SimonWaldman.net

 

I was asked recently to speak at the Campaign/ APG Battle of Big Thinking. A few publisher types such as myself were tagged on at the end of a day of agency planners pontifications on life, the universe and everything (there was a lot of quantum physics, for some reason). Anyway, this was my contribution. It wasn’t quite in tune with the day – but it went down OK, I think..Some of the stats/info might be out of date. Also – I snaffled lots of the photos in a hurry not thinking about using them online. If anyone has a problem with their use – please contact me.

There is no shortage of reasons to be utterly miserable at the moment in the media world. But, I have been plagued with wreckless optimisim – so I’m here to give you something very rare – a good news story from a media owner..

I believe that if for one second we can look up from, the short term pain we are feeling, and take a broader look at the health of the media industry, we are in a golden era.

We are living in the era of the Great British Media Brand.

I believe this is happening because of a combination of British creativity, the opportunities thrown open by the internet, an increasingly global cultural marketplace – and, of course, the gift of the English language..

And, I believe this is good for consumers. Good for advertisers. And good for the economy as a whole.

I want to start with Matt Damon. In the Bourne Ultimatum. Here he is on the Eurostar, and guess what, he’s reading a copy of the Guardian he bought at Gard Du Nord.

What is he reading you might ask? Is it Polly Toynbee on social policy? Is it Charlie Brooker on why Apple Macs are really Fisher Price computers? Or Hadley Freeman on the fashion pages on whether it’s ok for middle aged men to keep their shirts untucked? [quick answer – no because everyone knows what you’re trying to hide].

No – he is reading none of this. He is a ruthless assassin with a heart of gold and not much interest in fashion, gadgets or the state of the nation’s poorly paid. He’s readings  story about him, Jason Bourne.

Soon he’ll arrive in London and call a Guardian journalist. You’ll see a shot of our offices. You’ll see a bespectacled editor who looks spookily like Alan Rusbridger.

You’ll see our intrepid journalist go off to meet him at Waterloo. Unfortunately he gets killed, while Matt Damon gets away – which is a shame – and possibly not how our PR department might have written the script – but it makes for a much better film than if Matt Damon had got shot and you have to follow the exciting escapades of a Guardian journalist for the next two hours.

And the remarkable thing about this – is that the Guardian is featured at all. Ten years ago, for an American blockbuster, they would either have used the Times ‘Of London’; or created a fictional title – The Bugle, or The Daily Beast.

And why has this happened? Entirely because of the internet. It is only because of the internet that our brand means anything to anyone outside the UK – certainly anyone under 50 – and because of that, they can include the brand because it fits with the story. Even those who have never seen the paper, or perhaps even the website will be aware that this is just the sort of story the Guardian would break.

The truth is that in the national press, a set of titles forged in a phenomenally competitive domestic market, are finding themselves with significant international followings as they forge ahead online.

Over the last year, we have seen the Daily Mail dramatically increase it’s international audience – due perhaps to such insightful investigations as this gem I found on the site today :

“Has ex Blue peter presenter Zoe Salomon used sticky-back plastic to protect her modesty”. Which features no less than three photos just to help us get to grips with this tricky issue.

And by sparking off such comments as – and I quote directly: “ So what has she achieved by wearing such revealing clothes? Imagine her father looking at those pics…..? Will he be proud by looking at her assets? Of course not!” Tops, London, 5/11/2008 16:54

And..
“I think she looks gorgeous, but then here in Australia we can recognise class when we see it!” Bruce McDonald, Melbourne, Australia.

OK – so maybe I’m not the greatest fan of the Mail, but they, errr, certainly seem to know how to keep their audience happy.

But the global audiences of all the national press combined are dwarfed by the BBC, who now have a weekly global news audience – on TV as well as online – of 233 million.

Now, like many commercial media owners, I have plenty to complain about with the BBC – but, you cannot deny their global achievement around news in the last decade has been spectacular.

They are perhaps the greatest British Media Brand of all  – what’s important in this context, is that it didn’t have to be this way. They could have spent the last decade bumbling along in White City with their greatest innovation being a new version of the Generation game – instead, they have become a global creative powerhouse.

There is a similar revolution happening in Magazines – but here it’s more about licensing. Here is Caroline’s boss – Lord Heseltine on the Haymarket site, talking about the increasingly global reach of his brands. I will spare you the full video for the moment – but you can see..

