…say leading publishers. That was the sentiment coming out of last weeks AOP summit at the Business Design Centre in London. The key point here is who is doing the talking. In much the same way that the oil industry might say “fossil fuels are vital for the world’s future” – there’s a clear and vested interest at work here. The FT.com Managing Director Rob Grimshaw said,
“I can’t see how it’s possible to make the pure advertising model work unless you have enormous scale. Publishers have to find other ways of making money.”
It’s interesting to note that Grimshaw doesn’t seem to have considered a) working towards an enormous scale or b) innovating a new platform; it’s the lack of creativity I find the most frustrating. If the MD hasn’t got the answers he doesn’t deserve to be in his lofty position, it’s time to start firing the old firm and promoting the juniors.
“You’ve got to pay for it” seems to be the only answer big media hitters can come up with, and so far, in the history of all things internet, no one has ever paid for anything. The problem I see with their pricing model is the clear generation gap. They might get some people over the age of 40 to pay for their content – but aren’t these the same people who still buy their newspapers? How do they plan on attracting a younger audience who grew up reading blogs, reddit, and digg?
The quick fix solution of slapping a price tag on their content is like throwing paper on a dying fire, the party will continue for a brief comforting period followed by its swift and inevitable collapse into grey dust. They’ve really got to get creative to keep the party going – install some disco lights, hire a DJ, hand out some goodies and amass a large following and once you’ve got them there, sell things to them.
OK, so it’s not the best analogy, but I’m sure you see my point.
The music industry has been as slow to react to the changing times as the printed media industry has. They expend all of their energy clinging desperately to whatever influence they have left to point at pirates and content thieves and cry unfair, all the while startups like hypem, last fm and spotify take it upon themselves to sort things out. To take an Eddie Izzard analogy, the mainstream media have been demoted from the driving seat to cleaning the windscreen at the traffic lights dreaming of how it could have been.
The innovation and experimentation has got to start today. Start thinking “how are we going to do this without a paid model?” My answer would be to let your brands become conglomerates of smaller ones – give your staff the room, support and funding to innovate online platforms. If you’re convinced that money from consumers needs to end up in your pocket, know this – people certainly won’t pay for written content. They’re going to want much more than that if they’re ever to part with their hard earned cash, and what do you currently have to offer them? Very little.
Videos are free on YouTube, music is free on spotify, and television is free on hulu, iPlayer and 4OD so why are people going to pay to read your words? They’re not.
Companies that have innovated are the companies that excite young people so it’s innovation you need to be taking part in. Why isn’t big media doing everything they can to fund UK media start ups? I’d be hesitant to say it’s because they don’t want to be dethroned by a company with an average age below that of their children. Spot.us is an idea that should have been developed by big media, as was tumblr, twitter, vimeo, viddler, kaltura, and wikipedia, but alas, big media has been too busy counting its dwindling chips.
They’ve been immersed for so long in the status quo they’ve forgotten what innovation means, how to do it, and why it’s important. If I were aboard the sinking ship I’d forget the wishful thinking that el’capitanos is going save me. Start frantically designing life rafts to float away and prosper.
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