The Futures of Media
In this series on From Complexity to Emergence, we’re recapping the IAM Weekend 16 and bringing you everything we learned and explored in one place. At our next edition in April, we’ll be discussing The Renaissance of Utopias across media, education and the arts. Join us!
As our consumption of media has grown increasingly digital, newspapers, broadcasters and new media outlets have had to respond to falling revenues, a growing distrust of institutional authority and entirely different behaviours from readers, listeners and viewers about how they interact with content. Now, a complex system of disintermediated, on-demand content presents a radically new context for publishers and platforms alike. While many organisations’ responses will be reactionary, during the Futures of Media session at the IAM Weekend 16 we heard from those tackling the fight head on.
Sometimes, for large organisations, bringing in specialised, external help is crucial to this process. To that end, BBC Digital have been working with Moving Brands® to help them rise to these new challenges, and it was the nature of the working relationship itself that formed the basis of the session’s first talk. Colin Burns, then-Executive Creative Director at BBC Digital (now Chief Design Office of BBC Design & Engineering), and Darren Bowles, Executive Creative Director at Moving Brands®, emphasised the need to make collaborations less complex and problem solving more achieveable.
Railing against transactional, customer-client dynamics, Colin and Darren identified 8 characteristics to their partnership that have made it so successful: curiosity, craftiness, personability, lo-fi working, openness, humility, ‘sleeves up’ hard work and ‘bondage’ (taking pleasure from constraint!). Collectively, these values allow both the BBC and Moving Brands® to experiment and collaborate in a friendly, constructive environment, sharing their skills in the process. By being open, honest, and on the same page (“Fast, cheap, good. Pick Two”), the teams from BBC and Moving Brands® work in a context that allows for criticism and argumentation as much as it does celebration and praise. In turn, they can actually get on with trying to solve the problems at hand.
From one large media company to the next, Alberto Barreiro, Chief Experience Officer at Grupo PRISA explained that the complexity and uncertainty provided by our new technological context demands that media adapt to digital, but we should think in terms of strategy in a digital world, not digital strategy. While the first wave of digital disruption led to digital versions of print media, we must now prioritise digital-first media to ride the next wave.
Media companies no longer control the interface — which has been taken over by the likes of Facebook, Google and Medium (the irony isn’t lost on us here) — while traditional distribution channels are increasingly decentralised and dematerialised. Media organisations now have to reach out to readers, rather than readers coming to them, a challenge which also speaks to the broader trend of increasing distrust in institutions.
All is not lost, however. Alberto emphasised that when media companies strategise for their new, digital contexts, to remain relevant and interesting they must meaningfully understand their essence and purpose. What they do next may be completely different to the old world of print media, but by translating this essence, at least, journalistic outlets who were once seen as authorities can maintain the legacies on which they now trade.
For new media outlets, Quartz is setting the pace. Built as a ‘guide to the new global economy’, ‘QZ’ is freed from the constraints of having to do “news” and just being a website, even though its first product ticked both those boxes. Instead, Executive Editor and SVP of Product Zach Seward explained that Quartz should be thought of as an API; the brand sits at the centre, and is realised coherently across numerous, decentralised channels. (Since launching qz.com, Quartz has launched email newsletters, podcasts, a charts platform, video content, and more recently, a native iPhone app.)
Rather than shrinking a desktop website down for mobile, Quartz’s iPhone app looks to overhaul the mobile experience with an engaging, conversation-style delivery of breaking news and stories, while also designing for the 21st century inbox: the notification screen. While ad-supported, Quartz ensure this isn’t annoying and continue “to delight readers in a way that inspires loyalty”. This is the key. Loyalty is earned across a variety of products because the experience of each is distinct. The reputation of the website supports that of Quartz’s podcasts and app, and the same is true of the reverse. Each offers something new, a reason to keep coming back, which is as fundamental as anything in the world of digital media.
Gareth Seltzer, Founding Partner of RYOT, also highlighted the need for an audience which keeps coming back for more, so that media organisations “don’t just rent them, but own them”. For Gareth, the answer lies in empathy. Through their use of Virtual Reality (VR), RYOT is creating stories that allow viewers to see war and disaster zones as if they were really there, including in Haiti, Syria and Nepal. The resulting experience is completely immersive and adds a layer of compassion that goes far beyond any other form of storytelling.
Where the old web revolved around navigating through topics and menus, VR gets straight to the action. “Fuck navigation,” cries Gareth, “I want the journey to be part of the experience!” This sort of compelling storytelling — especially when it’s socially-minded, as is RYOT’s signature style — ensures VR’s enduring relevance, but a lesson to new media companies: the bar has been raised.
The challenges facing The Futures of Media are numerous. Yet this session introduced ways of working — both literally and figuratively — that allow organisations not just to survive the oncoming wave(s), but to ride it(them) out. It’s a truism to emphasise the importance of designing digital-first, but as BBC, Moving Brands®, Grupo PRISA, Quartz and RYOT all show, the forms this can take are varied. By embracing what makes them different — their essence — media companies new and old are far more likely to succeed.