Autotrader in South Korea. F1 Racing in Singapore. FourFourTwo in Nigeria. Stuff magazine in Morocco. [can you believe that – Stuff in Morocco?] WhatCar website in Latvia…

Conceived in Britain. Consumed around the world.

In a different medium, but a similar vein – we are world leaders in the TV formats. According to the latest estimates we have around 40% of the market – way ahead of our nearest rivals – the US and Holland.

Pop Idol, The Weakest Link and, unbelievably, Wife Swap have all been round the world – remade in dozens of countries.

The Office, as you’ll know has been both sold around the world – and remade. As you can see here – in Germany, France, Canada and the US.

I like to think that the internet played a role in the Office’s global success – as you know he holds the Guiness World Record for the most popular podcasts  – and these started initially with the Guardian. Ah yes – Ricky Gervais, he’d be nowhere without  us. But, strangely, you never hear him say thank you!

The current best seller – perhaps the fastest grower of all is the ‘Got Talent’ format – which is everywhere. This is the website of the Belgian version – which, I think you’ll agree, looks like a must-watch.

And even comparatively old formats continue to find new markets. You might have noticed earlier this month that Who Wants to Be a Millionaire is now being launched in Afghanistan – albeit with a total prize of around £12,000…

All of this points to one of our great strengths as a national media industry – we are a formidable creative hot house for media brands, and we are also very good at exploiting them…

We are helped by working in the English language – but, trust me, you couldn’t give the same presentation about Australia, Canada or New Zealand..

But this goes beyond simply licensing and redistributing. Like all great brands, Great British media brands are brilliant at evolving. This goes beyond simply chosing which platform to operate on.

If you were in LA last night, you could have gone to the weekly NME club night, which follows on from the NME Awards that were held in the same city in April.

The NME has broken out of a petty local scrap with other British music mags onto a broader stage – bringing in both the net, and live events.

And if you fancy a podcast – you will notice that the Economist now creates the sixth most popular podcast on iTunes US. That’s the sixth – in total. Ahead of everything. Bigger than BBC World News. Bigger even than Jamie Oliver. Who, while we’re at it is another Great British Media Brand!

The Economist has been a phenomenal flag-flier for the UK – a premium product that has continued to grow in the US, while Time and Newsweek get slimmer and slimmer.The production qualities on its podcast are frankly less then wonderful, but the core ideas and the quality of insight more than make up for it.

The internet too has enabled some of our more ambitious cultural brands to start to become real media brands. Tate is my favourite example.

Tate Modern is the most visited museum of modern art in the world – with around 5m annual visitors, that is about twice the annual visitors of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Every week, hundreds of thousands of people pour into it -  engaging not just with the brilliant art inside, but also with Tate – which has had the foresight to build on this, and if you speak to their marketing director, Will Gompertz – he’ll you how they increasingly see themselves as a media company.

They create their own video – to further the knowledge and understanding of art – around the world. And they do rather nicely in sponsorship as a result.

I would put Tate near the the top of my ‘media brands to watch’ over the next five years.
I think the learning from Tate –and from my next example, is that we know how to keep pushing our media brands forward. To keep them evolving.

Enter Daniel Craig, and James Bond – perhaps the most valuable British media brand of all. Recently re-invented and revamped.

I can’t really add anything to the screeds that have been written about this – other than to point out, just how remarkable it is to have kept this franchise alive and relevant for over 30 years. It is the most formidable act of media brand management.

The ingenuity goes beyond the films to the books – where the originals have been reworked. On the left is the original cover for Casino Royale. In the middle is the 2006 retro edition, and on the right, it’s the Penguin Classics version – ideal for A Level English Literature. Or, more likely  media studies.

But this is mere re-packaging, much smarter has been the introduction of the young Bond books by Charlie Higson, and getting Sebastian Faulks to follow on from Ian Flemming with the release earlier this year of Devil May Care – in both cases, bringing Bond to new audiences..

As we broaden our cultural horizons again – we can see our cultural influence contining to grow. We have a pretty healthy crop of artists in the US top 50 – and fortunately, Simon Cowell is only responsible for one of them.

But, the real example of someone rising from being merely a star to a ‘brand’ has to be Amy Winehouse – the only living popstar (other than Michael Jackson in his Thriller outfit) who has become a staple for Halloween Fancy Dress.

