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I’ve been involved in putting the ZA News media launch together (via client kulula.com) over the last couple of weeks. Yesterday morning at the Grand Daddy in Cape Town we held the very first screening in front of around forty journalists and the show seems to have gone down pretty well. The launch was a bit of a PR challenge as we had several things against us. Firstly nobody from the SABC was going to be brave enough to turn up so that takes off a lot of TV and radio targets. Also the show is being hosted on Mail & Guardian Online which is a competitor to both traditional print and online publishers. It’s credit to Zapiro and team that the concept was strong enough to still attract competitors to the launch (and also says something positive about SA media).
Choosing the online route (even if it wasn’t first choice) takes the show into really interesting territory and makes it pretty unique. The show will go out between Tuesday and Saturday every week so it requires the kind of production team traditionally only TV could put together. I think the show is going to hopefully be seen as the tipping point where this type of content is viable online (thanks to sponsors) and can bypass traditional media (with all the political restraints that go along with it).
I’ve had some interesting conversations with South African journalists recently around the future of magazines. For a web geek I’m a huge fan of magazines (and must spend about R500 a month on them) so I’m not a believer in a purely digital future for media (in fact i think the idea is pretty sad). You can’t take laptops in the bath on a Sunday morning… But I think that any publisher that sees themselves as just producing a magazine is in for some serious trouble. A great publication to me is one that lives beyond the pages, yes obviously on the web, but also at events, in products, in documentries, or just when a member of the team opens their mouth in public. Monocle magazine is a great example living in print, online, podcasts, a shop, limited edition products etc.
One way to look at the future of media is to look at a magazine brand as a network formed amongst people with shared interests and lifestyles. All the output of the media in whatever shape is designed to feed this network with conversation points, inspiration and ways of bringing the network together. A step further is to take that network to the point where readers can start forming relationships with each other brought together by the media. A magazine like Destiny is edging towards this and has huge potential to bring likeminded, ambitious women together – not just in faceless chats but in real-life. Seventeen magazine with their urban scouts network is also heading in this direction with younger readers.
Media, merged with social media, has potential to become the gentleman’s (or woman’s) club of the future. From a brands point of view it will be very appealing to work with a magazine that isn’t just consumed in a one-way flow of information but that has a tight-knit community of followers that regularly interact with each other. I’m pretty convinced that magazines that survive the “death of print” will have found clever ways to form communities out of their readers and created relevant ways for brands to interact with them.
Didn’t make it the Vice magazine launch party myself but as you can see it was full of Cape Town’s young and hip, finger-shape throwers. As Ace (publisher) rightfully points out these people know their way around a bottle of hair conditioner. Shot by idoidea.
Although i’m slightly surprised that a globally aware mag like Monocle hasn’t realised for some of its followers its actually winter i’m enjoying their new more entertainment focused summer podcasts. They’ve also switched from uploading on a sunday to a friday. You can download via itunes or the monocle website.
I have noticed phrases like “online is the way everything is going” a few times over the last week, both from advertising types and publishers. I had plenty of opportunity with the latter at the web 2.0 conference in Cape Town last week. Every time it’s said with a bit of gloom and wistfulness for the old days of television ads and/or the rustle of broadsheets on a Sunday Morning.
I feel sorry for these people because they obviously love the work they do and they feel the weight of doom and kids with iphones bearing down upon them. A good point in this weeks Digital Edge podcast was that media doesn’t work like that if you look at history. Cinema wasn’t killed by TV or internet piracy (in fact its pretty healthy), There is far more broadcast footage being shot these days than ever before (its just going online more). And radio (if you broaden it to include podcasts) is actually thriving.
Based on my demographic study of one, radio consumption has actually shot up dramatically over the last year. It could be the rapid approach of middle age youth of course but actually think not. Audio is relatively cheap to produce so its quite easy to build shows around specialist areas of content (that old Long Tail thing). So rather listen to crap on 5FM during the day in the car I listen to downloaded shows. And if I have stuff to do round the house I often plug my ipod into the stereo to accompany it. It’s a great medium for multi-taskers (which is the main occupation of the noughties it seems).
My regular weekly consumption is something like this now:
Sunday:
- Download the (excellent) new Monocle Weekly podcast and listen to it lazing on the stoep (with coffee)
- Also use the BBC iplayer to listen to Radio 4 or Radio 6 while I read the paper
Monday:
- Download the Digital Edge podcast (listen to it while making food some point during the week)
Tuesday/Wednesday:
- Get the latest two episodes of Beats In Space via itunes (Tim Sweeney’s excellent space disco show on a New York college radio) I listen to this mostly while driving around.
- Also get the Media Guardian’s (UK) Tech Weekly podcast which again listen to while making food or doing the chores required to keep my crumbling Victorian bungalow from returning to the dust.
Thursday/Friday/Saturday:
- As most of the podcasts I follow come out earlier in the week if i need new stuff by this point i’ll pay a visit to Myspace and let a page stream tracks (DFA for example), Download Digital Planet from the BBC, or listen to Tiga (if a new episode is available) or Modcast.
And just to show its not only me living in this brave new world i’ve checked with my mum and she downloads The Archers (long running radio soap opera) to listen to while she does the ironing regularly.
So my advice to those weeping into their pillows about dying media is cheer up and transfer your skills (the new world ain’t that different).
