vrijdag 13 maart 2009

Transformation of Media Companies

According to Accenture research and a panel discussion at the 2008 Accenture Global Convergence Forum, media companies need to take four critical steps to be a winner in the-next-generation-media-industry:

  • Focus on strengths and use them across multiple channels
  • Understand and get to know B2C and B2B consumers better
  • Give existing workforce and new talent as much autonomy as realistically possible.
  • Get the cost base right.

While an exciting future may loom on the horizon, there are major challenges around strategic execution, the panelists said. In the “age of execution,” the potential to relate to and engage with B2C and B2B consumers is more profound than ever before. Media companies must be prepared to change much more and much faster than in any other time in their recent history.

Recently, Patty Maes of MIT woke up Microsoft by demonstrating that their vision of 2019 is already technically possible today.....and within reach for every consumer. The wearable device of Patty Maes - that enables new interactions between the real world and the world of data - costs only about $350.

Will Apple bring us our 'next level Iphone' and introduce an Apple designed Patty Maes' device this autumn?


Proliferating technology is enabling ubiquitous media. This, in turn, is facilitating the shift in consumption habits and content participation and creating huge growth opportunities for media companies.

Media companies will need to transition from analogue, offline delivery to integrated, file-based, digital enterprises. Media companies that want to survive are well-advised to start their path toward it today if they have nor done so already.

But turning around media organizations is a huge, and typically slow, undertaking. To learn more about how prepared the industry is to make this transformation and take advantage of industry change, Accenture interviewed more than 100 of the world’s top media executives.

The research results show that two out of three industry organizations have less than 40 percent of the capabilities to complete the transformation successfully and become a true digital, high performance business. And this statistic is likely overstated.

32 percent of respondents generated less than 10 percent of their 2007 revenues from nonlinear consumption (downloads and on-demand broadcasts, for example). And only a small minority—9 percent—have broken the 25 percent barrier.

A critical component of enabling transformational capabilities quickly and effectively is an integrated multi-platform. About 63 percent of respondents said they are pursuing a three-screen distribution strategy—using TV, online and mobile. However in doing so, at least 30 percent of them are using a completely siloed approach, which has been shown to result in low customer satisfaction and lost revenues.

An integrated, multi-platform, value-creation-network capability will help media companies find new ways to reach consumers, to be more valuable for consumers, to respond to how and where they access media and make digital content available to consumers whenever and wherever they want it. The panel saw this as the largest growth driver for content companies over the next five years. It would appear, then, that the media market is no longer characterized by the big eating the small but the fast eating the slow.

David de Boer, Head of B2B Marketing, Sanoma Uitgevers, The Netherlands


maandag 2 maart 2009

Sanoma will be moving beyond the serving ads advertising model.

Our mobile devices become the remote control for our daily lives. This will generate data (of a dimension which we have never had before), which in turn provides Sanoma the means to really increase our value for our B2C customers (providers of the data) and our B2B customers. It provides Sanoma the means to become more relevant at the right time and place, and transform the accepted practices of marketing, media and commercial communication.

Data has always been used in marketing, but it has been on a path of evolution. Three key stages can be identified:
  • Stage 1: Socio-demographics: age, gender, postal code, occupation, lifestyle, mentality.
  • Stage 2: Context sensitive: search domain/subject, time, location, mood
  • Stage 3: Social Marketing Intelligence: the combination of market segmentation and context, combined with customer behavior and social network profiles.
Marketing-, media-, commercial communication-decisions and data need to be symbiotically connected to each other to optimalize value, and to optimalize (marketing) resources for all partners (B2C customer, B2B customer, Sanoma). It this way the resources of Sanoma and our partners can be deployed intelligently at the right place and at the right time to create optimal value for all partners/participants/actors, while applying the optimal business-model(s) for that specific 'constellation' at that specific moment.



The decision on how much to spend and where to allocate (marketing- and media-) resources will evolve:
  • the once-siloed 'static'data warehouse becomes a living 'enabler' of making realtime (marketing- and media-) resource-allocation-decisions on a continiuous basis.

The effort and attention of marketing has always been focused on one aspect of marketing (serving ads). We have to get used to leave this one dimensional view behind us, when one begins to realise how a data-driven approach to marketing can be transformational by offering an opportunity to remove 'static' organisational silos that truly hinder that continious, fluid, dynamic process of resource-optimalization.

The way forward is to better understand what data Sanoma (and Sanoma's partners) do already have and will generate. We have to think about how that data gets better through user-interaction [through interaction with our B2C and B2C customers] and take care of 'co-produced offerings' (services/products/applications) for those partners that give them back the value of that data.

Which players in the media-industry are (culturally) able to make this fundamental change of mindset and transform succesfully? The timing of this necessary transition is crucial. So time will tell us.

David de Boer, Head of B2B Marketing, Sanoma Uitgevers, The Netherlands

About the author

Manager Marketing Intelligence Sales, Sanoma Media Netherlands david.deboer@sanomamedia.nl www.twitter.com/daviddeboer