You are what you eat

This phrase, 'You Are What You Eat', keeps coming back to me. I've been thinking about its wider meaning for more than 20 years when mobile and internet advertising started taking off.

The internet tells me that the phrase is thought to have originated in 1826 by Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin. He wrote, 'Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are'. A similar phrase appeared around 1863 when Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach wrote, 'man is what he eats'.

Most read these phrases as relating to the fact that the food one eats affects one's state of mind and health. This is a hot topic right now, and I know from my own experiments with the Zoe way of eating that one of the main changes I see when I stick to the principles is a noticeable improvement in my overall mood. 

For me the phrase goes deeper. I would argue 'man is what he consumes'. By consumes, I mean the people, the words, the images, the inane videos, the links clicked, the posters read, the media presented to you by algorithms, as well as the media you actively choose. It's also the people you surround yourself with and the things you choose to do with your time. It's your education - both what you received at school and self-education. The drama that does or doesn't surround you will also have an impact - sometimes you can't help consuming or absorbing what happens around you.

One could also argue 'garbage in, garbage out'.

So, in light of the riots in the UK, fuelled by misinformation and fear, let's take a moment to consider that we are what we consume and to watch what else we consume, by choice or not. 

Meeja–The Times They Are A-Changin’

Apologies for being a bit slow on the blogging front recently. I just got out of the habit. However, I’ve been busy squirreling away lots of articles and links to follow up on with blog posts should the moment come to blog.

As many of you already know, I do consulting work with media owners of all types and sizes, helping their senior teams get their heads around what’s happening in mobile and social and how it is impacting their business and what they might do about it. I recently did a talk to a group of Nordic media owners who were pretty horrified that I rarely went directly to an online or mobile newspaper to read it but followed random links from people I followed on a variety of social networks and as such, wouldn’t necessarily know which publication or which journalist I was reading.

Don’t get my wrong, by all accounts, media consumption of all types is in rude health when it comes to mobile and online. What isn’t so healthy are the business models to pay for that as well as the fact that many outlets are still focused on print as the main product despite declining revenues. And that’s the challenge that media owners face. The existing business models are in (fast) decline and the news ones are not (yet) replacing those revenues often coupled with a reluctance to change or move with the times.

If you’re interested in where mobile meets media, the future of advertising, the future of journalism and the like, the following links will probably be of interest.

Why tablet magazines are a failure by Jon Lund. Jon’s key point is to encourage media owners to build for the web rather than tablet app only. But while he’s telling us that, there are some really interesting case studies quoted and some rather useful numbers if you need to persuade your boss to move with the times.

The Financial Times to move to single global print edition. This is a very interesting move by the FT. They’re changing their workflow and product focus to reshape the paper for the digital age. Although the printed paper is still part of their multi-platform operation, the shift in how they’re managing it all shows a keen eye on the future and they’re changing before their hand is forced. Smart move, I say.

Ken Doctor highlights what’s coming for media owners in 2014. It’s not news to those of us who’ve been working in mobile and media for a while, but I suspect, the pointers are a bit scary for a lot of media owners who haven’t yet started the change process or haven’t invested in preparing themselves for the future.

Josh Marshall doesn’t believe in Flipboard’s model for media owners and he tells us why, even as far as calling Flipboard a scam. I understand where he’s coming from, but what he doesn’t talk about is who and where his audience is and what their needs and wants are, what their reading habits are and how that matches with TPM’s offering. It’s still early days for Flipboard and its ilk, but I don’t think services like them are going away any time soon.

Canada’s Globe And Mail’s CEO tells media owners ‘we have to think more precisely about what it is that will make people pay’. There are some useful pointers in this article explaining some of the things G&M are doing to get readers to pay for content.

How much are you willing to pay for digital news? There’s still no definitive answer to this, but this article (and the links within it) highlight some of the key issues faced by media owners (yes, it’s getting a bit repetitive isn’t it – the need to innovate, the acceptance that the print decline is real and not stopping, that the digital ad sales aren’t replacing print ad sales etc.).

