Five trends in advertising

Technology and new user behaviors are changing the game of advertising. With a range of new opportunities and tougher competition marketeers and sales people need to be more innovative than ever when understanding, reaching and engaging with customers. Kathrine Brøsholen, VP Schibsted Sales, guides us through five trends that are changing the business.

With a complex buying environment and more players on the advertising market the content is becoming more crucial in order to tailor it to create value. New technology that gives us insight has made this possible and it is already giving us new ways to develop products and services. Today Schibsted reaches more than 200 million people every month from Malaysia, to Brazil, Mexico and Norway. Since the new technology has helped bring the world closer together, the opportunities are many.

Insight has been used for years with the classic packaging of products, like buying a newspaper and getting offered a bottle of water, or buying a magazine and being offered a Snicker bar. The product offered matched what was presumed as the reader profile, and illustrates an easy way to use insight towards conversion of a product. This will all play out more personalized, as the web is now all about the user ID and it will be important to offer the right product in relation to the right content, at the right time, when the user is in the right mood.

Award winning examples

A modern version of using this insight is driven by technology and the ability to predict the reader profile and to actually get the user to buy a product when clicking on the online ad. There are already many innovative award-winning examples where Schibsted together with advertisers are using new technology and insight to create solutions that secure an effective communication. The products or services that are offered are adjusted to the user’s daily needs, where additional data like geography are giving a more accurate prediction to reach the right user at the right time. For the users, the benefits are convenient and are making the buying process more efficient, since they don’t need to contact the suppliers to get a product delivered; now you can even buy a car on the Internet.

The same change is also happening for business to business sales, where on an average 57 per cent of the purchase process is handled without contacting the supplier. For companies with high digital maturity it’s up to 90 per cent. This indicates that the traditional local competition is about to change for many industries as many offline industries are going online.

International competition is raising the bar

International players are now collaborating to create tools that will make it easier to buy and sell towards a broader audience through an automated buying process within the media industry. This means that the international competition is raising the bar, with a new level of technical solutions and storage of data and a new world of context.

The media landscape might be seen as complex, but there is still just a seller side and a buyer side. On the seller side there’s the advertiser, the media agency and their trading desk and on the other side is the publisher with the consumer reading the news and using the online services.

For the B2B sales and the digital advertising it’s crucial to create greater process efficiencies that drive more commerce, and enable deeper engagement with consumers.

We can sum up five trends that are driving and improving these changes:

1. Automated processes

The automated process has been at various stages since the end of the 80’s with focus on how to minimize waste, to create more value for the customer, with fewer resources and lower prices. The same efficiency is now reaching the media industry where the online ad spending in Europe are on course to surpass outlays on any other media platform by 2018, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau Europe (IAB Europe) and IHS Technology.

Automated or “programmatic” ad buying will be the main driver of this growth. Previously too many players have been involved in executing online advertising, but this is now changing due to speed and cost. The efficiency will continue to develop through open ecosystem so more companies and agencies can connect to streamline the workflow.

The greatest change with connecting ad technologies and data, is that the process involving media planning, buying and selling will be simplified. This means that more people and specialized skills can be dedicated toward the creative side and new insights can be used to engage and create effective ads that drive commerce, like native advertising, sponsorships, content marketing etc.

A report from IAB Europe verifies the benefits with programmatic advertising. 454 marketers were asked, “Why and how programmatic is emerging as key to real-time marketing success”. 54 per cent replied that it improved their ad targeting, 50 per cent said it enabled them to react to market circumstances in real-time. In addition 35 per cent related it to reduced waste and created value in relation to personalized ads, time to market and tracking of the campaign.

2. Personalized experience

Since the cookies, in time, will disappear and the open ecosystems will enable companies to join forces, we will see more login solutions for users to get access to full-service functionality. This will improve user data and will give an even broader access to a personalized experience for the ad targeting. Among most important factors behind a successful advertising campaign, targeting is ranked number one, where traditionally budget and creativity has been considered to be the most important factors behind a successful campaign.

3. Across digital touchpoints

The access to user data is setting new trends within the targeting and real-time marketing and is therefore evolving – marketeers are more focused on creating fresh, timely content to reach consumers across digital touchpoints. This is also the biggest challenge. In a report from IAB for the US Fortune 500, CMOs stated that reaching the consumer across digital touchpoints and finding a steady stream of relevant content is rated as top two most important challenges.

