I only get it for the ads.

They’re shiny and interactive. Multi-page video. Some ads have a Download App button at the bottom of the screen. Where the advertiser has bothered, the ad format is compelling and it’s more accessible than a web page; less mediated, more touchable. If I were a media company I’d be pricing interactive advertising cheaply; better ads = better publications (if that’s the word).

News Corp’s iPad app, The Daily, is 99c a week/$40 a year. It seems to have remedied a number of the shortcomings of The Australian’s effort; in particular the ability to share articles. The Australian has intrusive old-style display ads. Tacky in comparison but at least it’s Australian tacky.

Editorially, The Daily is no great shakes. Very MOR; a bit like Time Magazine but slightly dumbed down and sexed-up. Articles are very short; it’s not a serious read. An 80 page A5 colour newspaper; I don’t think there’s any breakthrough thinking.

The Daily’s interface is very slick but I sense the newspapers are all struggling with the contest between looking like a serious print publication and working the medium to maximum advantage. Flipboard is an interesting app in this regard.

There’s progress in navigation. The shuffle feature is interesting though too slow. The Carousel is pretty but you get lost easily. My guess is that whoever gets the navigation right wins.

The Daily innovates in the game space but it’s limited. Why they don’t work the game thing is beyond me. Yeah, I know you do Sudoku and Crosswords. What else you got?

AppWatch? Yes, that’s relevant for all iPad users. And a Download It Now button at the foot of every review.

But the ads are the highlight.

In their present form I don’t think these apps are saviours of the newspaper business. When I take my iPad to a cafe it’s loaded with four or five different newspaper apps, some magazine subscriptions, two or three e-books I’m reading, I usually have an online game on the go, I have email, an RSS reader, I browse the web and I do all that social media crap (follow me on Twitter; @brettreasure). So my time spent reading the newspaper app is a fraction of the time I’d spend if I had a printed newspaper in front of me.

There are many competitors out there and lots of free news on the web. There’ll be colossal churn in the subscriptions. Nonetheless, The Daily is an improvement on The Australian and old media are taking the new medium seriously.

I don’t get it. Why aren’t newspapers more excited about QR codes?

These are codes you can scan with a smart phone to directly access a web page. Within a couple of years over 50% of all phones will have this ability. The following video explains it better than I can; you need to watch 2 mins 30 to get the full force of it:

The contrast between static and dynamic content is unavoidable.

Now here’s a whole medium (video) that newspapers ceded to a competitor (television) after WWII in America and in Australia in the late 1950s. Billions of dollars in ad revenue departed print in search of more compelling advertising. But HOLD THE PHONE.

Smart phones now return the video advantage to print because you can scan a newspaper ad (for example) to access the advertiser’s video content. You don’t have to be sitting in your lounge room; you can be at the breakfast table or a coffee shop or an office desk. And print is the ONLY MEDIUM that can offer this. So Australian newspaper companies are right on to this. Right? Right?

I ran the first Web Promotion SHOCK seminar yesterday and it was poorly attended.

Getting the marketing right is a process that almost always involves risk and failure. I remember a guy who got promoted at Colgate-Palmolive while I was working there. He’d launched a new product into test market. Got the formulation wrong, the packaging wrong and the advertising wrong. But the market research showed why it failed and the company then knew what to do. Risk, failure, knowledge.

In the case of my seminar, I believe I got the proposition wrong and the creative wrong, so I need to go back and do some more testing. I think I’ll do this with AdWords. But where I failed spectacularly was in my attempts to get some PR; promotion that has an editorial component, is unpaid and carries the implicit endorsement of a third party.

I spoke to the Breakfast DJ of a commercial radio station who said he’d be prepared to do an interview. Right demographic and all of that. He asked for an outline, so I sent him some suggested questions and how I would respond. It was light and entertaining stuff about Google and web promotion but I proposed to mention the seminar. He emailed me back saying this: “this is an ad and I will get my ass kicked by management”. He explained that because I was charging for the seminar, company policy deemed the content commercial. Obviously they don’t want to encourage that, given that they’re in the business of charging for advertising. So the interview did not take place.

I had a similar response from the local newspaper. This is commercial; can’t do a story.

