“WAKE APP”: WHEN PODCASTS CHANGE THE “DIET” OF BREAKFAST NEWS
A Start-Up Initiative for Entrepreneurial Journalism
The problem with “Breakfast News”
One major problem people face nowadays is that they are bombed every day by a huge amount of information. They wake up, they hurry up and at the same time, they need to get their “breakfast news” shortly and delightfully. It is very hard to determine what are the key elements of a piece of information that worth spending your time during the morning but also during the rest of their day. One might say that it really doesn’t matter if you just lose some minutes by reading something that doesn’t really interest you, but is that true? Spending time on content you don’t care or doesn’t express you, not only costs that few minutes you need to get informed but it can be much more than that. The exposure to a worthless “info waste” is exactly this kind of information that leads inevitably to a process of perceiving information you do not conceive that will do the damage.
Wake App: Breakfast news need a “healthy” news diet
It is obvious today, more than ever, how hard it is to daily track the kind of information you need, to check the accuracy of them and at the same time to skip the useless news, according to their customized interests. But why to skip instead of scrolling down? This huge need of accurate well told, as well as, categorized news is that Wake App brings to people. Wake App came up to provide its users the opportunity to listen to high quality and reliable content through podcasts formats, choosing among several categories such as news, weather, music, entertainment, art, and travel. With this app, you can enjoy your everyday customized “news diet”.
Meet with “Wake App” idea in depth
But we kept the best for the end, our innovative application will look after your a-wakening! Pick your favorite music, define your interests and your favorite podcasters, fix the time you want to listen to it and you are all set up. Enjoy a unique a-wakening experience, lift your mood with your favorite music, get informed before you get up or while getting prepared. Wake app is the best way to begin your day.
Our app will be the first awakening application in Greece based on the podcast “breakfast news”. We understand the significance of this moment in someone’s life, so our aim is to provide a unique user experience that will guarantee our users engagement with content that they really want. Our experienced team and our carefully picked associates will provide to users to constantly get accurate information, and the personalized options we provide, will save them from irrelevant content. Wake app will be available on a free version with many options and on a Premium plan.
The team and the birth of Wake App
Our team consists of 5 women with a variety of personal, educational and business orientation. Our diversity is the key element that can lift this project as our skills that inter-complement one each other.
It all started during the course of “Leadership and Entrepreneurship in Journalism” for the MA Information Society, Media and Technology, under Communication Media and Culture department, of Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences, with course instructor the Associate Professor, Betty Tsakarestou @tsakarestou. After an extended study of the contemporary media landscape, implementing agile methods and design thinking we were challenged to create our own media startup. During the “Start-Up Bootcamp Weekend” that took place on 8–9/2/2020 at university’s media lab based in Hill (Plaka) we managed to convert an elementary idea to a start-up business proposition.
Our Research
The idea of creating a podcast alarm came up while we were studying the Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2019. It came to our attention, the interesting service that RTL News in the Netherlands provides to its users. A What's App 7 am wake-up service in the form of a two-minute audio summary of the day’s main news. It came up spontaneously that it would be very interesting to bring to Greece a wake-up service through an app with podcast format, combining news from several categories as well as with music preferences.
During our secondary research, we found out that there is not such an application available in Greece, while worldwide we just found two similar services that do something similar (Pod Alarm, Podcast Alarm). Continuously, we investigated the podcast market in total, the interest and the current use of podcasts, as well as the mobile penetration in Greece since mobile is the major medium for podcast hearing.
The Primary Insights
According to the Guardian, the number of people hearing podcasts is about to reach 1,8 billion up to 2023.
Spotify itself is about to invest 200 million by the end of 2020 in order to gradually develop more than 20% of its content to podcasts, aiming to establish user’s affinity.
At the same time Luminary “the Netflix of podcasts”, invests in Celebrities, from Lena Dunham (Girls) to Conan O’Brian, in order to launch in June, an add free, 8$ service.
The research indicates two important findings:
The significance of mobiles in a user’s life as well as the rapid increase of podcasts, that tends to be a major trend.
According to Nic Newman, Senior Research Associate in Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism refers that:
“…across all our countries, the main reasons for listening to podcasts are to keep updated about topics of personal interest (46%) and to learn something new (39%). Other motivations include to fill empty time (25%) and as a change from music (22%)”.