In addition mobile keeps expanding when desktops ads are expected to decrease.

4. SMEs will drive more growth

Today, it’s easier to establish a start-up than at any other time in our history, and it is likely to only get easier in time. In the EU small and medium enterprise are defined as the backbone of Europe’s economy as they represent 99 per cent of all businesses in the EU. In the past five years, they have created around 85 per cent of all new jobs and the European Commission consider SMEs and entrepreneurship as key to ensure economic growth, innovation, job creation and social integration in the EU. This will have an enormous impact on local trade, as the small and medium sized enterprises are established locally with a need for being visible and convert their product and services in a cost-effective way.

5. Sales experience is crucial

The great news with the market changes is that the sales experiences are crucial for the B2B sales. The consumers are also actually saying that they would like to speak to a physical person, when picking up their newly bought car. With more consumer data being generated and when insight is the key to create value, there is a need to have an early advice on the choice of ad solution. This is what sales professionals in Schibsted are doing today. They challenge their customers to really think differently and they teach them something new. They lead the purchasing process with insights that helps companies uncover problems and opportunities that they probably didn’t even know were there. Sales professionals who advance and challenge their customer’s thinking have a big impact. In fact, research has found that across all industries in B2B sales, 53 per cent of customer loyalty is driven solely by the quality of the sales experience and the way sales professionals are tailoring insights to create value in customer interactions.

“The media landscape might be seen as complex, but there is still just a seller side and a buyer side”

Schibsted’s vision is to enable advertisers to reach a precise audience by using all of Schibsted’s valuable data in local markets on a global scale. Together with our partners we will be able to pursue clear goals, secure risk and investments for the campaigns in a more digital future.

by Ann Axelsson

From transaction to relation

We’ve all heard of personalized content and ads. But how far have we really come, and what is the vision? Robin Hjelte, CRM Manager, shares his view on how to go from mere customer transactions to building user relations – without being annoying or creepy.

A light tap from your watch suggests that the store you are walking by offers a great bargain on the jacket you were looking at online a couple of days ago. When you enter, the store clerk has prepared the jacket in your size and favorite color for you to try on. It’s not cheap, but within your clothes budget. A quick glance at your phone confirms that this is the best deal on the jacket you can get in the area. You confirm the purchase with a touch to your watch.

As a little extra, on your way out the store offers you a complimentary snack, which is great, since you were beginning to feel a little peckish. It’s your favorite kind, and you have just the time to sit down for five minutes before you have to get to your next meeting. An excellent opportunity to check up on the latest news.

A staggering amount of data

This little scenario is pretty standard science fiction fare. Nothing too shocking, exciting or creepy. But of course the amount of personal data and computing power required to achieve an experience like this is staggering. Interests, positioning, blood sugar, income, calendar. Were this scene taken from a film it would likely move quickly into dystopian territory; intrusive ads, surveillance, hacking.

We’re clearly not there yet. But regardless of any personal opinions one might have on sharing personal data, the age old fact remains: the odds of providing a great experience to a prospective customer improve considerably the more a salesman knows the customer. He can anticipate needs, give advice, make suggestions. Furthermore a good salesman knows that investing in the relationship will pay back over time. This is also the basic logic behind loyalty programs of all scales – relationship building, turning the ability to build customer value over time into a competitive advantage.

Picking up on every signal

A salesman instead constantly following customers around, interpreting every glance as an invitation to push any random product laying around and jumping at every opportunity to close a sale would not be very successful. Yet, this is arguably what the online experience has turned into. Personalization and targeting in practice often means picking up on and acting immediately on every signal, no matter how weak, by pushing ads that sometimes follow the user around in endless efforts to retarget.

For ads this can be annoying, but the same logic applied to content recommendations can arguably lead to truly dystopian consequences, such as “filter bubbles”, echo chambers and confirmation bias.

