(Sorry guys – too much to do and too little time.  And since I’m spending more time now posting on the Spring Creek Group blog, my guess is that I’ll be reposting some content that I write over there…such as this article.)

What Channel is Your Phone Turned To?

There was a time when you used your remote to change the channel.  Now more and more often, the remote and channel are the same device.

Pew Research released a report that claims 33 percent of cell phone owners now access news on their cell phones.  So we’ve finally figured out what the people who aren’t Facebooking or texting are doing with their phones – they’re reading the New York Times or Perez Hilton.

The Pew report discusses, “two significant technological trends that have influenced news consumption behavior: First, the advent of social media like social networking sites and blogs has helped the news become a social experience in fresh ways for consumers. People use their social networks and social networking technology to filter, assess and react to news. Second, the ascent of mobile connectivity via smart phones has turned news gathering and news awareness into an anytime, anywhere affair for a segment of avid news watchers.”

Younger cell phone owners are more likely to look for news on their phones than from Katie Couric. In fact, according to the report, about 43 percent of those under 50 said they are mobile news consumers.  And social media plays a big part, as more than 80 percent of respondents get or receive news via e-mailed links.  But as Breitbart points out in their analysis of the report, the more things change, the more they stay the same.  People’s #1 one concern is still the weather (72 percent), followed by current events (68 percent).

John Cook from Seattle’s own TechFlash found it worthwhile to mention that, “The authors of the study write that news has become omnipresent and people’s relationship to news is becoming portable, personalized and participatory.”

I think John is right when he focuses on the fact that news (and other information) is omnipresent.  The “news cycle,” so to speak, is no longer valid.  The classic product launch is a thing of the past.  Making a big splash with a marketing or ad campaign is not effective unless there is credibility in the claim, and you can prove that the message is sustainable over time.  There’s an effect in which every marketing action has an equal and opposite reaction.  The more you promise, the more upset the crowd will be if you don’t deliver.

So how is this affecting the way news is being delivered?

“In one way it’s uplifting that over 60 percent of people using their phones for news are logging on to check current events. That goes against the passive news consumer we’ve heard about in TV for years,” says Cale Ramaker, an anchor at WOFL-TV in Orlando.  “On the other hand it means all news outlets, in any median, need to refocus on not only delivering the news in multi-formats – but do it with an emphasis for the right now consumer.”

Cale’s point is valid.  We now have more sources of information, more editors of the information, but also more opportunities to make critical decisions on whether the information is tainted.  And seventy two percent of the survey’s respondents said that “most news sources today are biased in their coverage.” If the “objective” sources are biased, then the marketing sources are unbelievably easy to see through.

So at the end of the day, information continues to flow, and people can find it whenever and wherever they are.  In fact, even if a marketing team lands an article with Kara Swisher, we may not read it there.  We may get it via a friend’s Facebook post or Tweet while waiting for the bus.