Month: June 2020

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

The easiest route would be to fall into a position of apathy while “the worst” have the passion to take action. What we’re seeing in the streets of major cities across the nation is conviction, a determination to not let this latest round of senseless injustices go for naught, not again. For the media industry, this was a week of introspection — and a time of decision. For all the progressive ideals espoused by publishers, marketers and agencies, most fall well short when it comes to turning words into action. On Monday, I got an email from Greg March, CEO of Noble People, telling me he simply couldn’t go through with his planned Digiday+ Talk about the future of the office space. I’ve known Greg for some time, and his reasoning was pure in that the anguish his colleagues feel would not be helped by him talking about something like a return to a physical office space. That can wait.

So instead, he spoke about leading through this crisis with action, not words.

What Greg said in our talk resonated in that he was spending much time interrogating himself. The media industry is good with talk. We saw this in the aftermath of the protests and disturbances following the death of George Floyd under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer. The seeming same messages of solidarity with the black community; vows to support systemic change. This was the expected response. And this time, it simply was not enough. As Fernando Machado, brand chief at Burger King, advised: “Action, not ads.”

Most companies and people need to spend a lot more time listening, less time talking. Listening is the key to learning, and as you go through life, you find that a lot of people are more comfortable talking than listening. Posting an Instagram photo with a hashtag is so popular because it is so easy and free. Web Smith, who runs the must-read 2pm, put it best with his advice for those in positions of influence in businesses: Hire or wire. This isn’t the time for empty words or manifestos that frankly sound mostly alike in a way that’s reminiscent of the initial wave of “salute to heroes” coronavirus ads. 

Systemic racism is hard for a lot of white people to get their arms around because the immediate knee-jerk reaction is to proclaim that you are not yourself racist. That is not the point. We have a system in this country that has for hundreds of years deprived black Americans of the same opportunities as their white counterparts, with disparities in everything from treatment by police to incarceration rates to access to health and education to employment opportunities. Merck CEO Kenneth Frazier summed this up nicely on CNBC this week. He grew up in North Philadelphia, about 15 miles from where I did but a million miles in terms of opportunities. He was given an opportunity thanks to a busing program and rose to become the CEO of one of the world’s largest companies. “That opportunity gap is still there,” he said. “We need to acknowledge there are huge opportunity gaps that still exist in this country.”

Personally, I have been focused on what steps we can take within Digiday to make our own dent in this problem. Here’s some actions we plan to take within our editorial group:

• We need to do a far better job of hiring from underrepresented groups. We haven’t done a good job on this front, even though we have talked about it. Greg took away a cop-out when he talked about how people often say they “don’t even see candidates of color” for open positions. That’s not good enough. We simply need to improve in this regard in order to be the strongest group we can. This isn’t about lowering standards; this is about expanding opportunity.
• We have to do a better job of increasing a diversity of representation in our coverage and events. Again, this is an issue we have spoken about repeatedly, yet we haven’t delivered consistently at all. 
• We have to tell the stories of the marginalized and underrepresented in media more consistently. Kristina Monllos did a good job of using our Confessions series to do this with a black media buyer this week. The industry loves to make a show of diversity initiatives. There’s a reason Cannes is non-stop talk about diversity and inclusion, yet you look around and most people sure do look white.

This was a bit of an unusual column, and I’ll return next week to whether publishers can make all these $1 intro offers work in the long run or if they’re devaluing their products. Of course, it is important. Subscriptions are the underpinning to a sustainable model for news publications, enabling them to report the truth of what is happening in a society seemingly being torn apart at the seams.

In the meantime, I would like to hear ideas you have for how Digiday, and our sister brands in Glossy and Modern Retail, can do a better job of accelerating change. At Digiday Media, we have a company mission statement that is centered on fostering change. We need to do just that — in actions.

Now, G/O is projecting an image of stability, with Deadspin under a new editor-in-chief Eric Barrow and editorial director Jim Rich. It has a full-time staff of 10 in addition to some freelancers — down from the more than 20 staffers it had back in October.

Spanfeller has also brought in a new chief revenue officer, former Bleacher Report svp of ad sales Brian Kelly.

Traffic to Deadspin has steadily been increasing since February when it had 717,000 unique visitors, to more than 1.9 million unique visitors in April, according to Comscore. However, year over year, traffic is down almost 85%, with Comscore reporting that the site had 13.8 million unique visitors in April 2019.

“We relaunched Deadspin for appropriate reasons and had already started hiring the staff, but it basically restarted right when sports stopped,” said Spanfeller.

The company’s other brands have seen a general decline in traffic from last year to this year, with its largest property Gizmodo having about a 58% drop in unique visitors from approximately 28 million April 2019 to 11.6 million in April 2020, according to Comscore. During that same period, Comscore also reported that Jezebel dropped from 8.9 million unique visitors to 4.2 million (a 52% decrease) and Lifehacker went from 12.5 million unique visitors to 9.5 million (a 24% decrease).

