Image by Spencer Tunik

People like making and maintaining human connections; they are what make us who we are. The people we form these connections with become acquaintances and friends; you can have a shared experience with these people that make a valuable addition to your life. If you form a connection like this you mutually advocate each other, this is a positive, active, human connection.

These human connections mean a lot more than the passive brand connections many people have with media products, and which some brands are actively looking to increase without thinking about what value, if any, these passive followings really have.

We don’t just need more people following us, we need more acquaintances and friends, we therefore need to make our brands more human and personable so people form relationships in which they feel they can advocate what we do.

The image above isn’t included for titillation or shock value. Specer Tunik once said of his art that the subjects are pivotal to the work. His work is credible because those involved completely buy into the idea, they advocate it, they are not just a following but working in collaboration with him to produce something startling, special and completely unique. Art.

It never ceases to amaze me when ordinary people get into the spirit of what I’m doing. It’s pivotal to my art.”

Spencer Tunik

People are pivotal to media products. Our products are our art.

Publishing brands are losing their credibility and relevance because audience expectations around forming connections with them have changed. This is due to the proliferation of interpersonal methods of digital communication like email, forums, Facebook and Twitter. The ability to share information with other people in real-time is easier than it ever has been and we maintain regular communications with more people than we ever have done, so why should we listen to what a brand has to say with the same level of interest as a human connection? We shouldn’t and we don’t.

There is still massive value in the media brand as a platform to enable professional content creation but more than ever before it is the personality and human behind the brand operating on the platform in which our audience are interested in and want to form a meaningful connection with. If the opportunity to do that is absent for the audience they don’t buy into it.

To facilitate the audience advocating our brands we must humanise them to the greatest degree possible, the audience should feel they can connect with the people behind the brand and form a connection with us on a human level.

Britain’s Got Talent and The X Factor have changed the face of Saturday night TV. Simon Cowell has revitalised the talent show format and turned it into an engaging collaboration with the audience.

Crucial to the success of these programs has been Cowell himself, who is the key brand filter for his audience. Indeed the hook of the early rounds in these shows is down to the producers of them getting in acts that are so bad Cowell has to filter them out to dramatic effect, the audience love this, they love the truth.

I’m only saying what everybody else is thinking”

Simon Cowell 2009

Cowell can’t lose on The X Factor because he filters out the chaff and allows people to vote on the acts they are most likely to invest in. This is good for him and good for his audience, there’s a mutual value in this relationship. This value reveals the truth in talent and the talent is then honestly recognised as a result of the the brand’s collaboration with its audience.

Key to the success of this formula is the brutal upfront honesty which Cowell indulges in to the delight of the audience, addressing the contestants head-on means the audience respect his opinion as the figure head of the brand, they then desperately want to be part of the collaborative process later down the line and engage with the brand frequently.

Audiences are often asked to do too much work when brands want them to engage with a vote. Completely open votes initiated by a brand with a target audience don’t work, people aren’t that interested in them. The brand’s involvement is irrelevant and it doesn’t resonate; people want to know what the brand thinks, otherwise what is the brand’s value in this equation? Enablement? Devices enable, brands filter.

If both parties, the brand and the audience, are on the same wave length a relationship is formed that can both parties can act on, working together like this means the experience of narrative; which results from the voting process is more tangible, meaningful and valuable.

The value of a brand is increasingly in its ability to collaboratively filter the world for its target audience so they are completely engaged with the values the brand holds, Cowell recognised this early and has utilised it to devastating effect.

I was sent this article

The point I have a problem with is below.

The end of frequency
Say goodbye to the idea of monthly magazines, or weeklies, or dailies. Print publications, already under siege by the Internet and 24-hour news cycle, will have to learn to adapt to a world of instantaneous updates. This is most obvious for news and business publications, but it’s just as true for fashion, entertainment and specialized titles.”

Luke Hayman, 2010

I disagree with Luke, I would have written something like this.

