SAY MAGAZINE SPRING 2012 ENGAGING PEOPLE
ish co dF rie ancis F Fr tle Lit , San pa o N
FASHION OBSESSION
FO O D
M A P
WHY OWNING STUFF DOESN'T MATTER
FR EE
HOW WE EAT NOW
IN SI D E
THIS IS WHY YOU WORK IN ADVERTISING
LETTER FROM THE PUBLISHER
Let Them Eat Orange Saffron Mashed Sweet Potatoes
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We’ve seen a shift from the old guard’s obsession with the Michelin star to a democratized, irreverent riff on the fine-dining experience.
The food world’s old guard would have you know that haute cuisine has for centuries resided under the purview of polite society. From the renowned kitchens of Careme and Escoffier came an undisputed mastery of craft and technique that have schooled generations of great chefs and informed the cuisine that would delight the palates of their well-heeled patrons. As for the common people, the great unwashed masses, let them fight for the nasty bits — the tendon-laced, sinewy cuts of meat, the throw-away scraps of rind. As history has taught us time and time again, from great inequity rises great innovation. Modernday democracy arose from the French and American revolutions. The uniquely American sounds of blues and jazz music is derived from the pain, loss and injustice associated with being an AfricanAmerican at the turn of the 20th century. Even the pejorative lyrics and do-it-yourself ethos of punk was a reaction to the monotonous sentimentality of 70s rock and the Western, capitalist homogeneity it epitomized. Taking a survey of the modern-day food scene, one could make the same argument to explain what has happened in recent years to the culinary world. We’ve seen a shift from the old guard’s obsession with the Michelin star to a democratized, irreverent riff on the fine-dining experience. Out are the white table-clothed bastions of fine dining. Today, it’s about reclaiming what has always been at our finger tips — locally sourced ingredients, offal “peasant” fare, casual and communal dining — and turning it into a world-class dining experience.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Troy Young is President of Say Media. He has spent the last 6 years working with amazing people to make Say. The project is not finished but definitely taking shape. He has three kids, 2 dogs and lots of bikes.
In this issue of SAY Magazine, we focus on this new generation of food lovers and how the new digital publishers are satisfying this hunger. “How We Eat Now” (p. 14) by SAY’s vice president of media, Josh Jaffe, explores how online food writers and communities are reversing a generational shift and sending millions of Americans back into the kitchen. We also interview Peter Meehan about his ungenteel new cooking magazine with the iconoclastic David Chang of Momofuku (“Food on the Edge,” p. 19). And we check in with rock star restaurateur Heston Blumenthal of the U.K.’s Fat Duck, who has his Michelin stars but keeps it real with dormouse lollipops and bacon-and-egg ice cream. The incredible food map in the middle of the magazine helps you navigate this brave new world (“Eat This Map,” center). Finally, in this issue, we show you how SAY is investing in technology and tools to bring the hard work of these digital entrepreneurs to every device in beautiful ways. “Beautiful Content Experiences Start Here” (p. 30) gives you a look at Orion, SAY’s content management system for our publishing partners — an all-new platform designed to support publications and to help them merchandise that content effectively. With all the talk of new media outpacing the old, the past decade has ironically been about catching up, something we explore in our Media Lab (“Editorial Design for the Post-PC Era,” p. 24). Whether you’re reading this in print, on a tablet or on your phone, we hope you enjoy it. Drop us a note at magazine@saymedia.com.
SAY Magazine | Spring 2012
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In three months since launch, a community of thoughtful women have jumped in: More than 700,000 unique visitors Over 20,000 comments, average 27 per post More than 5 million page views Average session time 5 minutes+
INSIDE 01 Letter From the Publisher
featureS 11 Welcome to Your (Augmented) Reality 2012 is the year when mobile marketing opportunities become relevant, useful and highly entertaining.
14 COVER STORY: How We Eat Now Inspired by accessible online food writers and communities, home cooks are returning to the kitchen in droves. Plus: Chef Heston Blumenthal on innovation and Peter Meehan on the delicious riot of Lucky Peach.
24 Editorial Design for a Post-PC Era With all the talk of new media outpacing old media, the past decade has really been about catching up.
30 Beautiful Content Experiences Start Here Premium ad and editorial experiences require new publishing tools. That’s why the world needs Orion.
perspectives 07 Fashion Obsession Leah Chernikoff of Fashionista on the new style influencers.
08 This Is Why You Work in Advertising It’s all about connecting the people behind the brand.
21 The Power of Real-Time Content Marketing Big opportunities in 2012.
36 Why Owning Stuff Doesn’t Matter For the iGeneration, access trumps ownership.
spotlight 22 Case Study / HP: Connect With Passionate Consumers How HP used context and content to drive deep engagement.
26 Time Shifters and the Future of TV Ads Millenials are leading the charge away from live TV. Here’s where they’re going.
32 The Science and Art of Engagement How to make ad experiences intuitive, thoughtful and accountable.
BITS 04 Scene & Heard 06 Things I Love With Leah Chernikoff / Fashionista 28 Things We Love With Eric Yang and Ben Bowers / Gear Patrol Kumquat, Ricotta and Nutella Sandwich Darwin Cafe, San Francisco
34 Things We Love With Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs / Food52 SAY Magazine | Spring 2012
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SAY Media is a digital publishing company that delivers quality vertical media experiences to engaged audiences.
SCENE & HEARD Last year was a big year for SAY Media. We hosted a record number of events around the world and in our U.S., Canada, Australia and U.K. offices. Expect a lot more fun and thought-provoking events and parties in 2012.
HOW TO REACH SAY MAGAZINE Mailing address: SAY Media 180 Townsend St., Third Floor San Francisco, CA 94107
Givers
Email: magazine@saymedia.com On the Web: saymedia.com On Twitter: @saymediainc TO INQUIRE ABOUT BECOMING A PUBLISHER PARTNER, CONTACT RICHARD ROCCA: 415.738.5158
ADVERTISING SALES New York Doug Barrett 917.297.2217 Washington D.C. Eric Laurence 240.620.3093 Midwest, Chicago Brad Schrepferman 773.610.8732 Detroit John Irvine 248.705.8086 West Coast Leah Corselli 310.709.8469 Canada Paul Cassar 514.370.2868 Michelle Koert, SunGard; Jana Messerschmidt, Twitter
United Kingdom Giles Ivey +44 (0) 7930.393.485
Eric Yang, Bradley Hasemeyer, Ben Bowers, Gear Patrol
CES 2012, Las Vegas, Nevada A live performance by the Givers in January rocked the house at 1Oak, Las Vegas‘ hottest new nightclub. More than 600 clients and publishers packed the venue for the 2012 International CES celebration.
Australia Duncan Arthur +61 (0) 433.394.892
SAY MEDIA Headquartered in San Francisco, with offices across the U.S. as well as in Canada, the U.K. and Australia Matt Sanchez CEO & Co-Founder
Troy Young President
Craig Morris, Carat and guest
Grant le Riche, SAY; Laura Fischer, NHL; Marie and John Milley, OLG
Sam Parker COO
PUBLISHER Troy Young MANAGING EDITOR Wendy Taylor CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Erin Olsson January Machold
SAY Holiday Party, Toronto, Canada SAY hosted more than 350 VIP clients, agencies, creative leads, publishers, Canadian bloggers and suppliers at The Mod Club with music by local band Arkells and DJ Dino.
CREATIVE DIRECTOR Alex Schleifer DESIGNER Sarah Teubner ASSISTANT DESIGNER Mira Kim PHOTOGRAPHY — NEW YORK Graeme Fouste PHOTOGRAPHY — SAN FRANCISCO Eliot Weisberg
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SAY Magazine | Spring 2012
Arkells
SAY Australia’s First Birthday Party, Sydney, Australia What a difference a year makes. SAY Australia celebrated its first birthday in November in Sydney in true SAY style with a party and lots of great food.
Toucan
Dacey Nicoletti, Expedia; Duncan Arthur, SAY; Yiming Pan, Carat Sydney
Roisin Durham, Antonia Farquhar, Erin Hardaker, OMD
Courtney Love
xoJane’s Temporary Office: Courtney Love’s NYC Townhouse Courtney Love generously opened her New York home to the xoJane team in Manhattan as an off-campus, pop-up office — and as the backdrop for an exclusive photo shoot. As her super-famous-in-his-field realtor Jared Seligman put it, Courtney‘s home is the “epitome of exquisite taste.“
Rachel Ooms, Dave Rollo, 22squared
Chad Darbyshire, Matt Diffee, Drew Dernavich, New Yorker cartoonists
Theresa Trelstad, HP; David Tokheim, SAY; Esohe Omoruyi, L'Oreal
SAY: Create, Napa, California Outstanding. Amazing. Mind-blowing. Those were just a few of the reactions to this year‘s SAY: Create, an event we designed to help deepen our industry’s understanding of how great content is created and how it builds culture.
