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Quote of the day: “Beware the cash cow in the coal mine”

Jeff Jarvis recounts the decline of a publishing industry cash cow – the TV guide, specifically TV Guide, the US publication that News Corp’s just sold at a loss.

I love that phrase, and hereby give notice of re-appropriating it for whenever it seems appropriate. What Jeff says he means by it is that organisations need to watch out for being beholden to “the money machine that blinds you to the strategic imperative for change”.

Candidate number one to earn this phrase is advertising’s reliance on big creative and buying eyeballs. These cash cows keep agencies from looking too closely at the complexity business, the work of operating on a human level in networks.

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Antony Mayfield

2 responses to “Quote of the day: “Beware the cash cow in the coal mine””

  1. Mark Hanson Avatar
    Mark Hanson

    Do you mean not taking enough trouble to understand nuts and bolts, doing research on where your audience is and how they behave?

    That’s pertinent to PR. We’re going through y/e budgeting at the moment and its so hard to get budget holders to commit even small sums to social media yet we pile money into things like press because there’s a box that can be ticked. I think its largely because most people round the table have grown up with press so it feels safe rather than being based on any recent analysis.

    Sorry, rant over. Merry Xmas everyone:)

  2. Antony Mayfield Avatar
    Antony Mayfield

    Spot on Mark. According to TNS figures from last year 43% of ad spend in the UK was on print, the same amount on TV and 7.8% on radio, yet 21% of people’s media consumption is online. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were similar proportions if we were able to see the percentage of PR resource sent to different channels.

    At an IT PR networking event recently former colleagues of mine which work with some of the largest tech brands in the world bemoaned the importance their clients attached to print over online, even.

    That it’s hard to scare up even an innovation budget for investing in online and social media campaigns suggests that some of the more pessimistic commentators on the state of PR may have a point.

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