Fortunately, personalization holds far greater potential. But in order to realize this potential, we need to move from treating every single contact, or touchpoint, with users in isolation, as an opportunity for a hard sell, to viewing them as a part of a whole, where we build relationship and user value over time. In short, applying common business sense to our digital user relations and becoming more like the good salesman. This is possible with better data, more advanced tools and sophisticated algorithms. And, increasingly, users expect us to deliver on this experience. A number of major trends from the last couple of years have influenced user expectations:

• The timeline – the endless stream of personalized content pioneered by the likes of Facebook and Twitter has become the primary interaction model for services with frequently updated content. No two users have the same exact experience, and user generated content, professional content and ads share the same space. Whatever finds its way into a user’s stream needs to be relevant in order to stand a chance
• The identified web – more and more services require login, which makes seamless experiences across devices possible. Native advertising and content marketing – ads and commercial messages share the same space as other content and need to be as engaging and relevant in order to compete for user attention.
• Wearables and the Internet of Things – means an increasing number of touchpoints with users: watches, small screen devices, health monitors, connected cars. These often interact with users in contexts that do not allow immediate conversions, but rather improve odds of conversion later. This all tells us that users expect constant updates, personalized to their liking, through mechanisms they may not fully understand but feel that they are in control of. They want a seamless experience and high quality.
  Clearly, the more touchpoints with users and the more data collected, the greater the opportunity to live up to these expectations and build valuable user relationships. Fortunately for Schibsted, as a large player with a strong local presence, we have the opportunity to collect this data because we can offer:

• Destinations and direct traffic – already established user habits.
• Highly valued, updated, original content – reasons for users to return frequently
• An ecosystem of services to capitalize on key events in the customer lifecycle.
• Trusted brands. Trust is the foundation of any relationship,
  and perhaps the hardest and most long term valuable asset
  any company can have. This is doubly important when
  handling large amounts of user data. Experience shows
  that convenience is more important than privacy concerns
  as long as there is trust. But as soon as trust is broken, this
  may be quickly reversed.

To make full use of these strengths we need to recognize that each user interaction has consequences, large or small, that either improve or worsen the commercial potential of the relationship. The trick is to subtly nudge the user over time toward long term maximization of customer value. In order to approach the challenge of building long term user relationships at Aftonbladet we have recently taken an initiative where we analyze and segment the user base based on behavior going back 12 months, tying together user profiles over time and across devices as far as possible. This means handling huge amounts of data, but it turns out to be very useful to understand usage patterns and changes in loyalty and engagement.

Monitoring small shifts

Aftonbladet’s most loyal 20 per cent of users make up a hugely disproportionate share of all page views, and an even greater proportion of revenues generated by ads and direct payments. Any changes in behavior from these users, such as them moving to a competitor for their daily news updates, have an enormous impact on revenue.

This means that even very small and slow shifts in behavior over time need to be closely monitored. In contrast, we have a considerable number of users that visit Aftonbladet less frequently than once a week. This highlights the danger of forming strategy and basing product development decisions based on averages. There is no such person as the average user, and trying to optimize for them is a certain way to make no one happy.

These are in and of themselves not extraordinary findings. In fact, it is so commonly observed in businesses that it is almost considered a natural law: the Pareto principle.

By segmenting the user base by degree of loyalty and personalizing the experience in accordance we can optimize every touchpoint for long term value, sometimes by sacrificing immediate revenue: a loyal user that is showing signs of decreasing return frequency might find a less distracting experience on their next visit. A previously infrequent user that is starting to return more often might be given some incentive to reinforce this behavior.

More specifically we are currently using this segmentation logic to identify which users we should try to convert to logged in users. By targeting users with an already loyal behavior we have the best chance of describing the benefits of logging in, as well as the greatest number of touchpoints to build the case over time. This allows us to prioritize development of logged in functionality to improve the user experience for this specific group.

“The trick is to subtly nudge the user over time toward long term maximization of customer value.”

The next step in this initiative is to further expand and improve our usage of data on our users to improve relationships. Improving loyalty over time requires that we become even more relevant. In order for long term conversion algorithms to be effective, they then need to factor in several other aspects that can be learned from behavior data:

• Context – how is the user coming to us?
• Interest – do we know what this user is interested in and expects to find?
• User mode, intent – the same user may have very different goals on two separate occasions. Sometimes the user wants to be in complete control, sometimes she wants to relax and be entertained.