SAY Magazine SAY Magazine | Fall/Winter | Spring 2012 2011
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PERSPECTIVES
Fashion Obsession: Leah Chernikoff’s Guilty Pleasures If you think covering fashion is all clothes and makeup, you haven’t met the latest generation of fashion writers. Take Leah Chernikoff, executive editor of Fashionista, one of the largest independent fashion news sites. Her range covers stories such as why Galliano wasn’t condemned by the fashion industry for his anti-Semitic tirade, the best street style from Paris Fashion Week 2011, and Kate Moss drunkenly seducing a bear for charity. Before she was at Fashionista, Chernikoff was a features reporter at the New York Daily News. Her work also has appeared in The Wall Street Journal and New York Magazine. She’s seen how upstart sites like Fashionista have transformed the traditional fashion heavyweights such as Vogue and Elle — and how they still influence the upstarts.
should never be taken too seriously. I loved when we put cats in the fall ad campaigns or when we put mustaches on the fashion industry’s power players for Movember.
How has the fashion world been changed by upstart sites like Fashionista? I think independent digital fashion sites and blogs like Fashionista have made fashion more accessible. They’ve brought the runways — once the domain of a select few editors, stylists, buyers and socialites — to the masses and broken them down. They’ve made that rarefied world real. Upstarts like Fashionista have made fashion faster, more immediate (for better or worse).
You’re known for taking haute fashion and making it accessible. What do you look for when you are covering a new trend or designer? What kind of information do your readers find most valuable? I look for newsiness. I want to find the thing that will make that trend accessible. Readers like information when it’s informative or service-y, when it gives them take-home advice or when it’s shocking or funny or when it’s a little gossip-y.
What’s your favorite stuff to cover? What are you most passionate about? I love producing original reported pieces like the story Hayley Phelan wrote recently about how personal style bloggers make money and how monetizing threatens the editorial integrity of their blogs. I also like bringing in a little silliness. Fashion
What are your all-time most popular posts on Fashionista? We’ve broken a few stories that spread like wildfire over the Internet and then mainstream media. We were the first to report on 10-year-old French model Thylane Blondeau, who posed provocatively in French Vogue and caused a stir, as did a French lingerie line we uncovered
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Who influences or inspires you? There are too many to name. Certainly Women’s Wear Daily (WWD), fashion’s paper of record, informs the news we cover (I especially like Miles Socha’s scoops), as do all the fashion writers at the major papers: Cathy Horyn, Suzy Menkes, Hilary Alexander, Robin Givhan, etc. They’re the best of the best, and I’m always interested in their insights. I’m also inspired by the fashion obsessives on the Internet who meticulously follow and chronicle the industry on forums like The Fashion Spot and Fashin.
designed for kids. That story went on to be featured on the big morning news shows — TODAY and Good Morning America — and was picked up in many major papers. We were the only outlet to get a quote from Joanna Coles, Marie Claire’s editorin-chief, after a writer for the mag’s site wrote an incendiary rant against fat people. We also were the first to report that Lady Gaga’s perfume would smell like “blood and semen.” We cover designer collaborations extensively because they are increasingly popular, and those posts do very well. Some of our sillier stories do well, too — the slide show of cats Photoshopped into fall fashion ad campaigns was a big hit. What other fashion sites or writers do you enjoy? Who else is doing it right? The other sites I look to, the ones that keep me on my toes for news, are New York Magazine’s fashion blog, The Cut; Racked (New York and National); Jenna Sauers’ fashion coverage for Jezebel; and Susie Bubble. Who What Wear and Refinery29 are great for style and shopping. I mentioned it earlier, but the fashion writers from the major dailies (some of whom have left their posts) are the ones I respect and pay attention to the most: Cathy Horyn, Robin Givhan, Suzy Menkes, Miles Socha at WWD, Hilary Alexander, Booth Moore, etc. What are your favorite new fashion finds of the moment? Wearing boys’ clothes. The silhouettes are in and the price is right. What’s your fashion “guilty pleasure”? Whenever a cat sneaks its way into an editorial.
THINGS I LOVE FASHION
Carven Asymmetrical Twill Tartan Dress I love pretty much anything Carven — a recently revived French label under the very talented direction of young designer Guillaume Henry. This dress plays to my Scottish roots (the side that’s not Russian and Hungarian) and has a classic flirty Carven look. Sure the price tag means it’s more of an “aspirational” item, but you’d be the only one at the party wearing it. (Net-a-Porter, $1,010)
RODIN Olio Lusso Face Oil Every model, stylist and editor raves about this face oil. Yes, putting oil on your face seems counterintuitive, but models look like, well, models, so they can’t be wrong, right? I’ve always wanted to try it. The price is steep, but apparently it’s a beauty regime game changer. (oliolusso.com, $140)
Marais USA Nude Patent Loafers If you couldn’t already tell by my habit of shopping the boys’ section, I love menswear looks, and these loafers strike that perfect balance: They’ve got a masculine edge, but they’re sleekly feminine and in a pretty patent nude. Plus you can walk in them! (Marais USA, $98)
Madewell Lily Lace Dress Just a great, timeless dress. And a more affordable party option. (Madewell, $158)
J.Crew Boys’ Lambswool Sweater Lately I’m really into shopping the boys’ section at my favorite retailers. The biggest sizes generally fit, they’ve got that boxy silhouette that’s so in right now, and the best part? The price! (J.Crew, $32)
Leah Chernikoff Fashionista Leah Chernikoff is the executive editor of Fashionista, an online explosion of personalities, companies, events and trends that shape the fashion universe. “It’s cold out, and all I’m craving are things that will make me feel cozy and warm — but chic at the same time, of course. Here are some things I already own and love, and some things I just know I’d love if I could only afford them. A girl can dream, right? Fashion is supposed to be aspirational after all.”
Mane Message Elastic Hair Ties Seems like a minor thing — who cares about a hair elastic? Well, I do. And these are the best ones. They never snap or pull your hair, and they stay stretchy. Also, they look like chic bracelets when you wear them on your wrist. (Etsy shop: Mane Message, $10.50 for six).
Fashionista is a SAY Media partner. Follow Leah on Twitter @leahchernikoff. SAY Magazine | Spring 2012
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PERSPECTIVES
This Is Why You Work In Advertising Every mother wants her child to grow up to change the world for the better, to perhaps become a doctor, researcher or scientist. Maybe even … an advertising executive? While no one here is debating the dignity of a job in advertising, it may come as a surprise that some of the world’s big thinkers view it not as a “necessary evil” but as a highly noble profession, one that is capable of artfully humanizing our
“Don't tell my mother I work in an advertising agency — she thinks I play piano in a whorehouse.” — Jacques Seguela desire to innovate and one that plays a pivotal role in creating a shared narrative of our successes and failures, aspirations and fears. And, according to digital visionary Jaron Lanier, a profession that has strayed woefully off course from fulfilling its destiny to romanticize human production and, ultimately, drive forth civilization. Lanier is not the only one who believes in advertising’s honorable purpose. Here’s Calvin Coolidge in 1926: “Advertising ministers to the spiritual side of trade. It is great power that has been entrusted to your keeping, which charges you with the high responsibility of inspiring and ennobling the commercial world. It is all part of the greater work of the regeneration and redemption of mankind.” While some advertising is capable of moving our emotions and redeeming the competitive and often ugly business of doing business, other advertising simply reduces the distance between commercial interests and people. Lanier puts it plainly: “Google’s thing is not advertising because it’s not a romanticizing operation. It doesn’t involve expression. It’s a link. What they’re doing is selling access.” Selling access rather than emotion is the way you drive revenue within earshot of Seguela’s piano. Everyone says they hate advertising, but it’s more likely that they hate bad advertising. If all
advertising were hated, it wouldn’t be so successful at moving people to take action. What makes us recoil are ads that prey on our fears and yell at us about things we don’t care about. We respond to ads that give us gifts and provide access to hopes, dreams, entertainment and information. Cynics will say this is a bad thing. But how else can we be introduced to the next great addition to our lives? The obvious question is, what form and substance would modern digital advertising be if it functioned in a way that “romanticized human production,” as Lanier suggests it should? You would certainly have to start with a far better canvas for romance: spacious, uncontested, clutter-free and frictionless. When you’ve cleared space to communicate, then the nature of the communication takes over. That is best done when advertisers think about — care about — their customer and understand realistically how they fit into the customer’s life. So when Charles Bukowski’s famous poem The Laughing Heart shows up in a Levi’s ad campaign, it reaches a broader audience and more people are moved. The ad then becomes the content people welcome, not the shouting that we try, with increasing success, to shut out of our lives. If anything, modern advertising is less about the romance of a single product and more about connecting the people, ideas and community behind a brand. This is a complex undertaking. It is content. It is social. It is useful and inspiring, or it is worthless. If you’ve read this far, it’s because you care about what we have to say. Perhaps you look forward to our quarterly magazine, you know someone who works at SAY or you’re a client. You’ve given us your attention because, we hope, we reward that attention with an interesting perspective, an insight you can develop, even just a quick chuckle at our weekly Venn diagrams. Make no mistake — we are advertising to you. But we’re doing it in the way that comes most naturally to us: by having a conversation with you. When advertising looks like (is) a conversation, it ceases to be manipulative and starts being human. When it pleases, the pleasure is real. You care about advertising. Stay the course, and go make the world a better place.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Troy Young is president of SAY Media. SAY Magazine | Spring 2012
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THE ORIGINAL ENGAGEMENT NETWORK. NOW MUCH MORE. An amazing portfolio of owned and partner sites across Style, Living, Food and Tech. Custom content programs, driven by passionate experts. As always, beautiful engaging ad experiences delivered across any device, priced on engagement. A global reach of 400 million people monthly. Learn more at saymedia.com/advertising.
