I was on a morning flight from NY to Chicago yesterday, reading the story in the New York Times about the death of Gourmet Magazine. News about yet another magazine folding is hardly even news.
What makes this more interesting is that I looked up from the article to see that the in-flight entertainment was an episode of Top Chef from the Food Network. For those of you not familiar with the show, think of it as Survivor in the kitchen. It’s much more about getting voted off the island than culinary skill. Not quite the bottom of the food barrel, but close.
On the surface, you can make the argument that, like all print vehicles, Gourmet’s ad revenue simply dried up while Cable TV is still attracting advertisers and viewers. But, I don’t think that’s the whole story.
Why are there more cooking shows than ever, yet the marquee publication can’t make any money? And, if you look closely at the Food Network, you see that the focus of their content has changed dramatically over the past 3 years. To attract viewers, they have moved from cooking techniques to cooking dramas.
I believe that there is an important message here for marketers about how consumers want to receive content. In the wine business there is an old saying “People talk dry but drink sweet”. I think that the death of Gourmet and the success of Food Network shows that people talk content, but want entertainment. But not just any entertainment.
To attract viewers, content must be delivered within the context of current popular entertainment models. If we’re all watching reality shows on TV, then content needs to fit within that framework. So, instead of shows about great design, we have Project Runway. You might trace the trend back to This Old House; the first to weave a deep human element into a do-it-yourself show. The Ultimate Home Makeover is just its logical extension.
The objective for marketers is not to find new content. There is no NEW content. The goal is to find new ways to bend the current popular entertainment models around existing content. There is plenty of content that people are interested in. The issue is how you deliver it. 40 years ago we’d have said “The Medium is the Message”. That still sounds right today.
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