Mark Brincat: The evolution of The Economist content platform
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The document discusses the Economist's approach to digital transformation, challenges, and lessons learned. Key points include: 1) The Economist embraced change and explored scenarios around content discovery happening off their domain and consumers returning to trusted brands. 2) Their approach involved becoming mobile-first, cloud-based, agile, and data-driven while strengthening owned channels and building new products for new audiences. 3) Technological changes included building modular components, embracing a new front-end framework, and introducing microservices and commodity cloud services. 4) The role of AI will be to enhance personalization, targeting, content enrichment, and automation.
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Mark Brincat: The evolution of The Economist content platform
- 1. Approach, challenges and lessons The Economist Customer Platform Mark Brincat, CTO
- 2. Who are we ? Smart Trusted Bold Global Well- written
- 3. Our Products The Economist Economist FilmsThe Economist App Global Business Review The Economist Espresso Economist.com The World In 1843 Debates Radio Social Feeds
- 4. The Market is Changing Mobile Chat Video Push Link
- 5. And at the evolution of aggregators
- 6. What I will Cover How did our thinking evolve ? How did we approach this thinking ? What role does AI have in our journey ?
- 7. Evolving Our Thinking We are empowered. We have the confidence to take risks and to do the right thing. If we know what has to be done, we do what it takes. We continually learn from our experiences
- 8. Set our Digital Transformation Be Cloud and Mobile First Buy Commodity and Build Innovation Become Cross Functional and Product Centric Having an Agile Mindset Becoming Value and Data Driven
- 9. We Explored Scenarios Content Discovery happens entirely off domain Consumers get tired of endless streams and return to brands
- 10. Our Approach Embraced We drive and embrace change, challenging the status quo. We adapt and evolve to ensure success.
- 12. Reading the Economist Apple News Line Facebook Instant Articles Medium
- 14. Watching the Economist Facebook Live Facebook Suggested Videos Apple TVAmazon Fire TV Google Chromecast and Android TV
- 15. Listening to the Economist Amazon EchoPanasonic - Aupeo
- 17. On Our Portfolio • Strengthen our own marketing channels and Invest in E.com • New products to reach new audiences with Espresso • And new geographies with Global Business Review • Continue to build brand awareness through judicious digital brand spend & PR • Improve our digital customer capabilities
- 18. We set a design direction 1 2 3 4 Analysis Finishability Editorial Modularity
- 19. Build Components not Templates • Deconstruct experiences into components • Introduced a component library • Assemble experiences and Reuse
- 20. We embraced a new front end “A declarative, efficient, and flexible JavaScript library for building user interfaces.” • The “V” in MVC • Reduce Coupling and Increase Cohesion • Separated concerns
- 21. We continue to evolve Curated Personalized Social
- 22. We Embraced Continuous Delivery Automate as much as possible Version everything Introduced tooling to support speed. Containerised our architecture
- 23. Introduced Commodity Services Cloud based service bus to connect our landscape A Marketing CMS to enable campaign briefing A CRM to power our customer services An Identity Provider to handle authentication and authorisation A DMP to enable campaign targeting A Subscription and Billing Platform to enable revenue Reporting Dashboards to understand our KPIs Personalised Metering and Paywall Capability
- 24. Delivering Ecommerce • CMS Driven • Journey Builders to empower Marketing • Product and Campaign management
- 25. Enhanced the Paywall • Configure vs Build • Enables the targeting of different audiences • Better control and flexibility
- 26. What about Content ?
- 27. We Introduced Microservices • Applied Golang to deliver a set of Microservices • Implemented through containers in AWS • An API Gateway that can be leveraged by multiple products
- 28. Redesigned our Content Platform Externals (Feeds and Aggregators) Blog ImagesArticles Micro Services APIs Content Repository REST/JSON Front End Experiences CCI OtherTagging Comment Moderation CommentsMetadata Distribution Engine Apps Marketing CMS Ad Serving
- 29. The Role of AI Understand A/B and MVT Testing Single Customer View Data science Reach Segmentation and Campaign Selection Targeting Capabilities Engage Personalization capabilities Context Driven Content Delivery More Automation for Marketing and Media Better Content Enrichment Advanced analytical tools
- 30. Lessons Learnt Ensure the cross functional team understands the roles and responsibilities Culture trumps Strategy Be ready to pivot on some technology choices – it’s ok Beware of spending time on non value activities Augmentation vs Project resources Have a clear vision and be ambitious but don't rush yourself in an unknown territory. Co Locate as much as possible Forward plan and come together as a leadership regularly Embed Ops into cross functional team Make sure you find partners not suppliers You can’t define it all up front. Ensure you complete an elaboration.
