The Demise of the CMO–(Adweek) CMO’s are leaving their jobs at a fast clip. The latest announcement is from Kraft. The cause– ill-defined jobs and lack of connection with ROI. CIQ: This article makes a good point that, in order to be effective, CMOs need to be less about fuzzy marketing and more about data and analytics. Perfect territory for those in the online space who tend to be data-centric.

Thumb Your Way to Retail Therapy— (NYT) New services are letting you buy products simply by entering a text number. CIQ: A superb idea. We can really identify with one person who says, “I have stacks of things I’ve ripped out of magazines. At the end of the month, I have 50 things on my desk, and I’ve never bought them.”

Newspaper Sites Up 15%–(Center for Media Research) This according to research firm NAdbase. The report says that newspaper Web sites have contributed to a 13.7 percent increase in total newspaper audience for the coveted 25- to 34-year-old demographic and a 9.2 percent increase for 18- to 24-year-olds. CIQ: Good news for flagging newspapers. But CPMs must increase for the business model to continue to work.

Prepublication Tour for Writers–(NYT) This article chronicles a debut novelist’s experience schmoozing with book stores and their salesforces before publication. It’s a practice on the rise because it helps get the salesforce behind the book. CIQ: Great practice. We’d like to know whether publishers also have digital efforts towards the same end– like email lists of these salesforces and targeted emails to them.

 Ditching DRM–(WSJ) In a major shift, EMI has agreed to sell its music online without insisting on digital security. iTunes DRM software is proprietary, locking people into the iTunes store if they want music to be compatible on their iPods. CIQ: The theory here is that it’s DRM keeping music downloads to 15% of the market. But with CD sales falling drastically, what other choice does EMI have than to try this strategy?

Studios Limiting Digital Downloads–(Business Week) “Imagine if you went to a bookstore and they only sold books by Harper Collins,” begins this piece. Then it goes on to lay out the current craziness of online movie downloads. Certain sites have certains content. Oh, and there there are different formats, rules, and compatibility issues. CIQ: We all assumed that the movie industry would learn from watching the music industry commit suicide. Guess not.

The man in a tweed coat, suspenders, and owl-eyed glasses sits across from me at the conference table describing his ground-breaking reference work. He’s coming out with a new version in a different subject verticle. And he’s wondering: What do I do now in the world of Google?

Through our reliance on Google and Wikipedia, we are at risk for losing huge swaths of history and culture. I have to ask the question: With these free, high-quality research tools at my fingertips, would I ever be motivated to seek out a reference work like the one written by my professorial interlocutor? Maybe not. Like most people, I’m pretty lazy. Also like most people, unless I start my research in a libary, I won’t even know such a thing exists.

A recent NYT article described the same phenomenon. People are doing lots of research digitally– the article said. Which means that scanned document, such as Mark Twains notes, have more exposure than ever before. But, those things that are not scanned, are lapsing into obscurity, as people forgo libraries in favor of the convenience of their home computers.

In our opinion, subscription content producers need to form a league with each other. There are the successful ones– like the Wall Street Journal and Consumer Reports– who can lead the way. I and many others who value works of reference and culture soon to be displaced by online, would be willing to pay a package price– say $250/year– for access to subscription content and reference work. It’s like the HBO/Cinemax/MTV cable subscription. Only for the tweed set.

Radio Customized for You— (NYT) Pandora, Last.fm and Slacker keep track of your musical tastes, then customize programming for you. They throw in new material you might like. “They all do it by harnessing the technological forces of social networking, data mining and music analysis, though each uses a slightly different technique.” CIQ: Sounds like a lot less work than composing your own playlist.

Young Adult Books for Adults— (WSJ) Publishers love the fact that the YA audience is hot– sales up in a large flat market, with targets easy to reach online in places like MySpace. And yet, books written in teen voices (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, and upcoming I Love You Beth Cooper) are being marketed to adults. CIQ: We’re interested in publishers doing more to reach adults online. Too few have serious online marketing efforts, though they say they do.

SecondLife Not Alone— (Business Week)  MapleStory and KartRider are more two dimensional role playing games. Users say they are for non-techies. The games are given away for free, but make money because users pay for clothes and accoutrements for their avatars. CIQ: In February at MapleStory, users spent $1.2 million on 600,000 avatar-enhancing items. We wonder how long it will take brands to product avatar items. 

Child Put to Bed— (NYT) Meredith Corporation will cease publication of Child Magazine, though it will keep the Child website running. CIQ: Like the American version of Premier and Life Magazine, the Child strategy is becoming familiar in the fading print world.

Ads Go to Gaming–(Adage) Marketers like P&G are sponsoring games, allowing gamers to play for free if a game contains ads. CIQ: With 100 million gamers out there, it’s a huge untapped platform for ads. It seems likely that other untapped platforms (books? music downloads) will explore this terrain.

Finder’s Fee–(Chicago Tribune) One 17-year old makes $1000/month digging through news and making recommendations to sites like Netscape and Digg.com. CIQ: The job is to find unusual content like an image of “Dubai in the fog.” We love this idea. A way to empower knowledgeable searchers to recommend content. It’s kind of the anti-Google.