Attention v. Relationship Economy – this article explores they way that media owners could or should be thinking about how to monetise. And I think I agree with the author, Jeff Jarvis, that it’s about the relationships newspapers have with their community of readers, advertisers and more.

Long story short…

• digital media consumption is high
• mobile set to overtake desktop very quickly
• tablet magazines probably won’t save your business
• media companies need to restructure
• we need some new ways to advertise (I still don’t understand why we’re shoe-horning old ways into new media)
• we need to create and try more new business models
• no-one has the definitive answer
• And as Bob Dylan sang many years ago, ‘The Times they are a changin’’.

Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2013

The rather good Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2013 is out now. It’s quite a long report – you can download a copy here and below you’ll find the PowerPoint charts that support the report.

I won’t lie, there’s a lot to read here and, clearly, a lot of work went into it and I will be taking my time to go through it all.

The short version based on what I’ve read so far is…

• News is becoming more mobile, more social, and more real-time
• Digital patterns becoming more entrenched – particularly amongst the younger half of the population
• Audiences increasingly want news on any device, in any format, and at any time of day.
• Digital revolution is not proceeding at an even pace in all countries.
• Social media take-up varies across countries
• Ever-greater competition and more disruption to business models to come
• More people say they've paid for digital news in the past 10 months so there’s still hope

Some of these points are no surprise to those of us working in mobile. And it just confirms that the pace of change is fast. Even if you’re not in the newspaper industry, I think this is worth a glance as it reveals some key trends that are relevant and of interest to other sectors.

Based on the methodology, the UK findings are perhaps the most pertinent as that’s where there were the highest level of respondents. Of course, they did only survey a limited amount people so it’s a representation but the data was weighted to targets set on age and gender, region, newspaper readership, and social grade to reflect the total population of each country. The sample is reflective of the population that has access to the internet.

As if you need any further convincing that now is the time to get your mobile strategy sorted, maybe this reports will be the nudge you need if you’re not already on the case.

Interested to hear your thoughts and examples of other recent reports that back up or contradict Reuters’ findings.

 

Reuters digital news report 2013 from Nic Newman

Wednesday linkage

Nokia is opening up via its Adlabs to teach the world how to advertise on mobile. This is a good thing and I agree with Mike Baker that the objections of reach and metrics are obsolete. I would agree that creative teams are holding things back, but most importantly of all, agencies still haven't worked out how to a)add value in mobile initiatives and b)charge a fair price. I had an interesting conversation with an industry pal yesterday who said he'd seen 'traditional' agencies mark up project quotes by up to 400%. And then the agencies in question wondered why they didn't win the pitch. Hmm.

Mobile operators are up in arms at the prospect of having to reduce their EU roaming and SMS rates within the bloc. And it's about time too that those charges were reduced. It makes no sense to me to pay 40p for a text message (but only 20p for a MMS message) and £7.50 per megabyte when roaming in Europe. Distance is not an issue these days. I look forward to the day when it's all reasonably and fairly priced. Well, a girl can dream can't she?!

The VC community is betting on mobile for future digital investments according to KPMG.

"With a focus on mobile entertainment, venture capitalist opinions vary when
asked about which mobile entertainment applications would dominate market
revenue in 2009, though social networks was the favorite with 31 percent of the
responses. Rounding out the top five applications were gaming (20 percent),
video (14 percent), music downloads (20 percent) and user-generated applications
(10 percent). Additionally, 90 percent of VC respondents believe mass adoption
of mobile video consumption will take off in the next five years, and 60 percent
expect it will happen within the next three years. "Activity in the market
clearly indicates that the mobile space has become a significant area of
opportunity for venture capitalists," said Brian Hughes, KPMG partner based
inPhiladelphia and co-leader of its venture capital practice. "The population of
consumers who prefer to receive content via their mobile devices is a rapidly
growing segment of the market, and VCs have shown keen interest. We've seen new funds created specifically for the mobile sector, and social media also
continues to gain traction." "