Winning in Digital

Paul Wright, digital strategy consultant and owner of Rockster Digital Media, says “digital media has been many things; once the saviour, sometimes the enemy and always the business that does not make enough money”…

World Cups have always featured in my life as key moments.

I was born the last and only time England won the Cup (yes, that long ago!), was made redundant from a sports business at the start of a World Cup (2002), sold a digital sports business during a World Cup (2006) and this time have changed roles again.

As with many World Cups, expectations were high this year before it started, yet reality was much more sobering.  Surprising successes for some and many of the old guard not doing so well.

Indeed the story seems to sum up the digital media world right now.

You could easily argue that we have had a series of  digital World Cups, and much like the great sporting event itself there have been a variety of winners. Equally, the high expectations that digital will provide great riches for media companies has often been matched with a sobering reality of  perceived failure.

But before I lose credibility and take this analogy too far, and start suggesting that Google is Brazil, Facebook is Spain and Twitter is Ghana (any suggestions for England?), there is a serious point to this.

In my experience of digital media businesses, there are waves of innovation often driven by consumers that usually end up with a clear winner at the end of that cycle.  Equally, survival for those more traditional companies, much like in a large sporting tournament, relies on careful tactics against changing opposition and fans.

As far as winners across this period are concerned, in the late nineties it was the browser wars, which ultimately Microsoft won. Then there was the boom and bust of the early noughties, which Google emerged as a clear winner. After Google everyone had a party and there were plenty of  smaller digital winners (often at the expense of  traditional companies bank balances – Bebo anyone?).

Then the rise of Facebook has created another winner, and more recently Apple’s cool consumer chic has propelled it to the winners enclosure again (iPhone 4 issues excepted).

None of these winners are media companies in the purest sense, although media is an integral part of what they do. What is YouTube without great content? What is the Apple store without quality apps from media owners or music, movies and books?

Often the media suppliers (the traditional businesses) to these companies have made it to the qualifying rounds, and sometimes to the tournament itself, but have not been leading teams.

Yet despite these new outlets for media owners, why does the whole subject of digital become so emotive internally, and are there clear strategies for survival in this disrupted landscape?

For many companies I have dealt with, digital media has been many things; once the saviour, sometimes the enemy and always the business that does not make enough money, all in a relatively short space of time. Media companies have bought digital businesses, restructured (several times), debated the changing landscape, hired and fired “digital experts” and now feel exhausted by the whole process. This is while their CEOs see Facebook, Google and others rise further up their board’s agenda.

It is hardly surprising that the recent recession has seen many media owners cut their digital investment to the bone. Some have almost relegated digital to the corporate equivalent of the shed at the bottom of the garden and told it to come back in when it has grown up.

This approach was highlighted recently when I was kindly invited to a couple of networking evenings which were attended by collection of senior media types (and me of course in the cheap seats). Most of my fellow invitees were digital people in traditional businesses, and much of the conversation came around how to do digital media well within this corporate environment. After various chats there seemed to be two groups. Those who were frustrated but positive (the many) and those who definitely saw a strategy and were integral to the long term business aims of their company (the few).

Interestingly, the businesses were not too dissimilar, yet the outcome seemed driven by three clear differences in approach that the few successful companies had sorted (which frankly all come from the top):

1. A clear realisation that media consumption is changing and relying on old models will not be good enough for survival.
2. Strong senior management who will support innovation without unreasonable expectation of immediate payback on all things.
3. Digital is integral to the whole company’s strategy – not a silo or an optional extra.

Indeed, on reflection, applying these principles to many key media owners in the UK will clearly identify the progressive companies from the rest.

So what does it mean for the future? Well the FA are sitting down to look at English football, maybe a few in the media world should do the equivalent. After all, like football, 44 years will be too long a wait to get it right.