STEVE SMITH

Articles by Steve All articles by Steve

• Pulling Playboy.com Behind The Paywall in Show Daily: Videos on 10/24/2017
  

  In the modern era, where digital's adverse effect on media experience is unavoidable, can Playboy.com maintain quality content that it prides itself on? During a keynote interview at Publishing Insider Summit, Playboy Chief Creative Officer Cooper Hefner told Steve Smith, MediaPost's Editorial Director, Events, there will inevitably be changes as Playboy.com comes behind the paywall. While there'll still be a certain amount of free content, the publisher's main focus will be cultivating its loyal base of subscribers.

• From Basketball to Excellence: The Jordan Brand Evolves in Show Daily: Videos on 08/29/2017
  

  Aiming to unleash the Michael Jordan in everyone, the Jordan brand's marketing team highlights how training is the secret sauce for champions of all kinds. This team turned a training/venue space in New York named Terminal 23 into an activation point (a training/event/lab space for millennials) that put marketers in direct communication with their customers insights and activities.

• Setting The Top Of The Funnel Higher in Show Daily: Videos on 08/24/2017
  

  The marketer's job is to get the audience -- not to assume who their audience is. Lindsay Hendricks, senior media manager at Positec Tool Corporation, shares some surprising findings during the "What Does A Convergence Video Strategy Look Like?" panel at the TV & Video Insider Summit.

• Co-Opting The Platforms in Show Daily: Videos on 06/17/2017
  

  Don't just leverage the major social platforms - co-opt them, says SourceMedia's CMO Matthew Yorke. He explains how his high-CPM b2b publishing brands are using social analytics and their own first party data to target users on Facebook and Twitter with specific content and packaged advertising that drives readers to O&O sites that monetize at much higher ad rates.

• Beast's Avlon: Influence Matters More Than Scale For Its Own Sake in Show Daily: Videos on 06/17/2017
  

  "News needs to do two things right now," Daily Beast Editor-in-Chief John Avlon declared at the Publishing Insider Summit earlier this month. "We need to call b**ls**t. And we need to make important stories interesting." And publishers need to eschew clickbait, easy growth and recognize that "influence matters more than scale for its own sake."

• Even Uber Can Get Overwhelmed By The Data in Show Daily: Videos on 06/15/2016
  

  Jealous of Uber's wealth of detailed user data? According to their eCRM Manager Wayne Miller, even this master of data can get overwhelmed by it all and finds it best to start with small actionable uses of data points. Warner Music Group's Itay Rahat, Director of CRM Product offers some example of the little things that work.

• How Do You Define "Inactive" In Email? in Show Daily: Videos on 06/15/2016
  

  It depends, of course. Every brand has to measure a number of parameters before determining when a user is really inactive. Our panel on "Searching for the Next New Thing" at the Email Insider Summit last week wondered aloud, when does inactivity mean your email approach isn't working?

• Does the Org Chart Match Cross Channel Ideals? in Show Daily: Videos on 06/15/2016
  

  It is not just the channels that are siloed. It is the data, too. VISA's Mary Grundy outlines just how deep the change needs to be among brands to realize the holistic consumer view.

• Buying Into Silo-Busting in Show Daily: Videos on 06/15/2016
  

  Cross-channel marketing is not just about the big plan and the tech. It requires internal buy-in on multiple levels. Our Email Insider Summit panel on cross channel last week at Amelia Island addressed the issue.

• Don't Boil The Cross Channel Ocean...Or Eat The Elephant in Show Daily: Videos on 06/15/2016
  

  Metaphors were flying at the Email Insider Summit panel on cross-channel marketing last week on Amelia Island. Don't "boil the ocean" or "eat an elephant" advised our panel. It is easy to get overwhelmed by the enormity of the challenge and set ambitions too high.

