by Jacqueline Koch | Jul 20, 2016 |
By Janinne Brunyee
As the publishing industry continues to face the impact of the unstoppable digital transformation, one organization has found a formula for success that allows them to pursue their passion for long-form narrative content.
Brooklyn-based Atavist is in fact two companies in one. The first is The Atavist Magazine, an eight-time finalist for the National Magazine Awards and the first digital-only magazine to win for feature writing. The second is the Atavist self-publishing platform. This enables creative individuals and organizations to produce beautiful and shareable stories, attract new audiences and build business around their work—all without knowing a line of code.
Together with Nicholas Thompson, a Senior Editor at The New Yorker and Jefferson Rabb, Atavist’s CTO, co-founder Evan Ratliff put his experience at National Geographic, Wired Magazine and The New Yorker to work to sketch out a new approach to long-form narrative content that is based on an innovative take on design and storytelling. The result: The Atavist Magazine.
Design + Storytelling
“Each story is a creation of its own and is meant to be an experience. We have pioneered this form of long-form content where each story includes video, GIFs and big imagery.”
The magazine covers topics of general interest ranging from “Zombie King”, Emily Matchar’s exploration of author William Seabrook who introduced the zombie cadaver—the walking dead—to the American imagination before sinking into obscurity to “Whatsoever Things Are True”, the result of Matthew Shaer’s ten-month long investigation into the aftermath of a crime that happened 39 years ago in Chicago.
The team publishes one story each month, attracting between 10,000 and 20,000 readers. “We are known for long stories that are hard to do and that is why we have won awards and have been nominated for Emmys for our video-based work,” Ratliff said.
Advertising free zone
The magazine does not carry advertising and according to Ratliff, this is the reason that their stories enjoy higher than average reader engagement. “If you tell an engaging story, people will read it on their phones and their laptops. Everything does not have to be shorter and faster,” he said.
“We have stories pitched to us or we will go and find them. Either way, we spend months with the writer to make sure they can get inside the story.” Ratliff says sometimes there are stories that the team just wants to do – especially international stories. “It is a very purpose-driven organization. Even so, we have to lure our readers in and our stories have to feel like movies,” he said.
Earlier this year, The Atavist Magazine carried a serialized story about an international drug dealer which was the result of two years of investigation. Penned by Ratliff with help from Aurora Almendral and Natalie Lampert, “The Mastermind” chronicles the story of Paul Calder Le Roux, an international crime kingpin turned government informant who was apprehended in Liberia in 2012 after a six-year investigation by DEA agents. “The Mastermind” was released shortly after Le Roux’s dramatic appearance in a Minneapolis courtroom on March 2, 2016.
“This time, we released this story in serialized form with one installment released each week.” Ratliff says it took a week to produce each installment. “We are much more akin to a production company in some ways—but we meet a monthly deadline,” he said.
A self-publishing platform for long-form narrative content
What makes this magazine possible without having to turn a profit is the income generated by the Atavist self-publishing content platform.
Ratliff said that the impetus for creating a publishing platform was born out of the absence of commercially available solutions capable of producing the kind of rich experience the team wanted to deliver. “When we launched, there wasn’t software that would allow us to do the type of design we wanted to do. So, we built a CMS and started selling it to others.”
In essence, the Atavist platform allows someone who is not a designer to create something that looks professionally designed. This includes easily adding multimedia to projects by dragging and dropping blocks of video, sound, slideshows, charts, maps and Instagram and Soundcloud embeds to really show the whole story.
Today, a number of organizations are using the platform for a variety of reasons. United Airlines, for example is using it to build and publish Hemispheres, the online version of their inflight magazine. Stanford University’s Engineering school is using it to create a magazine-like version of their prospectus.
“Our clients are often at the intersection of journalism and activism,” said Ratliff. Most clients are using it for long-form content, whether that is for corporate reports or journalism.
Revenue model for long-form narrative content
As far as the business model is concerned, The Atavist Magazine is available via a subscription. A metered paywall allows readers to access three stories for free before a subscription is needed to gain more content. “We option a lot of our stories for movies, which provides another revenue stream,” said Ratliff.
And finally, there is the software platform that provides the main funding for the magazine. The Atavist self-publishing platform offers a variety of paid subscription options ranging from $8 a month, for small users, to $250 per month for larger organizations.
The idea of a self-funding magazine supplemented by its own publishing software is one innovative way that publishers can support their passions for narrative journalism while not being reliant on traditional ad revenues to succeed.
Atavist is one of the companies that participants of the 2016 VDZ Akademie Digital Publisher’s Tour visited in New York City this June. The Tour was co-organized by Boost! Collective.