ENGAGING PEOPLE
SAY Media data analyst, Ryan Christo, makes sense of it all.
MOBILE TRENDS 2012
Welcome to Your (Augmented) Reality 2012 is the year when mobile marketing opportunities become relevant, useful and highly entertaining. People’s connection to their mobile devices is breathtaking to observe. These devices were designed to communicate, but now like those shortlived Microsoft Mobile OS commercials, phones have us crashing our cars, walking into walls and bumping other people. The scenario of people sitting in bars, faces eerily lit by their phones and ignoring everyone else around them drives home the point that phones can be virtual isolation chambers. While the physical isolation that mobile devices engender is one pole of experience, some interesting external projections of those devices are also taking place. In 2012, some of the early dabbling in socalled “augmented reality” — when you point your phone at something in the physical world and gain access to information — is actually developing into stuff that makes a whole lot of sense, stuff that even nongeeks might want to use. App developers also are making smarter use of the GPS features on smartphones, which is what truly sets these devices apart from all other things that deliver media. In 2012, we’ll see people using their phones to connect with the world around them in new
and sometimes unexpected ways. The following scenarios are just a few basic examples of how mobile technology can indeed augment our everyday lives. Find Me a Job If you are one of the nearly 20 percent of people between 18 and 34 who is not employed, looking for a job is a pressing issue. JobCompass uses the iPhone’s GPS to find open positions within a given radius of the area you are in. After all, who cares if there is a great job in Des Moines (or even Jersey)? You’re just not moving there. This app, in addition to providing job description information, also allows you to apply directly from your phone. Find Me Parking So you’ve applied for a job, and miracle of miracles, someone in HR actually wants you to come right in. Now, to find cheap — or preferably free — parking. The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) has taken this very seriously and released SFpark in an effort to make things a bit greener and provide “cleaner air, improved safety and faster Muni times.” Nice goal. Also interesting is that it operates on a dynamic congestion pricing model where prices change based on the number of available spots. In fact, the mobile future is filled with variable pricing. My personal favorite in a very crowded field of parking apps — most of which are logically cityspecific — is Open Spot. It has a social networking “do good unto others and earn rewards” aspect that is appealing. So when you leave a free spot, you enter that info into the app and build up “karma points” that can be used to redeem spots when you need them. Another service, called ParkingCarma and available in 50 cities, does not give you karma points but has a larger goal to reduce the exhaust from driving around looking for a parking spot. Instead, the service helps people plan for parking in advance with reservations. Find Me a Deal With the car successfully parked and the job
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MOBILE TRENDS 2012
interview aced, you may want to look for a few deals near your new workplace — especially now that cash flow is positive. You can use two augmented reality apps from very different companies: the Valpak local deal finder, which is part of the junaio app, and the new Amazon Flow app, which not only scans bar codes for comparison pricing but also provides an augmented reality overlay of product information right on the iPhone’s screen. Yes, you can buy it instantly, but you also can sample related music and video or access reviews, because all of this content exists in the giant database of media that Amazon has become. Find Me Love Unfortunately, the cool new job and all the shopping can’t solve the issue of coming home alone — but mobile can. While the growth of the Internet went hand in hand with the growth of dating sites, mobile technology and the location finder on the phone are taking dating into new dimensions. How About We, Flirtomatic, Dates Near Me, meetMoi, Sonar and OkCupid (now owned by Match) are all dating sites that have apps for geolocation dating. The idea is simple: You are where you are. Why sort through all that blather about walks on beaches at sunset when you can quickly set up an actual meetup in real time? How About We uses the lens of posting date ideas rather than just a picture and a place, which can skew toward the instant gratification end of dating. On the other hand, that’s what apps like Grindr are actually going for. While they’re fun and engaging, trying to find and use all these apps is exhausting. iPhone users with Siri can use her to help — but only if she finds the information in an Apple-sanctioned app. What if the information and deals came to you? Placecast creates geo-fences or virtual perimeters around physical locations through programs for AT&T in the U.S. and O2 in the U.K. The company now posits that it can extend the technology to create a personal geo-fence so that marketers can reach you whenever and wherever you are in a virtual cloud of relevant marketing. So if you enable the service onto your phone, you can go into the Placecast preference center and set specific services, places, merchants or merchant types that you want to be able to contact you. You also can set how the companies contact you — through SMS, push notifications, email or whatever. You can then literally walk around in your own geo-fence of relevant retail and dining offers and discounts. One of the most appealing aspects of mobile technology is the idea of using data and location relevance along with customer preference to create marketing that’s relevant, useful and not intrusive. After all, your customers are demanding it.
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The Incredible Lightness of Mobile John R. Quain, New York Times and CBS News contributor, columnist and tech expert, weighs in on the phones of our future — or at least of 2012. We can and will do just about anything with our phones. What’s the next frontier of consumer action spurred by technology innovation? Augmented reality. Look at what Layar and Google are doing. Google integrated with its street views is really compelling. Google is not just photographing streets but the whole world, including parks and museums. Your phone becomes your tour guide, travel agent and business assistant. Try it at a place like the Empire State Building. You point it at the building, get info on it and then even book a ticket to the observation deck — all through your phone. One of the big disappointments of 2011 for phone geeks was that Apple only released an upgrade instead of an entirely new phone. What currently missing features do you think Apple has to release in the iPhone 5? The main one is 4G service — Apple has no LTE phone, and it’s critical. iPhones are not up to speed, literally. The second is near field communication (NFC), which is technology whereby an encryption chip in the phone enables payment when the phone is tapped against a special reader. The only feature Apple never added is FM radio functionality. In terms of making the phone your everything, it’s missing. I also think it’s got to add some sort of biometric recognition. Google already has a phone with face recognition. It’s an additional level of security that will become important, especially if we start to do mobile transactions. Seen any Android features that you think will set them apart from Apple? Android’s at a limit — they need to make them lighter and thinner. Phones have the power to be your PC, but there’s no way to properly do work. You can do work on an iPhone but it’s all mistakes and errors. The swipe typing functionality on Android often works better than a keyboard. Motorola’s newest version of the Razr has accessories that make it more like a working computer. Android is always pushing a little bit further — they have had voice recognition for some time, they just didn’t really market it. What’s truly next with phones? Phones will become controllers for gaming consoles, and Sony is in a position to do that. The new version of Wii has something that looks like a phone. People also will be using phones to control their home and music systems, open and close their cars. What do you want your phone to do that it doesn’t now? Last all day. Battery life is still a serious issue. If you use your phone for everything, it will die by 4 p.m. Charging stations are common in the Pacific Rim, and there are also stores where you can just swap out your battery. It’s a pretty basic thing, but we haven’t fixed it yet.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Kathryn Koegel is a media and marketing specialist who has worked in online, print, TV and mobile. As chief of insights at Primary Impact, she works with media and interactive-marketing companies to turn their data into industry insights and develop advertising revenue streams.
Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary is a spectacular remastering of the very first Halo game’s battle between the Master Chief and the alien Covenant. Breathtaking new graphics and 100% faithful gameplay deliver all the adventure of the original, along with a huge list of upgrades and new features. XBOX.CA/HALO XBOX.CA/HALO
© 2011 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Microsoft, 343 Industries, the 343 Industries logo, Halo, the Halo logo, Xbox®, Xbox 360®, and the Xbox logos are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies.
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Inspired by accessible online food writers and communities, home cooks are returning to the kitchen in droves.