Spanfeller said he sees a comeback in the making as activity slows picks up as the U.S. economy begins the process of reopening.

“One of the reasons that we pulled the trigger on bringing Brian on board is we’re seeing light on the horizon,” said Spanfeller, adding that RFPs and conversations with clients have been gradually increasing back to what they were before the pandemic. 

Kelly said that he is joining the team with a level of optimism for selling the brands, regardless of advertising being down. This is because 50% of G/O Media’s total traffic is direct, which he said proves a true affinity for the brands. 

Spanfeller added that this direct audience has also enabled the company over the past three to six months to start preparing for the end of the third party cookie by building profiles of first party users. But it has also allowed his team to implement a series of popup surveys across the company’s sites over the past few weeks to learn what audiences want from advertisers in this moment.

From that, Spanfeller said they received thousands of responses, which they’ve shared back with advertisers to help inform potential campaigns.

“I can’t guarantee that we’re going to see brightening spots in June and then an explosion into Q3. I can hope that, but there is still a lot to be determined. Emblematic of that are the events of the past week or so,” said Spanfeller. 

Similar to how he said his team saw brands stop spending on advertising during the outbreak of coronavirus, many brands that were just finding their footing are now facing the instinct again to go quiet to see how the situation unfolds. 

To help offset some of the advertising declines, Spanfeller said that its ecommerce business, which usually brings in half of the revenue that advertising brings in, has been holding steady throughout the pandemic, helping the company “weather the storm.”

As for future growth, Spanfeller said that immediately the goal is to get “our house in order as it relates to the pandemic and revenue streams,” but beyond that, he is very focused on potential mergers and acquisitions, not just in the verticals the company is already in, but potentially expanding into new spaces. “We’re definitely keeping an eye on the marketplace to see what’s out there,” he said.  

Part of the reflection comes from the nature of the moment. As influencers have massive platforms, their fans expect them to talk about what’s happening and to take a stand, according to influencers and agency executives. “The role of the influencer has changed a lot over the last three to five years,” said Brandi Riley, influencer and blogger behind Mama Knows It All. “There are a lot more expectations of us and the community. It’s capitalism: Once people start getting paid they start having a responsibility.” 

The push for influencers to take more responsibility and use their platforms to educate their followers now is at odds with the opportunism of some influencers like Jake Paul, who this week had to respond to a backlash after popping up in videos of looting. Aside from Paul, videos of people, often white women, posing for photos in front of shattered store front windows or at protests have gone viral on social media. Using the property damage or protests as a photo opp has quickly been associated with influencer marketing even if the people doing so aren’t well-known influencers. 

Doing it for the ‘gram

“When there’s a staged moment people think of influencers,” said Ryan Detert, CEO of Influential, adding that the company has paused most of its influencer marketing campaigns earlier this week. “When people are doing it for the ‘gram or for a photo opp it seems like they don’t really care.” 

Whether or not big name influencers are participating in photo opps at protests or elsewhere is irrelevant as people associate it with influencer marketing and that could change how people view influencers, said Elijah Schneider, CEO of social/influence agency Modifly. “We’ll see a lot of people come to the realization that most influencers are very opportunistic,” said Schneider.

Doing something for a photo or for clout hasn’t gone over well in this moment and likely won’t going forward. “There’s now an obligation from influencers to stand for something deeper,” said Angela Brown, senior social strategist at GSD&M. “A problem comes to a head when influencers are posing in spaces co-opting another message or taking advantage of a vulnerable situation for likes on Instagram. It’s going to be a much more obvious issue going forward.” 

Changing the agreement

Seeing this behavior will likely put a renewed pressure on agencies and brands to examine their influencer relationships. Some influencer agency execs, like Detert, expect that influencers who do speak out authentically about the issues of the moment will likely book more jobs in the coming months as brands will want to align themselves with influencers who can add that authenticity to their brands. Others aren’t as optimistic as influencers like Munroe Bergdorf have previously been fired for speaking out in support of Black Lives Matter. (Bergdorf called out L’Oreal’s hypocrisy in its statement of support for BLM this week.)

The potential to be fired by big brands for speaking out does have some influencers nervous about doing so, said Riley who also runs Courage to Earn, a community of over 6,000 influencers. “People are trying to figure out how to manage being asked as a peer to speak up with the bottom line,” said Riley. “White influencers are able to gain more in the industry than we are because it’s a choice for them. For black folks this is our lived experience, we have to say something, it’s not a choice to stay silent.” 

