OPEN

Russian disinformation factories of Russia follow the Buzzfeed content model, according to the ever-insightful digital strategist, Rob Blackie. They throw themes and formats at the wall and see what sticks, to paraphrase his jargon free interpretation of the approach.

Buzzfeed doesn’t care whether listicles or explainers are there internet’s sharing drug of choice this week, it’s editors go where the attention signals take them. Similarly, when trying to exacerbate divisions in Europe or the US, online disinformation teams in St Petersburg try out whatever offensive, divisive content they can in all sorts of formats and then do more of the things that work – work at stirring discord in rivals’ societies that is.

Competing for attention is as much the domain of intelligence agencies as news startups these days. Although backing from the Kremlin or alt-right hedge fund owners solves the business model side of the equation for dezinformatsiya peddlers. Buzzfeed has to rely on markets rather than ideologues to keep the lights on.

A couple of years ago my advice for an organisation completing for attention online was “copy Buzzfeed“. Buzzfeed understands the nature of the web – that you can’t predict what content succeed, but you can run as many experiments as you like and build on successes earlier and faster if you give credits access to the right data.

The editorial content model at Buzzfeed still works – but the company is having to dial down its aversion to advertising in order to make money, even as the digital add market is getting tougher. It’s also cutting 100 jobs this week.

So copy Buzzfeed’s data-supported content approach, but find another business model? That would seem to be the right approach.

  When Christina Scott, CIO at The Financial Times spoke at Dots 2015 I introduced her with a joke that she was one of the top five CIOs according to an industry journal – number three in fact, so she might want to try harder. I recalled this earlier this year when she was awarded CIO of the Year at the Women in IT Awards 2016 – an incredible achievement, and one earned in large part by her digital transformation efforts. As Information Age put it: 

When Scott joined the Financial Times almost four years ago, technology was not in a good place at the 127-year-old newspaper. Not only was it criticised for not delivering on its goals, it was seen as being subservient – or, at least, a blocker – to the business.

But when she joins News UK – publisher of The Sun and The Times – as its new chief technology officer later this year, she will leave behind an organisation where technology is now seen by stakeholders and the CEO as an important partner to the FT’s success.

Changing how technology is viewed by a business so positively requires more than just delivering solid IT projects – Scott has, in particular, transformed how the FT approaches data – but a complete, organisation-wide cultural change

I’d highly recommend taking a look at the slides and notes of her talk – there’s also audio of her talk on the Brilliant Noise podcast feed. I learned a great deal from working with the FT and from Christina’s talk. Recently I finished a book she mentions, Turn the Ship Around!, a book on devolving leadership and change by a US Navy nuclear submarine commander – I also highly recommend.

What makes Christina’s Dots talk useful and interesting is just how candid she is about how tricky change can be, even in an organisation like the FT, admired for its efforts in digital. For newspapers – which, like the music industry have been one of those sectors to feel the full force of digital disruption over the past 15 years or so – digital transformation isn’t just about getting the right tech in place – it’s about changing the culture. 

I was lucky enough to see how the FT was transforming on the inside. At Brilliant Noise in our strategic consultancy team we designed a programme for FT staff called FT Digital Campus, helping executives in the business think about how digital was affecting them at personal, team and organisational levels. It was working with the company’s excellent learning and development teams and Christina’s strategy team that we honed the idea of the digital mindset – which I spoke about at Learnfest 2015 last year (slides here). 

Often in the past, I’ve seen IT leaders cast as the conservatives, the blockers to change – but leaders like Christina show that it’s not about your job title, it’s about attitude, ability and a will to change organisations for the better. 

For the past year or so I have been giving talks for students on Google’s Squared programme (and its sibling-programme Squared Online) about the digital landscape. My talk covers a brief history of the internet, the evolution of media, changing customer behaviours and how media and brands are adapting.

Buzzfeed‘s my primary example of a media company that understands how content works on the web – and that gives brands many clues about how they should think about digital. As a case study Buzzfeed is useful not just because it is so successful, but because it is open about its approach, tools and strategy which is unparalleled.

“Why are they so open?,” one student asked me the other week. “Can’t people just go out there and copy them?”

Fair question. There are two answers:

First, Buzzfeed talks about its strategy actually has a strategy. As Richard Rumelt wrote in Good Strategy/Bad Strategy:

The first natural advantage of good strategy arises because other organizations often don’t have one. And because they don’t expect you to have one either.

The reason many media organisations won’t share their strategy for digital, for their business, is that they don’t really have one. They are concerned with preservation of old business models. Even companies with strong digital capabilities are essentially concerned with creating digital versions of their old businesses (“Wouldn’t it be great if TV worked on the web?”, “Wouldn’t it be great if advertising worked just as well online?”).

The second answer is that Buzzfeed doesn’t need to keep its strategy a secret. Sure, it may not share its code or spreadsheets, but its success doesn’t rely on being the only company ever to understand how to do this – it is about executing at scale faster than anyone else. (And then selling, most likely.)

I’ve seen evidence of this openness and pace very clearly three times in the last year or so.

1. The Andreesen Horowitz investment. While a lot of business media ran snide stories about the high valuation of a website that specialises in vacuous listicles and cat pictures, canny commentators pointed out that the Buzzfeed press release made better reading than the coverage and detailed where the investment would go – video, commercialisation and other interesting areas that would build an ambitious web media company.

2. The POUND announcement. A while back it shared details of its POUND technology which allows Buzzfeed teams to understand how content is spreading across different channels and optimise its efforts accordingly. (Spoiler alert – Facebook delivers volume, but isn’t the whole story of how things go viral.)

3. Embracing Facebook Instant Articles. Buzzfeed used the occasion of its supporting Facebook to re-articulate its business model (see below) in an incredibly compelling and clear way.

Reading the Facebook announcement about Instant Articles last year, it seemed the  quotes from traditional media partners were given through gritted teeth. They knew that they had to work with Facebook to keep reaching the massive audiences there.

Buzzfeed the other hand, really wants to work with Facebook on this because they understand the web as it is. It was the only native web media who was a partner for the launch of Instant Articles, as Adam Tinworth noted.

In a blog post called “Making content for the way people consume media today” (which could itself be a fair summation of the company’s content strategy) Buzzfeed’s publisher, Dao Nguyen and chief of staff, Ashley McCollum, talk about their approach and why Instant Articles fit perfectly with it. They call out four reasons the company is “thrilled” to be working with Facebook:

1. Good experience for the user.
2. Data and insights. They can still get the data insights they need for their editorial and
3. A great business. Facebook helped them build ad units that would work for their “big story unit” approach.

The article also presents a new visualisaton of the company’s business model – the Network Integrated Media Company.

This isn’t theory for Buzzfeed – it’s what the company is building its core business around. Incumbent media may look at this as an ideal state, something for the digital teams, something to pilot or test – none of which will present a signficant challenge to Buzzfeed’s rapidly building knowledge and capabilities.

So, while smart folks elsewhere will try to use this, while observers like myself will continue to exhort others to “copy Buzzfeed”, most won’t be able to overcome inertia and entropy in their organisations. Buzzfeed meanwhile will be miles down the road ahead of them.