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arly in the research for The New York Times Essential Cookbook, food writers Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs queried readers about their favorite recipes ever published in the newspaper. The duo was surprised by the response. Absent were the creations by master chefs such as Julia Child and Alain Ducasse. Instead, they received thousands of photos and clippings of recipes by home cooks across America for everything from pumpkin cake to gumbo to brisket. These recipes resonated most because they are thoughtful and practical for people constrained by time and limited access to ingredients. That insight combined with the explosion of food content being consumed and created on and offline led Hesser and Stubbs to create Food52, an online food community for reading, sharing and talking about recipes. Food52, along with other emerging food blogs and communities such as Serious Eats, 101 Cookbooks and Simply Recipes, is helping reverse a generational shift sparked by fast food, TV dinners and prepared foods that lowered the number of people cooking at home. Now, inspired by accessible online food writers and empowered by friendly online communities, home cooks are returning to the kitchen in droves. The proliferation of food media online has helped underpin the popularity of more thoughtful and accessible restaurants. A dinner party that required one too many reduction pans fomented my own self-imposed exile from the kitchen. One decade later, I tiptoed back to the refrigerator in the middle of the night armed with printed out recipes for orange saffron mashed sweet potatoes from a Food52 user, seared brussels sprouts and bacon lardons from Serious Eats’ J. Kenji Lopez-Alt and rib-eye steak with blue cheese sauce from Turntable Kitchen’s Matthew and Kasey Hickey. It was the context provided from the recipe authors and the comments from the
readers who had tried them that made my return to the kitchen possible. Let’s Eat These new online food content creators instill a certain trust in their readers by revealing their distinct points of view about cuisine. The early food websites such as Allrecipes and Epicurious are collections of hundreds of thousands of recipes with no personality attached to them. They still attract millions of visitors per month, but user session time and social interactions are greater on the newer sites. “The most important thing about a recipe is context,” says Adam Roberts, founder of The Amateur Gourmet, a blog from the perspective of a nonfood professional who taught himself to cook. “If you saw a piece of paper on the floor that said ‘oil, vinegar and salad,’ it would mean nothing. However, a recipe for a salad dressing that has been around for 200 years and was served to the Prince of Persia takes on value, and you would want to make it.” Whether more established or a rising online food content creator (see Eat This Map, centerfold insert), each shares his or her own unique aesthetic of food. As one of the largest independent food websites, Serious Eats reflects the personality of its founder Ed Levine. A former food writer at The New York Times who travels across America looking for the best hot dogs, slices of pizza and barbecued ribs, Levine launched Serious Eats five years ago to cover American foods from highbrow to lowbrow. He reviews cutting-edge restaurants such as Wylie Dufresne’s molecular gastronomy restaurant, wd50, as often as a slice of pizza from Di Fara Pizza in Brooklyn. The site contains pages dedicated to hamburgers, pizzas and sweets as well as a community element and a recipe index. In addition, the site is in the process of creating new sections that will offer local food coverage.
Heidi Swanson’s interest in photography and travel informs the aesthetic that she shares with her readers on 101 Cookbooks. One of the best examples of food porn, the site is a collection of beautiful photos as well as stories and adaptations of vegetarian recipes using whole foods and natural ingredients. When Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan, the founder of home design site Apartment Therapy, sought to expand his company’s coverage into food, he tapped his wife, Sara Kate, to edit and write it. Dubbed The Kitchn, the food blog quickly grew into one of the most popular food blogs on the Web. Sara Kate’s ability to connect the kitchen to the rest of the home is one of the reasons it attracts more than one million readers per month. Apps to Appetizers The coverage of food online is also responding to the fact that an increasing number of people are consuming their media on their phones and tablets. Foodspotting offers an iPhone app that lets people share photos and information about specific dishes they like. Food52 released a paid iPad app in November with holiday recipes and entertaining tips contributed by users. Six-time James Beard Award winner Dorie Greenspan recently launched an iPad app called Baking with Dorie that complements her blog. The app goes beyond a written recipe to offer more than 20 baking lessons with HD video that home chefs can take with them into the kitchen. The emerging food content creators are no less unique. The husband and wife founders of Turntable Kitchen pair each dish with a musical selection and explain why the two fit together. Bee Yin Low started blogging about Malaysian recipes and expanded her site, Rasa Malaysia, to share other Asian recipes that her readers requested. Gabi Moskowitz’s BrokeAss Gourmet offers recipes for high-quality food with ingredients that cost less
SAY Magazine | Spring 2012
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than $20 to buy. “We’re getting people into the kitchen that otherwise would not be,” she says. “I seek to minimize the fear and anxiety that so many people feel about food.” Food Without Fear There’s a lot at stake in ensuring that more people overcome those fears. Most people spend far less time in the kitchen preparing food now than their parents or grandparents did. Food journalist Michael Pollan wrote in The New York Times that
“The Web unlocks this culture of younger people who are craving good food, and we can find each other.” — Adam Roberts‚ The Amateur Gourmet Americans spend 27 minutes a day preparing food, which is less than half the time they spent 50 years ago. Pollan also noted a Harvard study that found the less time people spend cooking their own food, the more unhealthy they eat. Moskowitz is a rare example of someone who took over the cooking in her family at an early age and was confident in the kitchen from the day she left home. Taking the place of prepared foods are processed ones. Moskowitz says, “I am in a
Seared Brussel Sprouts and Bacon Lardons Recipe from Serious Eats
generation of people who don’t know how to take care of themselves as far as food goes.” I count myself as a member of that generation. My own decade of exile was preceded by a colorful family food history. I grew up visiting Europe each summer in search of Michelin stars financed with the money my parents didn’t spend on hotels that had passed their recent sanitation inspections. My brother spitefully ordered cheeseburgers and well-done steaks in Europe’s finest kitchens, until he finally expanded his range to include escargot (only because he didn’t know they were snails). Mom scoured French patisseries to enhance her professional catering company’s offering, even though since moving on to another career, she rarely ever prepares anything more involved than fish sticks. At the end of the summer, my father would return with ambitious dishes to make for the rest of the year, each of which he would self-critique as being “Un-be-lieve-able!” Whether sitting at a starred Lyonnais bistro or at a backyard barbecue in Marin County, food has brought my family closer together. Family and food are also intertwined for Elise Bauer. She established Simply Recipes as the most popular personal food blog on the Web by emphasizing the role food played in forging closer ties to her parents. She was living with her parents while addressing health issues when she launched Simply Recipes in 2003. Six years later, she moved down the street into her own home but continues to have her parents over each week to test out her latest creations.
These new food sites have fostered the development of active online communities that enable people to build ties beyond their immediate circle of family and friends. Roberts considers this essential to his development as a cook and food writer. “The Web unlocks this culture of younger people who are craving good food, and we can find each other because of food blogs.” Food52 was borne of the friendship between Hesser and Stubbs while testing recipes for their cookbook. “Food brought us together. It was a jumping off point for connecting as people,” Stubbs says. They extend their friendship to the users on the site by creating a welcoming culture. Experienced cooks answer questions from novices, and they promote inclusiveness by choosing one recipe contributed by a user each week of the year to include in a printed cookbook of 52 recipes. Stubbs says, “I’m struck by users telling me they never would have considered writing their own recipes before joining Food52. But reading other people’s recipes has given them the confidence to write their own.” It’s that ability to inspire people to take action — whether it’s getting back into the kitchen after a decade-long absence, publishing a family recipe for the first time or trying a new restaurant — that defines this new generation of online food content creators. “People are taking what we write seriously, and it becomes a part of their lives,” Roberts says. “It’s a pretty intimate thing to tell someone what to eat. We’re feeding them and their families.”
Orange Saffron Mashed Sweet Potatoes Recipe from Food52
Ribeye Steak with Bleu Cheese Sauce Recipe from Turntable Kitchen
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Josh Jaffe is vice president of media for SAY Media. 16
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Chef Heston Blumenthal examines the crossroads of sensory design. In the pantheon of rock-star restaurateurs, Heston Blumenthal is legend. An English chef, Blumenthal is the owner of The Fat Duck, a three-star Michelin restaurant in Bray, Berkshire, which has been anointed restaurant of the year, best restaurant in the world and best restaurant in the U.K. Blumenthal is part scientist, part creative genius. He’s a champion of lowtemperature, ultra-slow cooking (to bind in fat while preventing collagen molecules from reforming), and his groundbreaking culinary concoctions range from dormouse lollipops to bacon-and-egg ice cream. His trademark is his desire to push boundaries and bring creativity to the kitchen. Blumenthal also breaks out of the kitchen and brings his unique approach into the marketing arena — he stole the show at the Marketing Society’s 2011 Global Leadership Conference in London, highlighting innovation as a key to the future for marketers. So what is the single most important ingredient for innovation? Blumenthal’s answer is simple: naïveté. “The more you learn about a subject, the more you are likely to find reasons it won’t work. I always prefer instinct over anything I have time to think about,” he says. “If you can maintain some sort of child-like inquisitiveness, some wonderment, some sense that anything is possible
— even if it’s not — you’ll be amazed by how many other ideas you’ll come up with.” Blumenthal believes innovation more often than not comes from the places you least expect. “You need to be aware that innovation can happen on any level, and ideas can come from anywhere — from seeing a leaf fall from a tree to the most cutting-edge design,” he says. “I am personally at my most creative when interacting with creative people from completely different disciplines to my own, whether that be a perfumer, a scriptwriter, a magician or an experimental psychologist. Being a chef means I am at the crossroads of sensory design because eating is the only thing that we do that involves all of the senses.” Blumenthal feels that the past plays a key role in his quest for innovation. “Great ideas can come from delving into the past. After all, innovation and development, in general, are all relative,” he says. “Innovation does not exist without tradition. Modern cooking is an evolution and not a revolution of what has come before. I believe that innovation comes from being aware of the world around you, being inquisitive and loving what you do. With all of these things in place, you just need to relax and innovation will happen.”