Comments by Steve All comments by Steve

• Obit: Pioneering Magazine Publisher Hugh Hefner, Dead At 91 by Joe Mandese (Publishers Daily on 09/28/2017)
  

  Malcolm X, Norman Mailer, Saul Bellow, James Baldwin, Jimmy Carter, Alex Haley (who originally interviewed Malcolm X for Playboy), Erica Jong, Germaine Greer, Bella Abzug, David Bowie - just a few of the interviews that still resonate for me decades later becasue they went deeper.and got closer to the figure's voice than anything else available. All of it sat within a package that was also irredeemably sexist and unapologetically wedded to the shallowest material pleasures of consumer culture. Somehow they were all of a frightening, contradictory, delusional, brilliant, craven, dazzling, piece that was America itself in the last half of the 20th Century.       

• GenerationVexed by Bob Garfield (Garfield at Large on 04/10/2017)
  

  This is the fake news we need more of.

• The Trump-ification Of 2016: The Super Bowl Implodes by Steve Smith (Mobile Insider on 02/08/2016)
  

  Luke. Thanks for that. Nice evolution of the argument. Although post-mass culture is more manageable than post-mass politics. Democracy still demands majorities to move forward. Mutli-party systems worldwide have long had to rely on coalition-building among varied three and four parties. One argument goes that the American two party system is already now based on coalitions of unlike-minded segments, and have been since the late 60s and the original Nixon Southern Strategy. Reagan's coalition of the blue collars, evangelixals and country club has always been an uncomfortable marriage. We are now seeing the seams show.  

• The Trump-ification Of 2016: The Super Bowl Implodes by Steve Smith (Mobile Insider on 02/08/2016)
  

  Thanks Jon, Peter and both Georges for your comments. But take heart. I may sound depresssed, and this may all seem very depressing. But I think there is a real hunger for creative thinking in both commercial and political fields. History shows (American Renaissance, Civil War, Progressive Era, Great Depression, Modernism, post-WWII pop and high art in America) that it takes a loss of faith in old institutions to make us receptive to new ideas.  

• Remembering A Legend We Lost In 2015: Joe Franklin by Adam Buckman (TVBlog on 12/15/2015)
  

  The WOR TV show was integral to my own passion for pop culture and respect for the troupers who hoofed, crooned, astonished and touched us from the stage. Joe had a humbling envy/respect of performers. His hospitality to performers of all stripes was an object lesson for budding media critics like myself that the people we wrote about were putting themselves out there in ways we never would. 

• A Mass Medium Without Mass Media: Live TV Losing Default Status by Steve Smith (Data and Targeting Insider on 07/27/2015)
  

  Hi all. I agree with your reticence over trusting self-reported data, which is why I mentioned that caveat. The research is a tracking study of 1200 US TV viewers with broadband access, so there is a skew built into the sample. But what I found most interesting in this research was the attitudinal implications - the ways in which users admitted to watching TV with different levels of engagement and attention according to situation and source. This part of the research I find very recognizable in my and my household's own behavior has to do wil how and why we choose different sources. OTT video is chosen much more deliberately I think and is my default source for content I am ready to pay attention to. On the other hand, most live TV is on because I have made a choice not to pay close attention while I peruse books or a second screen. 

• Verizon's 'No Cord Required' Mobile Video Service Launching Soon? by Steve Smith (MoBlog on 07/26/2015)
  

  @JS Oops. Missing work. The phrase should read "an OTT video market that will not lack players." Corrected. 

• A Modest Proposal: Truly 'Native' Mobile Advertising by Steve Smith (MoBlog on 07/16/2015)
  

  DanielYes some vendors tried on their own to do this, which is why I am suggesting it needs to be done at the OS level or as a common standard within the infrastructure. Single players trying to make it happen won't 

• Mobile Wallets And The Great 'Someday' Brigade by Steve Smith (MoBlog on 06/25/2015)
  

  Exactly.

• Gorgeous by Bob Garfield (Garfield at Large on 06/22/2015)
  

  Beautiful, Bob. Thanks.

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