BlueCoast Media Group

BlueCoast Media Group provides professionally generated, quality content in column form for professionals wishing to establish themselves as thought leaders.

We give your original articles the highest credibility for distribution to the media, for your website's intellectual library, newsletters and customer mailings. We work closely with you on ideas and organization. Our work corresponds to the highest media industry standards. We know what they want!

We also distribute your content nationally, regionally and to targeted trade media to our 150,000 searchable media database.

The Count: EXPERT articles in 140 posts have reached targeted business website and newsletter audiences totaling 32.1 million as of 3/1/13. 

For the latest articles published by our clients, click here.

NewMedia :  Marketing professional services 

From our clients: "Your talent for synthesizing our professionals’ insights and experience into ideas that are readable and marketable, is where you add tremendous value.

Without your involvement, senior professionals would rarely if ever find the time to put their thoughts on paper. In addition, those who may not have the confidence to write have the security of knowing their thoughts will be well articulated when they work with you. At a higher level, your contribution facilitates our marketing group’s efforts around profiling CRG’s professionals as leaders in the industry," Lirianna Krysak, director of marketing, CRG Partners.

New Media News Bytes by Keith DuBay

New Media Bytes April 2012 -Death of print publishing – Reading off of tablets seemed pretty efficient when you saw Captain Jon Luc Picard do it on Star Trek, Next Generation. We are getting much closer to that. Magazine ad pages fell 8.2% in the first quarter year-over-year, according to new figures from the Publishers Information Bureau. Declines were led by auto, food and retail sectors. It has long been hoped by print publishers that they will regain advertising as the economy recovers, but I disagree. The publishing industry signed its own death warrant when it started giving away its digital content and it conditioned its audience – particularly younger readers – to expect free content.

In Colorado, I believe that we will witness the death of two general audience print publications within the next five years. ColoradoBiz, an important magazine for its statewide audience and a publication I used to work at, is not receiving the ad support from the business community and can’t survive in print. And have you noticed that the business and metro sections are now included in the front section of The Denver Post? The paper shrinks by the day. It’s out of bankruptcy but you can look at the paucity of ad pages to realize where the last general audience newspaper is headed: Out of business. Names that come to mind who have been laid off in the industry: Business columnist Penny Parker, about town columnist Bill Husted, city columnist Bill Johnson, political commentator Mike Litwin, all from the Post. Mike Cote left ColoradoBiz. I’ll continue to speculate about where the media and news business is headed. Look here in the future for that.

March 2012-It’s obvious to say that mobile applications are the new dominant form of media and they will only continue to be more so as their utility increases. A couple weeks ago a bunch of us went on a golf trip to New Mexico and one of us had an advanced phone with all the Internet browsing capabilities, which allowed us to check the temperature, wind speed, course booking, navigation and on and on from our rental van. So advertisers are trying to figure out how to make a buck off of mobile. Don’t do what publishers did, this writer suggests. “Yet demand for mobile advertising from premium brands is not keeping up with increased utilization of mobile websites and applications. As a result, many publishers are being tempted to turn their inventory over to mobile advertising networks for monetization.” Don’t do it, he says. Third-party resellers basically destroy the ability of publishers to monetize their audiences.

Watch out cable-The six largest cable and satellite TV providers lost a combined 580,000 customers during the second quarter of last year, the biggest decline in history, Bloomberg says. The trend is continuing. The economy is forcing the industry to face the reality of cord-cutting-pay-TV customers canceling their subscriptions in favor of online options such as Netflix and Hulu.

And finally, kudos to my client, CRG Partners, who were awarded the turnaround management of the New York Mets. I had a lot of fun working with them on articles about Pilgrim’s Pride and the sale of the Texas Rangers and hope I’ll get to dive into that juicy subject at some point, though it’s all hush-hush now for the financially strapped team.

January 2012 -Denver Bronco quarterback Tim Tebow is worth his weight in publicity, well, a little more, maybe $10 million a year, one marketing exec said. Tebow is in the Trendsetter Top 85 world list of celebrities. The Steelers-Broncos game was the highest rated first-round NFL playoff game in 24 years. Tebow mentions set a peak rate record of 9,420 tweets per second on Twitter. Cha-Ching!  Something tells me that the kid can get a date.

In March, the formerly staid magazine Ladies Home Journal will turn over a good deal of its pages to what it calls readers. This move is being heralded by magazine executives as a New Media sea change, where the readers write the content for the 3.2 million paid subscribers. My view is that this is not a crowd-sourcing model. The mag will not only edit and fact-check the content submissions, but will also pay contributors its going freelance rate.  So essentially Ladies Home Journal is going to use more freelance writer material – it’s a smart way to go – because although some abject rookies will make it through the screens, freelance pros will end up toting the luggage.

October 2011-Talk about in your face. New York University professor Scott Galloway told an audience at the American Magazine Publisher’s conference that their industry was facing a double-dip recession because their traditional advertisers were connecting directly to their customers through Facebook. His evidence? Burberry today has more than 8.6 million likes on Facebook, while Gucci has nearly 5.4 million, Chanel has almost 4.6 million and Ralph Lauren has more than 4 million. Vogue has nearly 1.7 million, by comparison, while Cosmopolitan has less than 1.2 million.

In case you hadn’t noticed before, Google wants to own your online identity. This is more than Big Brother; this is trying to get inside your noodle. The search giant takes a hard line on anonymous names because it sees Google+, its social networking site, as an “identity service” or platform on which it can build other products, Business Week reports. Talk about creepy. I can see this backfiring on Google.

September 2011 -Ad Age says that iCrossing, the No. 1 agency by U.S. search revenue with $92.4 million in 2010, is making  a push toward producing branded videos, blogs and other content for clients. Some other agencies are following suit. This is a push towards content marketing. I hope that’s good news for writers. The agency plans to tap into parent company Hearst Corp.’s “vast network of freelancers.” iCrossing’s blog contains some good pieces, such as “Why chief marketing officers need content marketing.”

Good news from PitchBook News, a company that tracks private equity investments, recorded 52 investments in 2010 and 37 so far this year in B2B media and information companies. That’s compared to a low of 27 investments in 2009. It is considered a bullish sign because corporate wallets are loosening for marketing and similar business development activities.

I don’t always place a lot of confidence in Forrester Research because they were a driving force behind the Dot Bomb crash of 2001. Here’s their latest: The firm is predicting that U.S. interactive marketing spending will reach $76.6 billion by 2016, equal to TV spending this year and comprising 35% of all advertising. That's a big jump considering that this year interactive will comprise 19% of all spending, according to Forrester. Mobile advertising is taking a big jump and will be a main component of the mix soon.

August 2011 - Author Scott Donaton says that marketers “have an unprecedented opportunity to move upstream in the content development business.” He says forget product placement, brand integration, advertainment and every other buzzword. Trust me, this is pretty vague writing, but essentially what he means is that brands need to combine creativity with the art of story-telling to deliver meaningful insights to their audiences. This will create a lasting bond between brand and customer, he argues.

 Back to good ol’ advertising. L’Oreal, the cosmetics maker, got busted for over-air-brushing Lancome ads featuring model Christy Turlington and actress Julia Roberts. The United Kingdom watchdog agency, the Advertising Standards Authority, banned the ads from the UK for being “misleading” and an “exaggeration.” You mean those women don’t really look that good?