So that is the end of my whistle stop tour. What, you might ask, makes a Great British Media Brand?

There are three things I think are often important.

Brand history helps. If only because it means that when people come to work at the BBC, or the Guardian or the Economist, or the NME – they have more than likely grown up with it; the understand it as a consumer and they are committed to taking it forward, and make it relevant for their word.

At the same time – I should add history can hold you back, if you allow it to. Tate could easily decide it was just a gallery. But it wouldn’t be the same organisation.

Being great on the web helps – not just in terms of distribution and publishing, but in using it as a tool to engage with your audience – and vitally to let them engage with each others.

I should stress that online is not the end game – but it is the easiest way for a media brand to realise it can be more than a local publication.

And finally – success breeds success. The more things people get right, the more they keep getting right. Simon Cowell (unfortunately some might say) is the perfect example of that. So is the BBC, but then so again is the Tate, Haymarket’s licensing programme and the Economist’s podcasts.

If this was just a bit of trumpet blowing – I could stop now.  But it’s a little bit more important that that.
This is not just some triumphal jingoisim And, if you this is not a rehashing of ‘Cool Britannia’ – because, let’s face it, there isn’t much that is cool about Belgium’s got talent.

Actually, this is just about survival.

The world is getting smaller – so we have a chance to get bigger. Not only that, but as our economy is slowing down – so we need to look overseas for growth.

To abuse a quote from Woody Allen –:  ‘Brands are like sharks, they need to keep moving in order to stay alive’ – and for media brands, that means the constant exploration of new platforms, new ideas and new territories.

Above all – thinking internationally, thinking globally, makes you better.

From our point of view, you pay much more attention to what you say about the world, when you know the world is watching you and more than willing to pick you up when you get something wrong.

I make this point repeatedly when people ask me if we’re making any money from our international audience. Or, if  they have a particularly poor grasp of the Englsh language if we’re ‘monetising those eyeballs’.

As important as our immediate revenue figures are – there is much more at stake in the long term.
Not everything is going to work – creatively or commercially. But the alternative – sticking to what you’ve always known, and what you’ve always done is perhaps the greatest failure of all. Fortunately, I think that is hard coded into the DNA of the media brands I’ve talked about today.

And if it is essential for us as media owners, it is also essential for advertisers.

Strong brands, with engaged audiences make the best advertising environment. None of us can claim exclusive access to an audience any more – there are too many alternatives. As a result, we have to compete not just on the scale of our audience, but the depth of our relationship with them – ideally on as many different levels as possible.

And, on a broader scale – the economy needs us. We hardly manufacture anything any more. And now that the financial services sector are either on their knees or   owned by the state – the creative industries are frankly the best hope any government has of a good news story.

So – I want to go back to where I started. I believe that right here, right now – it is time for us to get behind the Great British Media Brands in our midst.
The alternative is just too teeny to contemplate.

Now, there’s a headline to get the pulse racing! paidContentUK picks up on an interesting part of the Lords report on media ownership, which says

News aggregator sites benefit on news gathering done by other organisations, but they do not invest in original content themselves. This is an issue of justifiable convern and we recommend that the Department for Culture Media and Sport should examine the effect of news aggregators and consider how their impact on news gathering might enhance their investment in news. 

 

It’s interesting they came to this conclusion after visiting Google – who pointed out that they only take a small part of the story, and that they take no ad revenue from Google News. 

Sarah Hartley from the MEN did this for a session we had the other week…regardless of who is doing what better than whom, what I find remarkable is just how much innovation there is now in the UK regional/ local market. Completely unrecognisable to the situation a year ago.

This has just been published as an essay in the Reuters Institute publication ‘The Price of Plurality – Choice, Diversity and Broadcasting Institutions in the Digital Age’ (download the .pdf) which is part of the PSB Review . It was actually written at the start of the year, so as well as perhaps being a little old hat for many of the people who might look at this blog, some of it is perhaps a little date now. And, yes, if I was a really good blogger, I’d add all the links to it – but, I’m not. Sorry.

In the 15 years since the arrival of the first web browser, the internet has fundamentally changed the way that we connect with with information, people and organisations.

And the rate of this change is doing anything but slowing down. Billions of pounds spent each year on R&D by the likes of Google and Microsoft; or by venture capitalists looking for the next big thing are driving a continuous process of innovation that is global in scale, but all too often, very local in impact.

