Madhumita Venkataramanan (Associate Editor Wired UK)
Paul Keenan (CEO Bauer)
Mick Ebeling (Founder Not impossible),
Andrea Vidler (CEO, Centaur) – We are becoming platform agnostic content business from being publishing and exhibition business.
Kelly Williams (MD Commercial ITV) – To prepare for the future we are acquiring a number of production business across uk and globe for content
Mike Darcy (CEO, NewsUK – Times and Sunday Times) – We will be looking at deeper engagement with readers based on the subscription model. We currently have 400,000 subscribers across tablet and digital.
Carrying on the topic of innovation…
Kelly Williams (ITV): We have gone from a purely free-to-air model to our first partnership with Sky offering a pay channel. We launched Twitter Amplify last year.
Andrea Vidler (Centaur): You have to create the right atmosphere where others want to partner with you.
Paul Keenan (Bauer): The explosion in distribution has allowed us to innovate, to give a different experience for logged in users offering advertisers relevant audience and users more music and stats.
Q: How do you keep your audiences' attention?
Andrea Vidler (Centaur): There are different ways for different audiences.
Mike Darcy (NewsUK): We create an environment with fewer distractions. We made the tablet an app and not browser-based to focus on an edition without lots of messages (versus a browser experience). We know that people are engaged for 45 minutes. We could play in the game of the 24-hour news cycle as well, however newspapers traditionally bring deeply engaged audiences so we need to offer advertisers a deeply engaged experience. An edition experience offers this more than a browser experience.
Paul Keenan (Bauer): We need to offer engaging content.
Mick Ebeling (Not Impossible): iWriter is anti-Jobs invention. It's a cheap pair of sunglasses, copper wire, webcam and duct tape, allowing you to draw letter with your eyes and then it writes. It was voted by Times Magazine as one of 50 top inventions. It demonstrates that we go on instinct.
What are the major obstacles when you try to be entrepreneurial?
Mike Darcy (NewsUK): We are doing a lot on the tablet as forced by circumstance because of the change in the newspaper business. We need to try think of ourselves as a challenger and a rebel despite our size. We work with smaller companies like IDEO for the suite of apps, Neuroinsight helped us prove that people read the tablet with same depth and recall as the print edition. That's how we bring ideas into the business.
Andrea Vidler (Centaur): Big business can innovate because they have the resources to make an idea become reality. Innovation shouldn't be hampered by the scale. We need to encourage people to have an idea and quickly turn an idea into reality. It's more about being agile and innovative rather than being entrepreneurial.
Kelly Williams (ITV): We need to give permission for people to fail in order to create innovation.
Paul Keenan (Bauer): We need passionate people.
What bets are you taking?
Paul Keenan (Bauer): Big bet with digital radio and foresee every household in the UK with 100+ live curated services. That distribution will be really good! It will learn preferences and give suggestions, probably start to know your favourites (Mick Ebeling: Isn't that Pandora now?) Paul's answer: It has to also have serendipity.
Mike Darcy (NewsUK): We are making a bit bet on the curated proposition and think it still has a pretty big place. The challenge is that there is too much. The editor's job is to tell what you need to know to help with this. Mick Ebeling: it's the same way as a DJ will chose a playlist.
Andrea Vidler (Centaur): That's true for magazines and everything else.
Let's talk about community as consumers are much smarter. Is that something you are thinking about in your businesses?
Mike Darcy (NewsUK): We use community to reinforce the relationship with content. We have a membership group of like-minded individuals helping them get more from their relationship with us. Times+ ran 150+ live events attended by 30,000 members with the likes of Cheryl Sandberg, David Beckham etc. Because they are subscribers we know a lot about them and we can think about that other services we can provide for them.
Can you talk about cool collaborations?
Mike Darcy (NewsUK): We bought the rights for the Premier League, launched a Sun Goals app with clips for subscribers and included in the 'Times and Sunday Times' app.
Kelly Williams (ITV): We collaborated with Sky, Twitter, Shazam, Lego with the Lego break and launching Sainsbury's Christmas 'proud to present'.
Paul Keenan (Bauer): "Go Think Big" is in its third year to get young people more engaged in how to land a job with digital hub together with O2/Telefonica. We created 30,000 work experiences and now have extended to 40 other like-minded companies in the UK. Digital is in the heart of the collaboration.
Mick Ebeling (Not Impossible): We are working on a rehabilitative robotic exoskeleton to help kids with cerebral palsy to allow their legs to teach the brain how to walk. Think we will see more content during apps like while waiting for the Uber driver.
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