five drivers of change in news engagement and share-ability

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introduction
Our initial research in the area of news, social media and paid content has uncovered a range of issues and opportunities worth considering in the context of a future social media strategy. This document outlines five emerging subjects: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Personality First Subject Fragmentation Curation Nation Eventisation Good Looking Stories

Prepared by Publicis Mojo. August 2011

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1.personality first
Ever since the early days of social media, many in the media industry have expressed the gloomy view that social media would level the playing field and usher in the age of citizen journalism. They warned that average people, armed with social technologies, would displace professional journalists, possibly even render a vital profession obsolete. These doomsdayers couldnt have been more wrong. Recent events suggest that elite journalists, particularly those with personality, Interesting to note that Glenn Becks news website (The Blaze) was getting Some in the media industry are citing the recent career moves of Oprah Winfrey and the controversial Glenn Beckboth of whom have recently started their own networksas early indication that personality-driven news networks might be the way of the future. can be even more marketable than the networks and the mastheads that they work for.

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Consider cherrypicking high-profile writers, allowing them a greater degree of editorial opinion, giving them a format that allows them to convey their personality, and marketing them as a personal news source. The aim would be to build a base of followers loyal enough to pay a nominal fee to hear their brand of news.

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more traffic than his network, Fox (Fox Nation). Now, Becks fans pay to follow him via social channels, on mobile,

and online video via a new network which is spearheaded by Beck himself: GBTV.com. http://goo.gl/VCZ9c The Personality-driven approach seems to be well-suited to the current fragmented media landscape. Objective facts are distributed quickly and are no-longer ownable. Access to news personalities, on the other hand, can be kept exclusive and attractive to subscribers.

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2.subject fragmentation
For many years, newspapers have used a tried-and-tested format: several sections are bundled together and sold as one newspaper. Whats interesting is that newspapers now face competition from several angles. Instead of being replaced by a digital version of itselfa complete virtual newspaper that includes all the same sections that one would expect to find in a real newspaper newspapers are being challenged, section by section, by a number of varying communications technologies For instance: WORLD NEWS is being sought out directly from the sources that we used to syndicate it from: Australian audiences are going directly to The Guardian, BBC and The New York Times for world news. better suited to deliver that content. Which is to say, the communications platforms and technologies that challenge the sports section of a newspaper, arent the same as the technologies that challenge the weather section, and so on.

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The competitive set is widening and becoming more complex. To attract and engage readers, each section will need to

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become more compelling in its own right. In fact, each section of the newspaper might be sold separately, from a different outlet, or costed differently.

BUSINESS NEWS is delivered

Hilton. Practically all celebrities now update their fans immediately and directly via Twitter. The TV guide is built into the digital TV. LIFESTYLE is being impacted by tablet computers including the iPad, which offer a great user experience and through the iTunes store, are able to deliver better-than magazinequality content faster and cheaper than a newsagent can. TECHNOLOGY reviews are offered at more complete product review websites. News is being delivered immediately by websites like Wired and Mashable.com; key note speeches on technology trends are being delivered at TED.com

as alerts and tracked via apps and dashboards. Banking and share trading tools provide insights also as part of their service. SPORTS faces competition from streaming video, IPTV, time-shift viewing, pay-per-view, and video-ondemand. These technologies can be used to deliver highlights or even full games. Twitter is a convenient way to follow tennis and cricket scores on your mobile WEATHER is being provided by mobile apps that are at arms reach, have the users geo-location data, and are very accurate ENTERTAINMENT news is being provided by gossip blogs like Perez

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newspapers are being section, by a number of technologies better that content.

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challenged, section by varying communications suited to deliver

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3.curation nation
In a single minute there are 98,000 + tweets, 1,500 new blog posts, 510,040 comments made on Facebook and 600 videos uploaded on Youtube. Our cup runneth over with content. The challenge now is how to sort and filter through all this content to find what your interested in. In this age of infoglut, we dont need more or better sources. We need a better way to identify and curate credible and relevant content. A few tech savvy media companies, including the Washington Post, found that by editorially curating quality social media channels, they could cut out the noise associated with a raw Twitter feed and still relay key information at Internet speed. The Oslo Attacks

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Washington Post created its own curated Twitter list of Norwegian journalists, a crisis expert and an American translator. None of whom had any association with the Washington newspaper. http://goo.gl/prbfz Google Art Project

The Guardians Comment Network

British newspaper The Guardian have created a hub featuring original content from the publication, as well as content from affiliated sites. http://goo.gl/2T37p

Curate and share your own collection of masterpieces from the worlds most acclaimed art museums. http://goo.gl/HujCJ

Reinvent what it means to curate content. Develop a curation strategy that will help consumers to discover and value your content, over the abundance of content already out there.

