Tag: digital

Business People Podcast – Sandeep Saujani interview

Martin Tripp 13th July 2020

The aim of the Business People series of podcasts is to explore how businesses, and the people that run them, are coping with the challenges of a changing world: the Covid-19 pandemic, changes in technology, expectations of staff and customers, and all things human.

A couple of weeks ago, I interviewed Sandeep Saujani, CEO of Contentive Media, for the “How to Stage a Virtual Conference” blog. The conversation was much wider ranging than just about virtual conferences: we talked about the future of his business, how changing working habits will impact how people interact, and the future of media among other things. All neatly edited into 27 minutes.

I hope you enjoy it.

 

Martin Tripp

martin@trippassociates.co.uk

Martin Tripp Associates is a London-based executive search consultancy. While we are best-known for our work across the media, information, technology, communications and entertainment sectors, we have also worked with some of the world’s biggest brands on challenging senior positions. Feel free to contact us to discuss any of the issues raised in this blog. 

How to stage a virtual conference

Martin Tripp 13th July 2020

Distance learning

Many media businesses have moved into conferences and events in recent years as they have looked to diversify their revenue streams. It makes sense: you can serve your communities across digital, print and in person just as well.

 

Covid-19 has put a stop to face-to-face events for now, and this has hit many companies hard financially. But an even bigger problem in the long run might be that your client communities start to drift apart, and fall out of the habit of connecting with each other via your brand. So for many B2B businesses, it is important to find work-arounds which will allow them to stay central to their community.

 

One such community we know well is that of HR professionals. For the past fifteen years, the HRD Summit has been bringing together senior HR and people leaders to discuss their challenges, with a particular focus on the future of work, along with tech providers who might be able to help them solve their problems with innovative solutions. 

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Psychometric tests and quality recruitment

Sophia Garibaldi 3rd July 2020

Thinking outside the box-ticking

At all levels, recruitment can be costly and time-consuming. As such, employers understandably aim to maximise the benefits and minimise the frequency of the recruitment process. For the same reasons, improved staff retention is one of the highest priorities for our clients. For recruiters too, it is a sign of a successful hire, since strong retention strategy starts at the recruitment phase when companies look for compatible values in candidates alongside role-related skills.

Core competencies are the focal point during most recruitment processes, tested through competency-based interview techniques or by the assignment of practical projects. However, an increasing number of companies, particularly larger ones, have started

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Not worth the effort: the inertia of the undifferentiated internet

Chris Sutcliffe 7th March 2020

One of the most common criticisms of the internet as a publishing medium is, ironically, also one of its greatest strengths. The fact that anyone can publish inevitably leads onto the fact that many people do publish. That creates an undifferentiated landscape, where the value of any article or video is effectively the same as any other, with no consideration given to the amount of time or research involved in its production.

Less? More?

That is exacerbated by the fact that digital advertising has historically rewarded the production of huge quantities of articles instead of rewarding quality. If you’ve ever despaired at the idea that newspapers’ websites will indulge in churnalism, producing articles that are mutually contradictory, that’s the cause.

That is beginning to shift slightly, as many newspapers’ priorities change from chasing advertising revenue to limiting the number of articles they publish to better serve members and subscribers. However, for generalist titles who have little chance of developing subscription products (usually the tabloid papers), the age of churnalism is here to stay for the foreseeable future.

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Consensus before Censorship – why the Copyright Directive was rejected

Rhea Mills 13th July 2018

An impossible code

Having only recently recovered from the GDPR frenzy which gripped the continent in May, some media companies will be feeling relieved that the European Parliament last week sent controversial copyright reforms back to the drawing board. The proposed legislation included Article 11, which would require online platforms – search engines, news aggregators, etc. – to pay publications if they link to them. Article 13 meanwhile would have made copyright enforcement the responsibility of online service providers, and asked them to use content recognition technology to censor material at the point of upload.