Classic Cheesecake with Salted Caramel Sauce Recipe from Food52
Sour Cream Coffee Cake Recipe from Amateur Gourmet
Grapefruit Champagne Float Recipe from Serious Eats
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Belgian Fries with Mango Chutney, Black Truffle Organic and Pom Teriyaki Mayo Pommes Frittes, New York
Sky High Sandwich Le Truc, San Francisco
Bacon Cheddar Grass Fed Hamburger with Pickled Onions Nopa, San Francisco
Pad Kee Mow Koh Samui and the Monkey, San Francisco
Carne Asada Quesadilla The Little Chihuahua, San Francisco
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Cinnamon Milkshake Caracas, NYC
Spicy Red neck Hot Dog Crif Dog , New York
M A P FO O D G IA N T
“Everything you see I owe to spaghetti.” Sophia Loren
IN SI D E
Plan The tain an d LItt le C Black hih uah Bean B ua, San urrito Fran cisc o
IN THIS MAP $5 Dinners 101 Cookbooks Alcademics The Amateur Gourmet AmazingRibs.com Bakerella BakeSpace Baking Bites
Beer Advocate BrokeAss Gourmet Brown Eyed Baker Burnt Lumpia Cake Wrecks Cannelle et Vanille Chocolate & Zucchini The Chubby Vegetarian Cupcakes Take the Cake David Lebovitz
David Lida Delicious Days Dorie Greenspan Emiko Davies Everybody Likes Sandwiches Food52 Food Republic For the Love of Cooking Fresh365 Gluten-Free Goddess
Gluten-Free Girl and Healthy Eats Honest Cooking Ideas in Food In Praise of Leftovers Joy the Baker Just Bento Kath Eats Real Food Kitchen Generation The Kitchn
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La Tartine Gourmand Lottie + Doof Mark Bittman Matt Bites NY Barfly nordljus Orangette Our Best Bites Panini Happy The Perennial Plate
Picky Palate Pinch My Salt The Pioneer Woman Politics of the Plate Rasa Malaysia Serious Eats Shiksa in the Kitchen Shutterbean Simply Recipes Smitten Kitchen
Steamy Kitchen Stone Soup Summer Tomato Sweet Savory Life Tartelette TasteSpotting Turntable Kitchen White on Rice Couple
Spicy P ork Scr ambled HRD Co Eg ffee Sh op, San g Over Rice Francis co
“Cooking is like love; it should be entered into with abandon or not at all.� Julia Child
“Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy� Ben Franklin
ken Spicy Chic s Wing B on C hon w York Boka, Ne
“If ever I had to practice cannibalism, I might manage if there were enough tarragon around.” James Beard
es d Waffl t, n a n e e Chick Little Skill ’s n isco rbrow San Franc e m r a F
Lucky Peach’s Peter Meehan discusses the surprising hunger for a rich and irreverent food magazine. Ramenate, did really got people going. And Dave Arnold’s egg temperature chart was another one that readers were asking for posters of. In the second? I think Adam Gollner’s apricot story is the reader favorite — it’s what I’ve seen people tweet about the most, and Utne Reader is gonna run an excerpt. You have quite a few rock star chefs in the magazine. How do you decide which ones to feature? Who makes the cut? That’s Chang’s world and, to some extent, a part of the world of food I’ve written about over the years. We know a bunch of people and, generally, we write about or go through them. One look at the gritty and loud Lucky Peach, and you know this is not your typical food magazine. Printed on thick, matte paper with cover photos of dead fish and chicken feet, it’s laced with lots of profanity and provocative essays from the bad boys of the food world. A collaboration between David Chang of Momofuku fame and former New York Times food writer Peter Meehan, and published by Dave Eggers’ independent publishing house McSweeney’s, Lucky Peach is a riot of essays, art, photography, rants and recipes. And it’s awesomely entertaining. But why would anyone print on dead trees in a post Gourmet world? And how’s it going six months out? We checked in with Meehan to find out. How did you and David come up with the magazine idea? The magazine was a byproduct of a TV show-app hybrid we were working on. I thought we could take all the scraps — the time away from the cameras, the long rambling conversations that don’t make for scintillating video — and make sausage out of them. It is surprising to see how popular the sausage is. In this day and age when everyone is going all digital and iPad, what made you decide to print a paper magazine? We were trying to go digital! We failed. Now we have a magazine. Maybe one day we’ll join the 21st century. Honestly, though, aside from the silly amount of work that goes into putting each issue together, the magazine thing is great. You don’t have to explain what it is to your grandma.
Now that a few issues are out, what have you learned that surprised you? I’m pretty constantly surprised at the resourcefulness and talent of the people who work on the magazine internally — there are five staff members, and everyone has other jobs. I think everyone’s putting out a really great effort. And I’ve learned that most of the writers who write for us turn in far better, far more polished first drafts of stories than I ever have. It’s a kind of shaming surprise — a good learning experience. David Chang is known as volatile, radical and a willful iconoclast and rebel. Besides the chefs swearing at each other, how did you try to bring that into the pages? I’ve known and worked with Dave for years now. I don’t like that side of him so much. If he was a turtle and that aspect of his personality is his shell, the game of making the magazine is seeing if I can flip him over. The swearing is how we all talk right now. We’re trying to tone it down. I feel like I went overboard in the first issue — but it was new unexplored territory we were speeding off into, so I naturally just yelled “FUCK” at the top of my lungs. What were your most popular stories in the first issue? There’s no way for us to track page views. I know people liked Bourdain, Chang and Dufresne all talking to one another for pages and pages. I think the ramen map that Nate Shockey, aka
When you think of other food publishers out there — who else is doing it right? Are there any other voices, sites or magazine you follow or admire? Tons. All of them. You know how when you don’t do something, it’s easy to criticize? Like I feel street construction in New York is too loud and too dirty — but I’ve never manned a backhoe or wielded a jackhammer. Seeing magazine publishing from this side of the looking glass is totally different. In terms of specific things I like — The New Yorker is pretty goddamn amazing week in and week out. But I’m also into old things, like Details back when Bill Cunningham was shooting for them, or this fashion magazine called Flair from the 1950s. And all kinds of small press rock ‘n’ roll stuff, like The Negative Guest List from Melbourne. Lucky Peach costs $10 per issue and has no ads. What made you go with that model and how’s it working? a. Inexperience. b. We’ve junked it. It’s now $12, and there will be up to six ads per 180 pages if we can sell them. What can we expect in Issue No. 3? Another rambling conversation with Chang — this time with Daniel Patterson (the chef at Coi in San Francisco) and two U.K. chefs, Sat Bains and Claude Bosi. There will be stupid cartoons, at least one mention of cat food, another of Disneyworld. One story will be in Chinese. And the chances of a barbecue chicken pizza recipe: 100 percent.
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REMODELISTA MARKET A CURATION OF OBJECTS FOR THE DESIGN OBSESSED
2012 LOCATIONS / CHICAGO / SEATTLE / NEW YORK / SAN FRANCISCO / LOS ANGELES / PORTLAND
For more information on Remodelista Markets in your area, please visit Remodelista.com/markets.
