Credit should also go to Hot Tomali (www.hottomali.com) who provided great branding and design work for the Juump website.

Best of luck with NOWCastSA!

Great to meet you and I (as a History major) agree that there is a lot to learn from the past.

Unlike most in this discussion, I bring (I know -oh yuck) a marketing perspective. And the perspective of one who has owned and operated the exclusive rights to a multi-media sports event with an avid and underserved fanbase (US Latinos).

From reading Steve Buttry, Jeff Jarvis, Howard Owens, Steve Yelvington, as well as others you haven’t mentioned, I think we all agree that consumer-oriented innovation is needed. Some agree that people will pay for a more consumer-oriented product. I think all agree that marketers will pay more to support a more consumer-oriented product.

I understand why Howard and others think the Divide and Conquer route is the only alternative to get around the conflict with the “old” media mindset.

I have tried to partner with “old” media to create a fully integrated media experience on TV, in print, online, in radio, and activating locally – all the way to retail (we had merchandise to sell too). Can’t tell you how that worked – because couldn’t get these guys to think this way! So I get the hurdle.

I agree that a lot has been learned by operating “untethered” from the mother ship. When I experimented with very limited syndication of a dynamically updated widget during games (reported line score and highlights) our website traffic tripled. In other words, curiosity is there, and I had a chance to convert them to buy a live video subscription and merchandise.

But I also know how many sponsors were interested in my fully integrated concept that I couldn’t deliver to them. Many $ left on the table. The point is that marketers have been trying to execute integrated marketing campaigns forever. The biggest hurdle is that media is not integrated. (By the way, I think the MySanAntonio.com jv with the local tv station and newspaper is brilliant. I’ll bet if the print and television entities integrated seamlessly with the website it would still be alive today. The timing for that idea could not be better. As the big networks are not “over the air” anymore their relationship with affiliates is totally “in the air” right now – the local stations should be very motivated to explore how to “own” their local markets by collaborating with other local media – and I would include radio too.)

The point is learn what you can be being a renegade. But eventually you have to work together to succeed. So the question is what will it take to bring all the stakeholders to the table and collaborate. I think delivering a better product for the audience is it. And if focused on delivering a product they would actually pay for, the motivation goes up.

Is it possible they will pay? Remember CB Radios: Created a market for mobile communications, demonstrated how bad it could be, cellphones came along and solved that problem for a huge premium – even with less reliable reception!

That’s all for now. But I think this is a really productive conversation. Wonder how it could be improved . . . hmmm.

Katherine Warman Kern