One of the trends we discussed at Marketspace is that now “Every Company is a Media Company”.
(The underlying premise — best described in Jeffrey Rayport’s book Best Face Forward — is that more and more, companies are competing on how they go to market, rather than what they sell. This raises the importance of forging and sustaining relationships directly with consumers, particularly through new digital channels. To give a couple examples, this describes why Nike is shifting its marketing budget from TV to online services, and why Dove is blurring the line between content and advertising.)
Upendra Shardanand provides another example of this trend: Purina and Kellogg’s are using Daylife to create their own customized news properties. Purina’s “Pet Charts” is a social news site for pet lovers and the Team Kellogg’s site aggregates news and photos on ten members of the British Swimming team. Neither site has a strong community element: Team Kellogg’s does not appear to take submissions, and on Pet Charts users can vote on, but not submit articles.
It will be interesting to see what reaction these types of sites will receive.
I would expect it to get a great response from marketers, since Daylife’s capabilities will allow them to create full-featured sites on limited budgets.
For consumers, I’m not so sure: they should be able to attract an audience, but I suspect that they will have a hard time driving repeat usage (at least in their current form), unless they add additional features to make the sites more interactive.