The rebirth of frequency
Say hello to the idea of monthly, weekly or daily digital magazines. Print publications, which have seen their audience decimated by the unbundling of content on websites can take control of their content once again. News publications by their nature require instantaneous updates the feature led niche subject matter found in magazines doesn’t. The iPad may provide a consumer platform for a digital equivalent to a monthly, weekly or daily magazine.”

Me, 2010

Putting news, business, fashion, entertainment and specialized titles in the same bracket confuses the issue. Newspapers and magazines are fundamentally different platforms, which are consumed in a very different way by their respective readers and in turn deserve different digital platforms.

Luke comments himself that “Print publications [are] already under siege by the Internet and [a] 24-hour news cycle” the modern news cycle isn’t part of the way modern magazines need to operate. While touching on topical issues magazines are predominantly feature led and nowhere near as time or location sensitive as a newspaper.

I also have a problem with Luke referring to the Internet like it is a medium (“under siege by the Internet”). It isn’t, the Internet is a place, print publications are under siege by websites.

Websites by their nature make bundling content rather difficult. The iPad as a medium may be able to deliver bundles more effectively in a fundamentally different way to websites. As Jony Ive comments in the iPad launch video though “In many ways this defines our vision, our sense of what’s next”. It isn’t the final solution, but it is a start.

When Bonnier published their Mag+ research at the end of last year they commented that audiences like “an editorial package” and “an infinite, endlessly expanding RSS feed” makes it difficult for an audience to really engage and relate to a content provider. Audience like a package they can “read through and finish”. I agree.

Audiences like a bundle of content, it’s not a bad thing for them to want and it’s not a bad thing for us to want to provide. The birth of the iPad does in no way whatsoever signal the imminent death of monthly, weekly or daily magazines, it signals their renaissance.

After seeing a tweet from @cslyons about the mydavidcameron.com website I had a look and decided to submit the picture above, a day later it was up on the site. Today, incredibly, it went up on the Mail’s website.

The Labour party have also now adopted the idea and posted an entry on their website, which they’ve used to highlight what they see as some of the misgivings of the Conservative campaign so far. This little idea is really having an impact!

With the simple instruction below and a good idea Clifford Singer, the man behind mydavidcameron.com, has effectively crowdsourced an audience of activists and provided a vehicle through which their voices can be heard and can gain national attention. What a great achievement!

This is the first election that can really harness the full power of social media to intimately involve us in the debate on our terms. With mydavidcameron.com Clifford has started something which may grow and develop over the coming months and result in more people taking an active shared interest in the current feelings about the different parties campaigns. Could that effect the result of the general election? Not on its own, but it can form a relevant part of the debate.

The reason people don’t vote in the numbers they used to is because they are disillusioned and disconnected with the electoral processes. If through activities like this the electorate can re-engage with it then this is an extremely good thing.

This is the first part of the user generated digital election of 2010. As Labour and the Conservatives trade blows over the coming moths it will be interesting to see who really ‘gets’ digital. If one of the parties can harness social media as Obama did to such great effect in the US presidential election last year it could get really interesting!

The December issue of US Esquire sold itself as the Augmented Reality Issue. This means you can hold up certain pages that contain a special barcode in front of a computer with a webcam, which has a specific piece of software installed and are shown images, videos and audio that relate to the page you’re on. It’s really good fun!

Benjamin Palmer from Barbarian Group who put the augmented reality application together comments that.

What we’re trying to do is create something that isn’t just about showing off the technology, but actually adds to the story.

Benjamin Palmer, 2009

And it does, it’s the best issue of US Esquire I’ve ever read, actually it’s the only issue of US Esquire I’ve ever read, but isn’t that the point. Being brave and taking a risk can put you back on the map for readers and advertisers. That’s always a good thing.