Using these insights will make it possible to create strong relationships with our users and to provide excellent user experiences. This is where Schibsted needs to be going, and where our ecosystem of users and services will create the most value. Without being annoying or creepy.

by Ann Axelsson

Facts & Figures: Digital economy

Information and communication technologies are influencing most aspects of the business world. Enjoy some statistics that highlight the digital economy's impact.

by Ann Axelsson

Looking for the next big thing

In the search for new investments Schibsted Growth needs to be at the front in tech trends. These are some of the phenomena that has caught their interest lately.

Banking not banks

Banks are like print newspapers: a broad package of services and features, produced by old technology, delivered in a likeable but very costly way. Segment by segment this packaged offering is being attacked by niche players unburdened by legacy, technology and old distribution methods. In each niche the challenger can outcompete the package given focus and global scale.

As services delivered by banks are increasingly available from new providers users will discover that what they need is banking, not necessarily banks. The phone will be the bank, offering basic features such as identification and data storage. The user’s collection of integrated apps will be banking.

Desktop is the new print

We used to think that our businesses were safe once they were “digital”. Not anymore. The massive shift towards mobile will destroy valuations of some of the best known digital companies worldwide. If you are one of them, you need to prioritize mobile transformation now. The same challenges as in the print-to-digital transformation applies: You need to define the core value to your users and rebuild your business. Cramming existing interaction- and business models to the small screen will not be sufficient. And there are already some casualties of this new transformation: Search engine driven marketplaces are declining when digital engagement has moved into the app world. The million-dollar-question is how this will affect the company that defined the desktop web: Google.

From product to service

For years, we’ve focused on driving users and customers to our products on the web. Once we’ve captured their attention, we’ve monetized them with advertising, transaction fees and third party commission models. To succeed the next ten years, we have to tilt our heads 90 degrees and turn the modelaround: How do we build platforms and businesses that come to the customers when they need us?

This will force us to become truly service oriented organizations. We need to learn how we approach our users in their smartphones and on their wrists when they need us. This requires us to be both more friendly and even more relevant to our users. If we succeed, we will truly empower our users in their daily life.

Consumerization of SMEs

Since the 1980s, Microsoft, PC manufactures and business software vendors defined how we interact with digital tools. The Internet (driven by human needs) and Apple (putting the users first) have turned the model around. These days, you could scare small children (and kill small mammals) by telling them how enterprise software makes your life miserable. The small and medium enterprises never went digital though. “Digital” never helped them in the restaurant kitchen or when they redecorated a house. But today, they own a smartphone, they use Facebook 24/7 and have a 50" flat-screen running Netflix. If you want to drive your SME revenues, you need to delight them with best-in-class digital tools and products. They will demand the same simplicity and ease-of-use as your consumers.

The "multi" in multimedia is finally happening

In the coming years, content will develop into experiences that include several of our senses. Companies within gaming, sports and entertainment are already starting to offer this multi-sensory experiences in Virtual Reality. If you’re a football fan, you can enter an arena as one of the players in the squad (offered in the Netherlands and Sweden). You can smell the grass or feel when the person next to you bump in to you.

There will also be more options than ever to distribute content. The cable companies’ dominance is being eroded by social media and over-the-top (such as Netflix) services. Apple has also launched a full-frontal attack on cable companies with the new Apple TV. This will change the way we consume video streams and films in years to come – all video content will be availbale on all platforms everywhere. If you care about content, you’ll need a multi-sensory, multi-channel strategy.

E-commerce re-invented

As more and more Internet users shop online, e-commerce is evolving from “dumb” digital storefronts to fully personalized and highly relevant digital experiences where users are inspired to research, plan and purchase in new ways. Thanks to new technology, e-tailers now have the tools to optimize their inventory and their online-shops more effectively than ever before.

In the evolving ecosystem for online commerce the value chain looks very different from what it used to in the offline world. The big and large-scale retailers are being disrupted by fast moving products and services that offer users better experiences through niche focus, aggregation or innovative sourcing and shipping. Who will be the winner of consumers’ love and commerce spendings? Most likely the companies that drive and develop the best products and services based on the new technologies.

Why does ad-tech still suck?

