Marketing Interview: The Move Toward Fluid Content
How Doubleday.com is using an open-source platform to engage its readers.
August 2008 By Carolyn Huckabay
The Web is an ever-changing animal. Keeping that in mind, the most successful online marketing executives must think in the future tense: coming up with inventive, original ideas to help publishers stay ahead of the game. Jeff Yamaguchi, associate director of online marketing for Random House Inc. division The Doubleday Publishing Group, is one such innovator, and he fills us in on a little secret—that the future tense is not enough.
In June, Yamaguchi launched Doubleday’s newly revamped Web site, which uses a WordPress platform to simulate the look and usability of a blog while maintaining Doubleday’s integrity and standards as a publishing house. According to Yamaguchi, the site’s user-friendly familiarity, combined with its inventive content, is what takes Doubleday.com to the next level.
Yamaguchi says that years of experience in the dot-com world, plus his own personal projects (like 52projects.com, his do-it-yourself craft Web site), have armed him with the marketing knowledge necessary to leverage the Internet of today—and tomorrow.
How did you get your start in the industry?
Jeff Yamaguchi: When I first came to New York 10 years ago, my first job was in book publishing, in marketing at New Press. … A lot of companies still didn’t have e-mail accounts, and I remember using an AOL account for e-mail. And I had just come from San Francisco, where the whole dot-com thing was just starting to happen. … From there I went to iUniverse, a print-on-demand publisher, and after that, I left book publishing and went to [magazine publisher] Ziff Davis. That’s where I think I really learned the most about how the Internet works in terms of reaching out to audiences and building traffic.
… I got back into book publishing at HarperCollins doing online marketing … . I learned a lot there. I was there for two years, and then I came over to Random House. What brought me here was [a] great opportunity and good timing.
Were you hired to revamp Doubleday’s Web site?
Yamaguchi: Doubleday Broadway recently changed its name to the Doubleday Publishing Group. The site needed to be revamped anyway, so with the name change and the new logo, it just made sense to have it all go online. …
Where did the concept of using a WordPress platform come from?
Yamaguchi: About a year ago, [Senior Designer] Michael Colico actually started up a blog for the group, and people loved it, but it was never a formal thing. When I came here, he showed me what he had done using the WordPress platform … . He was laying the groundwork for the direction I thought we should go. … There was a lot of work to be done [to make] it look less [like] a blog, but it’s more than that—it’s a content management system that can be used in many different ways. It’s not like Blogger or Typepad—there’s much more flexibility.
In June, Yamaguchi launched Doubleday’s newly revamped Web site, which uses a WordPress platform to simulate the look and usability of a blog while maintaining Doubleday’s integrity and standards as a publishing house. According to Yamaguchi, the site’s user-friendly familiarity, combined with its inventive content, is what takes Doubleday.com to the next level.
Yamaguchi says that years of experience in the dot-com world, plus his own personal projects (like 52projects.com, his do-it-yourself craft Web site), have armed him with the marketing knowledge necessary to leverage the Internet of today—and tomorrow.
How did you get your start in the industry?
Jeff Yamaguchi: When I first came to New York 10 years ago, my first job was in book publishing, in marketing at New Press. … A lot of companies still didn’t have e-mail accounts, and I remember using an AOL account for e-mail. And I had just come from San Francisco, where the whole dot-com thing was just starting to happen. … From there I went to iUniverse, a print-on-demand publisher, and after that, I left book publishing and went to [magazine publisher] Ziff Davis. That’s where I think I really learned the most about how the Internet works in terms of reaching out to audiences and building traffic.
… I got back into book publishing at HarperCollins doing online marketing … . I learned a lot there. I was there for two years, and then I came over to Random House. What brought me here was [a] great opportunity and good timing.
Were you hired to revamp Doubleday’s Web site?
Yamaguchi: Doubleday Broadway recently changed its name to the Doubleday Publishing Group. The site needed to be revamped anyway, so with the name change and the new logo, it just made sense to have it all go online. …
Where did the concept of using a WordPress platform come from?
Yamaguchi: About a year ago, [Senior Designer] Michael Colico actually started up a blog for the group, and people loved it, but it was never a formal thing. When I came here, he showed me what he had done using the WordPress platform … . He was laying the groundwork for the direction I thought we should go. … There was a lot of work to be done [to make] it look less [like] a blog, but it’s more than that—it’s a content management system that can be used in many different ways. It’s not like Blogger or Typepad—there’s much more flexibility.
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