Here’s what I don’t understand. Every radio station does interviews with authors. Authors are blatantly promoting their books. Commercially. What is the difference between an author promoting a book and a speaker promoting a talk? The policy that is currently in place gives free publicity to large book publishers many of whom have the capacity to pay for advertising but it withholds free air time from the whole speaking industry; small operators with precious little advertising budget. The clear intent is to make editorial comment unavailable in an effort to extract paid advertising. The listener misses out on good content and the radio network restricts itself to larger advertisers.

Ironically, our public television and radio network, the ABC, have exactly the same approach: free plugs for authors and nobody else. Of course they won’t take your money for commercial advertising. So the effect of our current media structure is to shut the commercial sector out of public discourse.

Society would be positively affected if the public media lightened up about commerce or the commercial media lightened up about editorial. I’m suggesting there is room for another media network; one that preferences good stories and good content, irrespective of commercial content. Create a media channel accessible to professional consultants and businesses. One that does not rule you out of public discourse because you charge money for a product or service.

Here is a problem; here is a solution. It costs money. Get over it.

Perhaps you’ve been listening to Rupert Murdoch’s Boyer Lectures? He has an awful voice but he says a lot of sensible things – as you can imagine, he has the benefit of an unusually wide perspective. His dislike of elites and authority mark him as an Australian; his enthusiasm for change explains why he lives where he does.

Rupert was optimistic about newspapers. He understands that newspapers are a brand, that they are about trust and that their oxygen is the reader. Using that brand, he argues, News Corp will deliver relevant information in whatever technology format is appropriate. Spot on.

Much hand-wringing by journalists nonetheless about the death of journalism now that the Rivers of Gold (classified advertising), are flowing to the Internet. The old newspaper business model said, we will provide the reader with journalism and companies will pay for advertising so they can access those readers. But readers now search Internet databases; a far better system for the classifieds buyer. Simultaneously, the Internet is competing with newspapers for eyeballs. What is to be done?

What newspapers have is credibility, so they should look to use this competitive advantage in subject areas which are perceived as valuable. Where credibility is currently lacking.

This is most feasible in areas where newspapers have not traditionally trodden. Take Search Engine Optimisation for example; a subject close to my economic heart. The web is full of SEO experts, all giving away free content and trying to up-sell you into subscriptions. The problem is, you don’t buy a subscription unless you have a high level of trust. You with me? Would I pay $100 a year for the opinion of one expert? Hmmm. Would I pay $500 for a subscription to the Wall Street Journal’s Best in SEO? If it has 20 contributors and a WSJ banner, I probably would.

Would people pay $100 for a subscription to the Sydney Morning Herald’s Guide to Selling on the Internet? Many would. Would business people pay $500 for the New York Times’ Internet Networking subscription? Yes. The Economist’s Web Marketing? The Guardian’s Internet Relationships? The Mirror’s Best Bargains?

Newspapers should be looking at the e-book market and turning some of those products into premium, branded subscriptions. They should develop new products which deliver expert content in technical and specialist areas. You can’t justify charging for ‘news’ or ‘opinion’ or ‘business’ because they are established as free info but anything new is fair game. Industry specific subscriptions will also work if the content is extensive.

Your mainstream publication then carries normal articles plus pointers to Subscription Only articles, both on the web and in printed form. Newspaper management are not used to new products. They’re used to the monolithic publication. But the splintering of news into specialist subscription publications is a logical response to losing your advertisers. In effect, the newspaper could become the Editor of the Internet.

Gene Weingarten won a Pulitzer Prize for his feature article in the Washington Post, Pearls before Breakfast. It discusses a little social experiment the paper conducted. They convinced Joshua Bell, one of the world’s leading violinists to busk at a Washington Metro station, curious to know if commuters would react to wonderful violin pieces wonderfully played on a Stradivarius. Or would they just keep walking? I think you know the answer.

I couldn’t help thinking that another level of the same experiment played out when the Post published the article; itself a beautiful piece of delicately crafted work. Did people pause and read the article or did they just keep turning the pages on the way to the Business Section and the Sports Section?

Now here we are on a third level; an endorsement of a comment on an experiment. On an obscure marketing blog with a modest readership. But that’s not the point. The point is, here is the article.

There is another irony. If, as the article suggests, beauty is properly acknowledged when it is in an appropriate context, a well regarded writer in a famous newspaper is the contextual equivalent of a virtuoso in a concert hall. But he probably deserved a Pulitzer anyway.

