NEWS ANALYSIS: ITEM

			Lemon Trees: How Content Quality Needs to be Repositioned in an Era of New Technologies
			John Blossom
			26 April 2004
SUMMARY:			Just as U.S. auto manufacturers drifted from the models that brought them marketing success until the industry almost died in the 1980's, today's publishers and aggregators seem to be intent on ignoring many of the key needs for content quality that are the keys to their brand value - and long-term profitability. Focusing on improving existing production processes in publishing and distribution obscures the need to look at how content markets perceive content value in a changing landscape of creation and delivery technologies. From portals to search engines to eBooks and weblogs, content quality needs to exploit and adapt to the market's perception of what's valuable - regardless of how it's produced today.

Alfred Sloan was a manufacturing legend who defined how automobiles are marketed in America. Under Sloan's tutelage, General Motors grew out from under the shadow of the Ford Motor Company in the 1920's  into the world's largest manufacturing colossus. Sloan's idea was revolutionary at the time and taken for granted today: use common manufacturing methods and distinct product styling and marketing to give consumers the perception of tiers of product quality. Start with a lowly Chevrolet brand car and work your way up into a Pontiac, an Oldsmobile, a Buick, a LaSalle, and then declare your ultimate social success with a Cadillac. It's a model that worked for generations of car buyers - until U.S. manufacturers became sloppy with brand management and quality control to the point that few U.S. auto products were distinguished or distinguishable. By the 1980's Americans were giving up on U.S. auto brands in droves, migrating to Asian and European brands whose quality and engineering was proving to be superior in the minds of consumers. Only now are U.S. auto brands starting to shake their image as "lemon" producers and make up some of the ground that they lost in the war for brand loyalty.

The content industry is facing a similar crisis in brand management today, the recent resignation of USA Today's top editor  due to fabricated articles being only the latest example of editorial quality management gone awry. Like a four-wheel lemon rolling off the assembly line these incidents are addressed with appropriate damage control and may not result in any immediate changes to market share for major content brands, but in aggregate the picture is getting rather grim for content companies that fail to keep up with the leading edge of quality expectations from their clients. Sunday's New York Times [PREMIUM] noted the recent rash of non-fiction books released focusing on hot political topics, topics that in previous years would have hit the presses in respected newspapers and magazines well before they ever hit hardback editions. The Times article focused on technology's ability to produce books quickly and cost-effectively enough to exploit these opportunities, but the unspoken truth is that the technology is exploiting an already existing quality perception gap: the "good stuff" just doesn't come from papers and magazines like it used to in the minds of many, a perception that flows into many other kinds of professional and consumer content.

What are some of the key factors that can lead content producers back into the quality fold? Here are a few ideas as to how they can get back on track:

• Reconsider your core marketing models. U.S. auto manufacturers allowed their premium models to become stuck in images of product attributes that were not in line with real market opportunities. Customers expected Cadillacs to be "floaty-boaty" cars and so GM produced them as such, even as the attributes of premium quality had moved on from that concept. Too many publishers and aggregators are in a similar position. Having content technology in place that allows one to publish easily in the latest formats has not changed the perception of many publishers and aggregators being primarily news producers, database producers or book producers. Companies such as Google challenge production-oriented content models by acknowledging that the value of quality content production is moot if it doesn't provide value to the right audience at the right time. Publishers need to rethink in a much more fundamental way how they address the quality needs of those audiences independent of established production processes and create content brands that respond to those needs in clear and specific tiers of value generation.
• Reconsider how you package premium quality. Today's editorial environment is challenged to keep up established levels of quality in an electronic era that rewards immediacy and ubiquitous distribution. The real lesson being taught to us via the recent rash of political books is that people are willing to pay for premium, well-packaged editorial content very highly if it comes in the right package at the right time. For example, if content is valued in book format but basically newsworthy information, why not produce it that way yourself? With rights-protected eBooks an increasingly accepted distribution medium, technology allows for content monetization models that can leverage quality content traditionally produced by news publishers in far more opportunistic ways even in electronic form. If your production method is no longer the center of your marketing universe, such opportunities may abound.
• Reconsider what your audiences consider to be valuable. A recent CBS MarketWatch article [REGISTRATION] noted weblogs reports being pounded out by Jeff Jarvis of Buzzmachine.com during an American Society of Newspaper Editors conference at which out of an audience of about 200 news professionals only five were producing weblogs and only about ten were considering to produce them. Yet again production-oriented publishers and aggregators are just not sure whether this new medium is worthy of their attention, even as weblogs and numerous other new publishing technologies prove out the value of immediate and raw content to both consumer and professional marketplaces. Editorial processes are oftentimes still stuck on trying to add value to raw content that is best left sorted out by users equipped with powerful filtering and content management technologies, instead of focusing their talents on where value really can be added. If raw content is considered valuable, consider how to package the value of raw more effectively - rather than trying to cook it to a recipe that may or may not be appreciated.

Technology may improve content production efficiency, but it doesn't guarantee that you're producing vContent - highly valued content that exploits human values as much as information technology production values. Focusing on content quality as a primary mission and learning how that mission can be adapted to specific market needs, rather than specific production processes, is one of the keys for success in today's content marketplace. Such an approach may not always guarantee that there aren't content lemons being produced, but in general it should help to broaden the sweetness of content to all concerned.

- John Blossom

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