Boost! Collective is a strategic messaging and story-driven communications firm. We help clients discover, write and tell powerful stories which drive engagement.
by Jacqueline Koch | Jun 22, 2016 |
By Christopher Ross
Publishers have always known that quality, original content is the undisputed king for engaging and maintaining a relationship with readers. It’s a fact that’s been a cornerstone of the publishing industry for decades.
But what if a reader wants to dive deeper, to explore beyond the featured content and know more about the props in the story or the pictures, or even more about the surrounding scenery? What if the reader wanted to purchase elements found in the narrative? Welcome to the world of shoppable content, where a reader can enjoy content, while seamlessly creating a personal shopping list.
Shoppable ads
Shoppable ads are one manifestation of how the online retail experience is being advanced by technology. A key element to the technology its ability to eliminate barriers so a reader can move about a site without unnecessary new tabs or excessive extra actions. Even for the digitally savvy consumer, the movement between multiple platforms presents real barriers to shopping for items in the content. It is right to assume consumers care little about platforms but to stay engaged, must be able to move seamlessly across them. In a recent Guardian article, titled Rise of shoppable content will change the face of advertising, Simon Hathaway stated “technology is resetting [our] expectations of retail and transforming shopping behaviour. We are getting used to being able to click on a product image and go into the buying process. Soon, we’ll expect to be able to buy any image we click on – and be frustrated if we can’t.”
Shoppable content
The challenge to create a seamless shoppable content solution between platforms is especially problematic on mobile devices where consumers are increasingly leaning but the technology is less accommodating. One such solution comes from Zumobi, a Seattle based tech firm that aggregates a client’s multiple sites into a single mobile destination. Zumobi transforms a brand’s content from multiple sources, such as social media channels, video platforms, product information and content management systems, into a dynamic “flipboard like” mobile destination, dubbed a microzone. It enables shoppable content where readers can purchase items found in the microzone.
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by Jacqueline Koch | Jun 14, 2016 |
By Jacqueline Koch
“We’re hacking into the audio and visual systems of your brain,” director Chris Milk and co-founder of virtual reality company, Vrse said to The New York Times just over a year ago regarding virtual reality projects. “A major part of journalism is painting people a picture of what it was like to actually be there. With this, the audience actually feels like they are there.”
In the year that followed, it became increasingly clear that VR is pushing its way beyond the realm of sci-fi and gaming and into the mainstream. A few VR highlights over the last 12 months also indicate that Milk’s take on the relationship between VR and journalism, while complex, is crystalising. Immediately after introducing Sundance audiences to the Millions March in NYC, a VR journalism broadcast venture between directors Chris Milk, Spike Jonze and Vice News, Milk marched onto Davos to debut Clouds Over Sidra. The groundbreaking collaboration with the UN used VR to highlight the life of a Syrian girl in a refugee camp.
Fast forward to November. An unassuming cardboard box—Google Cardboard—lands on 1.3 million US doorsteps in tandem with the Sunday New York Times. More recently, dispatches from the 2016 Sundance Film Festival describe the ‘boom’ in virtual reality, augmented reality and immersive films that include an extensive line-up of documentaries.
For the researchers, scientists, investors and engineers who have spent decades attempting to push VR across the finish line, this may look like the victory lap. On the sidelines, there are those cheering and eager to seize the storytelling opportunities this technology brings. Yet among them there are many—particularly from the newsroom—that are grappling with the implications of an emerging and highly elastic platform transforming to an established platform.
Merging the Newsroom onto the VR Superhighway
There is a balance to be struck between the unparalleled potential of a highly compelling storytelling format and the practicalities and many implications that arise from a platform that spans diverse genres. At the same time, it’s time to lead, follow or get out of the way, according to Robert Hernandez, of the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California. In his 2016 media forecast published in the Neiman Lab, the Harvard-based media innovation report, he asks, ‘Do news orgs get in early and risk the tech not working out? Or should they wait and let others define VR journalism and risk being left behind, again?’ His answer: Both.
The question then is, how? While journalists and media organisations are eager to get behind the wheel, there is broad consensus that there are no rules of the road. Taking practicalities and logistics into account, VR demands innovation, expertise, bigger budgets, flexibility and longer production lead time. The price of admission is going down, and Hernandez, echoed by others in the industry, cites 360-degree video as ‘the low-hanging fruit of VR’. Partnering with universities leading the charge and tapping into fresh student talent also may serve as a practical and efficient onramp to the VR track.
The New York Times has committed strategy and resources to make VR a viable journalistic tool. Their earnings released on February 4, showed net income of $52 million for the fourth quarter—a 48 percent increase over the same period in 2014—may point to efforts paying off.
‘We believe that our strategic approach—to rapidly build out new high value propositions for marketers in branded content, mobile, video and VR—is paying off,’ said Mark Thompson, the company’s chief executive said in an earnings call with investors.