PERSPECTIVES
The Power of Real-Time Content Marketing David Meerman Scott has spent a lot of time thinking about content marketing. His philosophy, in a nutshell, is that the old rules of PR and marketing in mainstream media don’t work on the Web. Instead, he believes anybody can earn attention by using social media tools, blogs, podcasts, viral marketing and other online media. His hugely popular blog, Web Ink Now, reads like a content marketers’ handbook. It’s full of advice for publishers, bloggers and brand managers about how content can reach an audience. It’s ranked by Ad Age Power 150 as a top worldwide marketing blog. David also has written several bestselling books, including The New Rules of Marketing and PR, Marketing Lessons From the Grateful Dead and, most recently, Newsjacking. At SAY Media, we also know him as one of Seth Godin’s picks as a top business voice in the SAY 100 Business channel. We checked in with him to see what he’s thinking about content marketing in 2012. You’re great at spotting trends early. What’s your secret? I draw on things I’ve learned in my career outside of marketing and try to find parallels that I can adapt to the world of marketing. For example, I worked at several electronic news organizations including Knight-Ridder. The idea of news content driving action always fascinated me, that a story about a company in the news could drive a stock price. Wow. My very first job was on a Wall Street bond-trading desk. It was all about real time. If you waited even one second to make a trade when the time was right, you could lose out. A few years ago, I realized that every business now has access to the same real-time data as bond traders — real-time news, real-time social media, realtime Google indexing. But I also realized that more than 99 percent of marketers were doing campaign marketing, focusing on the future rather than the moment. There was a huge opportunity to do what I called real-time marketing, so I started writing and speaking about it.
leaves its competitors, who are busy planning next quarter’s campaigns, in the dust. I’m also interested in mobile marketing. Adding the GPS component to content creation opens new opportunities. You’re a big believer in the power of content. What important changes do you see ahead in 2012 for content marketing? The biggest change now is that people are beginning to recognize the power of content marketing. That’s a good thing. However, most are just talking about their damned products like they’ve always done and calling it content marketing. You’ve got to think like a publisher and create content that is valuable for your buyers, not create for your own ego. Nobody cares about your products — they care about themselves and solving problems. Newsjacking — tell us how that works in a nutshell, and how businesses should be using it. As journalists scramble to cover breaking news, the basic facts — who, what, when, where — are often fairly easy to find, either on a corporate website or in competitors’ copy. That’s what goes in the first paragraph of any news story. The challenge for reporters is to get the “why” and the implications of the event. Why is the company closing its plant? The corporate website may offer some bogus excuse like “because it wants to spend more time with its family.” Competitors may quote some expert’s speculation on the real reason, but a reporter can’t cite that without adding something
self-demeaning like “according to an expert quoted in the New York Times.” Journalists need original content — and fast. All this is what goes in the second paragraph and subsequent paragraphs. That’s why the newsjacker’s goal is to own the second paragraph. If you are clever enough to react to breaking news quickly, providing credible second-paragraph content in a blog post, tweet or media alert that features the keyword of the moment, you may be rewarded with a bonanza of media attention. Newsjacking combines content marketing with real time to reach journalists looking for people to quote in stories. Newsjacking is all about creating content right now — this instant, in real time — so journalists find the content when they are looking for another angle on a story. What are your all-time most popular blog posts? And what do you think that says about what businesses are looking for or need? A few popular ones have been “Social Media Marketing Explained in 61 Words” and “Who the Hell ARE These People?” People want new information that presents a new take on something they think they already know. They appreciate humor, and they want you to get to the point quickly so you don’t waste their time.
What are the most interesting contentmarketing trends you’re following right now? The most interesting by far is real time. When a smart marketer sees something happening in the marketplace and reacts instantly by creating an immediate blog post or tweet or video, that company Follow David on Twitter @dmscott. SAY Magazine | Spring 2012
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CASE STUDY / HP
CONNECT WITH PASSIONATE CONSUMERS How HP used context and content to drive deep engagement.
CONTEXT
CONTENT
A curated set of relevant and engaging Web properties spark interest with your target audience.
Custom content, developed by experts, creates an authentic connection with the consumer.
A large, highly customized and engaging ad unit delivered 100% share of voice and appeared on quality sites including Gear Patrol, Pretty Much Amazing and MovieWeb.
Sponsored editorial posts by influential voices appeared on technology and lifestyle sites across the SAY engagement network.
Ben Bowers and Eric Yang, Gear Patrol
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IMPACT AT SCALE
EQUITY
Rich ad experiences deliver maximum reach and deeper engagement.
Content and interaction is leveraged across social channels to extend the life of the campaign.
An amazing AdFrames experience amplified the content and drove massive reach and attention. Sophisticated targeting made it easy to pinpoint the core HP audience.
Consumers participated in the conversation and shared the experience.
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NOTES FROM THE MEDIA LAB
Editorial Design for a Post-PC Era With all the talk of new media outpacing old media, the past decade has ironically been about catching up. I’ve been in the Web design business for about 15 years now — which is remarkable, because 15 years ago, there was hardly any Web design to be done. Still, I felt comfortable with its limitations: designing for the most common resolution, with the few available fonts, in the accepted Web-safe colors. Things changed, of course, gradually at times but often rapidly and with very little warning. Today, most of these restrictions have faded away. Coming Clean A few months ago, I had a conversation with Troy Young, president of SAY Media, about editorial design, specifically in print. He was reminiscing about the days when the beautifully designed pages of Wired would make him feel something. The narrative of a story flowed and blended with the design, and the design, in turn, helped to tell
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the narrative, to impart its cultural impact. When comparing this experience with that of today’s Web design, the latter felt … uninspired. Web design is messy and cluttered, the interface tedious. We realized that in some ways the Web had moved us backward. Social sharing buttons clash with an increasing number of competing ad units, further and further marginalizing the content. Structurally, pages are becoming far too complex with too many points of interaction, forcing readers to make various decisions instead of focusing on the content — or the ads for that matter. The same week of our conversation, Troy laid down his vision for the Clean Campaign, our concerted effort to recapture the beauty and craftsmanship of publishing while taking advantage of what the Web has to offer. The goal: remove clutter while increasing depth and reestablishing a healthy
relationship between content and advertising. There are a million ways to do things wrong and a thousand ways to do things right. The Clean Campaign is our way of doing things right. Catching Up A large part of the Clean Campaign process has been pure iteration — removing visual noise, simplifying navigation, making the content take center stage. We’re focusing on all of the things that are, and universally should be, the basics of good, human-centric design. And yes, much of this involves simply trying to catch up to print media, which has been around since about 1439, when Johannes Gutenberg decided to stop producing polished metal mirrors and invented movable type. Much of our work involves mimicry. We can
NOTES FROM THE MEDIA LAB
now make far more effective use of typography, photography and page layout. Web technology has simultaneously moved at a tremendously fast and achingly slow pace. It has given us access to data, media and knowledge beyond comparison, and yet we still have to wrestle with archaic presentation tools. The advent of HTML5 and the quickened adoption of modern browsers have finally started to level the playing field somewhat. But we could hardly consider what we’re doing innovation if all we did was catch up to print or even simply focus on what we can do with the technology
From the smallest to the largest screen, from mobile phone to widescreen TV — build smart, and it will work. at our disposal. The true leap forward happens when you step back from what happens onscreen to see what’s happening around the screen — or more precisely: around the many, many different types of screens. We’ve long (in Internet time, at least) talked about mobile and desktop devices as two distinct ways to consume content. You were either stationary at your computer or moving around and using a mobile device. But these definitions have been rewritten — you now use your mobile phone while sitting on the couch, with your notebook mere feet away. You may start your day on an office computer and, most likely through the miracle of the ubiquitous cloud, wrap it up on your personal machine at home. The computing experience has become a continuous one, spanning across devices and locations. From Hulu-streaming TVs to editing spreadsheets on your phone, we are slowly removing the notion of a clear definition between desktop and mobile technologies in the same way you don’t particularly separate the content coming from the radio in your car and the radio at home. Moving Targets One big difference is that the written word, unlike audio or video, doesn’t translate entirely seamlessly from one device to another. You can easily imagine how an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm will move from your wide-screen TV to your mobile phone
(hint: It’ll be smaller). Words and the interfaces required to navigate them, however, need to adapt in far more complex ways. Different sizes require changes to layout, and touch interfaces force us to radically rethink the way users interact. Sitting position dictates design decisions. We were used to dealing with moving targets such as varying screen resolutions and browser quirks. But today, we have to consider device orientation, gestural navigation, pixel density, and potential network interruption, as well as myriad other variables. Our solution is to become nearly dogmatic about what we’re calling “device agnosticism.” While it doesn’t quite roll off the tongue, it seems to have struck a chord with the teams building our next-generation properties including Remodelista and Dogster. Device agnosticism means creating a single core experience for all devices, even ones that do not exist yet. From the smallest to the largest screen, from mobile phone to wide-screen TV — build smart, and it will work. While the experience should be carefully considered to work the best way it can on different devices, a common thread should run through them — a singular vision that remains intact while adapting itself to the situation. It hasn’t been easy. In fact, it’s been very, very hard, but the results are promising. One core piece of code means one path to iterate on, and no device left behind. We partially solve this problem by fully embracing responsive design — a single template that reshapes itself according to the device, a single unit of code that can be iterated on, tweaked and enhanced on all devices at once. Navigation that adapts to the device readjusts itself for touch screens and feels like an integral part of the experience, not a lesser version of the “real” site. Another part of the solution comes in the way SAY Media is building Orion, our publisher-focused content management system. We’re intelligently adapting content to the device while leaving much of the control over display in the creator’s hands. We believe we can only work to redefine the content consumption experience if we’re also redefining the content creation experience. We’re getting there — rewriting rules while iterating on others. The Clean Campaign is about bringing all this thinking together, from the blatantly obvious to the technologically remarkable, and looking beyond simply matching what Gutenberg brought us nearly 600 years ago.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Alex Schleifer is general manager of SAY Media’s Media Lab. SAY Magazine | Spring 2012
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SPOTLIGHT
A whopping 91 percent of millennials watch TV shows on their laptops.
