The best – and often the simplest – ideas have you kicking yourself, asking ‘why didn’t I think of that… and the online and social media-focussed first day of WAN-Ifra’s Digital Media Asia event in Hong Kong had a raft of them.
• Nobody, it seemed, had thought what ’tween and teenage girls were thinking until Finnish woman Liisa Wrang came up with the idea for what is now stardoll.com five years ago.
Virtual dress-up fashions, a MeDoll avatar and a social network were early elements of a concept which has now grown into a massive brand in most countries of the world (except China). That geographic spread generates 28 best-looking ‘cover girls’ and has moved on to a virtual store with real and own brands, and opportunities for members to become designers and retailers (from whom it takes a commission).
Recent developments include a toy line developed with Mattel and a range of clothing sold through US retailer JC Penney and online. “It’s been a pretty amazing two years,” says chief executive Mattias Miksche.
• What would video footage of news events look like if the cameramen had been there? ‘Apple Daily’ spin-off Next Media Animation has answered the question by making a business of creating that footage by animation with such success that some clips have gone viral.
An early video of what production manager Emily Wu coyly calls ‘the Tiger Woods incident’ delivered six million views on YouTube… and set the Taiwan team thinking. Now it produces about 22 minutes of news animation a day, for its own Taipei and Hong Kong dailies, US associates and contract customers.
Animations on the Apple Daily Hong site alone score four million views a day, and Wu says, “we really think this is part of the future of news”.
• Thai service portal Sanook – bow the country’s most-visited website – was another success story with growth that exceeded the expectations and plans of its founders. It was three years before thoughts turned to setting up the 1999 web portal to collect money, and another four or five before it got thoroughly into search and e-commerce.
Then last year, chief executive Torboon Puangmaha says he “woke up and told myself the market has changed”… an epiphany which has led to the development of a social network and games. ‘Plan, execute and – if it doesn’t work – iterate’ is his advice.
• Financial publisher Financial Times was already working on an HTML5-based WebApp – basically a web page for mobiles – when it reached an impasse with Apple on terms for the iTunes store. “We’d realised by summer 2010 that producing apps for the proliferation of tablets and smartphones would exhaust us,” says FT regional online director Hiroko Hoshino.
“When Apple told us they wanted 30 per cent and wouldn’t share subscriber info, we accelerated the project. Frankly, that wasn’t going to work for us.”
Hoshino says they told iPad app subscribers of the substitute and they should change, “and they did”.
A quarter of traffic now comes from mobiles, and this is expected to rise to 50 per cent within three or four years. The relationship with Apple remains cordial, however, and Android store app – which “works for us” – has just been upgraded.
• By the standards of Australia’s Fairfax Media (below) Malaysia’s 166-year-old NSTP is a late adopter, but one working hard to catch up, head of e-media 26-year-old Cheryl Goh told delegates. Its Wakalabs concept recruits volunteers from staff to brainstorm and implement ideas for digital growth including a ‘Hackweekend’ during which 60 youths brought into its beanbag-furnished centre, created 13 “awesome apps”.
The ‘new ideas’ speakers in the programme were somewhat offset by those from ‘old’ businesses which had coped with the cultural and technological change in gaining digital focus.
Greg Hywood, recently appointed chief executive of Fairfax Media, had rejoined a company which was early into digital publishing. Its smh.com.au and theage.com.au sites went live in 1995, not very many years after the World Wide Web itself (1990), and two years before Google (1997 following the name change from 'Backrub', launched the previous year).
“Contrast the Australian experience with the US, where many publishers didn’t move, and as a result, the networks and Yahoo gained dominance,” he says.
The company now has the largest digital development team in the country and A$3 billion in digital revenue to help it face the future “with enormous confidence”.
Print-backed Scandinavian publisher Schibsted was also early into digital and with “more than 20 internet companies” now derives almost half its revenues from online business. An “eco-system’ sees the giant company make money at all levels of its vertically-integrated multiplatform business: “You might visit the Aftonbladet website, go from there to our Destination holiday site, and from there to Lendo (also Schibsted) to borrow money to finance the trip,” sayssales director Anders Berglund.
Not that these businesses are short of ideas and innovations themselves: Long-form video has proved such a runaway success for Fairfax that it now has 75 provider partners including Bloomberg, and a deal to put its sites into LG’s smart televisions.
The company’s new AirLink printed code – developed with RMIT and Wollongong universities – delivers “world first” links between print images, editorial and advertising, and video and other content online.
And from Schibsted, the latest idea is a virtual concert with virtual tickets –standard and premium seats, of course – and the opportunity to chat and interact with your favourite artists. It’s rocking, Berglund says.
The sellout full house for DMA reflects the change which has taken place in the market in the past year – from ‘why should I do it’ to ‘how?’ In Asia, where as WAN-Ifra regional manager Thomas Jacob pointed out, 15 per cent growth in revenue compares to a 20 per cent drop in the USA over the last five years, “means we have some time to prepare”.
But not – if the experience of others such Schibsted is anything to go on – very much.
Peter Coleman