Engaging the influen,al in an ideas communityNick Blunden | Global Digital PublisherE: [email protected] | M: +44 7968 838933 | T: @nickblunden
Un,l recently we lived in a world of rela,ve informa,on scarcity
Picture credit: h,p://www.flickr.com/photos/archivalproject/3296822880/
“Eight years ago, in its heyday, the New York Times Company was worth $7 billion and paid a dividend of more than $100 million a year.”
Henry Blodget, Business Insider
“There was 5 Exabytes of informaEon created between the dawn of civilisaEon through 2003, but that much informaEon is now created every 2
days and the pace is increasing”Eric Schmidt, Exec,ve Chairman, Google
We are now entering into an new age of informa,on abundance
The explosion in new digital tools is making media owners of us all
“All one needs is a computer, a network connecEon, and a bright spark of iniEaEve and
creaEvity to join the economy” Don TapscoU, Author, Wikinomics
Picture credit: h,p://www.flickr.com/photos/karola/4669292392/
This is fundamentally changing the rela,onship we have with informa,on
Informa,on is no longer an asset to be exploited by the few and passively consumed by the many. It is increasingly a universal social currency that is
ac,vely traded by us all.
Picture credit: h,p://www.flickr.com/photos/drewm/468436732/
The consequences of this change in our rela,onship with informa,on can appear to be trivial
“The gap is between doing anything and doing nothing. And someone who makes a LOLcat has
already crossed over that gap.” Clay Shirky, Author, Cogni,ve Surplus
Picture credit: h,p://icanhascheezburger.com/2007/01/24/trashcat-‐is-‐not-‐amused/
But the consequences of this new mass par,cipa,on in media can also be very profound
“A revoluEon doesn’t happen when society adopts new tools, it happens when society adopts new
behaviours” Clay Shirky, Author, Here Comes Everybody
Picture credit: h,p://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2011/dec/13/guardian-‐weekly-‐news-‐review-‐2011
The implica,ons for tradi,onal media have generally been seen as profoundly nega,ve
Picture credit h,p://www.flickr.com/photos/wvs/7860530/
“Clearly, the sky is falling. The quesEon now is how many people will be leP to cover it.”David Carr, Mourning Old Media’s Decline,
The New York Times
However despite warnings of informa,on overload demand for it seems to just keep growing
“It is clear that consuming more media and more entertainment, in a sense, makes Affluents hungry for sEll more rather than saEaEng their need. What beTer news could anyone in the media
industry hope for?”The Ipsos Mendelsohn Affluent Survey
That’s because intelligence, like affluence, is increasingly becoming a mass phenomenon
“In most rich countries, the old disEncEon between high and popular culture is breaking
down.”John Parker, ‘The Age of Mass Intelligence’,
Intelligent Life
Picture credit h,p://moreintelligentlife.com/story/age-‐mass-‐intelligence
This is crea,ng unprecedented opportuni,es for the creators of ‘intelligent’ media
"IncepEon, the $160m auteur vechicle that proves really expensive movies don't have to be stupid to be successful. It's a film that imagines that the mulEplex masses aren't so dumb aPer all.”
Mark Kermode, Film Cri,c
In the emerging networked knowledge economy ideas are more important than ever
“It is really exciEng when you think about the different way stories are told and products are
sold you are thinking about a whole shiP in many ways of how we engage with content.”
Aleks Krotoski, Boradcaster
Video available on request from The Economist Group
And influence is no longer just about who you know but more about what ideas you have
“Obama for America mobilized 3 million individual donors, who made 6.5 million donaEons totaling $500 million over the course of the campaign.”
Blue State Digital
In this new ideas driven networked economy tradi,onal media and social media coexist
“There is no point in ge\ng connected unless you’ve got something to say”
Sir John Hegarty
These changes create huge opportuni,es for companies who can think beyond the status quo
“The internet is a connecEon engine and companies that build on top of the underlying
knowledge of that connecEon engine are going to be the ones that Succeed.”
