“Business opportunities are like buses...there’s always another coming along.”
-Richard Branson, Founder Virgin Group
How do media companies adapt to the quickly evolving media landscape they are presented with? There has been a Cambrian explosion of tools, platforms, channels, and stars in the last few years starting in ’00’s. Creators are able to self-fund their creations, and independent publishers are able to effectively compete with the entrenched media players (and sometimes out-compete them).
The tools, knowledge, and the distribution channels have all come down in costs drastically and are accessible by a wider variety of people than ever before. Simultaneously, people have far more media choices. You can watch an algorithmically recommended multimedia stream via Netflix/YouTube/Twitter/etc., on anything from a smartphone screen to your hotel hdtv, or a tablet while on a pan-european flight. For the most part, media finally exists in a pure informational form, free of physical constraints such as vinyl, magnetic tape, or even laser readable discs, which means that it can be accessed immediately and nearly anywhere there’s an internet connection. But we have spotted new constraints on the horizon: DRM, payments, geo-blocking, interstitial advertising, and the rejection by users of horrible experiences and hard to use interfaces.
What do “traditional” or incumbent media players do? Everything should be great, but it’s been horrible for many of these previous leaders. Just as the incumbents were managing to get their digital operations to a point where they were generating at least some revenue in the past few years, they are now experiencing another massive reduction.
Note: iPhone launched in 2007, kicking off the smartphone revolution
Some interesting facts to consider:
Facebook is controlling more and more of the access to content publishers, and the ones who do not accept this control are dying off.
Display ads are ineffective (industry average is 0.1%), and people hate all of the bolted on banner ads, popup ads, cookies, and display modules that have infected nearly every website. Which is precisely why a quarter of the US population avoids them with ad blocking technology; thus, depriving publishers of revenue.
The hatred of mobile advertising is so widespread there’s even a tumblr dedicated to crappy mobile ads [2]
This problem is compounded on mobile because of the smaller screens, the direct charge to the user for data consumption, and noticeable slowness that drags down the experience.
On top of this, most publishers do not have an inability to target the way Google and Facebook can.
All of this, meanwhile, helps play into Facebook’s desire to have media companies host their content directly on the social network, instead of linking out. One of the main selling points of the “Instant Articles” project — where partners like the NYT and Guardian publish stories directly to the network — is that it will allow mobile articles to load faster, and look better. The second big selling point is that publishers will get more ad revenue. Clearly, this is a short-term fix for the established media players, but long-term it means they are going to become even more dependent on Facebook and lose more control. Making yourself entirely dependent on a cooperative competitor for all (or most) of your revenue is not a comfortable position to be in.
And it’s not getting better. In fact, if you’re an incumbent media company you must think the world is conspiring against you. Look at the Top 10 mobile websites and apps among teens, and 7 of the 10 could be termed a media publisher. Although certainly non-traditional, they are becoming the dominant gate-keepers between content creators and audiences while facilitating new advertising models.
Additionally, mobile users don’t stay as long as desktop users, in part because most media publishers are poorly optimized for mobile devices (and as a result take forever to load), and they also tend not to click on ads. Consequently, those ads aren’t worth as much. This is the “mobilize” approach that we see lots of incumbent players trying to make: take what we’ve been doing for years on the web and make it small. It’s not working.
Instead of just thinking about banner ads, we should think about the experience the brand is creating for people, and what is unique about that experience when it’s in a mobile context. What new use cases emerge to solve well-defined, or interesting, problems for people? This is what leads us toward reinventing your brand for mobile.
Four focus areas
Reinvent your brand for mobile media by focusing on the following:
Business strategy - What is the decision making framework for your company with regards to how it takes advantage of opportunities? What makes you different to your audience?
Value innovation - What value are you creating through this strategy? Either operational, by finding clever ways to reduce costs that your competitors can’t; or perhaps by creating new forms of value that haven’t existed.
Data - Do you have policies in place to govern this? Do you have the competencies needed, the tools, and are you focused on simply collecting data or transforming it into knowledge that enables better decision making?
User experience - How does it all come together for your audience? What is the interaction like through the variety of interfaces by which they can access your brand?
We call this the reinvention formula and it’s a handy way of thinking about the relationship of these pillars for many businesses.
"Instead of just thinking about banner ads, we should think about the experience the brand is creating for people, and what is unique about that experience when it’s in a mobile context."
Case Study: Virgin Red
Take Virgin for example. They have a business strategy driven by their very popular lifestyle brand image: “Live the Virgin lifestyle”. We have been a trusted partner of Virgin for a couple years now, helping their Vigin Red [3] company take this reinvention journey. One of the key activities we’ve done with them is to map the customer journey in order to uncover their value innovation. By performing this mapping exercise, we gain insights into the connections between business processes, user needs, and the brand touchpoints. The team can ask themselves questions such as: is there a gap between the business strategy and the value we’re providing for people? What are the touchpoints? What is the user’s perspective on all this?
DMI screenshots and early sketches for Virgin Red
The value innovation in this case is that Virgin companies are largely operated independently and there’s nothing to leverage the strengths of each area, nor reward people who buy into the Virgin lifestyle. Mobile is a natural fit for this brand because it is associated with active lifestyles to begin with.
The Virgin Red mobile application is beautiful, easy to use, and expresses the Virgin brand strongly. But it’s also not just an app: it’s your Virgin experience in a mobile context. We’ve employed sophisticated analytics to track usage and continuously iterate the service experience based on user experience KPI’s, developed specific game mechanics to raise engagement, created new promotions like the augmented reality contest “Virgin Red Treasure Hunt”, as well as drive new value for other Virgin companies in ways that have not existed before.
In Closing
Mobile is a context of use and a wholly different computing experience. You should ask yourself how does mobility change your brand? How might you leverage a device’s camera, sensors, data, and the fact that it’s always connected and always with you to create a unique brand experience?
Your brand should be thought of as an experience that your audience is actively participating in. It’s no longer relevant what you tell people your brand stands for. Your audience is telling you what your brand stands for, and they are continuously co-creating it with you. Leverage that.
Use the reinvention formula: (Business Strategy + Value Innovation + Data) * Killer UX Design and remember, there’s loads of technology and data but it’s really about starting with the human problem first and working backwards to the best application of your technology and data mix. By working in this way, you will uncover the value that your audience, or users, are willing to pay for and how they wish to pay for it (subscription, advertising, or some other means).
[1] Pew Research, “News Use Across Social Media Platforms 2016”.
http://www.journalism.org/2016/05/26/news-use-across-social-media-platforms-2016/
[2] Tumblr, “Crappy Mobile Ads”. http://crappy-mobile-ads.tumblr.com/
