SimsBlog

9 Things: My Keynote to the ACNA

The start-up world has kept me hopping these past few weeks and I've been a very bad blogger.  Time to get posting again!  And I'm starting with the keynote presentation I delivered to the Atlantic Community Newspaper Association on May 13th.

Slide-by-slide commentary is below the SlideShare.

 

Judy Sims ACNA Keynote Presentation

View more presentations from Judy Sims.

1. Title

2. My name is Judy Sims and my day-job is as the COO of a Toronto Internet start-up called CanSport LIVE where I’m busy revolutionizing the business of amateur sports.

3. But up until 2009, I worked at the Toronto Star where as VP Digital media, I was responsible for thestar.com and also launched 4 digital products in 2 years.  Though my day-job is no longer in the newspaper industry, I keep a toe in the water as a member of the PostMedia Digital Board of Advisors.   I’m going to set the stage for our conversation today with a few slides on the new economics of media.  My apologies, there will be some charts and graphs, but I’m a nerd and I can’t help myself.  But the truth is, I find that talking in scientific terms, rather than emotional ones is the most effective way to begin discussing change.

4. What we’ve seen happening over the past 15 years is a fundamental shift in the way the economics of media work.  The root of that shift is the move from a world where media content was relatively scarce to one where content is very abundant.  The barriers to entry are down and anyone can become a publisher.

5. And not only is there a lot more content available, that content has become “atomized”.  Media is now consumed in smaller and smaller chunks across a wider and wider range of media sources.  The average YouTube video is only 3.5 minutes compared to a 30 to 60 minute TV show.  A blog post is only 3 to 10 paragraphs verses 20 or more in a newspaper or magazine article.  Twitter has reduced this even further to only 140 characters.

6. And now we’re even seeing this happening in the advertising world.  Ads have become unbundled from news.  Flyers are becoming daily deals. 

7. Workopolis, Kijiji, Autotrader, Flyerland, Craigslist – the ads are the content.  They’re the prime attraction.

8. The result of this atomization is that economics of this new media world are the inverse of the old media world.  Where content was once scarce and attention was abundant. 

9. Now content is abundant and attention is scarce.

10. Okay, here we go with the charts.  The economics of media, like the economics of any product or service are based upon supply and demand.  Where supply is low, demand is high and where demand is low, supply is high.  Where the two curves intersect determines the balanced market – the quantity produced and price it sells for.  This applies to the cost of a newspaper or movie or the cost of advertising.

11. This is what supply and demand for media looked like before the Internet.  Because there were significant barriers to entry as a media company, i.e. you needed a printing press or a TV studio or movie camera, supply was relatively limited and demand was relatively high.  Thus prices were high.  In our case, that meant that we were able to charge high rates to our advertisers.  Looks good doesn’t it?  We could even do a little marketing or increase circulation by moving into a new town or subdivision and we could even grow our demand and increase the price we charge advertisers.  It was awesome.

12. This is Umair Haque.  He’s an Oxford-trained economist who has been studying the impact of the Internet on various industries.  He defines this media 1.0 world as the Age of the Blockbuster.  The blockbuster resulted in very high revenues and profits for media companies for decades.

13. But Media 2.0 changed all that.  Reduced barriers to entry have increased media supply exponentially.  All this new content has made it easier for us to find what we like online so we actually consume more of it, shifting the demand curve out.  Good news right?  Well, the problem is that the demand curve hasn’t shifted out nearly as much as the supply curve.  The result is a hyper-deflation of media prices.

14. And we are in fact seeing this in action in the online world where supply of advertising inventory is much higher than demand.  And, technologies are being created everyday that make the purchase of advertising inventory increasingly efficient and increasingly complex.  As a result, there has been downward pressure on advertising rates both online and offline.

