Navigating the perfect storm- Challenges, trends & solutions for web newspapers

Introduction and context

The kids who didn’t read papers are now adults, the role of newspapers in people’s lives has shifted, advertisers are thinking differently and people connect differently. The challenges facing the newspaper industry – both print and online – come from all sides. The only solution is that the product at the heart of the newspaper has to leap forward: radical change will let them become relevant to the information needs of consumers in the digital networked society,
and accessible through the channels and techniques that match this new digital behaviour.

Only the newspapers who understand this will survive. Newspaper executives across Europe asked us to translate the landscape into identifiable challenges and solutions as part of our strategy programmes for helping them navigate the markets. This Digital Insight Report covers our approach and includes a few practical examples.

The perfect storm- Why this time, the change is different

The changes in consumer behaviour and advertising thinking that emerged in the mainstream during the last five years are neither cyclical nor generational. These are fundamental shifts in the way our economies and societies work. The digital networked society created new ways of interaction, and yet the models of most newspapers – both online and offline – remains heavily grounded in a world where:

• Information was scarce
• Information needed to be packaged and delivered
• Mass markets shared commonality in the content they wanted from this editing
process
• The supply of media was restricted
• Advertisers needed these classic media channels to reach their audience
• Advertisers did not have the opportunity to go direct to customers
• The economics of publishing created high barriers to entry for new entrants into the
media industry

These changes are neither cyclical nor generational. The only difference between markets is the scale of their impacts so far. Today’s media brands service the transition generation as well as digital natives. They are simultaneously spanning the mass of audience that has a completely different behaviour, the increasingly tiny minority of those whose behaviours are unchanged, and the evolving transition generation whose behaviour shifts further with every
extra hour on Google and Facebook.

The ingredients of the perfect storm

Having worked with online publishers for 15 years, we have been tracking the factors changing this landscape. These can be grouped into four areas.

• Audiences
• Advertisers
• Competitors
• Business models

The newspaper content and business model was built on a set of rules which no longer apply. In each of the four areas fundamental shifts have taken place, permanently changing the roles of newspapers, magazines, television, radio and outdoor media.

Creating the perfect storm

The global recession that triggered a collapse in advertising spend in many countries simply accelerated the inevitable, bringing forwards the effects of those changes and forcing some media groups to confront the need for change earlier. The breadth, depth and length of the recession means few newspapers have the ability to ride out the storm, lacking the financial reserves needed to carry on trading.

The challenges newspapers face stem from fundamental change in:

• The nature of information
• Marketing theory
• Consumer technology
• Media experience
• Social networks
• Cultural identity
• Consumer expectations

That’s why the traditional content models and business models – of those from the Web 1.0 era of online media – lack relevance and will eventually fail.

Danny has been coaching firms in digital marketing for over 15 years. More than 45,000 people have attended his talks and courses in over 30 countries. He set up and ran the UK and European IAB trade associations for almost 10 years, was the pioneering publisher of Telegraph.co.uk, held the Vice Presidency of NBC’s European internet business, and has been a government policy advisor in the UK. He is chairman of the Digital Training Academy that coaches marketing teams to improve their ROI and founder of the Digital Strategy Consulting practice that creates internet marketing strategies for brands. He is a Commissioner at the digital marketing regulator in the UK, and the publisher of Netimperative and Digital Intelligence. He now coaches management teams, helping them accelerate their businesses and transform their organizations. Contact him on Danny@DigitalStrategyConsulting.com or http://uk.linkedin.com/in/dannymeadowsklue