To combat that fear of losing brand deals due to speaking out, GSD&M’s Brown believes that influencers will start taking a better look at their contractual obligations with brands going forward if they aren’t already. Influencers will tell brands that “we need to be aligned on our values so that I can speak about this,” said Brown. “This needs to be part of the contract because otherwise people could get fired down the line.” 

Some influencer marketing agencies believe that going forward brands, agencies and influencers will stop being so fearful of speaking out. “We as a community are no longer ok with people trying to ‘play it safe’ on different issues,” said Vickie Segar, founder of Village Marketing. “We want to hear what people and brands stand for and we want to see it in action.”

Diversity in influencer marketing

Recently, diversity issues within influencer marketing have started to come to the surface more and more. Earlier this year the question of who gets credit, goes viral and gets brand deals came up again as a white teen girl, Charlie D’Amelio, gained followers and went viral on TikTok for a dance created by a black teen girl, Jalaiah Harmon. Now, as protests continue, people will look more closely at these issues, according to influencer agency execs.

“This moment will bring it more to light the diversity issues,” said Riley. “If you post a message of solidarity and never hire black influencers or you post about Black Lives Matter and there’s no diversity on your leadership team [that’s a problem].” 

Issues of diversity in influencer marketing are connected to issues of diversity in marketing in general. “It’s just like in the workplace: People hire folks that look like them,” said Riley. “People in the agencies and at brands’ marketing departments are hiring people who look like them who they’re comfortable working with.”

Most publishers have been touting giant pageviews, mostly vanity metrics as the traffic is often poorly monetized, but the BBC regularly scores high on the scale of trusted news sources even across political party lines. Here’s what the global news entity has learned from the last few months of remote working.

People don’t need to fly to enjoy travel content

The BBC Travel vertical has generated record figures. In April, it grew unique visitors 34% month-over-month compared with March. Time spent on page was also up 9% month-on-month. The month’s most popular story had over a million pageviews.

Internal data show audiences come into news via search before reading more non-coronavirus content across its five other non-news verticals. Even during the height of audience demand for pandemic news in March 2020, non-news content accounted for two-thirds of all page views. 

“We’ve had a light hand on the tiller,” said Mary Wilkinson, head of editorial content at BBC Global News. “We concentrated on what makes places distinct and interesting, people’s interest doesn’t change even if you can’t fly there. It’s not about visiting this hotel but about stories, history, people and the culture of places. People have more time on their hands and are housebound so want to be taken somewhere else.”

Popular articles include ancient underwater civilizations and success stories of cities that have turned their fortunes around. Advertisers class these non-news verticals safer for their branding messages to appear next to, which helps when overall, ad revenue does not match up to the heights of web traffic. Although, countries in Asia are seeing businesses return and reignite marketing. Airlines and tourism firms are talking to BBC Global News, according to CEO Jim Egan, to hit the ground running when lockdown restrictions ease. 

Contingency plans are only a starting point

It’s a simple process to shift online journalism to remote working environments. Keeping TV news channels rolling is tougher.

“For TV, it was a difficult, sobering moment,” said Wilkinson. “We had contingency plans about how to manage if X percent of staff were ill, now that feels naive. People aren’t ill but they don’t want to be going in. The newsroom is densely packed so we had to do swift work to reduce a staffing rota, working out who could make TV from home while keeping the live output going. All the time there’s a story that is constantly evolving and so much journalism that needs doing.”

The TV schedule had to be drastically simplified, relying on Zoom interviews and presenters with only a couple of socially-distanced panelists. But the urgency of the situation meant viewers overlooked the cracks in quality. And pulling in high-profile speakers, like world and business leaders, has been easier.   

BBC Global News is launching new shows: In mid-May, it released “Coronavirus: Your Stories,” a series where broadcaster Philippa Thomas hears from people around the world about how coronavirus has changed their lives.

Post-production editing is the time drain

Elements of remote working, for instance within teams, take longer. For the BBC, it’s editing and post-production that eats up time as it mitigates against lower quality recordings. The editing process is also more iterative when it’s bouncing between many stakeholders. 

“The next step is getting it to the playout suit [to be broadcast],” said Wilkinson. “We’ve never been able to do that when we’ve not been in the building. It now takes longer and is a bit of a technical fandango.”

The challenge is when to ease off

Already, internationally the most-read story for the month of May on the news site was the reappearance of North Korean leader, Kim Jung-Un, published May 2, (in the U.K. coronavirus stories are still top of the list). 

“Right now, the story is of huge interest to huge amounts of people,” she said. “The challenge is going to be to make sure we don’t miss the moment where people have had enough.”

There will, of course, be the story of the unraveling global economy and how it shakes different societies. “It doesn’t feel like it will be an optimistic story, but it is an important one. If lockdown persists, that’s also something that worries me, nothing beats face-to-face journalism.”