After enduring fifteen months of a pandemic, one thing is certain in the communication and marketing industry: nothing will go back to the way things were before, at least not entirely. Many will attempt to return to the same state we were in before March 2020; however, too many changes have taken place for everything to go back to the way it was before.
In principle, this is not a bad thing. Life is continuously evolving, thus, constantly affecting people and their environments, including the corporate world and the communications sector. There is no turning back this transformation—it affects our business at the core. From now on, concepts such as digitalization, creativity, sustainability, and paywalls will be much more critical in our daily lives.
Does anyone remember what digitalization was like in the past?
We don’t talk about digitization anymore because we are almost all forcibly digitized. Confinements, restrictions, and teleworking have done more for digitalization than years of investment in technology and business consulting. We have learned the hard way out of necessity.
The communication sector has clearly been affected. Today, a large part of the sector continues to work totally or partially from home, and productivity has not suffered, but perhaps, the opposite has occurred. Today, companies, professionals, and the media interact through screens and collaboration platforms that facilitate this work. Everything is done through email, videoconferences, or Whatsapp. Everything continues to work smoothly, more or less effortlessly, but businesses have taken a different path.
We have indeed lost an essential part of public relations, contact with other people, human interaction, or what we now call networking. However, we have managed to adapt quickly during a crisis, and we have discovered new valuable tools that continue to help us. We only need to think back to webinars, Zoom or Teams calls, virtual press conferences, and telephone interviews. Despite challenges, we have pressed forward while utilizing tools that will not disappear quickly. Our business has become highly digitized, and it is clear that we have adapted to this digitization.
Be creative, my friend
It is not a new concept but rather something that we have had to reinforce in our daily work throughout these last few months. Today, if you are not creative, you are out. It is as simple as that.
The media industry has been changing since 2008 when the economic crisis joined the business model crisis and caused the fall of various newspapers and professionals. This reduced the number of media outlets, consequently limiting the capacity to be broadcasted through them.
Moreover, many companies, brands, and personalities need to communicate, thus reducing the information space as well as our opportunities. Faced with a scenario full of competitors and little space, we must come across as interesting to the media, journalists, and audiences. Hence, creativity is essential.
Branded content has increased creativity in our sector. The idea is to create branded content that is also interesting to the public. In this way, it will be exciting and appeal to our readers. If we are noteworthy to readers, the media, and journalists, they will want to talk to us and about us. We will be a reference and, therefore, we will be in our stakeholder’s minds. Or, has no one seen the Bankinter ad?
And speaking of the Bankinter ad…
Yes, SUSTAINABILITY. We are going to hear that word a lot more from now on. Was there ever any doubt? Let’s get the skepticism out of the way. Let’s look around and see what it is that companies want, and above all, what people want. All market studies show that sustainability is the pillar upon which everything should be based: our communication, our strategic plans, our internal policies, and above all, our product and service development. This will be reflected in the way we communicate to the world.
Here’s a fact: Europe is already demanding sustainable actions from us. It wants us to be sustainable, and consequently, will affect our strategies. Just take a look at what the world’s largest investor, Black Rock, is doing and its policy of pressuring large companies to comply with the sustainable objectives set by international institutions.
We can be sustainable through communication. We can no longer send out thousands of press releases or organize press conferences as if there were no tomorrow, nor focus on the number of hits, but rather their quality. We have to be more efficient and “friendly” with the sector. It is in our hands.
Another rising trend: paywalls
The media is taking steps forward, looking for viable business solutions while maintaining the impartiality and ethics of newspapers. During a time of uncertainty regarding everything and everyone, the media stood firm and endured a year marked by a pandemic. It experienced cuts in advertising investment, remote working, and nonstop working amidst horrendous conditions.
For agencies and companies, paywalls have become a handicap, as they reduce the media’s audience, which directly impacts the ability to reach a more significant number of people. Now, people must subscribe and pay a fee if they wish to access information from various newspapers and magazines.
At first, paywalls will inevitably generate uncertainty, but it is part of a firm commitment to save the business model, increase the information quality, and improve professional’s lives. For us communicators, it is just one more step towards the quality search to grow and gain presence through valuable and focused content. It gives audiences what they are looking for and brings them closer to our brands in a concrete way that will generate loyalty and recurrence. Paywalls will take some getting used to, but it will be difficult to go back to the previous model.
The pandemic came, stayed a while, and is starting to leave. Nonetheless, it has produced impactful changes in our market, which are helping us to evolve. Does anyone want to put a name to this? Revolution x.0?
Ángel Arroyo (aarroyo@atrevia.com)
Director of Technology at ATREVIA