- 31. In Conclusion • We evolved our thinking and hedged our bets with tackling customer reach both on and off domain. • We embraced a best of breed approach to our technology landscape focusing on buying commodity and building innovation • We continue to look at ways to improve our customer experience
- 32. More Information? Mark Brincat markbrincat@economist.com The Economist Group 20 Cabot Square London E14 4QW Twitter : @mab38400
Editor's Notes
- Smart guide to the forces that shape the future Trusted, finishable filter on world affairs Advocate for progress A global perspective Quality content & premium pricing
- The Weekly Economist Publication and The Economist App available on a multitude of platforms Economist.com our web presence providing a means for subscribers and non subscribers to recognise the value of our content. Economist Films launched last year and focuses on delivering high quality short form video content such as Futureworks a series of documentaries exploring future jobs such as Drone Rangers and E-Sports Superstars, Global Compass exploring topics such as the right to die or health without wealth. Espresso our daily shot at news preparing for the day ahead with 5 topical stories and a round up of the news in brief The World In a yearly publication, app and website looking at the year ahead and exploring the different factors to look out for in the year ahead. The World If a companion product that explores how the world would react in the event of certain scenarios. As for 2016, the year can be summed up in three words: woes, women and wins. Go to TheWorldIn.com to find out more. 1843, recently launched and provides a publications focused on culture and lifestyle available as a print publication, website and app Global Business Review a monthly edition of content and our first bi-lingual product available in Chinese and English Debates is our debating platform hosting topics such as LBGT Rights and Online Pornography. Social Feeds we are now available on LinkedIn, Facebook, Line and soon to be available on Google AMP and Snapchat
- The undeniable proliferation of smartphones, consumers living in social streams and the growth of news content distributors made us think of two scenarios that could emerge A: Content discovery happens entirely out of publishers’ media B: Consumers get tired of endless streams and return to brands The implications would go from our business model re-defined as pure content creators to a happy strengthening of our subscription led growth model We didn’t think a pure A or pure B scenario would happen but rather a possible mix of A & B would emerge -> Hybrid B We decided to hedge our bets with some concrete steps to tackle both sides, A and B
- Distributed content Menu: We will provide a set of content (not all) to the distributors. This will reflect our brand offering and promise. BUT, won’t threaten our core weekly package. We will distribute this widely. Video: With Economist Films, we have the means to play in the exploding video opportunity. A new vessel to take our content far and wide. Social outreach: Be even more proactive on social platforms, old and emerging, to spread our content. Audio: Idea is to do five shows a week that spreads awareness of our quality content and highlights key stories every week that will pique interest in the weekly package.
- Distributed content Menu: We will provide a set of content (not all) to the distributors. This will reflect our brand offering and promise. BUT, won’t threaten our core weekly package. We will distribute this widely. Video: With Economist Films, we have the means to play in the exploding video opportunity. A new vessel to take our content far and wide. Social outreach: Be even more proactive on social platforms, old and emerging, to spread our content. Audio: Idea is to do five shows a week that spreads awareness of our quality content and highlights key stories every week that will pique interest in the weekly package.
- Distributed content Menu: We will provide a set of content (not all) to the distributors. This will reflect our brand offering and promise. BUT, won’t threaten our core weekly package. We will distribute this widely. Video: With Economist Films, we have the means to play in the exploding video opportunity. A new vessel to take our content far and wide. Social outreach: Be even more proactive on social platforms, old and emerging, to spread our content. Audio: Idea is to do five shows a week that spreads awareness of our quality content and highlights key stories every week that will pique interest in the weekly package.
- Distributed content Menu: We will provide a set of content (not all) to the distributors. This will reflect our brand offering and promise. BUT, won’t threaten our core weekly package. We will distribute this widely. Video: With Economist Films, we have the means to play in the exploding video opportunity. A new vessel to take our content far and wide. Social outreach: Be even more proactive on social platforms, old and emerging, to spread our content. Audio: Idea is to do five shows a week that spreads awareness of our quality content and highlights key stories every week that will pique interest in the weekly package.
- Distributed content Menu: We will provide a set of content (not all) to the distributors. This will reflect our brand offering and promise. BUT, won’t threaten our core weekly package. We will distribute this widely. Video: With Economist Films, we have the means to play in the exploding video opportunity. A new vessel to take our content far and wide. Social outreach: Be even more proactive on social platforms, old and emerging, to spread our content. Audio: Idea is to do five shows a week that spreads awareness of our quality content and highlights key stories every week that will pique interest in the weekly package.
- Analysis – Our particular way of looking at and understanding the work Finishability – An essential collection of what matters Editorial – no add complexity to editorial Modularity – We produce as few modules as possible and make them resuable
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