John Brown Media appoints New Business Manager

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Hannah Brisby has been promoted to New Business Manager for global content marketing agency John Brown Media. Having been with the company since it started in the UAE in 2013, Hannah was previously Advertising Sales Manager on the SpinneysFOOD magazine account where she worked mainly on display advertising and creative solutions.

In her new role, Hannah will be seeking new partnerships for the agency, predominantly in the retail, healthcare and hospitality sectors. Prior to working for John Brown Media, Hannah was Corporate Sales Manager for Explorer Publishing.

“I’m thrilled to take on the challenge of growing John Brown’s business in the region,” says Hannah. “It’s a really exciting time for the agency, having recently expanded our team and moved to new premises, I look forward to taking on new challenges in my role as New Business Manager.”

 

Tala Samman wins Best Blogger Award

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Tala Samman of London/Dubai-based blog Myfashdiary.com won Best Blogger at The Middle East Fashion Awards 2015. Having graduated from London College of Fashion in Fashion Media and Communications, Tala has worked as a Fashion Editor for Style.com Arabia as well as a PR Intern for Halston and Tom Ford. She began Myfashdiary in 2009, as a way of showcasing her love of fashion, beauty, travel and food. In 2012, Tala won Fashion Personality of the Year at the Grazia Middle East Awards.

“I’ve been in the blogging world for over 5 years, and I am always incredibly honoured when I gain recognition from the industry,” says Tala. “I’m proud of my blog, and how consistently it is evolving.”

How #hashtags changed the way we talk

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Brandon Ancier, Head of Growth at TINT offers his thoughts on the ever prevalent #hashtag and how this has not only influenced the personal and professional sphere, but changed it…

Hashtags escaped Twitter and spread, like a plague, to Facebook, to Instagram, to everyday speech.

The hashtag arose in 2007 as a way to categorise and ‘tag’ tweets. It slowly gained traction, until 2009 or 2010 when suddenly hashtags (and their users) went rogue. These errant tweeters took hashtags from their good and purposeful tagging function, and changed them into something terrible – a form of parenthical commentary on the rest of the tweet.

Hashtags escaped Twitter and spread, like a plague, to Facebook, to Instagram, to everyday speech, where it is now acceptable to say things like ‘I love you guys! Hashtag blessed!’

Yup. The hashtag is a linguistic tumour. But do I think hashtags are destroying the English language? No. However, if they’re not destructive, what are they? Here’s what I found:

  • Hashtags are ‘ Paralanguage’ – Paralanguage is something you already use, every day. It’s the non-verbal cues that accompany speech and help us express meaning and tone – shoulder shrugs, intonation, facial expressions. But in the world of text, it is difficult to communicate these non-verbal ideas, such as sarcasm or self-mockery. Hashtags have expanded that ability drastically. When we now complain about tangled headphones and append #firstworldproblems, it shows we know our own complaints are ridiculous. Hashtags are not a tumour – they help us add a much-needed tonal layer to our communications.
  • Hashtags are our Greek Chorus – In 2012, when spoken hashtags were first causin’ a ruckus, New Republic published an article that claimed hashtags were a sign of our modern times – part of a recent trend to see ourselves in the third person. Saying “Hashtag happy” elicits a mental picture of the speaker viewed from a distance, labeled with the word happy. In this framework, hashtags are a way of distancing ourselves from our own words as a commentary on what we’ve just said or experienced, a shift in viewpoint from first person to third person, similar to the narrator of a book or a chorus in a Greek play. Hashtags are serving as a very ancient literary device.
  • Hashtags were always meant to mimic speech – The written word and the spoken word have always influenced each other in their formality. In the past we spoke more formally because of how formally we wrote. In the present, we write less formally because of how informally we speak. Speech and writing influence each other, and always have. The way language trends develop and words become popular IRL (in real life) is mimicked on Twitter. We really are writing how we talk.

What does this mean for language? Well, linguists are pretty much divided. Some say verbal hashtags are a passing fad. Others don’t. But in a recent Mashable article, Linguist Gerard Van Herk argues that Internet speak has made us smarter: “Today’s youth are much more aware of the social and stylistic uses and meanings of different genres and language types, and are able to discuss them using metalinguistic terms like meme,” he writes. Yeah. That’s right. We’re the generation that uses METALINGUISTIC TERMS in everyday speech. Feel brilliant yet? Good.

So, if you’re trying to create a hashtag that will stick, there is at least one lesson we can take from the linguistics: Hashtags that straddle multiple uses (tagging and paralanguage, narrative and the informality of speech) are most likely to be successful.