Over the past few years, we’ve witnessed an increasing inclination from the EU and its member states to privatise tasks which many believe should be undertaken by the police and courts of the respective state. As with the censorship of online hate speech, the ongoing debate has centred around just who ought to be arbiter of these laws – i.e. humans or machines. The trouble is that

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2018 will see the ‘quality revolution’ for digital advertising

Chris Sutcliffe 19th December 2017

There are any number of predictions for media priorities in 2018 floating around. As with last year’s predictions some will be on point, some will miss the mark, and some will appear laughably naive by the time January 2019 arrives.

Almost certainly, all the predictions will be subject to Amara’s Law – that we overestimate the effect of a technology in the short-term and underestimate it in the long-term. As an example, we saw disappointment with early implementations of A.I. chatbots this year because of early hype around the technology, but the bots have been ubiquitous – and delivering significant revenue – since the middle of this year.

This year has also been the year of the ‘pivot to video’, a term that was used so widely and so often that it became

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Does Gaming still need digital disruption to secure profits?

James Dodd 7th December 2016

Earlier this year, the overall value of the UK games market ‘soared’ past £4.1bn for the first time – so we are overdue a look at how publishers and developers achieve growth in the face of a prosperous secondary games market.

For the uninitiated, the secondary market covers the resale of second-hand games and trade-in (often for store credit). Retailers including Amazon, GAME, and HMV re-sell and, historically, this has been considered to the detriment of developers and publishers.

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Guardian Labs and the play for native advertising

Albert Ng 21st March 2014

Banner advertising has long been the established method by which digital publishers generate income – but an increased use of mobile, difficultly innovating the humble skyscraper, and growing customer ‘blindness’ to banners has led many to re-evaluate their approach and instead start experimenting with native ads.

Guardian News & Media is the latest publisher to jump aboard the native ads bandwagon. The Guardian is by no means the only newspaper looking for new and innovative ways to raise revenue (in fact, the Times has been has been involved with branded content for years), but even by its own forward-thinking standards, its move into native advertising is a compelling one.

The publisher has set up a branded content division – called Guardian Labs – with the aim of creating innovative marketing campaigns that can stretch its revenue stream beyond display ads.

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PR jobs: digital skills are the new currency in communications

OliverLuft 27th January 2014

Whether the job title is Chief Communications Office, Head of Content or Director of Corporate Affairs, the day-to-day tasks in-house professionals in the public relations industry are asked to perform are undergoing fundamental change.

Across sectors as diverse as retail, financial services and health, the nature of PR jobs is being redrafted by the inevitable rise of digital technologies. New skills are needed at the highest level so businesses can compete in a world where new forms of communication are increasingly important.

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Media jobs: paywall vs free newspaper websites

Martin Tripp 4th September 2013

In today’s Evening Standard, Roy Greenslade makes a case for metered paywalls for newspaper websites. As he says, it is the pragmatic (rather than dogmatic) approach: users who get past the maximum number of articles each month are required to subscribe. This has several commercial benefits, not least that it does not hugely impact visitor numbers through redirection from Google and others. Advertisers, therefore, are happy; and potential subscribers become used to the service and are more likely to subscribe – it may even help preserve a few media jobs.

Greenslade notes that, since telegraph.co.uk introduced its ‘soft’ paywall in March, it has remained the country’s third best visited newspaper websites (behind the free to access Guardian and Daily Mail websites).

It is a technique pioneered in the UK – after much indecison – by the FT, which now has over 600,000 online subscribers. After similar debates, the New York Times recently alighted on the same model, and now has 700,000 subscribers – and is adding 100,000 each year. In 2003, I met the then Editor in Chief of the NYT’s website, and the debate on business models was raging – it has taken a good ten years to resolve. But pragmatism has won out.

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Changing face of media – fifteen years as a headhunter

Martin Tripp 9th December 2011

Today marks fifteen years since I first became a media headhunter.

It is astonishing how much the sector has changed in that time. The job titles themselves are indicative of these changes. While we still recruit MDs, Editors, Sales Directors and so on, we are now as likely to be working on roles like Head of Product Roadmap or Chief Scientist. As business models keep changing, so too do the attributes of the individuals who can add value. 

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