Buying More Snow

The newspaper and magazine industries are trying to buy back some of their rapidly dwindly credibility with advertisers, with $50 million and $40 million ad campaigns respectively (via Jeff).

The other day, my 2-year-old daughter observed that all of the snow from the recent East Coast storm had melted. “Go to the store and buy more snow,” she suggested.

Try as it may, Old Media can’t “buy more snow” — it needs to evolve by leveraging its two greatest assets — audience and brand. But unless Old Media embraces deep audience participation and provides its content in fully distributed, atomized, and digitized forms (and about 27 other 2.0 imperatives), Old Media brands will have as much value as melting snow to a 2-year-old: here today, gone tomorrow.