Engage or die
The entry of traditional media giants
In the UK, at least, Heather Hopkins sees some hope in the numbers: “The Telegraph, The Guardian, The Times and The Sun are seeing strong growth in visits to their websites year on year, so although they really need to figure out how to compete in this new environment, it’s not curtains for these brands yet.”
The battle for attention
Timo Soininen leads Sulake, the 3i-backed Finnish company which owns Habbo – a virtual world that attracts over 7 million teenage users a month world-wide. He understands the challenges facing traditional media players: “All of the big companies want to be where their target audience is, which is why some of them have been making acquisitions. Good content will always play a big role but the fact is that certain forms of broadcast media will suffer a lot.
“Take youth magazines as an example. They used to be trendsetters but are now increasingly vanishing from the face ofthe earth. They’re being replaced by virtual communities, where you can tailor-make your environment and it’s much more interactive and immersive than a weekly magazine.”
Learning to let go
Richard Rosenblatt recognises the challenges traditional media companies face but foresees a bright future – if they learn to let go: “Traditional media companies have got the assets to make very successful online media businesses. The problem, typically, is they hold their content so tight and put so many restrictions on it, like the music industry did, that people just go away.
“Provided traditional media companies embrace the true democratisation the web creates, I think they sit in a pretty strong position. Everyone I talk to from traditional media is very focused on it, which is a huge difference from a few years ago where they thought it would never really take off.”
A continuing conversation
For Jeff Henry, who is Managing Director at ITV Consumer (see box), the adaptation to user-generated content is a change of gear, not a switch of mindset: “For ITV, user-generated content is not new. Probably one of the most famous brands in this area is home-video show You’ve Been Framed. The idea of people being given a window by a broadcaster has existed for a long time.
“What’s changed is the explosion of delivery mechanisms and the ease of people’s ability to voice their opinions. That’s allowed us to remain a creator of guided content while also facilitating a new conversation with viewers. It’s very much something that is integrated: it doesn’t overpower what we do, but it does capitalise on that new conversation, which is now an essential part of what a modern broadcaster does.”
Building skills and engagement
At Reed Business, preparations for the online battle go back to the turn of the century. Peter de Monnink recalls: “Six years ago, it was obvious to us that the game will be online and you can only win if you understand online. So we massively improved our competency level and our focus in the online space.
“Offline, content is driven by surprise – surprising readers with quality content in a magazine. Online, content is more driven by user intent, so we make sure they can find what they’re looking for. Ultimately, we skew our content creation towards that dynamic, to make sure our engagement metrics are favourable for the brand and therefore for the user.”