Rishad Tobaccowala, Chief Strategy Officer, Vivaki
Picture credit h,p://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=469716398919
But we need to stop thinking about individual products and start thinking about experiences
“I think we’ve known for a long Eme now that Starbucks is more than just a wonderful cup of
coffee. It’s the experience”Howard Schultz, Founder and CEO, Starbucks
Apple’s success with iTunes shows that crea,ng experiences around content creates value
“Apple has sold over 15 billion songs through it's iTunes Store since its launch in 2003, making it the
number one music retailer in the world”Techcrunch
This is why The Economist is focused on crea,ng a community experience not just a website
“The world’s most valuable community for intelligent analysis, discussion and debate where our readers benefit as much from the experEse of each other as they do from the experEse of our
journalists”Tom Standage, Digital Editor, The Economist
“People who have new ideas are going to show up in The Economist. You can think of it as a
community of ideas people who are out there looking for the next big thing to show up on the horizon and trying to figure out how the world works.” Richard Ogle, Author, Smart World
A community centred around the needs of the global ‘ideas people’ psychographic
A community centred around the needs of the global ‘ideas people’ psychographic
“People who have new ideas are going to show up in The Economist. You can think of it as a
community of ideas people who are out there looking for the next big thing to show up on the horizon and trying to figure out how the world works.” Richard Ogle, Author, Smart World
Video available on request from The Economist Group
The sharing inherent in this community creates valuable social currency for our readers
“If searching for news was the most important development of the past decade, sharing news may be among the most important of the next”The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence
in Journalism
And their par,cipa,on, which lies at the heart of the community, adds value to our content
“I enjoy your comments secEon because of how well moderated it is. It is a much more civil place than most news sites, it comes as close to true
discussion than any other news site”Katheryne Kieser, Economist.com user
Community fulfills a fundamental human need for belonging and recogni,on
“Human beings can't help it: we need to belong. One of the most powerful of our survival
mechanisms is to be part of a tribe, to contribute to (and take from) a group of like-‐minded people.”
Seth Godin, Author, Tribes
Community also allows us to explore the changing nature of journalism in a digital world
“The role of journalists in this new world is to add value to the conversaEon by providing reporEng, context, analysis, verificaEon and debunking, and by making available tools and plaeorms that
allow people to parEcipate”Jeff Jarvis, Author, What Would Google Do?
And to harness the huge poten,al of word of mouth to grow our reach and influence
“Social Media have taken the solid, dependable old tortoise -‐ word of mouth -‐ and transformed it into countless hares, mulEplying like, well hares”
Bob Garfield and Doug Levy, Ad Age
Commercially community provides the engagement adver,sers increasingly demand
“Consumer engagement with our brands is ulEmately what we're striving to achieve.
Awareness is fine, but advocacy will take your business to the next level” Joe Tripodi, CMO, Coca-‐Cola
And new marke,ng opportunites that go beyond basic display adver,sing
“ConversaEons among the members of your marketplace happen whether you like it or not. Good markeEng encourages the right sort of
conversaEons.” Seth Godin, Author, Permission Marke,ng”
Community also creates new habits to replace the old ones tradi,onal media once relied on
“Habit is one of the only true sources of sustainable compeEEve advantages in the media
industry”Jonathan Knee, Co-‐Author, The Curse of the Mogul
We believe that this community experience will also unlock new sources of value
“The value of content is not in what we produce but in what it produces: signals about people's interests, about authority, about topics and
trends"Jeff Jarvis, Author, What Would Google Do?
And that communi,es built around psychographics are capable of crea,ng sustainable value
“In towns and ciEes where there is a strong sense of community, there is no more important
insEtuEon than the local paper”Warren Buffet, CEO, Berkshire Hathaway
Ensuring that The Economist will remain as relevant in the future as it has been for 169 years
“To take part in a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, Emid ignorance obstrucEng our
progress.”The Economist Group, 1843
Engaging the influen,al in an ideas communityNick Blunden | Global Digital PublisherE: [email protected] | M: +44 7968 838933 | T: @nickblunden