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by Jacqueline Koch | May 12, 2016 |
By Janinne Brunyee
Participants on the Digital Innovators’ Tour got to experience the brand new LinkedIn building in SOMA which is the startup mecca in downtown San Francisco. In spite of having moved in only four weeks ago, our LinkedIn host, Jessica Chan, who is responsible for business and strategy, seemed right at home in the bright and creative space.
In addition to a mini tour of the building, participants also got a tour of LinkedIn’s evolving content strategy. According to Chan, the key goal is to provide content on LinkedIn that helps make them more effective at the job they are in today.
“Early on, we started working with a wide range of publishers spanning a range of topics and tried to get their content into our ecosystem. The challenge was how to surface this content to our members,” she said.
The team then started looking at how they could segment the content into categories that they could encourage members to follow. For example, TechChrunch content was channeled into a technology channel.
According to Chan, this was not a scalable way of surfacing content which led to the birth of LinkedIn’s “relevance teams’ – groups of engineers who parse through the content and surface it to members.
“For this to be effective, we need members to tell us what industry they are in, what content they are interested in etc.,” she said. “That ties into the broader aspect of identity on LinkedIn and why we encourage members to fill out their profile in its entirety.”
But this was still not the complete solution to the problem of effectively surfacing content to users. “The major disconnect historically was that the content team worked separately from LinkedIn’s flagship team who was distributing content. This also created challenges for publishing partners,” she said.
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by Jacqueline Koch | May 11, 2016 |
By Janinne Brunyee
HelloGiggles.com seems to have cracked the code on creating content for millennial women. After a flight from San Francisco, participants on the 2016 Digital Innovators’ Tour assembled in the beautiful conference room at HelloGiggles’ designer offices in downtown Los Angeles to meet general manager, Penelope Linge. She told the group that the site was started by actress Zooey Deschanel as a blog because she felt there was a lack of positive content and a safe place for young women to gather online. Today, the site whose audience’s median age is 26, reaches more than 30 million millennial women a month. HelloGiggles.com was acquired by Time Inc in October last year.
According to Linge, content is sourced from a contributor network of 1,000 millennial women from whom 50 to 60 pieces of content are sourced each day. The common differentiating thread across all of this content is a positive narrative. Traffic to the site comes from mobile and social channels. ‘Our audience is so young, we had to design for mobile and social first, because this is the engagement pattern for young people. They live their lives on the phone and on their social platforms,” said Linge. Fully embracing social channels, It may be surprising to know that Linge anticipates that in 24 to 36 months, most content will not live on hellogiggles.com. “We are embracing a distributed content model with most of our articles being hosted as Facebook Instant Articles via an RSS feed as well as the other channels our audience engages with. We will still be able to monetize this content,” she said.
Linge says the HelloGiggles team is seeing the same trend on Snapchat. “Facebook is our number platform and we are investing in creating original content for this channel. We are an official partner for Facebook Live and we are embracing Facebook Instance Articles because of the amazing user experience. Pages load instantly and we’ve seen a significant traffic increase. “According to Linge, the same level of engagement has not been possible on Twitter with this audience in spite a posting 40 tweets a day. “Snapchat is where we are the most bullish.” She said. This is because 14 to 20 year-olds are on Snapchat all day. Linge is hiring a Snapchat-focused team that will create content including video and invite advertisers to participate. She is quick to stress that the team is equally bullish about other social channels.
HelloGiggles Content strategy
HelloGiggle’s content strategy is not one-size-fits-all. Instead, the team creates content for each channel. With Facebook, for example, the audience doesn’t listen to sound – while they are at work or in line at the coffee shop – they want captioning. So the team focuses on creating videos every woman can relate to.
A recent example is a funny short video titled: ‘If you suck at putting on eyeliner’ which shows a young woman applying eyeliner to each eye and then returning over and over again to make corrections until she ends up putting sunglasses on over a wiped clean face.
“We are hoping we can create videos that we can take to advertisers, said Linge. The opportunity is to add a front card or tail card with the brand’s information. “We are also creating original videos for them because we are proving we know this space,” she said.
With recent Facebook Live Videos the team has created, there have been 20,000 – 30,000 people watching the live videostream and asking questions. ‘We have looked at what Buzzfeed is doing and recognized that Live Video is doing very well for them,’ she said.
Linge and her team are testing across platforms and trying to figure out what is next. ‘I think Snapchat is a greenfield opportunity for publishers and we are hoping to define what it means to be a publisher on Snapchat
Because HelloGigglees’ audience has not embraced paying for content, Linge said the team realized that heavily commercial sponsored content will not work on the site. ‘Millennials have never seen advertising and this generation does not see a quid pro quo for advertising. That is why we try to create a lot of organic video that doesn’t feel sponsored, but is brought to you by a brand’
Brands want content that will go viral and according to Linge, this audience is turned off if content feels too commercial. Instead, the team is creating premium video series and bringing in sponsors. This content is then distributed across multiple channels on the web including hellogiggles.com. This makes HelloGiggles both a content creator and a distribution channel.