15. Umair Haque believes that we are witnessing the end of the Blockbuster Age

Three Things Newspaper Companies Need to do Now

Tomorrow, I will join the digital advisory board of a very large, and, assuming they’ve read this blog, very brave newspaper company.  After almost two years of firing my unsolicited opinions at the newspaper industry, I must say, it feels nice to actually be asked for them.

 Here’s some thoughts I’ve been having about newspapers lately:

1.  Newspapers need to stop swimming against the current of the Internet.  It’s a sure way to drown.

Wikipedia lists one of the 8 behaviours associated with downing as “trying to swim in a particular direction, but not making headway.” 

Watching newspapers committing to strategies that are sure to fail is to stand helplessly on the shore as they thrash against wave after wave of inevitable digital upheaval.

Where the Internet is about openness and abundance, newspapers are attempting to recreate scarcity by moving toward the closed environments of iPad apps and paywalls.

Where the Internet is about receiving information anywhere, anytime, News Corp is about to release “The Daily”, an iPad app whose publishing schedule follows an old-fashioned, once every 24 hours news cycle.

Where the Internet is collaborative, many newspapers are continuing to engage in one-way conversations.  In fact, to some, community interaction is considered a “gimmick” rather than the fundamental factor that has lead to the development of the web as we know it.  As Clay Shirky said recently: “We have greatly overestimated the value of access to information and underestimated the value of access to each other.”

I’m not saying don’t ever swim against the current.  Sometimes it’s necessary.  But that kind of risk should be undertaken by only the very strongest of swimmers.

2.  Newspaper executives need to determine an audaciously awesome vision for the future of their companies, and then align their organizations to make it happen.

It’s simple.  To be controlling and defensive is to contract.   To be open and visionary is to expand.

Have you ever noticed that there much of discussion about “the future of newspapers” but no real conversation about “a vision for newspapers”?  We all talk about how the Internet is changing things and how uncertain everything is and how uncomfortable that makes us all feel, but not about how awesome it could be.

Ah, vision.  What happened to that?

Many of the world’s best newspapers were founded on a vision.  The New York Times, the Guardian, and my old workplace the Toronto Star were the products of visionaries who wanted to change their cities and nations for the better.

But somewhere along the way, that changed.

Perhaps newspaper executives are too focused on very real short-term economic issues such as crushing debt and shrinking revenues to form an inspiring long-term vision.  Or perhaps the day-to-day 24-hour news cycle has created a culture where long-term thinking is not required or valued.  Or perhaps newspaper executives have simply been unable to adjust to the ever-shifting world of new media, the resulting lack of understanding and fear leading to paralysis. 

Having a clear vision and aligning resources to it works, even for media properties in the 21^st century.  It resulted in the Atlantic turning its first profit in decades in Q4 of last year. 

What if newspaper executives imagined the best possible outcomes for their newspapers and then aligned their organizations so that they had the means to achieve those outcomes?

And what if they created that vision without ever using the words “still”, “once again”, “regain” or “recapture”?

Perhaps a newspaper could become:

A platform that facilitates the coming together of individuals, organizations and governments to solve a city’s great problems: poverty, education reform, joblessness, environmental degradation, transportation, budget deficits…

A platform that facilitates interactions between consumers and businesses –whoever, whenever and wherever they are.

An interactive and continuously evolving guide to living, working, shopping, playing, parenting and doing business in a city.

Who knows?  But it’s time to start thinking about it.

3.  Journalists need to stop looking at new Internet developments as frightening or frivolous trends and start looking at them as tools that can be used to achieve a vision.

You cannot succeed on the Internet without using the tools that it affords.  In my opinion, refusing to use these tools is the same as refusing to use a telephone, tape recorder or word processor.

Social Media.  Many a journalist hates Twitter because “it’s not journalism”.  I honestly don’t know if it’s journalism or not.  What I do know is that it’s a fantastic tool for disseminating information, rallying communities and tracking trends.

