The Guardian: Can journalism be sold like a pair of trainers?

In a conversation with the Global Editors Network, Anna Bateson, chief customer officer at the Guardian talks about the Guardian’s reader-first strategy, taking inspiration from other industries, and funny job titles.

Freia Nahser
May 10, 2018 · 6 min read

The Guardian reports that it is well on track with its three-year strategy to make the Guardian sustainable and break even at operating level by 2018–19.

‘More than 800,000 people now financially support the Guardian, up 200,000 from a year ago. Of these about 200,000 are print or digital subscribers, more than 300,000 are members or regular contributors, and more than 300,000 gave one-off contributions’.

Anna Bateson

Anna Bateson was appointed as the Guardian’s first ever chief customer officer in 2017. As part of her role, she takes global responsibility for the Guardian’s membership, subscription and contributions programmes. Bateson joined the Guardian from Google, where she was director of global consumer marketing at YouTube.

Interview slightly edited.

GEN: Journalism is not a business like any other — or is it? To what extent does your role differ from the role of Chief Marketing Officer in other industries?

Your job role is ‘Chief customer officer’. When does a reader turn into a customer?

Do you take inspiration from other industries outside of media in terms of building customer loyalty?

The primacy of our editorial platform does mean that it is not always the case that the ‘customer is always right’. But that doesn’t mean we don’t think of ourselves as having a reader first philosophy. The reader has a right to be listened to, and respected, but at times their opinion might differ to our editorial line — and that is important to acknowledge.

Please could you give us some more insight into the Guardian’s reader-first strategy and in what way your strategy is ‘ahead of the curve’ for news organisations?

The perks of a Guardian membership aren’t immediately obvious (no paywall etc), so why do people pay for a membership?

Our original membership scheme offered access to events, but while this was of interest to a small and loyal group of supporters, it was inevitably geographically bounded and therefore hard to scale. The power of our contributions scheme is that we can unlock the support of our global readership.

Has the membership scheme had an impact on the Guardian’s editorial line?

We were wondering what role platforms play in your strategy. How strongly does the Guardian rely on Google and Facebook for distribution?

Facebook is still important to the Guardian for reaching non regular audiences and groups of readers who might not otherwise come to the Guardian, but it makes up a small proportion of our overall traffic. The importance of Facebook referral has been declining over the last year although video explainers that we create for the platform do well.

How has traffic to Guardian articles fared since the recent Facebook algorithm change?

A recent article by Dylan Curran about all the data Google and Facebook have on us has been widely shared. In this tweet, it is pointed out how many Google/Facebook trackers are on the page of that same article. How can you be transparent about the tracking on your website? Is it your responsibility to be transparent about this?

I absolutely believe it is our responsibility to be transparent and to hold ourselves to the highest standards in putting our readers first and respecting their privacy. We regularly review our cookies, which are a necessary part of the current digital advertising ecosystem and we will continue to do this. We are currently updating our privacy and cookie policies to be ready for GDPR and I think this is only the beginning of what is an ongoing process of transparency, respecting our reader’s trust, and pushing to evolve our industry and best practice within it.

In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal — it’s been revealed that the Financial Times and Economist were Cambridge Analytica clients — what are the more successful and ethical marketing practices to get customers on board?

Global Editors Network

The Global Editors Network (GEN) was the worldwide…