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4.eventisation
Broadcasters, the film, music and gaming industry have been turning the release of new content into a major event since the dawn of time. Pre-promoting their wares, weeks, months, sometimes in even years in advance in a bid to capture that all elusive audience when it matters most, opening night/week. More recently politicians and publishers of the written word are following suit to grab the attention needed in those all important moments to win votes and make the bestsellers list. To build anticipation for the launch of his book Decoded Jay-Z teamed up with Bing. The autobiography was seeded out into the real world one page at a time in a number of innovative ways, on billboards, on the Bing/Decode Jay-Z

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bottom of swimming pools, wrapped on a car and even on custom made Gucci jackets. Fans were able to track down each new page through Bing maps and clues left within the search engine and social media sites. As a result the book hit the best sellers list for 19 straight weeks. Jay- Z grew his Facebook fans by one million and Bings search queries grew by 11% in just one month. http://goo.gl/sTav9 The New Yorker

reach and appeal, establishing a new acquisition channel by including it in the iTunes app store. Glee

Glee produced a Madonna tribute episode called The Power of Madonna. To pre-promote the episode they created a remake of her Vogue music video featuring one of the key characters, cheerleading coach Sue Slyvester. The video was a social The Digital Revolution: An iPad Anthology is the inaugural collection of technology articles curated by the New Yorker. While part of their traditional subscription-based content model, theyve opened up the series phenomenon, delivering the highest ratings of the series for the show. An accompany EP featuring Madonna covers was released with the airing of the show, selling 98,000 copies in its first week.

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Drive trial and incremental revenue amongst people who are reluctant to commit, by eventizing one off specials or serialised content.

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more recently politicians and publishers of the written word are following suit to grab the attention needed in those all important moments to win votes and make the bestsellers list.

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5.good looking stories

As technology continues to raise our expectations of news, the way a story looks is becoming just as important as the story itself. No longer just an act of reading, news consumption is now a multi dimensional, multi sensory experience. Brian Storm, founder of multimedia Bringing design thinking to news reporting and storytelling can dramatically increase audience engagement and share-ability. More importantly, art direction can add a layer of own-ability and value to otherwise un-own-able content. storytelling publication MediaStorm comments, when everyone has access, that is disruptive and causes chaos. Access is the territory that journalists used to own and now they look at what is happening with the crowd. Now the crowd has the access and the tools to report the news. Storytelling and design however are not yet commoditised. These areas present huge opportunities for journalists and news organisations to take the lead.

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This doesnt make me fearful; it makes me excited. We, as journalists, also have to elevate our game. From my perspective, this actually helps longform in-depth journalism since the crowd is less likely to go that direction. In fact, theyre taking some of the burden off of us in producing and discovering the things that waste our time. For me, the larger question is why we are wasting our time and skills covering stories that the crowd is all over. Why are we, as professional journalists, allocating our resources for such daily, perishable stories? We should be allocating them for things

that are in-depth, investigative and require the kind of expertise and professionalism that we have. http://goo.gl/rlcMb Storm also discusses the link between high quality, designed content and share-ability: Your friends are trusted sources. Theyre helping to screen a massive amount of information that you have access to, helping to filter in the good stuff, which again is why I really believe quality is the key. If you just push out a bunch of drivel, no one is ever going to forward it to a friend.

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Design, art direction and multimedia story telling will help shape the future of news. This years Best Designed

Newspaper in the World according to the Society of News Design, is an example of a publication that has gone beyond smart design to make newspapers more vibrant and relevant. It is designed like a beautiful piece of music. It has the discipline to play only the high notes that matter most. http://goo.gl/dLr61

Arguably, news design will move in two separate directions; design for efficiency and design for storytelling and engagement. The later provides an opportunity to premiumise content and create greater differentiation for publications.

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it is designed like a beautiful piece of music. it has the discipline to play only the high notes that matter most.
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thank you

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