At an extreme level – as a result of wizardry in Mountain View, California – I can go to Google Earth to find out who has the biggest garden in our road.

Should I then want to go out to drown my sorrows after finding out that it isn’t me, I can go back to Google type in ‘pubs in esher’ and be presented with a list of 10 fine establishments accompanied with a map showing exactly where they all are.

In both cases, I’m being offered a better local information service than was imaginable even five years ago – even though the providers of that service probably couldn’t even spell the name of the village I live in, let alone know where it is.

Should I seek further consolation, I can then go to WordPress.com, from a San Francisco-based start-up to start a blog about life in Surrey with an inadequately proportioned garden. Or perhaps go on to Facebook and start a support group for the horticulturally-challenged masses of west Surrey.

In both cases, I’m being given the tools to communicate and connect with people in a way that was impossible a few years ago. It still feels like a very local activity – but in both cases it is happening on a global platform.

In each of these examples the critical enabler – for discovering information, for enabling communications and connections – is web-based software. And if I have one prediction to make about the future of local information and communication it is this: ever greater value will migrate to those who provide the software that makes things happen.

This is true of the general information market – but it is even more so with location based activity, for two reasons. The first is that developers like it because our location – whether given explicitly as a postcode or a point on a map – or interpereted from, say, a GPS signal in a mobile device – can be precisely defined, and act as a filter to a vast array of content.

The second reason is because the business people like it. The online local advertising market in the US is forecast to be worth $13bn this year according to Borrell Associates – that is a big market to aim at. And as discussed, a software solution that works in the US will often migrate to the UK with relative ease.

As a result, there is no shortage of start up activity and innovation here.

Much of it comes from a fusion of Yellow pages style directory with a community and review section. Recent years have seen a rash of UK start ups in this areas: WeLoveLocal.com. TouchLocal.com, TrustedPlaces.com, Tipped.com are all offering variations on this theme.

But it goes beyond this. Take four examples of how location acts as a powerful and useful filters: the blog and news aggregator from the US: Outside.in and Everyblock.com, and from the UK: FixMyStreet.com, 192.com

Outside.in takes the mass of blogs out there and allows you to navigate them geographically – asking bloggers to tag their posts by location. The result is a grass-roots up review of a given neighbour hood.

Everyblock.com is a new service, funded by the Knight Foundation, which aggregates masses of public data (eg crime statistics, restaurant public health inspections) and allows you scan these block by block.

FixMyStreet.com is the latest offering from MySociety.org which allows you to type in your postcode and report problems in your neighbourhood immediately to the council.

And 192.com combines a mass of data sources to combine searches on the electoral role, business directories and land registry data. The amount of information that subscribers can gather just from the initial input of a postcode is quite staggering.

Meanwhile, geography is also becoming a critical filter for text, pictures and video.

Many years ago, Topix.net launched in the US, aggregating news from thousands of sources and letting you search by your zip code. Now Google has enterted this market in the US – and in the UK they have just launched a <a href=”http://www.google.co.uk/politics/”>politics site</a> that lets you type in your postcode and get headlines just relating to your constintuency.

At the same time both the photosharing site Flickr, and YouTube now carry geo-data. As a result at the same time as swooping through Google Earth to see how big my neighbours garden is, I can also see YouTube videos according to where they’re from. Think of it as a geographical EPG, and imagine where this might go if all news clips were similarly tagged.

The wealth of content made available online from both traditional providers (newspapers, broadcasters, directory publishers), public bodies and increasingly from amateur providers is ripe for sifting and sorting according to where we live.

And all of this is heading in one direction: making location based information more useful and accessible than ever before.

Which devices this happens on is largely irrelevant. Yes, some of it will be mobile; some of it through the PC and some of it through the TV. In each case, the value chain is slightly different – but the consistent theme is of a proliferation of content, and a shift in value to those who organise it and those who facilitate connections between like minded individuals.

However, this future model is not without its problems – not least for traditional content providers who now find themselves one step removed from consumers and, all too often, advertisers.

Local and regional newspapers, for example, face profound structural challenges as they try to define their role in this new ecosystem. In previous decades they created value by aggregating editorial and advertising and offering exclusive targeted access to a their audience.

Such exclusivity is no more. Advertisers have a host of digital offerings to chose from, and readers have dozens of places to go – not least the BBC’s ever burgeoning digital offerings.

