Putting the customer at the centre of storytelling, distribution and revenue
1. Alan Soon
Founder & CEO
alansoon@thesplicenewsroom.com
@alansoon
@splicenewsroom
Putting the customer at the centre of
storytelling, distribution and revenue
Sarajevo, May 2017
2. • Newsroom digital transformation
consultant
• Specialist in editorial strategy,
operations, change management
• Career journalist
• Radio, TV, newswires,
magazines, online
• ONA Singapore co-founder
About me.
3. Our mission
To help editorial newsrooms
shift from traditional
publishing models to building
sustainable, digital-first
organizations.
7. Expand your mind, change your world.
Gets you talking.
Our lives, our paper.
The paper for the people.
The world’s greatest newspaper.
All the news that’s fit to print.
When The Times speaks, the World listens.
Sunday isn't Sunday without the Sunday Times.
Bild. Read the world's fastest newspaper.
Making twice the noise.
Simpler. Better. Smarter.
Your right to know.
It's thinking time.
We are local news.
Our slogans.
8. What’s the role of media today?
Why do people
read/watch/listen to you?
9. What’s the role of media today?
Why do people
read/watch/listen to you?
What do people need that only you can
provide?
10. What’s the role of media today?
Why do people
read/watch/listen to you?
What do people need that only you can
provide?
Would people notice if you weren’t
around tomorrow?
13. Everyone can tell you what they do.
But not many can tell you why.
What we do
We give you breaking news.
How we do it
We have journalists on the ground 24/7.
Why we do it
…
25. Here’s the problem:
Scarcity no longer exists in media.
1. Content is commoditized. Plenty to read.
2. Ad delivery is commoditized. Plenty to show.
Your audience is spending less time on
news content.
26. “The scarcest resource of
the 21st century is human
attention.”
— Les Hinton
Former publisher of WSJ
27. The average attention span today is 8
seconds (a 33% decline since 2000)
(Btw, a goldfish has 9 seconds of
attention)
17% of page views last less than 4
seconds
49% of people read less than 111
words on a web page
28. How far can we push this?
Source: kissmetrics.com
29. We’re in peak content.
Journalists are forced to
keep churning more stories
— even though there aren’t
enough eyeballs, time or
ad revenues to go around.
30. Tablets, watches, glasses, bots,
live videos, drones, AR, VR.
None of these will save the
news business.
34. The answers aren’t going to
come from the industry.
So let’s learn from others.
35. “Customers are always beautifully,
wonderfully dissatisfied, even when they
report being happy and business is great.
Even when they don’t yet know it,
customers want something better, and your
desire to delight customers will drive you to
invent on their behalf.”
— Jeff Bezos, Amazon Founder & CEO, in
2016 Letter to Shareholders
36. 1. Create a customer experience map
Identify customer touch points with your product/service.
Obsessing over the customer.
37. 1. Create a customer experience map
Identify customer touch points with your product/service.
2. Identify customer outcomes
Using your customer experience map, outline what the customer
wants to accomplish at each touch point by customer segment.
Obsessing over the customer.
38. 1. Create a customer experience map
Identify customer touch points with your product/service.
2. Identify customer outcomes
Using your customer experience map, outline what the customer
wants to accomplish at each touch point by customer segment.
3. Determine the current state
Conduct customer research to validate your findings and
uncover unmet customer needs.
Obsessing over the customer.
41. Why hotels?
• Creating products and services that people
actually want to pay for
• Investing in behavioral analytics to understand
what people want
• Obsessed about the user’s experience
42.
43.
44.
45.
46. Some of the things they
share in common:
• Prioritizing bars and social spaces for
interactions
• Free, fast internet
• Comfortable common spaces for work
51. Media was never meant to reach
the most number of people.
We were meant to reach the right
people and help them.
52. Right people,
right information,
right time,
right place,
right monetization.
53. We are in a golden age of media.
For the first time, we have everything you
need to create content in your hands.
We have data to know what people
want…
how to get it to them…
on whatever platform they’re on.
55. “If you’re not an entrepreneur
in journalism these days, you
should get out of journalism.”
— Kara Swisher
Founder, Recode
56. “People will continue to demand
answers to anomalies and
suspicions... If news organizations
as we know them are not delivering,
others will step in to fulfill the need.”
— Simon Holt, Brisbane Times
60. Alan Soon
alansoon@thesplicenewsroom.com
Alan Soon is Asia's leading specialist on newsroom
operations, digital transformation and the business of
media. He is the Founder & CEO of The Splice
Newsroom, an editorial consultancy that builds,
develops and transforms newsrooms.
For more than 20 years, Alan has worked in radio, TV,
news wires, magazine and online across Asia. He
started out as a reporter and grew into other
operational roles including producer, editor, newsroom
manager and eventually a business leader.
Alan led one of the largest digital news teams in the
industry as Yahoo’s Managing Editor for India and
Southeast Asia. He’s also worked at CNBC and
Bloomberg across Asia.
Alan is a regular speaker at international media
conferences and is a co-founder of the Online News
Association in Singapore.