The gathering pace of brands and companies commissioning content to feed their own audience and customer networks is the “biggest threat” of any that traditional media companies face, Fairfax Metro Media group editorial director Garry Linnell has warned.
Talking to AdNews earlier this week on launch day of the new compact editions of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, Linnell said Fairfax and News Limited had traditionally viewed each other as prime competitive threats. But that was no longer the case.
Companies and brands looking to create content to service their ever-growing audiences through “owned media” assets was fast emerging as the biggest challenge facing traditional print and digital publishers.
Linnell cited the high profile move by the AFL to create its own media centre for reporting and video coverage of the code and the move by banks, telcos and a host of other industry sectors to invest more heavily in producing their own content as the biggest editorial challenge for Fairfax.
“It’s only a matter of time before the Commonwealth Bank and the other big banks really get a grip on how they can use content and how it can drive bigger audiences for themselves,” Linnell said. “Then we’ve got a real tough battle on our hands. I reckon it’s the biggest threat to traditional media companies. They’ve got the people – the audience is already there.”
However, Linnell said there were still several challenges which worked in favour of media groups like Fairfax and News Limited in the content war: independence and the fact that creating stuff that people really wanted remained a “tricky business”.
“It’s a little bit like the Chinese government telling us you can believe everything you read in state-sponsored newspapers,” he said. According to Linnell, there was a core group of discerning people who knew the difference between reporting and content engineered to benefit brands and corporates.
“They are the ones that advertisers really want to get to,” he said. “They are the old AB demographic under a different guise. They are the ones brands still need. They are smart, discerning and ahead of the curve. They’re often ahead of us in the media. Sometimes we treat them too simply and we need to have a lot more respect for that audience – for what it knows and wants.
“It is a sceptical audience, it is an audience that understands how the modern world works but it is also discerning about where it will go and what it will trust. Fairfax is a great brand and it still has a halo around it. Would I trust Westpac or Commonwealth Bank’s content or would I trust Fairfax? Our journos are pretty gutsy.”
Linnell said it would not be an easy road for the companies and brands now investing heavily in content to target their customer and audience networks and build stronger connections.
“You know what? Content is a very tricky thing,” he said. “We can’t take it for granted that it is easy, even for those of us who do it all the time. It is hard making those choices on content and figuring out what is right for the audience. It would be a great shame if [companies and brands] became the big content producing
companies.”
This article first appeared in the 8 March 2013 edition of AdNews, in print and on iPad. Click here to subscribe for more news, features and opinion.
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