Time Shifters and the Future of TV Ads Millennials are leading the charge away from live television. Here‘s why — and where they‘re going. Let’s get this out of the way: Lots of people watch television, and it’s a good place to advertise. You can reach a lot of people on TV. But not everybody. Sellers of digital advertising have been exhorting agencies and brands for years to move more money from television to Web and mobile because people spend a lot of time with digital content. That is true. The argument goes: Between Web and television, you can cover everyone, so move more money to digital. The counter-argument goes: You can’t sell me massive share of the Internet audience, and besides, most of the people I’ll get online have already seen my TV ad. The countercounter argument goes: Well … the whole argument goes around in circles. Audience behavior is definitely changing. Over the past year, SAY has conducted two studies into “off-the-grid” behavior with IPG Media Lab, comScore Inc. and SEA Polling & Strategic
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SAY Magazine | Spring 2012
Design LLC confirming that roughly one-third of the population is shifting away from watching live television. Instead of watching their favorite shows in real time, people are turning to digital means to consume content. The majority of 18- to 45-yearolds describe media other than television as their primary source of video. Does this behavior sound familiar? You are likely one of the many consumers time shifting through a DVR and skipping the commercials. As marketers, we are trained not to think the rest of the population is like us, that we can’t use our own experiences to develop communications for the masses because we are more in sync with the latest trends and technologies. Over the summer, a national telephone poll of more than 800 people produced this finding: 59 percent of DVR owners say they skip commercials all of the time. More and more people are watching what Hollywood produces but not what we produce. We know that eventually the one-third moving away from live television will grow to two-fifths and then three-sevenths and then a half of the audience. A recent study from Mr. Youth on eMarketer shows that millennials are leading the charge away from television screens all together. A whopping 91
percent elect to watch TV shows on their laptops, while the majority also watches video on their smartphones or desktop PCs. Can we afford not to communicate with such a large segment of the audience? Research like this often leads to a lot of handwringing and the resumption of those circular arguments. But this issue is too important to just study. The most useful research is actionable. In partnership with Quantcast Corp., SAY has spent the past several months working to bring that off-the-grid third of the audience back to advertisers. Based on our learnings from the two off-the-grid studies and a very large survey (n=4,000+) across the SAY network, we identified what makes a time and platform shifter and created a detailed profile of this audience’s Web behavior. We then identified others in the network whose behavior mirrors this profile and created a proprietary off-the-grid targeting product, which will help advertisers efficiently communicate with the segment of the audience that television just isn’t reaching anymore. This segment includes all those platformshifting DVR users, iPad owners, cord cutters, Netflix streamers, BitTorrenters … and you. Welcome back to advertising.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Matt Rosenberg is vice president of solutions at SAY Media. He has worked in and around television for 20 years, as a writer for various programs, including the Emmy-nominated sitcom Titus and the ABC children’s series Recess.
CLUTTER IS KILLING MEDIA. It’s time to make digital content work better for everyone — the reader, the writer and the advertiser. The Clean Campaign is SAY’s commitment to eliminating Web page clutter and focusing consumer attention on one engaging ad experience. Learn more at saymedia.com/clean.
ENGAGING PEOPLE
THINGS WE LOVE GEAR Basecamp X Hardcore Hammer It‘s a hammer — it‘s awesome, and it makes me want to go grab the biggest box of nails I can find and build a log cabin. The fact that it‘s made from Tennessee hickory is just icing. (Basecampx.com, $105)
Eric Yang Gear Patrol
Little Mule Co. Orville Based in Australia, Little Mule Co. is lesser known here in the states, but that‘s part of its appeal. The Orville pays homage to the Wright Brothers who, of course, got their start building bikes. There’s just something so right about this bike. It makes you wish you could ride it right back to the turn of the 20th century and watch Wilbur and Orville achieve flight. (TheLittleMule.com, $1,500)
Blame it on the job, but when it comes to products‚ I’m not always captivated by what’s “best,“ as great as these things might be. I prefer the objects around me to inspire some type of experience. To really love something — and I mean the be-it-hell-or-high-water-thiswill-be-mine kind of love — I often experience some kind of paradox with it: a vehicle that needs a few minutes to warm up before it can move, a piece with a unique history or story behind it, or something that transcends its original purpose. Some people think acquiring things with idiosyncrasies is a nuisance. To me, that‘s often the key to their greatness.
Grid Systems in Graphic Design by Josef Müller-Brockman There are countless uses of grid-based design. It’s the unseen graphic design principle that makes magazine pages or websites look so great. Yes, we could live without the grid, but things sure would be messy out there. (Amazon.com, $75)
Pro-Ject RPM 1.3 Genie Turntable The process of selecting a record, spinning up the turntable and listening brings back a lost magic in music. It takes time and patience to use it, but it sounds and looks so gorgeous, you‘ll want to build a room around it. (Project-audio.com, $499)
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Leica M9-P Outside of classic cars, this camera sits atop my list of expensive, much-soughtafter treasures. It‘s a jewel to behold, black as night and tough as an Abrams tank. And like the tank, what it shoots is breathtaking. The photos are peerless. (Leica, $7,995)
Hamilton 1883 Shirt Co. Shirts They’re not cheap, but well-made wearable goods cut and sewn in the U.S.A. rarely are. Hamilton oxford shirts have a well-tailored fit, inspired by Texas oilmen garb, that I keep going back to over and over again. Now that they have all my exact measurements and preferred details, I’ve practically become an addict. (Hamilton1883.com, $195–$245)
Omega Speedmaster Professional Caliber 321 Particular watch models often gain notoriety in the collector’s world based on the famous people who wore them. This rare vintage chronograph was the first watch worn on the moon by Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong during the Apollo 11 mission. It‘s beautiful, highly capable and one of the most respected watches of the 20th century. (Omega, price varies at auctions)
Ben Bowers Gear Patrol
Plane Pieces Retention Piston Desk Aviation Art Cessna Etsy maker Plane Pieces creates amazing limited-edition home furnishings and accessories out of airplane parts. This lamp is made using a vintage retention nut and piston from a Cessna 182 Skylane airplane propeller. (Etsy store: Plane Pieces, $295)
Scouring the vast world of products on a regular basis quickly teaches you just how fast trends can come and go. When a few rare items do stay in the mix over the years, they're clearly pretty special. I focus my attention on timeless items that will remain relevant for decades to come. However, we can’t always look to the past for guidance on the future, so identifying soon-to-be-classics is another area I enjoy. This list features selections that fall into one or the other of these categories.
Hermes Lapinosaure Silk Twill Tie I’ve always admired how Hermes ties mix luxury and class with a bit of silliness. Where else can you find a pattern depicting dragons breathing fire on bunnies? (Hermes, $185)
Technic SL-1200Mk2 This famous direct-drive turntable has been the go-to record player for premier DJs and vinyl fans alike since its original launch in 1972. Its iconic status, however, wasn’t fully appreciated until recently when Panasonic announced it would be discontinuing the series in the fall of 2010. (Panasonic, $1,099)
Mackintosh Duncan Coat Charles Macintosh (no “k“) formalized the first waterproof fabric by speeding rubber on cotton in 1823, and Mackintosh has been producing rain wear for men ever since. The Duncan coat is a modern offering from this classic brand that pays homage to the original, and it should keep you dry and looking good on any rainy city street across the globe. (Macintosh-uk.com, $800)
Eric Yang and Ben Bowers are the co-founders of Gear Patrol, a leading men‘s website and a great place to get your fix on the best new watches and cars, the coolest sports adventures, and the latest food and style finds. SAY Magazine | Spring 2012
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PUBLISHING TOOLS
Editorial Layout The Editorial Layout engine is one of the most significant innovations within Orion. It allows an editor to quickly manipulate cover lines, “hero“ images and other editorial elements in real time; easily schedule changes to be published at a specific date and time in the future; and preview any template in its current or future state in multiple Web, tablet or mobile resolutions. Content Promotion Orion makes it really easy to manage A/B testing of headlines and promotional images, as well as publishing headlines to Facebook and Twitter.
