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Interesting that on social media, companies like Business Insider, overlay a summary of a video in text as well. So when videos auto play, usually on wifi, customers can engage in their content without having to click through to the video.

And in other news

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I read the news today.  Nothing extraordinary there. For a change. But there was something extraordinary that struck me on this typically muggy New York summer day. I counted back and each of the 9 articles I had read through the day were between 5 different websites, only one of which was an actual publisher in the traditional sense.  The other 4 were social websites – Facebook, Twitter, Linked in and a Google newsletter.

It wasn’t always like this. I used to be a loyal reader of the BBC. I would read the BBC online sports, news, world, politics, and science and technology sections daily.  If they had made it a paid subscription abroad, I would have paid for it. This year not once have I typed bbc.com in my chrome address bar.

Within the last 6 months, there’s been a remarkable number of brands who are getting into the ‘news’ arena and who traditionally are not publishers. 5 major social media companies have all announced their push towards delivering content, in various ways.

Apple news announced it was launching a brand new home and an app for news organisations.  A sub plot to this is the Apple watch. Together, that’s intelligence and data from 63 million users in the US.

Facebook Instant Articles launched in May where publishers would let Facebook host their news and video directly. Their intelligence: 55 million customers.

Snapchat, debuted Snapchat Discover, a new space where around a dozen publishers publish stories directly into the app, specially designed and formatted to look Snapchatty.  Just to give you an idea of their size , Snowpocalypse  a video story stitched together from many users’ individual stories had 24.79 million views. (America’s most popular TV show Sunday night football averages 12 million).

In June Youtube launched Newswire, a channel featuring verified Eyewitness videos. Its feed will include videos focused on news, weather and politics.

Google is out with a new update to Google Trends, its tool for monitoring all the billions of things people are searching for around the world.

Apart from these big 5, platforms such as Reddit , Wikipedia, Quora, Tumblr, Imgur, Instagram, Vine, Pinterest and messaging apps are competing for content delivery too with interviews and in depth information readily available especially for those using search as their news consumption.

Two questions.

  • When an advertiser wants targeted and specific information on consumers why won’t he go to Facebook, Apple or Youtube instead of a publisher like the New York Times or the BBC?
  • And if a circulation director wants to understand the behaviour of his or her customers, where they engage, what they share most, who they are, how long they spend per visit, what is their conversion rate and what their lifetime value is, to truly generate a set of data and provide the right content to exactly who wants it, will she have enough of this data herself?

Many answers

There’s definitely not a single answer that smart publishers could use to retain their customers and not lose all the data and the revenue (subscription and ad-generated ) associated with it. I’ve listed the top 4 that I think will help answer those questions.

Loyalty: In today’s hyper-competitive markets, cultivating loyalty with a company’s best customers is the ambition of every CEO. Far too many times loyalty programs are just perks that dangle in front of customers forcing them to climb a ladder of transactions proving their devotion. Loyalty however is a worthwhile caring relationship at a very basic human level and that is what people want. 

According to Bond Brand’s Loyalty 2015 report, the average customer is enrolled in 13.3 programs, up from 10.9 programs in 2014. However, the number of programs in which they are active decreased from 7.8 to 6.7.

It’s not about points or free shipping or money back guarantees but personal interactions at every level be it customer service with a complaint or customer experience online.  The marketers who win the customer relationships of the future will do so by personalizing their offerings to a consumer’s preferences, habits and environments, and managing that consumer’s requirements over the longer term. It’s about creating value so that a customer keeps coming back. At The Economist we constantly use data to understand how customers engage with our products, their experience online and how we can improve overall customer experience.

Paywall : A paywall sometimes is exactly what it sounds like, a blunt thud customers come to when they’re interested in consuming content.There’s been good debate if paywalls are actually keeping customers in or out.

I believe publishers and content creators should have a red carpet treatment to customers by getting to know them, understanding what they really want to read and when and how and then providing them with that content. The result is to create value with consumers first and then they – like I would for the BBC – WANT to pay for better richer content. Content flows better in the journalism space and customers will pay more.

A good idea would be to pick a low traffic period and offer no paywall for that period to all traffic to the website. Of course, during that time the product experience should be well thought of, leading and nurturing readers to the right areas they would want to go and going that extra bit over the top to develop a relationship. It would also involve quantitative and qualitative surveys, 100’s of A/B tests and content related scenarios. That data is then used to work on an over the top quality relationship with potential customers.

A red carpet to engaged subscribers means they will rush to pay at the door.

Native advertising: High .Value. Content. There’s nothing like it. If content creators can produce great content like Buzzfeed, VICE or The Economist do, then they won’t have to rely on banner advertising or page views. Good content means building the perfect advertising content meaning a data-rich audience and happier clients ready to pay for advertising.

 Scale services: I attended the New York Tech Disrupt event a few weeks ago and a VC there whose name I forget gave an very important message: VC’s will rush to fund startups if they believe the companies have even a hint of increasing scale. It’s the same for publishers. Be it live events or programs, discounts to museums or courses, publishers need to scale their services apart from a one trick pony of journalism. The Economist is already looking into all these spaces with their upcoming global event in diversity, their launch of the a career website helping intellectually curious people progress in their careers and improve their skills and most recently a portal that provides courses by leading experts in their fields.