I’ve heard/read a number of bloggers question the future of blogs recently – some of them writers of very well read international sites with tons of readers. While I don’t think blogging was a fad that’s going to vanish anytime soon, I do think there are a number of trends at play re-shaping the blogosphere as we know it:
Media blogs:
Traditional media owners took their time but have now caught up with the amateur bloggers and taken the best elements of the quick fix, personally written blog and combined it with some appealing new qualities (like the ability to write). Alot of the content now floating around the blogosphere is actually originally generated by journalists that are getting paid to do it. As a blog reader i’ve found myself increasingly cutting out the middleman blogs and going straight to a few insightful content producers writing on topics that I follow (most of them are written by journalists).
Progs:
At the same time many of the key non-journalist bloggers have been around for many years now and have grown from amateur commentators to what i’d call professional bloggers (proggers?): they have a business model based around blogging. Many of these now have the scale and feel of a media company (not necessarily a bad thing) psfk.com for example. Some have actually become media companies such as The Huffington Post. For new bloggers theses sites are pretty hard to compete with as they dominate Google search results on any topic they consider to write about. At best new blogs can hope to grow their audience by acting as a feeder blog (one referenced by these super blogs).
Microblogging:
Twitter is one of the key agents of change in the blogosphere. Many blogs were based around re-posting others content. Twitter does this faster and more efficiently and is much less hassle than typing into wordpress etc. I suspect many (lazy) bloggers that weren’t producing original content themselves are switching over to Twitter to share links.
The future:
Original content on a specialist area of interest for me is the future of blogs. Unless blogs have a unique perspective and a stream of content that isn’t simply regurgitated from The New York Times or engadget I think they’ll start to fade away as blog readers become more settled in their online reading habits and stick with a small number of trusted sources.
(as a non-journalist/progger I of course realise the irony of this post but at least i didn’t pinch it from Gaping Void etc etc)
Update: Bloggasm recently did a quick survey on leading blogs which points out how they are regurgitating content rather creating original stories.
Deloitte recently released their predictions for the media & entertainment industry. As you might imagine it is somewhat gloomy particularly for traditional media industries struggling to get to grips with digital distribution (e.g. print media and the music industry). However there are some silver linings in there:
Quick fix digital entertainment (not including music sales which are considered pretty much screwed):
the last two times the economy experienced a downturn, movie ticket and DVD sales went up. It is likely that people will continue to indulge themselves in the small pleasures of DVD consumption, interactive game-playing, online entertainment, books, social networking and television while eschewing big-ticket items such as cars, refrigerators and computers.
Advertising:
Advertising, which is a critical revenue source, is both under threat and faced with incredible opportunities. The traditional advertising segment has been struggling for some time and will continue to struggle into 2009 with the conclusion of the U.S. presidential election and the turmoil in the automotive and financial sectors, which are among the top advertising spenders. Online advertising is growing fast, as evidenced by 26 percent growth in 2007.3 Yet with some advertising budgets locked into longer term contracts, the ability to shift more advertising spend online could be limited. Mobile advertising, which to date has failed to gain traction, could offer the much-needed growth opportunity in 2009.
Advertising budgets will go down, but guerrilla marketing and other innovative platforms for reaching consumers may thrive.
I mentioned Mario Garcia a few posts back. While browsing through his blog I came across one his more recent projects – the launch of Next in Lagos, Nigeria. The video (shot for its launch party) gives the behind the scenes view of the paper which goes from a daily tabloid during the week to a supplement crammed broadsheet at weekends.
Although the video doesn’t go into the digital side of Next this is also pretty progressive with plenty of multimedia content (example below).
There is an interesting interview with Mario Garcia in this weeks Monocle podcast (episode 3) on the future of media. Mario basically spends his time consulting around the world with publishers to transform ailing newspapers. The interview is well worth a listen (as is the rest of the podcast). But the gist of it is basically this:
- The daily newspaper is going to become thinner (or disappear completely) as most people turn to the web (and mobile web) as their source of breaking news (Think of The Times here in South Africa)
- Newspapers will be more about analysis rather than breaking stories
- The weekend edition is still very viable as the sunday reading of papers is a much loved habit
- Publishers should be considering how they expand their trusted brands out of print (mobile and online)
The message I get from this (and something we’ve been talking about at work) is content is really becoming divorced/loosened from their traditional channels. The more accessible the content can be made the more successful the publisher will be (assuming its business model can still make money from it). For example when I lived in London I read the Observer every weekend and usually bought the Saturday edition (I rarely got the week edition). These days I only really consume the Guardian via its podcasts: I listen to Tech Weekly every week and occasionally dip into Media Guardian and Music Weekly. I do visit the website as well but only occasionally.
So the main message I guess is publishers aren’t in the newspaper business they’re in the news telling business.
Mario writes an interesting blog at garciamedia.com
Having mentioned crowdsourced marketing in my trends for 2009 I thought this was pretty interesting. Current TV is a (mostly) user generated web and satellite TV channel/media company. Think Wayne’s World 2.0 run by Al Gore. The production of the more popular clips is pretty much what you expect from a professional channel (such as MTV for example).
One of the most interesting aspects of the whole thing is the user generated ads the station runs. Basically a brand provides the brief and then lets Current TV users generate the ad. A whole bunch of resources from production hints to music and sound clips are provided and the best ones (as chosen by the brand) get aired.
Check out this example for Nikon ( HP, L’oreal, T-Mobile and Toyota have also all given it a shot).
