Davai Blog

I am usually well informed in terms of what’s going on in the world. Each morning while I multitask with breakfast, email checking, making up the day’s schedule, and packing, I flick on CNN to make sure the end of the world didn’t whisk by while I was asleep, and with all this economic unrest potentially being bad for business, lately I tend to tune in more often.

CNN is arguably the top dog in the news industry, and they are smart enough to know what it takes to stay there. So what does this have to do with anything? Well, everything.

As you watch CNN, especially their celebrities (Cooper, King, Cafferty, Dobbs), you can always see a laptop on their desks, and not so they can read their notes (they have a teleprompter for that), but to interact with visitors of CNN.com while we watch 60 second ads of E.D. medication.

Each one of them fellas has a website and a blog that they relentlessly promote during the show, and people posting online often see their questions or comments make it on the air. This is good thinking by the brass at CNN, even if it probably took them a while to teach Larry how to type.

CNN is building their brand using their own viewers. They aren’t aggressively trying to squash the competition because they don’t need to. They understand that the public has opinions about what is going on in the world, so they use the Internet to let the people express themselves. Little did you know, this is all part of a brilliant marketing strategy.

A good example of how it all works is Jack Cafferty and his blog. The man comes on the air looking pissed off and blinded by camera lights, fires off something opinionated and controversial, and invites the public to respond on his blog. Later during the day he reads off a few responses on air and asks those who submitted an email comment to see if it got posted online. Brilliant!

It doesn’t matter that half of the people disagree with what he says. The point is not to please the crowds, but to create a reaction. The end result is that the lovers and the bashers all go to his blog and become part of the company-client interaction that is vital in today’s competitive market.

CNN gives the people what they want, and that gets them more people.