High-tech event season is in full-swing. So far this fall, I’ve attended VMWorld and OracleWorld.

And while waiting at a taxi stand outside the OracleWorld event in San Francisco, I was reminded of how dramatically these trade shows have changed. During my days as a PostScript and Acrobat evangelist at Adobe, the world seemed to revolve around events like Comdex, Seybold, PC Expo, and MacWorld.

Yet these tradeshows were difficult venues for getting messages heard above the cacophony of competing—and often irrelevant—voices. But industry people are still going to events. This time around, they’re attending company-hosted events where the agenda is tightly planned—and on message. From the invitation list to the keynote speaker selection, competitive enterprises are discovering that when it comes to messaging, it’s better to own than to rent.

A similar shift is happening in the media business. Traditional third-party enterprise computing publications now seem to be as archaic as industry-wide trade shows. With declining advertising revenues and increased production costs, it’s no wonder that many of these publications have been forced to accept online-only distribution or shut down completely.

But like event attendees, readers haven’t gone away. The retreat of industry publications has created a huge void that is quickly being filled by custom publishing and other media. Why? Because the benefits of proprietary media are similar to those of proprietary events. More control, when executed well, translates to far more effectiveness. And as our clients know, TDA-produced custom media now reaches hundreds of thousands of readers. These numbers are growing, too, as more of our clients are discovering just how vast the opportunity is with readers eager for more information that can also reinforce key messages.

And speaking of owning the message, I’m looking forward to traveling to Las Vegas for SAP TechED from October 18-22, followed by IBM Information On Demand from October 24-28 in Las Vegas. If you plan to attend either of these shows, do let me know. Hope to see you in Vegas!

I can’t resist writing about a recent eMedia Vitals article by Rob O’Regan titled, “Not your father’s custom publishing.” O’Regan—formerly the founding editor-in-chief of CMO, a critically acclaimed magazine that catered to senior marketing execs—writes about how something called content marketing is becoming an integral part of business-to-business marketing. Essentially it’s the ability to explain the value propositions of complex products and services—things that just can’t be described with a sound bite or jingle.

According to industry sources cited in O’Regan’s article, content marketing already commands over a quarter of today’s overall B2B spend and will soon become a $47.2 billion industry. No surprise for us—or our clients. In many settings, an in-depth understanding of products and services can only be created with multiple impressions of long-form media, such as magazines. Rich programs that integrate many forms of content and reinforce key messages over time produce consistently better results. That’s good news for everyone—except for traditional publishers with broken business models who are feverishly trying to reinvent themselves as content marketing experts.

So far, these old-school publishers are finding the transition about as easy as teaching a cat to walk on a leash. O’Regan quotes Charles Lee, SVP of IDG’s new content marketing group, as admitting that the “vendor publisher model takes us out of our comfort zone.” Frankly, it seems as if traditional publishers are both scared and at a loss to understand how to customize content in a way that works. Lee is quoted again as describing how IDG always asks its client the following question: “On a scale of 1-to-5, with 1 being vendor agnostic and 5 being vendor oriented, where you want the content to be?”

Such a formulaic approach is tremendously naïve.

The art of custom media lies in shaping content that reinforces client messaging and serves reader interest. Of course client-sponsored content is biased in favor of the client—but it must still serve reader interest to be effective. If custom content emits even a whiff of marketing-speak, it goes unread at best, or at worst, damages the client’s relationship with the target audience.

That’s why I enjoyed reading O’Regan describe why the effectiveness of content marketing begins with content quality—and how the skills of writers and editors with journalism experience are relevant to these efforts. We agree. TDA spends an extraordinary amount of time finding, vetting, and recruiting this talent. But that’s just the beginning. Once they’re here, we teach these professionals how to adapt their skills to the custom publishing environment through best practices and techniques refined over more than 20 years in the business. We know that complexity doesn’t necessarily mean complicated. And that’s a lesson traditional publishers are struggling to learn.

Because you’re reading this blog, enterprise media is probably important to you. Enterprise media is an umbrella term that describes all forms of proprietary content designed to accomplish a business objective. Examples include marketing collateral, sales tools, Web sites, custom publications, Flash animations, corporate videos, podcasts—really anything you can think of that’s designed to capture the attention of potential customers and move them through the sales process.

Here at TDA, we help our clients define and execute enterprise media strategies. These programs tend to be big, ambitious, and span multiple forms of content and channels.

When designed well, enterprise media programs can shape perceptions in the marketplace. When customers truly understand and appreciate the client value proposition, they become better customers: they upgrade more often and more easily, shop less often with the competition, become less price-sensitive, negotiate contracts with more trust…the list of benefits goes on and on.

Effective enterprise media also makes the business benefits of your products and services crystal clear to prospects. This is especially important when selling to those who’ve previously bought from the competition. In today’s competitive world, the only way to grow market share is to reach, influence, and sell to these prospects. And let’s face it: they probably have a bias against you. If an organization is accustomed to buying from your competition, that organization’s decision makers are very likely to believe what your competitor is saying about you.

But enterprise media can help these prospects become more open to your offering, see and understand the differentiation you offer, and consider you alongside the competition.

In the complex world of high tech, that takes more than pretty pictures. TDA begins every engagement by understanding the business goals of our clients, and the strategies they’re employing to accomplish those goals. With that in place, our creative teams have the ingredients they need to shape perceptions in the marketplace. It takes a mix of media, consistent messaging, and flawless execution. And every detail must align with the bottom-line needs of the enterprise. When it all comes together, these efforts can change marketplace perceptions to your advantage.

And at TDA, that’s exactly what we do.