Storytime: Zoom in, Zoom out
From time immemorial, storytelling has been one of the most powerful tools for moving humans into action, individually or collectively. It’s a primal form of communication, memory, and recall.
Personally, I find myself able to grasp concepts much more clearly with stories, case studies, examples, visual illustrations, analogies, and more. So let’s bring these mental models home with some examples!
🎯 Mental model for this musing : Problem Solving : Zoom in, Zoom out
Storytime!
While there are countless (no, for real, c-o-u-n-t-l-e-s-s!) examples here, I’m going to cover the two that came to mind right now for this particular musing.
- The NewsRun
- Social Media (Are you a 🎶 Belieber? Good. Keep reading.)
The NewsRun
What is it :
The NewsRun is a free daily email newsletter that provides the smartest breakdown of news from Pakistan.
Tell me a story :
As a short-term Advisor to The NewsRun, I became obsessed (still am) with the importance of accessibility of information and knowledge across social classes. An idealistic dream that equal access to high-quality, noise-free, and unbiased news content could become one the great equalizers for Pakistan. It has the potential to break down social class barriers (which are really only mythically ironclad), bridge those with and those without through a common thread of knowledge, elevate conversations between social classes, invite new and underrepresented perspectives to encourage introspection and cultivate greater empathy, celebrate diversity of thought and voices, and rally around a greater good that involves a collective mission to move society forward.
Together with the founder, we went deep into understanding audience behavior and motivations, their social and financial circumstances and sensibilities, the country’s digital infrastructure, our own financial models, and more. We put countless ideas on the board for us to discuss and dissect, and then created our own version of go-to-market plans to ensure we execute with thorough precision, templates and frameworks to allow for more efficient scaling, and fine-tuning plans to create value at each touchpoint.
We did this exercise successfully for several programs. However, for this particular purpose, I want to focus on one example of uncovering new opportunities and insights from zooming out, and zooming back in to ensure we were solving for the right problems.
Zooming out :
At one discussion point around monetization, a fellow advisor suggested charging a subscription fee. They went far into developing a business case for it by conducting surveys , researching methods to set up payments, and more. It was time to zoom out.
Firstly, charging a subscription fee was a contradiction to the broader mission of providing greater accessibility, ultimately gatekeeping The NewsRun from those who were not able to financially participate. Secondly, this project was taking valuable time and resources away from the actual mission at hand, had pretty low chances of scaling out effectively given infrastructure limitations, and the input would greatly outweigh the benefits of the output. And lastly, the business had yet to anchor itself into audiences’ daily workflow in a need-to-have manner, rather than the nice-to-have — until you have to pay for it.
At zooming out, we not only went back to our north star, but also gained a better understanding of the lack of digital architecture and security around financial institutions in Pakistan. Credit card and online banking behavior is available to a small portion of the population, those with education and access to the internet. Financial independence and control is still a privilege only a small part of the population is able to leverage. So many challenges outside of our core business to overcome.
Reframe : So many untapped opportunities!
Through this exercise, not only did we unlock a whole new set of opportunities across industries for the hungry entrepreneurial spirit, this also gave us a deeper insight into our own audience base.
Zooming in :
We began a deeper study into the personas of our audience, and realized that most Pakistanis consume news content on social media and messaging platforms, not email. We were also able to understand that our audience was not accustomed to a “subscription” model for any digital service, and were highly sensitive to price. Accessibility to high quality news content is still a nice-to-have, and we needed to establish ourselves as a thought leader and must-have through inserting ourselves into the existing workflows of social dynamics, and continuing to feed the motivations of each social class we were catering to.
Epilogue :
Without giving away too much, I can share that we began exploring other creative avenues to monetize, newer platforms to broadcast across, new partnerships to establish (messaging platforms, local language translations, voicenotes, thinkers and social influencers etc), primary audiences to engage more deeply with, and programs to create the influence and change we needed to drive our own business forward.
While my time advising with The NewsRun was short (for a variety of reasons, none bad) and the business has changed direction since then, it was a thrilling ride breaking down what we were dealing with and creatively solving for complex problems.
Social Media
What is it :
You know what it is.
Tell me a story :
Social media has been getting a pretty poor reputation over the last few years. Mental health and self-esteem issues, mobilization around dangerous causes, data collection and manipulation, privacy concerns, questionable surveillance practices, ads monetizing harmful content. The list goes on. I recently heard someone say they view the harm to be so great that they would vote wholeheartedly to shut down all social media today if they could.
😬
Let’s zoom out. Accessibility. Discoverability. A voice for all.
Zooming out :
Social media is one of the world’s greatest equalizers. It has made it possible for anyone, anywhere with internet to access news, content, opinion pieces, educational videos, and more. It has made it possible to discover perspectives, viewpoints, beliefs, lifestyles, and tastes so vastly different to our own, that it puts our minds to work at questioning our own absolute beliefs. It’s given us to the ability to learn, unlearn, and continue that process. We are but a speck on the planet, sharing with so many others.
Social media has provided a platform for those who would otherwise never have had the opportunity to be discovered, the accessibility to audiences, the required know-how or access to community education, and the ability to create at the speed and scale as they can now.
Access to educational videos. Mobilizing people for a common cause. Learning of protests in Iran. Keeping in touch with family and friends. Growing the economy through marketing efforts. Crowdsourcing ideas across tech, philosophy, agriculture, and more. Leveling the playing field for creators so that top talent can emerge from anywhere, anytime.
Zooming in :
What’s important to note here is that social media has clear defects and clear benefits — and both are true. Having the ability to zoom in and out will help us identify and solve for the right problems, rather than throwing the baby out with the bathwater (does anyone use this expression anymore?).
The ability to zoom in also allows us to create more targeted solutions. Facebook and YouTube have different use cases and different challenges. Advertisers will have different sensibilities around content they are comfortable placing their ads against (think : Levi’s vs Pampers by P&G). The way consumers engage on Instagram is different to how they engage on Facebook. Often, the consumer psychographics are different depending on which platform they choose to spend more time on.
Zooming in has led to a variety of identified issues and corresponding solutions ranging from setting up committees to address misinformation and content moderation, passing regulations on consumer privacy and data rights, creating new tech and programs for better digital consumption habits, deeper and more diverse conversations around the future of social media, and more. Each of these efforts will help course correct and drive forward the positive benefits of social media, the bigger picture. It comes back to thinking critically and understanding nuance.
💡 Zoom in, zoom out, zoom in, zoom out.
🎶 Epilogue 🎶 :
Anyway, if you’re a Belieber, or if you get your peaches out in Georgia 🍑, a part of you must believe in the positive power of social media.
💡For more on mental models : The Art of Problem Solving
