Conceptualising Product Innovation in Media — A Hybrid of Creativity and Technology

Here’s my take on media companies — Unless media companies step up and transform their view and abilities on product innovation, they will be eaten by tech and new players. Only those that fully embrace that product innovation in media is the intersection between creatives, user experience, software, data and analytics will thrive.

In this “tech-eats-everything-world”, it is important for media companies to rethink, and to start new ways of viewing Innovation from the perspective of their product.

Innovation in media is not just about the creatives and technology side by side — it is about the complete integration of creatives with user experience, software application, data and analytics, led by a new talent of media managers, who comprise of marketers, strategists, and even content producers.

Consultants from technology and digital are involved with research, strategy, analytics, querying, communication, and more. That is, product and solutions management defined by the world of technology.

The challenge with Innovation in media starts with different views on “Product”.

All of a sudden, what was pretty clear to me regarding the definition of product and how one should effectively deliver it, became really hard to grasp as I left tech and digital consulting and entered media — where this is almost totally not defined.

(It still isn’t).

The tech-driven platforms of social media like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube; of smartphones like Apple, Spotify; of online-search and that is the tech giant Google; and of e-commerce like Amazon and Alibaba have been playing out in the digital field by defining what their product and (or) platform is, or is not.

Similar to media companies, great content is also one of their main component in their product offering when engaging with audience. However, for tech platforms, the creation and curation of content is done by users, and in this lies the core difference between how tech and media view a product. I’ll get back to that.

Ask any creative such as an editor or producer what the product is, and then turn to a tech or an analytics strategist on the same floor and ask the same question. In most cases, you will not get the same answer. This disconnect will impede the ability to innovate and create new products.

Creatives like the editors, producers and creators consider the content to be the product — Catchy stories. Great videos. Nothing less, nothing more. Technologists consider it to be the strategy crafted using technology-enabled analytics to create, curate and distribute the content.

And by chance you happen to get the same answer from the creatives and the technologists in that media company when asking what the product is, invest your money in that media company.

Now, when the worlds of technologists and creative managers converge, technologists become great creative managers, and creative managers become better technologists. To get there, it is important to know about the dissociation, so that there is understanding between the two before joining forces.

Dissociation 1: Intelligence Toolset

Creative managers like editors, creators, and producers can directly enhance the quality and quantity of the content. They create and curate content by letting all their creative energy flow, expecting audience to consume it (their product). By hiring better creative professionals, investigating more on the trends, understanding what is perceived as more impactful, and getting better software and tools for content creation and curation, creative managers can improve the content and develop new ways to curate it, thereby improving their product.

However, for a technologist in media, product improvement is the result of using intelligence tools to

1. Gain content insights based on views, searches and engagements and uploads
2. Enhance design and user experience based on trends
3. Implement functionality based on audience preferences
4. Understand algorithms based on shifts in content trends on different platforms
5. Scale technology based on what social media has to offer
6. And apply data and analytics for strategy.

By leveraging on facts and statistics, providing advisory on greater content creation will result in more content discovery, consumption, and engagement — thus ultimately create a better product.

Dissociation 2: Time Horizon

Content is fresh goods. It has a shelf life ranging from a few hours to a couple of days. Media content doesn’t last very long and gets buried or magically disappears amongst millions of other posts. With such short life, a creative manager is primarily concerned with NOW — TODAY — TOMORROW.

With this very short time horizon and a quick-to-act attitude, a creative manager greatly differs compared to a tech consultant who has strategy frameworks, roadmaps, and iterations.

Digital transformation powered by technology evolves over time, usually in monthly sprints. By helping companies make a choice of adopting a technology, by prioritizing their business problems, and drive digital transformation for them, it was always a given that it would last until a future iteration improved it (or analytics told us to kill it).

Times are changing

Creative and Content management is no longer just about creating a byte sized video, or a comprehensive article and letting users find this in their newsfeed. It increasingly requires one to become data-driven using intelligence tools to master creation, curation and engagement. Similarly, technology professionals need to increasingly embrace the experience from creatives and content managers.

As the world of content and technology converge, it’s important for every media player to refine the way they manage their products, starting by defining what their product is.

So, what is Product Innovation in Media?

My idea about this is that Product Innovation is the hybrid of creative and content management from creators, producers, editors, and art professionals; and strategy and analytics from technology. It isn’t technology and creative in silos (like it is in most media companies that are also big and have been for years) — it is the integration of the two, with agile methods of working — replacing a “big bang launch / design” with small, consumable, iterative increments, by gauging the volatility and direction of market trends in this uncertain and complex world.

A new generation of media managers is needed who embrace product innovation as the hybrid between creatives and technology. The key components for all product innovation requires the following:

1. User Experience Concept: Design, UX and UI, and audience and market trends

2. Technology and Data Literacy: Software applications, and data and analytics

3. Fact-based-data-driven Strategy: Strategy models for analytics and growth, frameworks for content creation

4. Creative and Content Literacy: Production and publishing across platforms

It is common that this new breed of media professionals is hard to come across. It is also well known that tearing down the hierarchies and the old ways of working with the legacy systems in big media companies is difficult. That being said, the initiative and transformation to an autonomous, fully-mandated, and cross functional team needs to start and be included in the vision of every team.