One of my favorite slides from the 2011 Borrell Local Interactive Media Conference is a blip on an economic graph. It's called the Dead Cat Bounce (below). Usually the Bounce refers to a brief upward movement in the Wall Street markets preceding a catastrophic slide. The same motion, say Harvard scholars Clay Christensen and Gilbert Clark (both were lead speakers) is seen as new technologies disrupt established industries - from steel to computer chips, to media. The entire cycle ends with a "period of ambiguity" Clark says, including the Bounce, which is a sort of "last gasp followed by perpetual decline." So where is traditional media on the curve? Behind the bump with time to react? In front (after all, media has been in decline for years)? Or poised on the top of the Dead Cat Bounce like a hundred foot wave on (taste precludes a Tsunami comparison) Honolulu's North Shore ? more

This week we asked Nanci Williams, partner in Orloff-Williams, a local ad agency in San Jose, California, to weigh in on the status of the agency business. Here's her take how agencies have changed and advice for local media thinking about starting an in-house agency. LMI: From an agency perspective, what are the biggest changes that you see agencies going through right now? Clients are more confused than ever. Traditional media is going away and online media is changing every day. Agencies have had to become more like consultants than just service providers. They are providing strategies rather than media buying, putting online and traditional media together and showing clients how to measure it. There is more creative and more high-level thinking and less executing. LMI: Have you seen fall-out for agencies who didn't change fast enough? Williams: Yes. The traditional agency and heavy media-buying agencies are gone or sized-down considerably. Social media agencies and digital agencies have sprouted up and are larger than the traditioanl agencies now. Let's put it this way. We were losing business to agencies I'd never heard of, that were formed that year. more

The opening speaker at the E&P Interactive Conference, was John Paton, newly appointed (since March) CEO of the Journal Register company and E&P's 2009 Publisher of the Year. Here's his challenge: The Journal Register was a frugally run group of 18 dailies and 150 non-daily papers that was over-leveraged and coming out of bankruptcy. Not the easiest ship to turn. But Paton has made a name for himself as a digital innovator on a broad scale. This morning he let fly one statistic that encapsulates the complexity of the task: In 2006 Impra Media had nine products on two platforms. In 2010 Impra Media has 100 plus products on seven platforms, and operates at 40% less cost. In many ways the Journal Register company is just beginning down this road. more

With strong arts, entertainment and political franchises, alternative weeklies are known for sass, sex and creativity. How far that creativity extends into the digital world was on display at the Association of Alternative Weeklies (AAN) 2012 Online Conference. Several publishers spoke about their experience innovating more deeply into key verticals and areas of strength. more

As we worked through this week's reports, I thought a lot about Terry Heaton, author of thepomoblog.com and the book, "Reinventing Local Media." Heaton addresses a basic problem posed by the transition of the one-to-many-media universe into a many-to-many media universe; that is, given the ability to blog, tweet, Facebook post, contest, text and and more, some advertisers don't need our audiences. They can build their own. "It’s a very bad time to be in the audience hunting business," as Heaton put it at a recent AAN Online Conference, "because the deer all have guns." "Our old model was: We can reach people for you, Mr. Advertiser. And all of those people who follow us will see your ad. Now the advertiser has tools to bypass us. He is creating content and reaching people in the same ways that we do." "Our core competency of mass marketing is in permanent decay. We are always playing defense and never allowed to play offense." Keaton's main example is the disruptive and prescient Jerry Damson automotive in Northern Alabama, a local media reps' worst nightmare. more

Last week, we touched on the importance of creating brave new local brands. But let's back up an look at how social media has impacted what a brand actually is. Speaking at the 2012 Local Online Advertising Conference, AdAge columnist and marketing guru, Bob Garfield laid out his theory that a brand is no longer just the personality of the products, but how the company itself behaves as employer, community citizen and sales person - all the activities that create conversations in their communities. In the "Relationship Era" that has succeeded the Consumer Era, this creates unique challenges for local media companies. On one hand, what they sell, "one to many" advertising is rendered impotent - or at least much less efficient - for merchants trying to send out their message. And then media have their own brands to worry about. Yesterday a taxi cab driver asked if I was going to the "dinosaur convention," referring to the annual meet-up of the largest newspaper association in North America. Do local media companies have a problem with their brands? You bet. And it won't be solved by running a few house ads or changing up the slogan. more

It’s taken me a while to process all the information from NAA’s MediaXChange, including numerous follow-up calls. There were not a lot of “new toys” this year (last year Group deals … more

At the Key Executives Mega-Conference last week, several publishers came forward with cleverly rendered new approaches to emerging models. Schurz Media's email initiative provides a simple, overlooked source of.... drum roll please... banner advertising revenues. The most active Shurz markets are selling around $30,000 of ads on emails, even with very small, but targeted databases. The idea is that 150 people, who are, say interested in buying a home, are an easy upsell that realtors understand. Stay tuned for our case study on this in the weeks ahead. This week's case study looks at Kelsey Square Communications, a new inhouse agency created at Holden Landmark Company, a group of four weeklies and a monthly in Worcester, Massachusetts and a few surrounding communities. This initiative is unique – and, we think, smart - in that it employs no additional staff but takes advantage of the opportunity to sell PR and graphic services, as well as a few newly minted ones. And finally, Joe Boydston, VP/technology and new media at McNaughton Newspaper Group in Frairchild, Ca. caused a stir after showing how his newspapers are produced entirely on WordPress, including a system that requires editors to Tweet all stories as the final step in editing, and before they go online, and the formation of newspaperfoundation.org, an organization dedicated to helping newspapers convert to open source technology. Also in the spotlight at the conference is the huge potential of seasonal deal stores. Grouping better deals around the right seasons and running them longer, rather than a fixed 365 schedule, just makes economic sense. Also evolving quickly are mobile advertising sales, though it is clear that print companies have fallen far behind television in building and selling mobile products. But aside from these gems, the most interesting development at the conference may have been The Mood. more

Group deals come with a built in Catch 22: What merchants want and what their deal promoting partners want are inherently at cross-purposes. Both want revenues, of course. Whether a 50/50 or 60/40 split, their interests are aligned. Not so when it comes to the ownership of the data. Most deal providers simply assume that they will own all the data generated by the deal. Merchants are left to come up with their own separate data collection strategy. more