Leslie Nassar: I spoke to him after the Perth Podcamp. He was instrumental in Radio National’s wonderfully successful podcasting effort. Their average user is 40 plus plus, supposedly well over the technology hill. Yet on a pro-rata basis they get THREE times as much email feedback from a podcast as they do from the same show when it’s broadcast. Why is that?

Leslie cites two reasons. Firstly, people are listening at their computer so the email client is within easy reach. Secondly, they have made a choice to subscribe so they have a higher level of commitment and a higher level of involvement. Hold that thought.

Also discussed during the day was the Crikey success story and I wanted to mention Stilgherrian‘s thoughts on this. He said it works because it’s made easy; all the articles are bundled up in a single email that arrives without you having to do anything. Late enough in the day to have commentary on the morning papers and perhaps a little morning news. Filling a niche vacated by afternoon papers.

You can’t explain the two successes in terms of technology alone or even content alone. Here is the similarity. They are both delivered/collected in a suitable context. We are so used to consuming media ourselves that we forget a media campaign – even a media program – must consider the context in which it is consumed.

As Marshall McLuhan so beautifully put it: people don’t read a morning newspaper, they slip into it like a warm bath.

But then again, younger consumers don’t read morning newspapers and they have showers, not baths. What is the context for new media?

Advertising began with line ads in newspapers in the 17th century. A product description and a price, for a hundred and fifty years until the technology allowed illustrations and eventually color. Illustration saw advertisers link their products to fine art, hitching their products to the emotional, so that Pears Soap started to stand for the innocence of a clean, healthy child and all the positive nuances of parenting, instead of just animal fat.

As advertising discovered the moving image, or vice-versa, the products moved still further into the background. Teenagers on the beach and a pop music soundtrack cut deep grooves into the brains of the Coke generation. A logo and some product shots; bob’s your uncle.

Self-image by association; I drink therefore I am.

And the other vital connection: the conflation in the human mind between high production values and product image. Not so important if you’re marketing a product in the third world to be culturally appropriate. If your television advertisement is prettier and sexier than the local product’s, your brand will be seen that way too. In most parts of the world, America exported its special effects and successfully positioned its brands as sophisticated and modern.

It’s the brand, stupid. It doesn’t matter what it tastes like, it matters what the brand conjures up in the mind. This has been understood by modern advertisers since Coke and the Marlboro Man. All this you already know.

I mention it as an analog for what is about to happen in virtual marketing, because in this space, the virtual products are sexier looking than the real life products. What does this mean for branding?

It might mean that you don’t need to depict your real-world product in Second Life. Don’t take your dumb plain red t-shirts into Second Life. But that doesn’t mean there is no branding opportunity. Look for a product or experience in Second Life that adds something to your brand’s story. Then export it into the real world.

Enlarge the brand’s share of brain by exercising the client’s imagination. If the person you’re advertising to already knows your brand, you probably don’t need to show it to them again. Or remind them of its features. Maybe you don’t even need to mention it. Instead, give people a virtual experience that increases their involvement with your brand. I know this contradicts a lot of marketing orthodoxy. Frequency, frequency, frequency. Burn your name into their consciousness. But the thing is, brands are stories. They need to evolve. Virtual worlds offer up that opportunity.

If you’re a fashion house, create a space for fashion parades and invite in-world designers to exhibit. Then bring your trade partners in to Second Life. Give them a thousand Lindens and force them to choose between the designs they see. Ask them why they chose the ones they did. Try the outfits on. Engage your clients; create virtual relationships with people you normally only talk to on the telephone. Expand the scope of relationships. Use the virtual world to add some style or fun to your brand.

You supply veterinary products? Take your clients dancing on the lawns among the giraffes. Then send them a real-world product presentation the next day with a giraffe soft-toy.

Don’t be too literal. You sell risk-management software? Take your people virtual skydiving. Give their avatar an animation that has them juggling knives. Fire them out of a cannon. Then give them a video of that happening.

Personalize your brand. Take the example of a health and beauty brand. Bring a client in, take them shopping, give them a make-over and put the before and after photos on a web page for them. Branding and identity are closely linked and helping someone enhance their appearance in a virtual world is a powerful bonding experience.

Properly engineered, the virtual world can supply a context for a brand that helps you tell a story. Biased I know, but Inside This World’s Holodecks are the best tool for doing this. Promote your range of luggage by constructing different hotel lobbies and airports around it, promote your beer by giving people outrageously stylish bars, promote your bank with virtual sports cars and swimming pools.

Your brand is no longer an logo. Your brand is an experience.