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PUBLISHING SOLUTIONS
Beautiful Content Experiences Start Here Premium ad and editorial experiences require new publishing tools. That’s why we‘re investing in Orion, SAY Media’s next-generation digital publishing platform. If you talk with most digital publishers and editors, you’ll hear a constant refrain: They’re not huge fans of their content management system. Not everyone has the exact same set of problems, of course, but there is consistent frustration that they can’t evolve their sites fast enough, can’t connect with their readers deeply enough and can’t distribute their content effectively enough. When it comes to publishing technology, today’s independent content creators find themselves between a rock and a hard place. Thanks to lightweight blogging and content management systems such as WordPress, Tumblr and Blogger, it’s never been easier for an individual or small group of writers to start publishing and build an audience. But when that publication grows and has to start worrying about things such as managing outside contributors, optimizing distribution for social networks, content syndication, A/B headline testing, mobile browsers and tablet applications, well, it gets a bit more complicated. The combined dynamics of the software business and the media business means there aren’t great options for the modern publication. Any software company competing in the “enterprise” content management space is focused on intranet applications or marketing applications, not publishing. So growing publications are left to hack on top of what they know (typically WordPress or Movable Type) or build a custom system from scratch. Rock, meet hard place. At SAY, we see this as an opportunity.
Passionate sites with a strong point of view are about creating beautiful, compelling, quality content. They’re about connecting authors to their audience and engaging them in new ways. And they’re about advertising that supports and compliments the experience. These publications are creating a new breed of media, and they deserve a new breed of tools to support them. And that’s why we’re investing in Orion, SAY’s next-generation digital publishing platform. Orion is built for SAY’s publications — sites that have a strong editorial voice and feature engaging photo and video content, sites that are designed to drive audience engagement and that feature SAY advertising products. Orion is not a general-purpose content management system but is designed to meet the needs of the modern digital publishing team. Here’s how we’re doing that with Orion: • Orion helps site designers make beautiful publications through a modern set of tools that amplify instead of hamper the skills of today’s front-end developer. • Orion is designed from the ground up to support publications with multiple editors and dozens of contributors. • Orion offers built-in tools to help editors and writers craft well-designed stories and merchandise those stories effectively throughout their site. • Orion makes it easy to produce Web, mobile and tablet versions of publications, as well as
syndication-worthy experiences for the next generation of content-discovery tools.
• Orion gives editors and publishers access to
•
key metrics about what’s happening behind the scenes with their site and helps them adjust their tactics to grow their audience. Orion will enable those publications to attract and engage readers with a new breed of social and community experiences. Value in media today is generated at the
We are working with some of the best digital content creators on the planet. We believe they deserve the best tools to grow and connect with their audience. intersection of technology and content. We are working with some of the best digital content creators on the planet. We believe they deserve the best tools to grow and connect with their audience. We believe that a next-generation digital publishing platform will help us create significant value for those creators, their audience and the advertisers that help support their efforts.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR John Vars is director of product management at SAY Media and a co-founder and former chief product officer of Dogster Inc. SAY Magazine | Spring 2012
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SPOTLIGHT
Engagement, from science to art. SAY Media has spent five years perfecting the science of engagement and the art of creating conversations around your brand. It's a formula proven to increase ad effectiveness.
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Make an impression.
Get them to engage.
Increase time spent.
1:3 ads go unnoticed. So how do you make an impression? A rich media ad unit designed to attract attention, along with deliberate page placement, can result in 2x higher brand recall when compared to a standard banner ad.
Consumers who engage with your ad have 6x the brand recall compared to those who don't engage. Engagement strategies, that include an opt-in advertising approach, amazing creative and trusted environments, are critical to campaign success.
Longer engagement times can significantly boost purchase consideration. Increase time spent by delivering content with a strong point of view. Custom video, expert editorial, events and other packages give consumers lots of reasons to stick around.
ART Inspire action. Inspire consumers to take the next step – find a location, get a deal, download a song, take a test drive – and make it frictionless and rewarding.
Build equity. When consumers have a unique and valuable experience, they want to share it. Create lightweight ways to leverage all their social channels to build brand equity beyond the life of the campaign.
Research: SAY Media “Maximizing Brand Lift“ Study; comScore vCE Charter Study
SAY Magazine | Spring 2012
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THINGS WE LOVE FOOD
Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs Food52 Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubbs are the co-founders of Food52. Together with their community, they create cookbooks and apps, and they get people together offline to share good food. “We love simple design and earthy textures, so we‘re drawn to stone and wood and rustic metals. The kitchen is our workshop and den all in one. And while we believe kitchens shouldn‘t be filled with superfluous objects, we like to surround ourselves with objects that make us feel happy and inspired.“
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Weck Canning Jars They have the heft and practicality of German design, but they‘re also cute. Every jelly looks like a jewel in these jars. (Weckjars.com, $13 and up for a set of six)
Bragard Kitchen Towels This chef brand isn‘t well-known among home cooks, but the Marie kitchen towels are the best: sturdy and absorbent. We buy them by the dozen. The shipping cost is high but the price per towel is incredibly low, so it evens out. (Bragard, $25 per dozen)
Heath Coupe Plates in French Grey Every food looks great on these plates. We use them in our photo shoots. (Heath Ceramics, $18 and up)
Frances Palmer Vases Flowers are an important part of entertaining, and just as with the dishes we serve, we‘re particular about their presentation. These fluted vases are hand-finished and handglazed, and we love the earthy, natural color options. As an added bonus, they‘re dishwasher safe! (Frances Palmer Pottery, $68 and up)
Libeco Table Linens These soft, versatile linens drape beautifully and add subtle color and texture to any surface. (Libeco, $29 and up)
PERSPECTIVES
SMELLS LIKE TEEN SPIRIT
ALWAYS ON
Why Owning Stuff Doesn’t Matter “You need as much ballast as possible to stop you from floating away ... I’ve got more stuff, more clutter, more detail in here, because at the moment I am in danger of falling off the edge.” — Nick Hornby, High Fidelity Remember the days before the terms “cyber-bullying” and “sexting” mainstreamed their way into our daily lives, giving media pundits and “concerned parents everywhere” yet another platform for sanctimonious outrage? In those days, everyone was a latchkey kid, which was fine because you got to blast the latest Nirvana CD on your newly acquired boombox without pissing off your parents.
INSTANT ACCESS
Yes, things have changed. Two decades ago, your average young adult lusted after things — things to own, collect and treasure; things that would tell the outside world who you were, what you were into, and who you wanted to become. A collection of CDs was not only expensive but demonstrated persistence, passion and cultural credibility on behalf of its owner. Print magazines were hoarded and displayed as emblems of personal identification and aspiration. A first car, a first house — these things became, and still are, outward representations of how we perceive ourselves and how we want to be perceived. Now let’s fast forward to the dawn of the iGeneration. Sure, these post-millenial tweens still WANT things (e.g., iPad, iPod, iPhone), but those things are merely conduits for a greater demand: access. This newest generation, replete with Bieber fever, is detaching itself from an inherited sense of ownership to an almost pure consumption model. It’s no longer, “Hey, wanna come over and check out my CD collection?” but instead, “Hey, wanna come over and stream music on my mom’s iPad?” The pride of possession and sense of identification that an album/book/movie collection used to give has been supplanted by the ease of access and availability that Internet services provide. But this paradigm transcends mere media
consumption habits and traverses into all areas of life. From Zipcar to AirBnB, people are slowly letting go of the reigns of ownership in favor of a social, access-driven share model that satisfies demand. What’s becoming increasingly clear is that this generation of children is placing a higher value on the consumption experience rather than the amassing of goods. Their value is placed on the interface — the ability to access, share, discuss and move on. As this generation grows up and longs for more innocent days, physical goods will take on special meaning. The fetishization of good and lasting craftsmanship will only become more prominent. As we collectively wake up to the fact that our constant need to accrue things — homes, cars, electronics (read: stuff) — has led us to live beyond our means, we may find that we have a thing or two to learn from our kids. Place value on the experience, and know when it’s time to own.
GET THE WEEKLY VENN! The SAY newsletter is delivered weekly, featuring our take on media, culture, Venn diagrams and the occasional Nirvana reference. Sign up to get it weekly by email at saymedia.com.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR January Machold is the director of global communications at SAY Media. 36
SAY Magazine | Spring 2012
PASSIONATE CREATORS. REAL COMMUNITIES. ENGAGED AUDIENCES. SAY’s content channels are a portfolio of sites that span key consumer interest areas. We make it simple for advertisers to connect with passionate audiences in accountable and scalable ways.
52M DIGITAL INFLUENCERS A portfolio of the most influential tech sites on the Web including ReadWriteWeb, Techdirt, Gear Patrol, gdgt, Android and Me, and SplatF
24M STYLE WATCHERS A collection of fashion and lifestyle publications with deeply engaged, styleconscious communities including xoJane, Fashionista, RCFA and Honestly…WTF
10M FOOD LOVERS Where epicureans discover, discuss and share the best in food on sites such as Food52, Serious Eats, The Kitchn and The Amateur Gourmet
87M ARTFUL DWELLERS People, places and things that inspire good living on sites including Remodelista, Dogster, Design*Sponge and Curbly
Reach Data: comScore Media Metrix, US, November 2011
Making the business of technology understandable. Watch for the new ReadWriteWeb, launching in April 2012.
ReadWriteWeb.com A SAY MEDIA PROPERTY