Strategic reimagining, quantum shifts, horizontal portfolios and richer integration
Regular readers may recall the somewhat robotic comments from NineMSN’s new boss Mark Britt earlier this month.
Dr Mumbo is concerned to report that the disease appears to be spreading.
Here’s what NewsLifeMedia boss Sandra Hook had to say about the company’s rebrand in a press release today:
“This name change recognises the work we have done over the last few years to strategically reimagine our business. We are elevating our digital focus, creating new products and services, developing our presence in Women, Lifestyle and Life Stage, while building on the strength of our phenomenal print brands.”
And her colleague Zara Curtis:
“Our rebranding represents a quantum shift in the way we will do business both vertically for deeper connections and through the portfolio horizontally for scale and reach. By restructuring our portfolio into lifestyle verticals, we will deliver richer integration for our advertising customers across all platforms that we publish, putting content in context for more relevant connections and meaningful action with consumers.”
Got it?
At least they avoided paradigm shift.
To be fair to Zara Curtis, that does sound tongue-in-cheek anyway. It had better be!
But just in case, I’d like to add, once more:
This month we’re really going to break through the clutter with this item and deliver some paradigm-shifting news that, at the end of the day, should capitalise both on our core competencies and on your hunger for change.
Things at News lately have been all-business, all-the-time. So we’ve decided to spin-up a new communications initiative that I’m calling – and this is a real game-changer – Buzzwording.
Our messaging this month is all new and standards-based. It’s a bit of a thought experiment right now, but we’re going to run it up the flagpole and see who salutes it. If we can get buy-in from a majority of our 300,000 key stakeholders then we may just make Buzzwording a tentpole of our core messaging strategy and a key differentiator of our value proposition.
Make no mistake – this is some real blue-sky thinking here. We wanted to keep you in-the-loop so that, moving forward, we’re all singing from the same sheet music.
We hope to leverage your interest in what’s new at our organisation and align that with our propensity to eat our own dog. Food! Dog food. Sorry, I’m still getting the hang of this.
See, that’s an example of what we call “pushing the envelope”. Also “bad business practise.” It’s really just a matter of us honing in on which levers we need to pull to enhance the end user experience, and which levers are really just avenues to fostering user detachment.
User ID not verified.
I am actually laughing out loud.
User ID not verified.
I love it when people use quantum incorrectly
Wikipedia: “the minimum amount of any physical entity involved in an interaction.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum
User ID not verified.
Steve Browning from News here.
Google Ninja – you are correct in the definition of ‘quantum’.
However, the universally accepted understanding of ‘quantum change’ or ‘quantum leap’ is ‘big’ or ‘massive.’ If you google ninja by trade as well as by name, a quick look at search engine result will show this.
Grammatically wrong it may be, but as with ‘incredible’ there is the literal meaning and the everyday meaning.
And, I’d argue, if you make a change to a quantum, you are changing everything – right down to the smallest particle. Hence it represents huge change.
Cheers
Steve
User ID not verified.
Steve, hold up there pal…….jumping in to defend the (arguably incorrect) use of the word “quantum” is the least of your problems given the absolute dribble coming from the mouths of your colleagues. Why do corporate mouthpieces insist on speaking such jibberish?
User ID not verified.
Well done DA.
What do you think the robust best-practice gold-standard metrics quantifying their engaged audience delivery would be?
User ID not verified.
It may be jibberish overall .. but google Ninja is wrong – it actually does use the term ‘quantum shift’ correctly. The phrase comes from quantum physics where a particle moves from A -> G without going through B,C,D,E or F.
So a quantum leap (or a quantum shift) in everyday life involves a major change rather than an incremental one. (eg: A -> G instead of A->B->C->D->E->F->G)
This SEEMS somewhat paradoxical when the definition of ‘quanta’ is the minimum change possible … but it does make sense. That’s because the whole point of a quantum leap is that it MUST go directly from A->G because the smaller changes (A->B->C->D->E->F) aren’t possible in the model.
Some pedants point out that in atomic physics a ‘quantum leap’ is very tiny .. but that’s irrelevant because EVERYTHING in atomic physics is tiny. The thing that makes it a ‘quantum’ change instead of a normal change is the way that it doesn’t go through intermediate points.
An example here: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/quantum+leap
To think I finally got some use from studying Quantum physics at Uni !
Thought I never did get the hang of Schrodinger’s Equation …
User ID not verified.
Priceless!
User ID not verified.
Google their previous efforts…my personal favourite ‘ a sprinkle of zeitgeist’ … http://girlwithasatchel.blogsp.....zines.html
Don’t deviate from that press release now ladies.
Classic!!
User ID not verified.