It is convergeance, yes, but not in the ‘gee-whizz-I-can-watch-video-on-my-mobile’ sense of the word. It is a convergeance of what have traditionally been seen as distinct business sectors. Software, broadcast, directories, newspapers, telcos are all treading on each others toes and trying to nudge each other out of the way.

The net result is a structural shift in the economics of traditional local and regional media businesses, and consequently an ever diminishing appetite to invest in strong local journalism.

And this is the nub of the matter. This has to be of concern to all who care about ensuring citizens remain truly informed about their area. Yes, a wealth of local data is being liberated on the web. Yes, a culture of participation is allowing everyone to create and distribute their own content. But the process of journalism is an integral part of local democracy, we will all be poorer is this proliferation be accompanied by a dilution in local and regional news coverage.

It goes beyond this immediate impact on the local market. Regional and provincial journalism is the lifeblood of national journalism. The next generation of lobby correspondents, of reporters who will tell us what is happening in far flung corners of the world, who will win awards for exposing corruption in the City and Whitehall will be groomed on your local Argus, Echo or Star.

The world of blogs and wikis, citizens journalism and user generated content has brought with it the promise of a new world of local content. It is true they have introduced a wealth of new content for search engines and aggregators to collate, and the element of participation has brought a new dimension to the media landscape. Some stars have emerged from this explosion.

But, the brutal truth is that no-one has made this new world of local content work commercially.

In the US, the enthusiasm around citizen journalism on a local scale has been somewhat punctured since one of the movement’s pin-ups Backfence.com folded last year.

n the UK, a start up such as Rick Waghorn’s My Football Writer, which covers Norwich City with wit, verve and unwavering committment is a shining example of regional editorial entreprenerialism, but it is one site around one topic in one region. An exception that proves the rule.

The most commercially successful local digital businesses tend to have one thing in common: they make no significant investment in original content.

That said, publishers and broadcasters on both sides of the Atlantic have appropriated these new tools and ways of working as they innovate and evolve their output for this new local landscape.

We see more video and more community elements and more user generated content. Sites are restructured to become more search engine friendly. Stories, audio and video are geo-tagged. The creative efforts and intentions are now impressive – we can see the creative seeds of the future of local and regional journalism. The question is whether the business model exists to allow these seeds to develop.

Much of this is going to be down to the market. Local advertisers will make decisions whether to spend with their local paper (and its website) or radio station or with Google or any one of the dozens of digital alternatives they are now offered.

But regulation also has a part to play. And I urge anyone who is looking at this market from a regulatory perspective to consider three things.

First: that at a local and regional level we can no longer talk about broadcasting as a discrete market, there is already a converged local information, entertainment and advertising market, and the degree of convergence is only going to increase in the coming years. This affects they way we have to see ownership restrictions, it also affects the way we have to think about the possible market impact of any public service interventions in the local and regional arena..

Second, time is a factor. Regulators need to realise that the coming decade is a period of fragile transformation for local and regional publishers and broadcasters. They are leaving behind the certainties of the past for a future that is at best only 40% defined. They have to bring both readers, listeners, viewers, advertiser and shareholders with them. During this process, any increase in activity in the local markets from the BBC – or, for quoted companies, even the threat of such an increase – will have disastrous consequences.

Third – that innovation needs to be both commercial as well as editorial. The long term challenge for this market place is to develop businesses that both deliver both the public value that we expect from local regional and provincial journalism and the economic value that is critical for the health of UK plc. This has worked in the past, and provided there is the right regulatory environment, there is no reason why it won’t work in the future.

I should stress, finally, that this is about clearing the path for the future, not clinging on to the past. No business has a God-given right to exist. And, in the coming years, it is very likely that we will see some names we once thought immortal fall by the wayside. But we should be aware that what is currently happening in the local and regional media markets is more about revolution than evolution, and requires radical thinking from all involved.

A bit late, I know – but have just had a read of the posts on the Britannica Blog’s: Are Newspapers Doomed? forum. Impossible to read without this from the Onion in mind (thank you SeumasSeamus).

My thoughts? Nicholas Carr’s points about unbundling are on the money (familiar if you have read Blown To Bits). But, the debate is now pretty much meaningless. We’re on a journey. We can’t go back. We can’t stop. We can’t see the end yet. So we might as well carry on, enjoy the view, and make the most of it.