community. That seems pretty medium-neutral. And it's more focused on the value of the community we create, rather then the array of 'core' products and 'ancillaries' we produce.
I continue to worry about the temptations of ancillaries. (See my screed on b2b trendiness.) We need to be careful not to forget the central reasons why audiences gather around our media, because we might just end up losing them, no matter how many highly profitable ancillaries we produce for the short term.