Some people would argue that digital ads have replicated their offline ancestors for as long as they have existed. That display ads are basically print ads with additional interactive elements, online video ads are TV-spots that you can click on and podcast/audio-ads are radio spots, sometimes with an additional interactive element. In some extent this is true. We have seen rapid development of new digital content, products and services so why is the innovation and pace of development so slow in ad-formats and ad-tech? Is it because publishers, entrepreneurs and users aren’t excited about ads? And if ads are not a priority, are ads as a way of monetization in fact slowly dying?

Messaging as a platform

As Mary Meeker stated in her yearly trend report, six of the top ten most popular mobile tools are now messaging apps. WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Snapchat, Japan’s Line, and Korea’s KakaoTalk are all setting themselves up as potential broader platforms, including e-commerce. Most remarkable, and least well understood maybe, is WeChat, the dominant messaging service in China with more than 550 million active users (MAU). In contrast to Western app strategies, WeChat put a lot of functionality in a single app. They are trying to solve as many everyday problems for their users that they possibly can. They have achieved this by pioneering the app-in-the-app model where over 10 million mini-apps or accounts are granted special access to the platform (including payments) in order to fulfill all kinds of user needs. As Connie Chan notes, “WeChat reveals what’s possible when we take a mobile-first approach to platforms. The question we should ask, I believe, is how can every business rethink its model from the ground up, so it leads and not lags behind mobile?”

At its F8 Developer conference in March, Facebook launched its Messenger platform, making it easy for 3rd party developers to build useful apps that integrate with Messenger – and reach more than 600 million people that use Messenger, thus setting the stage for a WeChatesque emergence of all kinds of services on top of messaging.

Blockchain beyond bitcoin

The Blockchain is the main innovation of bitcoin, and it uses the Blockchain algorithm to achieve distributed consensus on who owns what coins. The jury is still out when it comes to the future of bitcoin, but using the Blockchain as a software development building block may prove more important than bitcoin in itself. Even if Blockchains were invented specifically for bitcoin, the Blockchain may be applied anywhere a decentralized consensus needs to be established in the presence of malicious or untrustworthy actors. Leading figures in Silicon Valley are fascinated by the Blockchain’s potential of creating a decentralization trend at the societal, legal, governance and business levels.

Open Bazaar, for example, is a source project to create a decentralized network for peer to peer commerce online. Put simply, it’s the baby of eBay and BitTorrent. And in an age where we tend towards trusting networks more than authorities, that should be an attractive proposal for many

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opc67dnzeTs

by Ann Axelsson

The spirit of management for millennials

Leadership is a key factor for success. New challenges are facing us as we now see three generations working together. Jaume Gurt, General Manager at Infojobs, believes in encouraging managers to be more humane and closer to their teams.

Right now, we are at a unique moment in history: for the first time three generations (Baby Boom, Generation X, Millennials)1 are living under the same roof at companies. The different technological and economic surroundings that they have grown up in have allowed each generation to develop a particular approach to life and to the world of work, with its own values, motivating factors and characteristics, forcing us to reinvent ourselves to contain them all and keep them happy.

The last to enter the workplace were the so-called Millennials. Unlike the previous generations, Millennials are more focused on getting the most out of the present moment, making their living doing what they love, and seeking happiness in everything that they do. They trust themselves; they are connected to the world and open to change, since they know that evolving is the key to survival. But what moves them is passion. Millennials want to control their work and their personal life. They are connected thanks to new technologies. They want to develop new ideas and projects, either on their own (entrepreneurs) or inside a company (intraentrepreneurs) and they are 100 per cent more oriented towards people than the previous generation (Generation X).

Putting people at the center

With a new profile that demands a combination of passion, working in something that they like, orientation towards people, being listened to and talking about happiness to work, what are the keys to attracting new talents? How will we be able to keep them with us once they fall in love with our company?

For me the answer is simple: we have to humanize companies, putting people at the center, promoting their humane and professional growth. We have to seek ways to make peoples’ passions into work, making companies into unique places where people come to live and enrich themselves with their co-workers. When we do something that we love, it’s no longer work, time doesn’t matter, motivation and dedication increase, and all of this leads to results that are extraordinary.