PS: I reference mostly publishers above but I do think the case will be true for any content creator in media. 

All views are my own.

Young Invincibles

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Thanks to a friend and ex-colleague, I recently got the chance to volunteer and sit on a panel to listen and gauge the business plans of some candidates from the Stern New York University (NYU).  These budding entrepreneurs, the oldest of whom was probably 25, had all done a course at NYU about a specific business that they wanted to start, and had to present their plan at the end of the course complete with financials, loyalty program and long term sustainability.

Businesses ranged from pet care to food delivery to travel apps and came from either a personal experience where they felt there was a gap in the market or from a particular passion.  Some of the candidates already had the business in place, some had the infrastructure and were just waiting on funding to start. I listened attentively to about 12 of them, each one unique in their own way (All were unique but not all were practical).

What struck me were 2 things really.

The first was how much energy and passion each one of them had in their own business ideas. Almost all the candidates would have at least one or 2 people working for them within the first year. This almost never happens, especially if it’s primarily an online business. They were asked fairly grueling questions that would make serial entrepreneurs ponder, but they all had an answer for everything. I found out later that an astounding 54% of American millennials want to start a business or have already started one. There’s even a website called Young Invincibles that represents the interests of 18-34 year olds who want to set up their own ventures. It’s a national organization today, and tries to ensure that the millennial’s perspective is heard when political decisions about their collective future are being made.

I once heard Jeff Bezos speak and he said that the greatest advantage any business owner had over all of the qualities it took to set up a successful business was youth. The ‘youth’ I suppose that would give the courage to be risky and make bold decisions and perseverance to stand and continue if they got hit. It was refreshing and astonishing to see all that zeal and enthusiasm live in front of me.

The other thing that struck me was the number of oversights most of them had on basic cash flows and on their P&L or balance sheet. I’m not an accountant but manage a budget and could easily see gaps in their balance sheets. A simple question like what the cost per customer was (all of them knew the profit per customer) or how they would account for insurance were clearly not thought of. Even if they were, most had lofty numbers that wouldn’t make sense in the practical world. Almost all of them had made a profit in their second year in a P&L that included fixed costs (some of which were huge).  I certainly don’t think that’s the be all and end all of setting up a business but I’m sure knowing what you’re getting into financially CORRECTLY would help.

All said, it was fascinating to watch and even got me to put a couple of ideas to paper. I worked out a P&L of my own and a little mini balance sheet from one of my ideas. With 1 employee (me) working every single free minute I got, it would be 3 years until I earn some profit (about $20k!). And that was with about 20 assumptions all suiting me!

Successful entrepreneurs it seems have a good mix of it all and not just a well worked out balance sheet or plain energy and ambition. Which is also probably why they are out there finding out about cash flows and negotiation skills while we’re writing and reading about it in wonder.

Intuition and Science

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Everyone in marketing is talking about big data. Scratch that. Everyone concerned with anything is talking about big data. The Economist recently said that the big data business is worth $100 billion. Huge.

But we need to remember that however much data you have about your customers or your patients or your pet cats, you still have to make decisions based on your instinct or intuition.

And it’s not all about focusing on ‘just’ the data. I work in a data driven company, but we’re also good taking decisions by what we intuitively feel is the right thing to do. And I can clearly tell the difference between a leader who doesn’t purely rely on facts but also goes on a faith that they’ve built up over the years. Years of experiences and failures and successes. And months of understanding the right information.

Intuition is different to guessing. Intuition is knowing all that you need to know in facts, running the analytics and then going with a decision that feels right to you by looking at the larger picture. That you’re comfortable with and that you believe in.  Guessing is taking a decision without the faith or knowledge behind it.

A good example of getting so enamoured by facts is the episode in the UK not too long ago with the big supermarket, Tesco. They have such wonderful data on customers, right down to the size of their socks and their favourite breakfast cereal,  but couldn’t check that their beef was actually made from horse meat. That’s almost fundamental to what’s largely a food store.

Another example is that of Yahoo’s successful CEO Marissa Mayer. When she joined, all the facts (and her team) pointed to building applications for smartphones and tablets via HTML5 –  a single overarching version of the product that could work across any operating system. Intuition however told her that she needed to build native apps, such as Yahoo Mail and Yahoo Weather, that would be used on a different platforms or devices. Yahoo’s growth today outpaces the industry average.It’s a fascinating story.

Building customer loyalty requires understanding big data yes. But it also involves looking at a fish tank as a whole and not just the fish. Study the fish all you want, its eating habits and its swimming habits and its speed and gill to breathing ratio, but if you can’t see that the oxygen tank is working properly, sooner or later your fish will die. Intuition is looking at the larger picture.

Henri Poincaire , the great French mathematician said, ‘it is through science that we prove, but through intuition that we discover’.