I want a young man with a good income

Ok, I personally don’t.

What I mean is that many companies want to—and have always wanted to—reach relatively affluent young men. It’s the golden demographic. Guys with disposable income that they readily spend on beer, gadgets, and shower gel that they hope will have hordes of women chasing them down the street like something out of A Hard Day’s Night.

(Maybe that isn’t the best example. These young guys probably don’t understand the phenomenon of women chasing Ringo down the street…On second thought, do any of us understand women chasing Ringo down the street?)

And where do you find all of these guys? In front of their computers on that productivity-killing Thursday and Friday in March, watching basketball. Pretending to work.

It’s likely that as viewing continues to move from TV to every other conceivable mobile device, more and more advertising will follow. And perhaps the first two days of March Madness, where men everywhere watch games online, will eventually replace the Super Bowl as the ultimate advertising event.

“Marketing Madness” if you will.

If it does, with the personalization made possible for the Internet, a guy goofing off in Rochester will see ads for Genesee, while a guy wasting his boss’s money in Philadelphia will see them for Yuengling.

But some things never change. No doubt we’ll all still have to watch Bud Light commercials that aren’t really funny.

Jacek Utko designs a better newspaper

The daily newspaper model is dying. Readers moved to the web, where it’s hard to earn adequate subscription or ad dollars. The other revenue stream, classifieds, was upended by craigslist.

Smart people are trying to create a model to save not the medium (print) but the institution (journalism). I-tune like micropayments for stories is one. But no silver bullet yet.

Jacek Utko has a different idea. He thinks better design can make a difference. His inspiring presentation from a recent TED conference is below. It includes striking examples and might change how you think of the printed newspaper’s potential.

Be warned, he takes away any excuse you (I) might rely on. As he says, you can work in the boring branch of a small company with no record of achievement. With guts and perseverance, you can still make an impact.

Can the D & C can pull this off?

Matt Jones