Need for flexibility

But the change has only just begun. In the next five years, Generation Z (born after 1994) will start to enter the workplace. Here the difference is a matter of degree with respect to the previous generation. Generation Z wants to work with something that they like (76 per cent compared to 50 per cent among the Millennials). There’s more entrepreneurs (61 per cent declare that they will start their own business if they don’t find the job that they want, a logical consequence of working at something that they like). Generation Z needs flexibility: not having a balance between work and life is not an option for this generation. They are less motivated by money, more interested in growing as people and professionals and even more oriented towards people (60 per cent more than the Millennials). Honesty is the most important quality that leaders need for this generation to follow them, they want to be listened to, to have their ideas taken into consideration, and to participate in decision-making.

This means four generations in the same company!

Contribute unique values

The way is clear: the organizations of the future must be more humane, because in the end this is the only thing that each and every one of these generations have in common.

As leaders we need to balance the abilities needed for developing companies spread out over various generations. We have to work so that all of them can contribute with their unique value in order to take advantage of all of their strengths. Without a doubt, new styles of leadership are necessary to lead these multidisciplinary teams and only leaders who understand them will really be able to mobilize them and to make the most of their potential. Only by encouraging managers to be more humane, closer to their teams, and more authentic than ever will we be able to perform the magic of bringing together different generations.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31IMPRhDZF8

by Ann Axelsson

Are you sustainable dear?

Sustainability has become a strategic issue for most corporations. But numerous concepts of doing good can make it hard for the consumers to see the reality behind the reporting. Mari Vonen, Schibsted’s expert in CSR, believes that disruptive start-up competitors, sharing best practice – and our kids, will push development the right way.

For most individuals the debate about what is doing good and what is doing good enough remains private. For corporations this debate is public and their choices are highly scrutinized. From being the home turf of poorly dressed idealists, saving people and the planet has become the latest accessory for the fashionable and glamorous. Is this a bad thing? I think not; the more attention the issues that affect us get, the better – regardless of the selfappointed ambasador.

Endless list of labels

But why should corporations do good and how does one define it? There is an endless list of labels and focus areas that can be included under the doing-good umbrella, in addition to a multitude of reporting standards and frameworks, which adds to the confusion: It is not always evident when a corporation can claim to be sustainable or socially responsible. In layman terms1 sustainable is defined as “able to be used without being completely used up or destroyed”. For businesses this mean that satisfying the present needs should not be done at the expense of future generations.

The Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) or sustainability movement did not gain true attention from the business community until the late 20th century. At the turn of the century and after years with cost-cutting and outsourcing of negative externalities to low-cost countries, western corporations faced increased demands of accountability and requests to demonstrate how they balance and optimize the sometimes conflicting interests of people, profit and planet. This balancing act is not always an easy one, and has paved the way for a jungle of frameworks from the consulting industry (shared value2, true value3, blended value4, and thick value5 to name a few).

Including shareholders

This abundance of concepts fuels accusation of CSR being merely the latest management fad, a window-dressing or green washing from powerful multinational corporations to avoid state interference. An older critique is Milton Friedman’s argument that the only duty of the corporation is to maximize shareholder profits. Academics and consultants still pursue this line of thought when they try to demonstrate that investing in sustainable development maximizes shareholder value. More holistic approaches expand the group of “holders” to include the stakeholders – a group which is, alas, not as easily defined as their shareholding counterparts.

What matters most

Sustainability proponents use various means to make their cause more business-like. The introduction of the materiality concept – proclaimed to be the missing link in sustainability strategy is one such example. A corporation should define what matters the most to its key stakeholder groups, and use these insights to select focus areas to both invest in and report on. A recent Harvard Business School study6 argues that investing in material sustainability issues will increase shareholder returns.

As a rehabilitated accountant I find the development of CSR towards what used to be an accounting stronghold fascinating. The introduction of standards, audits and frameworks seek to facilitate comparison of the sustainability efforts between corporations and industries. However, all this makes it difficult to easily compare anything but the proverbial apples and oranges. We are a long way from seeing a top executive being sent to jail for fraudulent carbon emissions accounting, although the recent Volkswagen emissions scandal and its reputational and financial consequences prove that we are indeed moving in that direction.

A potential negative consequence of the good intentions behind the calls for transparency is that reporting itself becomes the main focus. It becomes so complex that one needs a specialized degree to interpret it. How then will the average Jane and Joe decide what products to buy and what shares to invest their savings in?