Our Insights
In order to investigate the podcast preferences in Greece, we conducted primary research via the internet. People responding to this research with the majority (81%) to get a university education or more (Master, Ph.D.), a fact that indicates the need for high-quality content. The idea of having a news alarm was popular interested since 72% while the main themes respondents would like to hear is news, weather, music, entertainment as well as art and travel.
The ideal duration according to our research, ranges from 5 to 15 minutes. The ability to combine podcasts with music is very popular among users who also declare that they would like to use their alarm many more times during the day while driving, using means of transport, during lunch break, even before sleeping, statistics that give great feedback for further product development. In addition, we conducted interviews to further investigate the user’s behavior when they wake up and listen to content based on their preferences.
After taking consideration of this first received sample we came up with the design thinking of the ideal personas — users as follows;
Aspa
Aspa is a young, motivated girl, only 20 years who lives in Athens and she is studying her bachelor's. As a “millennial” person, she is tech-savvy, active with her social media accounts and wherever she is her mobile is like her pet. Apart from her university schedule, Aspa doesn’t wake up everyday very early. But without her alarm, she can not wake up, and when she wakes up, snooze is her second chance to sleep more. When she finally wakes up the first thing she does is check her phone; she surfs on Facebook, Instagram, and Youtube. She is looking for new trends and she loses a lot of time before she gets up. As a tech lover during the day when she finds the right time, she listens to podcasts and her main interests are music, travel, cinema, and weather.
Sofia
Sofia is political science with high educational level so she leads as a CEO in her own company. She is a businesswoman and ambitious so she is trying to be proactive by learning all the time new things. She uses her mobile phone as a waking alarm and when she wakes up she surfs on twitter and listens to the news on the radio. She tries to get informed on a daily base with breakfast news but sometimes it is very difficult for her because she often drives to useless info waste.
Tasos
Tasos is a 38 — years — old architecture, husband and father of one boy. He is passionate about his job and he is devoted to his family but his daily routine doesn’t let him get informed fast and reliably. So “skip” of useless content is the most often choice for him. He also defines himself as antisocial as he barely uses social media. But he likes watching Youtube and listens to podcasts related to politics, art, athletics, and weather.
Costs Structure and Revenues
The creation of ios, android, and desktop application will be assigned to an out of the house development team. In the meantime, our team is about to develop podcasts. We appreciate we will need 5 months before getting online. Our fixed costs are calculated to be 9.300 per month including salaries, accounting/law services, rental and monthly fees. Our installation expenses 23.000 and we have also calculated 15.000 for marketing expenses. The marketing plan includes SEM advertising, social media, and Youtube campaigns as well as E-mail marketing. Our main revenue source is considered through content advertising, events, membership, and sponsors as well as our premium services.
Planning our Next Steps
Expecting to serve a need that is necessary for a variety of user personas, like the referred ones wherever they are, anytime they need it with, providing customized content, our app we collect all the types of news that they need to get. They will be based on “diet news” but information about everything will be distributed based on personal preferences. So we decided to create an accompanied Podcast Website in order to complete the needs of users to listen to podcasts through the channel they desire.
The curation of reliable and attractive content will be the biggest challenge for us, so we are about to approach credible associates to produce separate content with greek journalists, forecasters, and producers who have high experience and knowledge in the field of media. We also intend to contact famous greek podcasters in order to enhance and complete the goals of providing breakfast news and interesting content through the app and the website.
Through feedback, ranking assessments and comments from users for the podcasts and through our social media channels as well as by studying the whole user itinerary, we expect to understand and develop the provided audio content, in the appropriate way. Our newsroom will primarily consist of five contributors which will refresh the news every hour from 07.00 till 22.00 in order to provide constantly new content for the users.
We hope that our idea will be a new trend in the greek market regarding the function and use of podcasts and at the same time, this initiative will be a start of us to follow new career paths in the fields of journalism and entrepreneurship!
@eleni.st.mavropoulou , @xeniantavranoglou , @zinasap , @aretytaaat
BMC MODEL
PROTOTYPE
Sources:
https://m.naftemporiki.gr/story/1320351
https://www.insider.gr/tehnologia/kosmos/126198/exartisi-me-kinito-toys-deihnoyn-1-stoys-4-neoys
http://www.digitalnewsreport.org/survey/2018/podcasts-and-new-audio-strategies/