Aggregation/Curation.  I can’t understand why newspapers have not sought to create a Huffington Post – like aggregation site around not just news but also vertical content areas such as parenting, health, automotive, sports, business, etc.  These sites would attract loyal and engaged users and deliver advertisers a healthy ROI with minimal cost to the publisher.

Online Gaming.  Newspapers could use online game dynamics to engage a community in solving a city’s large problems.  Before you dismiss the notion outright, watch Jane McGonigal’s TED Talk on how “Gaming can Make a Better World” and then consider the implications of Cubeduel’s “Who would you rather work with” game built on the LinkedIn platform.

If I were a newspaper executive trying to align my resources to achieve an audaciously awesome future, my next hires would be community managers, curators and game designers.

What would you tell a newspaper company executive team if you had the opportunity?

 

 

I Love You Earl, but Engagement is an Activity, not a Statistic

Newspapers are places where marketing and branding are not only given little value, they are often viewed with suspicion. I remember being told not to call the paper a “product” in front of people from the newsroom.  Unless it’s their face on a billboard or bus somewhere, many journalists believe that they are above marketing (though who can deny that a headline isn’t the same thing as a tagline).

As such, it is nearly impossible for a marketer to discuss the need for brand attributes, brand positioning and brand statements at a newspaper.  And 10 years ago, as a lowly newspaper marketer, I was growing increasingly frustrated with my inability to communicate the importance of doing so.

Then I came a across a speech given by INMA CEO Earl J. Wilkinson in which he stated that newspapers reflect and affect the communities they serve. 

I fell in love. 

No one speaks and writes more poetically and passionately about the power of newspapers than Earl.  Though as much as I loved the notion of newspapers reflecting and affecting the communities they served, I felt that notion was incomplete. 

Newspapers also connect the communities they serve. 

At one time, these connections abounded: politicians and voters, cops and witnesses, performers and audiences, buyers and sellers, landlords and renters, the unfortunate and the generous, the bereaved and the comforting.

The newspaper’s ability to reflect, affect and connect a city and the people who live there became my marketing mantra.  It was our purpose, our strength and our unique selling proposition.  I spoke of it whenever I could, and across the organization people got it.  It had resonance, clarity and authenticity.

Ten years later, we don’t speak of connection so much as we speak of engagement.  But really, they’re the same thing.

And this week, Earl posted a piece on his blog lamenting the newspaper industry’s current inability to measure engagement.  He focused on how old media metrics don’t apply online:

Metrics, metrics everywhere.  We’re drowning in data.  Research budgets have been cut, so there aren’t enough smart people around to make sense of it all.  Our instinct is that we’re reaching more people than ever before.  Yet instead of brand loyalty, we’re fighting for every second of attention with more and more granular pieces of content with sensationalized headlines which turn out to be our biggest marketing weapon (what did “sex” and “headless chickens” have to do with last night’s city council meeting?).

All we want to do is make a difference.  Yet we can’t sleep at night because we have no idea what level of engagement we have with an audience we can’t quantify or weave together in an adequate enough storyline to monetize.

Sigh.

While I’m thrilled that Earl agrees with me about headlines being taglines, I must admit that I’m shocked that a piece about digital engagement didn’t have a single reference to social media.

Engagement is not a thing to be measured, it is a thing to be practiced (well yes, and then measured – but first practiced).

Earl, I hope I can help you the way you helped me all those years ago.   This is all you need to know:

Old marketing is archery, new marketing is ping-pong.

(Though I would very much like to, I can’t take credit for this simple yet brilliant observation.  I found it on SlideShare in a social media presentation by Jay Baer.)

As I wrote last month, a failure to embrace community will become a leading cause of death for newspapers.  The potential for meaningful audience engagement has never been greater than it is right now.  But I’m afraid that convincing newspaper execs that ping-pong is necessary is even more difficult than teaching them about branding.

Here’s hoping Earl buys-in and becomes a social media evangelizer.

Then we can all sleep better.