The very reason

We live in an age where many corporations have had to re-learn what it means to be a responsible business after public scandals and media scrutiny before arriving at a level of maturity that we expect today. A lot of start-ups on the other hand tend to integrate sustainability in their very reason for being – their purpose – and their business model and value proposition. I believe the emergence of disruptive players and technology that challenge old paradigms and established truths will be a driving force that can truly bring sustainability factors to the strategic level – even when the tough decisions are made.

If sustainability has become a strategic matter, one can assume that a competitive advantage can be derived from being good. Does this impact corporations’ willingness to cooperate to tackle industry specific issues? Here there is reason for hope: Requesting sustainable and ethical behaviour from suppliers and suppliers’ suppliers is the new norm.

Share best practice

Although the cooperation efforts have historically been directed upstream in the value chain this is changing. Forums and arenas where direct competitors share best practice and cooperate to tackle industry specific issues have emerged in industries ranging from extraction, fish farming to media to name a few. In addition great corporations acknowledge that a significant share of the environmental and social impact of their products and services may arise after the time of sale, and try to influence consumers’ behavior long after the products have left the shop. I believe the trends of increased cooperation and expansion of the sphere of influence will accelerate in the future. The possibility of nudging or shifting consumers’ behavior – in the end they are the ultimate decisions makers – towards more sustainable products and services is probably the greatest challenge and opportunity of modern day corporations.

No other choice

As for another type of corporation – the family – the future generations are taking on the role as the family’s Chief Sustainability Officers. I am hopeful that the combination of pressure from kids, technology innovations, nudging from corporations, and the non-avoidable increase in regulatory requirements can pull and push us all in the direction of a more sustainable way of life to overcome the environmental and societal challenges that we as humanity are facing. It will not be easy or pleasant, but we’re all in this together and frankly we have no other choice.

by Ann Axelsson

The heart and soul in the media business

Twitter and Facebook are Carina Bergfeldt's two best friends when she’s on assignment for Aftonbladet. Not only do her connections in social media help when seeking information and sources – when she visited the Syrian boarder the readers also gave proof of their true engagement by raising money to help.

Another boardroom, another brainstorming session, another long trip. Together with photographer Magnus Wennman I am about to travel along the Syrian border, through Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey It’s February 2015 and the world has not yet comprehended the extent of the refugee disaster.

“It is hard to make people care”, the woman from UNHCR says. “Maybe that’s what we should call the campaign? ‘Who cares?’… since no one does”, she continues. A few weeks later, we are there. Among the most forgotten victims of a humanitarian disaster.

Meeting the children of war

An eight-year-old boy, Shiar, has a body that looks like patchwork, put together by whatever skin was left after the mine. Five-year-old Ahmed lives in a plastic tent situated on top of a garbage dump, so close to Syria so that I can see his homeland as I talk to him. I can see it. He cannot. His blind eyes are as white as the world around them is black. Day in and day out we meet them. The children of war. On this specific day, my colleague Magnus has walked away to take a photo of some boys playing – when she catches my eye. She is seven years old and her name is Rima. She starts to follow me as I walk around the refugee camp. At first she walks behind me, smiling every time I turn around to look at her. Then she starts walking a bit faster, catching up with me. Finally, she is walking by my side.

A wooden treasure

All the time while she is walking she is holding something, her hands tightly clasped. Whatever is in there, she’s protecting it like a priceless dinosaur egg. It takes a lot of smiling and pointing from my part before she finally agrees to show me her treasure. It’s a little wooden heart, no bigger than a thumbnail, painted blue. The kind of little wooden heart you can buy for less than a dollar at the crafts store. With the interpreter’s help, Rima tells me that the little heart is the prettiest thing she’s ever seen. She asks me if I feel the same way.

As I smile and nod I feel my own heart breaking into pieces. Over this girl. Over the life she’s endured. Over the hundreds of other children we’ve met. And over the fact that UNHCR believes that nobody in Sweden cares about her. I refuse to believe that’s true. As I often do when my frustration level goes up during an assignment, I turn to Twitter and Facebook. My two best friends when I travel. I post a photo, share a brief version of her story with the thousands I interact with there. I tell the readers that I can’t wait to tell them more when I come home.

