Entertainment is not a need
Media companies should radically innovate media products by identifying deeper and more complex needs.
I facilitated a futures workshop at one Finnish media company. I think the workshop went great: the feedback was really positive and I felt we truly met our goals. Pondering the results later on, one thing stroke me as peculiar. To tell you what it was, I need to explain a little bit deeper to how the workshop was held.
In the first part of the workshop, we used futures scenarios to name possible values and missions of the media company in the far future. The goal was to understand how the role of the organization changes over time, and to identify socially relevant goals in a changing world. Group used three very distinct scenarios to get a broad view while still staying in a specific environment to enable design thinking style empathy.
In the second part of the workshop, we generated ideas to expressed needs (why the idea is used), contexts (where the idea is used) and ways of use (how the idea is used). I asked to clearly express the needs that are addressed, because media business does not currently understand what needs they are fulfilling. The reason for this is that it’s a very difficult question to answer. We live in a mediated world and consume symbols, and our reasons — as rational as they might be for us — are not always rational to the outside observer.
Here is what troubles me: Many of the workshop participants wrote “entertainment” as a need for many of the ideas they generated. But I don’t think entertainment is a need. Do you think entertainment is a need?
It seems like a common consensus that it is. Coming back home from work, we think “I need my daily dose of entertainment” and then we sit down and watch TV. But when we dig just below the litany level, it seems clear that there is a variety of needs that explain why we want or need to entertain ourselves.
We play computer games to escape the banalities of our lives (escapism)
We watch TV series so that we can talk about them with our friends (social pressure)
We consume link bait articles because it stimulates our dopamine levels (evolutionary feedback for curiosity)
We click memes because the variances in symbolic interaction creates — — — no, I actually have no idea why we do this. Maybe it has something to do with primal mechanisms similar to those that encourage us to learn language?
We watch thrillers to forget about our ex and soap operas to learn behavioral models.
We go to Facebook because we always go to Facebook (e.g. ritual as a reason of use). We also go to Facebook because we want to create ourselves (identity).
There are hundreds of little needs that can be explained in different ways through psychology, biology, cultural conventions or social interactions. These are actual needs that can be fulfilled. Entertainment is not such a need.
Do people go to a standup show because they need to laugh or because they want to be the kind of people who go to standup shows? Both are true. But accepting this makes planning the perfect standup show much easier, because if the previous needs are both true, the perfect standup show is not only about getting the best laughs ever. It’s also about being provided an opportunity to tell peers about ones presence in the show.
Considering media products, there are two approaches to fulfilling multiple needs. One could either take all the relevant needs into account and provide a total experience (as in the standup show). Or one could innovate a perfect solution to just one of the needs and compete in that sector. Comparing to newspapers, Facebook is radically better way of creating identity. It’s much easier to post comments to Facebook that to casually mention in conversations that, by the way, I read the Economist.
Fundamentally media business needs to ask “why people read newspapers?” How could they improve their offering to all of these identified needs? Could they pick just one of the needs and create a perfect solution to address it?