Solutions for advertisers
A growing part of the business for HelloGiggles is creating premium branded content for advertisers.
“There are so many ways for young
women to find out who they are today. Kids can pick from thousands and thousands of identities. Zoe tapped into that zeitgeist. Our narrative, therefore, is find your freedom to explore who you are and embrace that. This is the messaging we are taking to advertisers,” she said.
HelloGiggles’ content creation team consists of 10 staff writers aged between 22 and 28 who edit contributor content. If something breaks and editors are looking for immediate coverage, this team also writes original content. Currently there are 4 video producers on staff, but this team will be ramping up fast.
by Jacqueline Koch | May 9, 2016 |
By Janinne Brunyee
What happens when 16 executives from traditional European publishing companies converge in California to visit companies at the forefront of media transformation? Intellectual alchemy.
This is what Boost! had the privilege to witness as co-organizers of the FIPP/VDZ 2016 Digital Innovators’ West Coast Tour. It was apparent in the animated conversations between tour participants on the bus between visits and in the deep engagement with tour hosts on a wide range of topics including the best approaches for reaching millennials, whether traditional publishing is truly dead and many more.
As Innovation Tour organizers, we worked with well-known German media innovation journalist, Ulrike Langer to set up the tour program. Over many months, we agonized over who the best organizations are in San Francisco, Silicon Valley and Los Angeles to help tour participants write the story of their digital future. And to ensure that bodies as well as minds were properly fed, we curated a set of restaurants that best represent modern California cuisine.
Innovation Tours are part of Boost!’s practice to help organizations facing disruptive change write their future storyline.
Innovation Tour program
Here is an overview of the tour:
DAY 1: SAN FRANCISCO
- RocketSpace is the ultimate technology campus for entrepreneurs, startups and corporate innovation professionals.
- LinkedIn, a professional networking site, allows its members to create business connections, search for jobs, and find potential clients.
- Bloomberg Beta is an early-stage fund, backed by Bloomberg L.P.
- Optimizely is the world’s leading experience optimization platform, providing website and mobile A/B testing and personalization.
- Tout helps publishers, content creators and advertisers generate more online video revenue.
- Contextly makes high-quality editorial tools for news sites and other publications
- Storied brings the native app experience to the mobile web.
- Jaunt’s technology provides an end-to-end solution for creating cinematic VR experiences.
- Buzzfeed’s Open Lab explores new ways of telling stories through hardware and software.
Food highlight: Dinner at the Slanted Door at the Ferry Terminal Market.
DAY 2: SAN FRANCISCO/SILICON VALLEY
- Stackla is the content marketing platform that puts user-generated content at the heart of marketing.
- Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) Project is improving the mobile web and enhancing the distribution ecosystem.
- The Brown Institute for Media Innovation provides grants for research and development for both the fields of journalism and technology.
- Known on campus as the d.school, the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford works to develop innovative, human-centered solutions to real-world challenges.
Food highlight: Family style lunch at Tamerine in Palo Alto
DAY 3: SAN FRANCISCO/LOS ANGELES
- DistroScale is a platform + marketplace for delivering, managing, & measuring native content across websites, mobile web & apps.
- Hello Giggles publishes articles by young women under 18, and maintains a vibrant monthly youthful readership.
Food highlight: Dinner at Gracias Madre – known for delicious vegan Mexican fare.
DAY FOUR: LOS ANGELES
- Venture capital firm CrossCut Ventures which recently added $75 million to its fund, has 45 companies in its portfolio and 10 exits to date.
- Addressing the youth market, Awesomenesstv is a multi-channel network with 90,000 YouTube channels and over 3,300,000 subscribers.
- Meredith Xcelerated Marketing is the leading Content Marketing Agency for today’s hyper-connected world.
Food highlight: Delicious and fresh family style lunch at Rose Café in Venice
DAY FIVE: LOS ANGELES
- Digital native Tastemade, is a food and travel video network for the mobile generation.
Food highlight: Breakfast provided by Tastemade talent Bondi Harvest Café.
Facilitating deep and meaningful engagement
As we discovered first hand, an innovation tour offers participants an unprecedented opportunity to get up close and personal with the organizations who are driving innovation and transformation. Also the opportunity to share and learn from fellow tour participants who are facing or who have faced the same challenges is extremely valuable.
Next Innovation Tour
VDZ Akademie Digital Publishers’ Tour to New York City and Chicago – June 13 – 17, 2016. Limited seats are still available. Sign up today.
Contact us
Contact us if your organization is looking to create a powerful learning experience for key executives and managers. We will develop a program of company visits, manage all tour logistics and manage the day to day tour operations.
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