They put my heart back together

When we finally publish the story about Rima, we raise almost half a million SEK in that very first day. Four days later, Aftonbladet’s readers have given the children of Syria over two million SEK. And while doing that, they have put my heart back together, with the emails they send me. With the interactions we have on Twitter. With every share and comment they’ve given me on my Aftonbladet-Facebook page. And with the money they spent.

Important journalism

Our readers care – when we give them journalism worth caring about. When we tell them about people worth portraying. Within Schibsted we can truly impact people in their every day lives. We can give them journalism that they feel is not only worth their time – but also their money. In this case above, the aim was to raise money for the children. In other cases, I go on assignments with the purpose of writing journalism that readers want to buy from us, The two trips I’ve gone on so far for Aftonbladet Plus, to Texas and Canada, have provided a profit of more than one million SEK – after both trips were completely paid for.

Some people find it offensive to talk about money and journalism. I have never really understood that. Ever since Lars-Johan Hierta published the first edition of Aftonbladet in 1830 the purpose has been just that: to provide people with important news worth paying for. We just do it in a slightly different way today. My job is to go out into the world and bring back quality journalism that is powerful enough to make people want to open their hearts – and their wallets. As I do that, I get the most wonderful gift in return. With every new Plus account when I write about indigenous women in Canada, or every SEK when I write about girls like Rima, I learn that the UNHCR lady was dead wrong.

Our readers care.

by Ann Axelsson

Media Houses going all in on social media platforms

At the moment there are three things that many of the major media houses seam to agree on: Be where the audience is and focus on optimizing the content for different platforms, diversify your business and keep up the storytelling.

At tech conference South by Southwest in Austin Texas, major media houses gather to share their thoughts looking forward, in many different areas. When it came to the over all strategies, they spoke mostly about more of the same than revealing new solutions.

The doubts whether it’s a good idea to go all in on other platforms, seams to be overrun by the need to reach an audience. New York Times, Washington post, LA times, Vox, Buzzfeed are all increasingly distributing their content on social media platforms. As an example Washington Post publish 1 000 articles on Facebook Instant Article each day. They all reason the same way – there is no other choice, they need to be where the audience is and the platforms are distribution channel, just like the post office.

There is a significant difference though, compared to postal delivery – you can’t send out your content looking the same way on the different platforms. The challenge now is to optimize and package the content for each platform.  At the same time you need to be aware of being true to your tone and brand. If you do so – the different platforms can build your brand even stronger, they argue. The question of who is monetizing data and getting the revenue is not as clear.

Washington Post might also be the number one when it comes to building different revenue streams – they have 18, including building an advertising platform, publishing technology and VR.

And Buzzfeed might open a pop up restaurant. They recently launched Tasty – the worlds leading food network, which guides you to recipes in 60 second in an up tempo sort of way  (hard to follow, fun to watch). They got 82 million viewers in 24 hours – no wonder if you want to find out if some of them might pay for a real dinner in town.

Old or new, media house or marketeer – storytelling is still king. Some explains this better than others. Buzzfeed and Vox, the rising stars in the media family, also know how to create storytelling about storytelling and how to build engagement with your users.

Frank Cooper, CMO at Buzzfeed, put it like this: ”Food, entertainment or news – it’s about the everyday of people. It starts with the question – what connects you?” And he concluded:  ”Empathy and human connection are the superpowers”.

Jim Bankoff, CEO of Vox Media, explained that their mission is to look for relation, and intimacy and a voice closely associated with the content. With 170 million users, they might be on to something, having created a portfolio of brands combined with a cross platform strategy.

Here’s another view on the subject Content provider or platform player:
http://schibfr.wpengine.com/content-provider-or-platform-player/

South by Southwest (SXSW)

SXSW is a set of annual conferences and festivals in Austin, Texas, gathering experts and enthusiasts within, film, music and interactive media.
The music festival is regarded as the largest of it’s kind, featuring more than 2 200 acts and attracting more than 30 000 registrants in 2016.
SXSW film started of focusing on indie films but is now also attracting larger players.
The interactive part is focused on emerging technology and trends and attracts start up hunters as well as industry leaders within tech and media. The first SXSW festival took place in 1987.

by Ann Axelsson