Online Media Consultancy - Social Media - Convergent Media - Ascala Group

Having spent the past 16 years working within the telecommunication infrastructure sector talking about convergence and consolidated media delivery ts only now that disruptive technologies such as web 2.0 and web 3.0 will make the new media revolution a reality. You may have heard this termed as Social Media. 

What this means for your traditional Middle East publisher is nothing less than a complete re-think and re-architecture of the business model.  They will need to reappraise the market and economic supply chain influences affecting the media industry. The billions of dollars spent in the IT and Telecommunications boom six years ago are starting to take effect as those complicated high ticket telecommunications convergence projects are on the edge of delivery.

What Lime Green has achieved could be considered remarkable, within its first two months of operation the company was profitable, and the companies CSR platform a not for profit original music and art forum increased its activity by 500% and recovered its costs.  ASCALA invested 200,000 USD into the company in August 2007 based on its website growth plus what we saw as the first real use of web 2.0 to drive an offline business. 

Web 2.0 has provided Lime Green with an integrated communications strategy across its supply chain, by recruiting its service delivery partners (musicians) its customers (venues) and its consumers (Music Lovers) using the internet all for around 100,000 USD .   That’s a pretty good price for an integrated communications strategy talking to 4M people.

Anyone will tell you that Entertainments companies survive through sponsorships, with the deployment of the web 2.0 portal does that mean that Lime Green Entertainments just have one kick ass website to promote its business and its CSR agenda or does it turn it into a media company by default?  Well the answer is almost certainly both.  Let’s look at the figures compared to some traditional media companies in the Middle East.

The Middle East has one or two relatively new TV channels that have been subject to investment of over 5 M USD, as a rule they attract between 20,000 and 100,000 viewers every month and took over a year to set up.   Compare that to Dubai Lime with a small investment of 100,000 USD to set the entire company their website now receives 300,000 “Viewers” each month, receives 22,000 individual video clip views every month, 6000 audio downloads and has achieved it all in four months.  Now with these metrics is it just one very popular corporate website or does it constitute a media channel in its own right?

The answer is both, companies that take the opportunity to create their own media channel around their brand are going to be the new power houses of tomorrow, and like any business “Wave” it is probably going to the younger companies, that have more flexible business processes allowing them to turn on a dime that will cash in.  That means that kids that understand web 2.0 and its power are going to be building the best branded media channels of tomorrow. 

As the more tech savvy younger business leaders evaluate their competitive landscape they will see gaps in traditional companies’ business models that can be ripped apart with disruptive technologies.  Generally it’s these new business leaders that have skill to deploy and the understanding of the technologies potential that will make the most from them. These technologies are also within budget, especially considering that many of the tools required are licensed under free Open Source license agreements.   The company had the assistance of Onlime a new media marketing consultancy, but let’s face it who doesn’t hire consultants in the Middle East market.

Marketing managers (at least the good ones) will no longer be in brand marketing , they will be in brand media.  It used to be that if you wanted to talk to millions of people as a brand manager that you had to make a huge investment in a traditional communications strategy across Radio, Television and Print Mediums.  Now the tech savvy brand manager in the Middle East can achieve the same without the huge investment, using internal resources, free software and enjoy the complete creative freedom in representing their brand. 

Now a company that sells shoes can be running their own TV channel online, providing entertainment and good content for their target consumers (Shoe Lovers) and promoting their brand for as little as 30,000 USD. 

So with companies becoming media houses what will happen to broadcasting regulations?  Government censorship will still be in place of course, certain channels that provide pornographic content or derogatory content can still be blocked by the service provider – but no one wants to restrict trade in multiple industry segments to save the traditional media straggler, the economic cost on the global stage would have huge ramifications for a countries economy and ability to compete.

It’s the traditional media companies that need to be sitting up and taking notice.  It used to be that a media company had to make millions of dollars of infrastructure investments and wade through lots of governmental regulations to deliver a traditional service, with the fragmentation and liberalization of the media caused by the online revolution those restrictions fly out of the window

Now that media companies no longer have those restrictions, those of them with lots of media content that they could only spoon feed to consumers before can now set it out on the table for the masses consume at will.   They also have an open door to the global party and the tickets are not expensive in comparison to their old business models.

With the fragmentation of media in the Middle East market that will be driven by the adoption of disruptive technologies such as web 2.0 what are the impacts for the traditional media company? 

One thing is for sure – they need to start to integrate their media assets (TV, AUDIO, and TEXT) into the online strategy almost immediately otherwise they will loose out to the more nimble new kids that have the ability to generate good content for a fraction of the price.  

Traditional media companies need to become educated quickly.   If you are looking at investment into a traditional Middle East media house and the CEO doesn’t mention that the new media revolution provides the largest challenge and the largest opportunity to the business I would suggest keeping your money in a savings account. 

Media companies will need to become convergent content providers, a publication that delivers a PDF to your mail box and doesn’t offer Video, Audio and text on a subject is certainly going to loose market share to mixed media competitors.  Media is converging.