Quantcast
Channel: Storyplanet - Connect with stories
Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 14

What media can learn from startups

0
0
I’ve worked on a number of different online projects with big media outlets around the world over the years, and when I analyze the ones that failed I find one common trait: We wanted to create a perfect blockbuster straight out of the gates.
There is nothing wrong with ambition and setting the bar high, but the reality is that almost no idea or concept, no matter how great it is, will work straight out of the gates. If there is something I’ve learned from running startups it’s that you have to try, adjust, try, adjust and eventually you might get it right.
The problem is most media organizations don’t think that way when they plan their projects. More often that not I’ve had editors brief me like this: ”Bjarke, we have this budget (some figure is mentioned), and we want you to do something for us that will be an instant hit with (some target audience is mentioned).”
There is definitely some tradition involved here. In the past when you wanted to launch a newspaper supplement, or a new format for broadcast, you had very high initial costs. But on the contrary you did not have to worry about the business-model, user experience or technical setup. This was more or less set in stone. So if you had a really great idea or concept it was easier to execute it with success.
Reality reversed
Today it’s reversed: If you plan your project right the initial investment is low – however you can’t expect your business-model or the entire design of the project to just work. Users might want to pay another way, they might want another type of navigation etc. There are a thousand parameters you can tweak to jump from failure to success. So instead of launching a huge polished projects big media should learn from startups, and launch a whole range of smaller projects to test out their concept, and get some data on how it’s behaving with their audience.
One example for inspiration is this project that a small collective of freelancers launched this week on Storyplanet. The interesting part about the project is not as much the content or design, but the purpose and how it was conceived. It took less than two weeks to put the whole thing together and a minimal budget. The team now has a pilot project that it can test with a real audience and use to raise money to do the next version, which will be larger and more sophisticated.
Most of the big media outlets of the world have so much great content, that they could easily make 5-10 experiments, like the one above, a year. An experimental project should take 1-2 weeks from idea to completion with a budget below 10.000 USD. If planned right this would give a vast amount of data and knowledge that could be used to find the right model for the big blockbuster.
So why don’t they?

Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 14

Latest Images

Trending Articles





Latest Images