This issue of US Esquire is engaging, exciting, inspirational and makes you feel intimately involved with the magazine (look I’m in the background!). If that’s not good for brand building then I don’t know what is.

Although it’s fun and I’d love to make something with this technology it’s really just a publicity stunt, but there’s nothing wrong with that. I hope it gave US Esquire a sales boost and I hope they are back on the map for some readers who might have lost interest in their brand.

Trying something new like this is brilliant for the industry and Esquire should be congratulated for giving it a go and hopefully inspiring others to take similar risks. Because sometimes, as in this case, they pay off!

To re-engage an audience with branded publications we need to provide multiple touch points. This will us help us build a relationship with and recognise the importance of our audience,

As publishers instead of thinking ‘what do we need?’ we should be thinking ‘what do our audience need?’ David Cushman recently wrote in his insightful post 2020 vision that “By 2020 a person’s worth will be valued by what they share, not what they keep.” If this is how we are to be valued as individuals it should also be how we are valued as publishers.

We need to serve our audience and share our content with them if and when they need it. In order to do that we need to share in a place they are comfortable accessing our content and where they find value in it.

There is nothing wrong in expecting people to pay for a service, but it needs to be on their terms, they need to book the appointment knowing the price. We shouldn’t react by giving them the same thing they are already getting but now make them pay for the privilege, that would be relationship-breaking, not relationship-building.

I’ve had The Guardian’s iPhone app now for a few weeks. I don’t use it everyday but I do use it more than any other news application I have for several reasons.

1. The content is of a reliably high standard.
2. I paid for it and I want to get value from it.
3. It is almost perfect for the medium.

I know when I use it that I am going to get a variety of content on one page which I can spend 5 minutes looking at and feel I’ve been effectively updated about the world in which I live.

I don’t want it to replicate the amount of content I would get on their website homepage or in their paper. That isn’t what this is for. It’s a referential touch point which gives me access to their brand when I’m on the go, it’s mobile.

People will pay for content, the argument is over and we now need to work out how we grow an audience that will pay for our content on multiple devices in multiple formats.

This particular mobile app is effectively getting an early adopter audience ready for the next thing on the horizon. It shows me that the Guardian are acutely aware that this is a transitional platform which will breed an audience who are ready to pay for digital editions on a yet to be released piece of hardware, which will allow their audience to subscribe, perhaps for 30p a day, to download the paper on a device which they can then read at their leisure through the day, if and when they like.

The more touch points we can provide our audience with the more likely they are to grab hold of our hand and keep hold, forever.

From a reporting point of view this is fine but from an editorial and production point of view this is a year to stop thinking about users and start thinking about an audience.

The mindset we are in when thinking about users is nondescript, impersonal, cold and distant. We need to do something to readdress this relationship.

The problem exists across the online publishing industry, because we are now so used to reporting ‘user’ numbers our products are developed to serve the need to build these user numbers and not foster an audience of readers and viewers. Users find our content through a search engine, decide if it’s what they are after, quickly read/watch it then leave, most likely returning to Google to start another search. My worry with this sort of user behaviour is that there is clearly no engagement with the brand, which we would traditionally have seen with an audience that perhaps subscribed to a magazine or picked up the same newspaper everyday.

The future of all brand aligned commercial or digital subscription activity will be built on the solid foundations of an engaged audience. With this in mind I believe the transient users entering from and exiting to Google are losing value faster than an investment in the Dubai property market.

Efficiently delivering your product will mean it is built to be Small, Simple and easily Shared. These pillars can form a foundation to re-evaluate what you are trying to achieve and what the future holds for your product and business.

Small: Look at the most high profile web business of the year, Twitter, it sets out to do one thing well: it broadcasts small messages accross multimple platforms. It doesn’t try to over complicate its proposition and becuase of that it has been massively sucessful in growing an engaged audience.

The publishing industry should look at web businesses like Twitter for operational inspriation and slim down their offering so it is focused, reliably delivered and offers users multiple touch points, which they control. Concentrate on your core verticlals and break them out into separate websites if nessessary.

