The numbers for any one of these outlets may be small by mass media standards, but they represent the customers who matter most—the most involved readers of your food section, the most likely buyers of your advertisers' products and services. They're the last readers you can afford to lose.
So there's pressure on you to find new ways to reach those high-value readers/customers. Yet it comes at the same time that you're under pressure to cut costs and do all your traditional work and more, with less.
SKY FULL OF BACON offers you a unique opportunity to extend your brand further into the world of online media—with minimal time and effort on your part.
It gives you a product which matches up with your editorial mission to present a full picture of Chicago's vibrant culinary scene, while providing readers with everything they like about the new individualized media—a unique voice, a distinct point of view, insider insight and humor.
It gives you a medium which will bring new readers back to your food section or food blog—because it will be out in the world of podcasts and blogs, spreading your name and bringing attention your way.
For a fraction of the cost of producing and editorially supervising such video segments inhouse, you can have a quality branded product which will communicate your presence in the changing media environment—telling the readers in the new online-driven media world that you get it and you're part of it. Yet it won't take staff time away from your core business.
HOW WOULD SPONSORING SKY FULL OF BACON WORK?
There are many possible scenarios. (After all, we're inventing new media here, so we can also invent new ways of integrating a sponsor's message with content that don't have to be measured by the standards of the 30-second spot, network TV and Madison Avenue.)
• For instance, you could take a "presents" credit at the beginning, along with a bumper for your food blog which would give it prominent placement and drive traffic back to it afterwards.
• Given the fast production turnaround of all online content, we could promote specific articles published at the same time as the latest podcast. (Of course, the degree of synergy between text content and video content wouldn't have to stop there.)
• You could offer advertising placement within SKY FULL OF BACON as an innovative value-add to your advertisers, giving them access to cutting-edge new media (and vice versa) and deriving revenue from a new media source, while insulating the content creator (me) from direct involvement in advertiser recruitment (like any other producer of editorial on your staff)
These are simply some basic starting points for discussion. To have that discussion, contact Michael Gebert here.
In the new virtual distribution world, you need innovative content to do the same thing. To go out and attract attention, and bring readers back to you.
The whole world is fascinated by what's happening with food in Chicago. Sky Full of Bacon helps you tell the world that your publication is where to go to know what's going on.