Q&A: Borja Bergareche, Chief Innovation Officer of Vocento
As CIO of one of Spain’s largest media companies and the leader of Vocento Media Lab, Borja Bergareche helps drives digital innovation in Spain — at a steady pace. We spoke with him about his role, the digital transition, and the importance of cultivating a loyal audience.
The Idea: Can you describe your role as Chief Innovation Officer at Vocento?
BB: What do we talk about when we talk about innovation? Part of the answer has to do with our corporate structure. Vocento is one of Spain´s largest media holdings publishing one national newspaper, ABC, the largest network of local and regional dailies and several vertical publications (Mujer Hoy for women, Eslang for millennials…). The innovation director falls within the Digital Strategy team at the corporate level, hence working horizontally to help our editorial and business teams to navigate all things digital. On top of that, our philosophy comes into play too. I’ve been on this job for three years now (after a wonderful period of London correspondent for ABC), and I always pictured a Digital Innovation unit focused in “thinking,” but also in “doing.” For that, we launched the Vocento Media Lab as a platform for experimenting (hackathons…), training and sharing best practices. And we also have a small budget for what we call innovation pilot projects, where the “doing” comes in play. Eslang.es, our millennial digital-only site, was born a such, like infoPlayas and infoEsquí, the first two products of our experimental automated-content project. On our day-to-day, we push best practices and benchmarks on video strategy, apps strategy, social media and audience strategy, agile methodologies on the product side, or readers engagement & loyalty funnel on the customer side.
What is a cool project you’ve worked on lately?
The coolest thing right now is the next generation of automated-content products we’re about to launch in March: an automated, Instagram-like, AMP-first web to bring into life our century-old photographic archive. From a back-end point of view, we’re learning about how to extract relevant content in an algorithm-assisted way from our wonderful archives at ABC, which is turning 115 years-old this year. From a front-end perspective, we want to test the boundaries of the AMP project. On top of that, we want to absolutely test new ways to turn our readers into known or registered customers, and we think there is a lot of potential in the serendipitous travel in time our archives can offer (if brought to life properly for the mobile era).
What is the most interesting thing that you’ve seen from a media outlet other than your own?
We’ve focused a lot lately in benchmarking customer strategies and subscription models. So, not to fall into the easy chorus of cheers for the New York Times or the Washington Post, I’d say I’ve been most impressed by the technological capabilities and the strategic depth of the subscription strategies deployed by the Financial Times, the Daily Telegraph, and Amedia, a Norwegian publisher of local and hyperlocal papers.
What do you think is the most pressing issue in the Spanish news media industry?
Short answer: paid content. Longer answer: the most pressing issue for us, in Spain just as anywhere else, is how to build a sustainable, profitable digital business reinforcing a healthier advertising model with an enthusiastic — daring, even — customer model around loyalty funnels and subscriptions. In the case of Vocento, our local and regional newspapers are still strong and two-thirds of our income is still print-based, so we can’t afford to rush into things. Measuring the pace of our digital transition is key. But for sure we need to work –in a humble but daring way — on editorial marketing to bring pride and trust into our position as responsible publishers in a murky digital information ecosystem. We also need to adapt our digital product and distribution strategies to the overarching strategy of turning reach and user volume into a qualified, intimate, well-known customer base. At the bottom of this funnel, we need to make a step forward, in a country previously known as the land of digital piracy, towards building great products and experiences for our most loyal readers. Vocento has lead the way after we started launching a paywall on some of our regional newspapers two years ago. We’ve learned a lot and we are determined to fine-tune and improve the strategy. But I really think the rest should join. And they are thinking about it, of course. Aren’t we all?
How do see the Spanish media industry innovating/evolving over the next ten years?
Over the next years, the structure of the market should be different; there’s too many of us for a shrinking advertising cake (courtesy of Google, Facebook and Amazon), so concentration will occur, and we’re looking forward to it. From an innovation perspective, a lot of wonderful things have happened since around 2014, when we started to leave the worst of the 2008 crisis behind. New digital-only projects were born, new membership-based business models emerged, a great start-up ecosystem flourished, and larger, legacy companies like ours caught up in a spectacular manner, I’d say, if we look at where we were. The first semester of 2015 was our first profitable six-months at Vocento since 2008! Looking ahead, this welcome trend will go on, but I think a lot of things digital still have to mature and a lot of rebalancing needs to happen. It’s hard to tell what this business’s ecosystem will look like, but in ten years there will be print, there will be mobile… and there will be voice.
This Spotlight was originally published in the January 16th issue of The Idea. For more Q&As with inside intel like this, subscribe to The Idea, Atlantic Media’s weekly newsletter covering the latest trends and innovations in media.