Simple: The more complicated you make your product the less likely an audience are to identify with it. They are also not likely to return regularly if they dont know what they are going to get.

Look for ways to slim down and lose sections that you don’t maintain regularly. This will make your product simple to maintain from an editorial point of view and simple to access from an audience point of view. The time saved by this simplification will free up your editorial team to focus on delivering your audience what they actually want, more regularly.

Shared: This is possibly the most difficult to implement but also the most important in order to build an audience that are engaged with your product and actively want to engage in helping you grow your audience.

Facebook Connect and Twitter API integrations are going to be massive in 2010. They will help grow an engaged audience for your content and strengthen your brand.

Being “Small” and “Simple” does not mean you will dumb down and lose out. It will mean that you are refined and easy for your audience to identify with. This will strengthen your brand and grow your audience.

This simplification isn’t easyily attainable and carries a new set of challenges, it does however allow you to try out new ideas and find a clear path down which you can grow your product, audience and business over the next decade.

The comment around consuming “an editorial package” is important, people will always look to find the linear prescript narrative that magazines can provide, it’s hard to do this with “an infinite, endlessly expanding RSS feed”, which due to its non-linear nature doesn’t have the same defined end point which we can see people do still enjoy in print magazines.

I think the feeling that you have finished something, and hopefully enjoyed it, adds value and breeds an audience that feels more engaged with the brand as a provider of content. As a reader you are then more likely to return to the same branded editorial package, thus building a dedicated digital readership which has massive commercial value.

Is this the future of magazines? Possibly, but it is massively dependant on the hardware which enables it to happen.

Reading this presentation by Matt Kelly from Trinity Mirror given at the World Editors Forum I found some interesting arguments.

Certainly as people (hopefully) become less reliant on algorithmic search and more focused on recommendations from friends through social networks, or a new social search platform, brands having this sort of approach to an extent does make sense and cant be discarded out of hand.

We followed the brochure word for word, and we employed the same merry-go-round of SEO consultants to help us build sites that would ping to the top of search engines for a world hungry for our content.

If little things like character, brand…the ingrained values that made the print product a success, got in the way, well … the ends justified the means. Content wasn’t king. Traffic was. Whoever, from wherever, reading whatever. It didn’t matter as long as the audience grew.“

Crucially, traffic from search engines is ridiculously low for a newspaper website. Around 15 percent for MirrorFootball and less than 10 for 3am.
That means the vast majority of traffic has either come from bookmarks, or a referral from an informed source. We get a lot of traffic to both sites from social networks like Twitter and Facebook.”

In part it does sound like a sales pitch based on having an alternative product, going against the flow, ooooooh exciting, what rebels! However with an ambition to grow traffic I often fear it is easy to forget how important engagement is and the value content has to hold for the audience it purports to represent.

In my opinion the way in which commercial revenue is generated by ‘big media brands’ online will completely change in the coming years so we are more focused on delivering integrated engaging partnerships, which will not be measured by eyeballs but by how many people make a meaningful engagement. You cant really do that with a transient audience that are not dedicated lovers of a brand, I think this is what Trinity Mirror recognise, it isn’t just about being rebellious.

We can already see this with companies like videoegg getting more clients who want to base their ad spend not on how many browse past an advert or how many it is forced on, through preroll, but how many actually love the website they are on so much that they would willingly accept and advert from them because it may actually be on benefit to view it.

Of course this isn’t just a debate about SEO, and I certainly do not write this with the intension of starting a war against it! It is about the core proposition of content based sites and what they actually offer an audience that they cant get on a million other sites. It is about making deep emotional connections with our audience, loving them and in turn allowing them to love us so they have a “Loyalty Beyond Reason*”, which can be exploit ed to commercial gain.

*Lovemarks worth reading the book if you haven’t already.