But a common failure with hashtags? They often only use the tagging function of hashtags – not the metacommentary function, or the paralanguage function. There is an easy litmus test to avoid creating the #corporatehashtagthatnoonewilluseever. Ask yourself: Would you say it in daily speech? Would Justin Timberlake?

The answer should be yes.

Have publications reached their plateau?

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Has the publication market in the region become saturated in certain areas or do we have room for more? Two journalists offer their opposing views…

“NO” says Robin Amlôt, Managing Editor, CPI Financial
RobinAmlot2“Good-looking, high quality content targeting the right readership will always find a market and will always find an advertiser willing to support it in order to reach that audience”

In a varied career in media I have spent time in all forms: magazines, newspapers, radio, TV and online. The search for a profitable audience is the key to all media outlets. Without an audience that can generate revenue to pay for content and content delivery, media does not exist. Having said that, how big an audience do you need? We all want to reach decision-makers. That is true of both B2B and B2C magazines. The decision in question might be which investment banks to choose to help your company carry out an IPO or it might be what fashion boutique from which to purchase the next cocktail dress, etc.

No commercial media owner, whether corporate or individual, chooses to publish a magazine other than to make money so it is fairly safe to say that the industry at large does NOT believe that the market is saturated – as the continued growth in the number of titles on offer attests. However, this is not ‘steady state’ growth. As some titles are born, others die. As publishers, journalists, art directors, ad sales and circulation managers we are only as good as a combination of our last issue and our next issue.

The economist Joseph Schumpeter is renowned [blamed?] for the term ‘creative destruction’ as a metaphor for capitalism. Creative destruction is inevitable in the media industry as titles fail, titles survive and new titles are launched. Advertisers want to reach their chosen specific set of decision makers. Does your title provide them? Does a new title do a better job of reaching them? Where will that ad spend be allocated? Who, ultimately, will provide the funds to settle the print bills and the staff salaries?

Good-looking [ideally], high quality content targeting the right readership will always find a market and [again, ideally] will always find an advertiser willing to support it in order to reach that audience, providing that the publisher is able to ‘tell the story’ properly and explain the benefits of the publication in terms of the decision-makers it reaches.

There is no such thing as ‘a plateau’ in terms of publications because such a statement assumes that all the publications that have existed will continue to exist. Look back 20 years [an arbitrary number]. How many of the titles then in existence are still with us. How many of those published now will still be in existence in 20 years’ time? And then there’s the small matter of technological change. Should we indeed be discussing ‘publications’ at all or should we now be thinking of ‘brands’ rather than titles and considering the brand as an entity that exists in more than one medium, that our readers ‘consume’ both online and offline? But I guess that’s another discussion entirely…

“YES” says Nick Rego, Senior Editor, AskMen Middle East
NickRego1“Another fitness magazine, perhaps another publication about home decor, or maybe just recycled celebrity news combed from various blogs. The thirst for original and expressive content is very real, but there are few publications that truly understand it”

It’s easy to glance through the news rack at your local grocery store checkout and have the various publications all blur together. While there are certain key topics that will almost always be covered by several publications, it seems that if you buy one magazine, you’ve bought them all, at least in terms of content.

There are several publications both new and old in the region that seem to think it’s a good idea to launch a new magazine or name every year. Another fitness magazine, perhaps another publication about home decor, or maybe just recycled celebrity news combed from various blogs. The thirst for original and expressive content is very real, but there are few publications that truly understand it. The print market is very competitive, and I find that more and more publications are trying their best to figure out how to reach out to readers in an already saturated market. There doesn’t seem to be much differentiating one publication from another, and it seems that in the end it’s just a matter of which branded magazine you prefer over another.

On a rare occasion, I will thumb through a publication and find an interesting and relevant local story buried amongst other stories that don’t always speak to the regional audience. As a publisher, the question to ask is whether or not people actually value a particular publication or not. There’s no point in putting out a publication just for the sake of it, or just because you see a competitor doing it. Focus instead on quality content and publications that resonate with different kinds of audiences, rather than just going for a cookie-cutter mould in the hopes that someone will like what you publish.

There seems to be too many publications at times all clamoring for the top spot – endless rows of celebrity magazines, fashion spreads and fitness publications to name a few, all adorn our local shops, but hidden between all of them are the niche publications that recognise the need for truly original content and insight. I’m certainly sure there are plenty of publications who are going to be sticking around for years to come, but in doing so need to realise that they have to continue to evolve with current trends in order to try and stay relevant to a whole new always-connected audience.