More on Media

Here's what Vintage Foster e-mailed me when I asked why an accounting firm like Armanino McKenna would create a unit devoted to media and communications. As I wrote yesterday, Foster is teaming up with Armanino after years spent as a business publisher.

The world of cost-per-thousand and traditonal approaches to marketing has changed. The models are different, the formulas are different.

Combine that with the fact that traditional public relations has been more art than science and you have a marketplace in need of a real help. What we see is as an opportunity to mix legitimate communications know-how with the analytical skill set that has made Armanino McKenna the powerhouse.

Fair enough, but it's still got me thinking. Armanino is known as an innovative firm, and in a state with as much media going on as California, this could the kind of move that puts its full range of services in front of a host of new prospective clients. And, to a certain degree, consulting is consulting, whether you're developing media strategies or business strategies.

I'm leery of communications strategies that are developed purely by numbers, which is the first thing that comes to mind when you say "an accounting firm is getting into media consulting." After all, media-by-spreadsheet is the kind of approach that has made broadcast television everything it is today. But I don't think that's what's going on here. By many accounts Foster has done well running newspapers in tough markets, and a combination of heavy trend analysis guided by a communications hand could probably come up with interesting strategies. We'll see.