Category: Latest thinking

The Impact of Voice & Sound : the audio web is still in the 90s

 

The audio internet, whether that’s voice-activated devices powered by machine learning AI or journalistic podcasts, is at an equivalent stage of development as the World Wide Web in the mid-90s.  This was the point that resonated most sonorously with panellists at a World Media Group Briefing this week entitled The Impact of Voice & Sound.

 

It was an assertion starkly illustrated by Brenda Salinas, who works on news partnerships at Google.  Salinas showed the audience an image of The Washington Post‘s homepage in 1996 — primitive and clumsy by today’s design standards.  “I think in terms of the audio internet, this is where we are,” she said. “It’s a very nascent technology but it has a lot of potential.”

 

Salinas’s point was echoed by Nate Lanxon, technology editor at Bloomberg, who talked about how in the mid-90s, meta-tagging helped make online content searchable, but in a very rudimentary way. “That’s where we’re at with podcasts today,” he said.

 

Elevating journalism

But while there was a consensus that audio technology is fledgling, there was also enthusiasm about the opportunities it already provided.  Sebastian Tomich, global head of advertising at The New York Times, explained how award-winning journalism had been augmented by an embrace of audio. The newspaper’s The Daily podcast is often the number two ranking podcast in the world.

 

The publisher has also been experimenting with more unusual ways that audio can complement print journalism. This saw it create an “audiozine”, a sonic magazine that introduced listeners to sounds they would never experience in real life, sending listeners on an audio voyage featuring, among other things, laughing rats.

 

Audio proliferation

Event chair Clancy Childs, chief product and technology officer at Dow Jones Professional Information, explained that the “amount of audio-friendly content is multiplying minute by minute” and asked: what are the implications for publishers and brands?

 

For Jeremy Pounder, futures director at Mindshare, the launch of Amazon Echo in the UK, “represented a quite fundamental break in how people interact with tech”.  “We felt that voice and talking to something with a seemingly human voice speaking back, it was a new type of interaction that we’ve not seen in society before,” he added.

 

Experiments conducted alongside research firm Neuro-Insight saw Mindshare discover that sound outperforms text in terms of “cognitive load” on someone’s brain. “When voice works well, it’s a very streamlined way to achieve a task. With text, there’s more going on, with the brain having to work out what’s the important information it’s looking for.”

 

Ethical barriers

But there are ethical concerns too. “One of the biggest is that voice might reinforce gender stereotypes,” he said.  Such as that older men tend to prefer the AI voice of young women, reflecting an increasingly outmoded, patriarchal attitude. “Do brands want to tap into that or take a more progressive stance and challenge some of those stereotypes?”

 

Sonic branding

The session also looked into how music could play a part in a customer’s experience of a brand.   Hamish Goulding, head of global brand strategy and creative at HSBC, explained how the bank’s journey into creating a sonic brand saw it recruit the talents of musician Jean-Michel Jarre.

 

Jarre produced seven tracks, from a string-led orchestral movement and synth-driven alternative, to a mnemonic jingle. The creation of a sound palette has been applied at HSBC’s physical events, in branches to identify when a cashier is ready, in ads, in content and even as a more palatable form of lift music.

 

“Don’t try to be international, try to be universal,” was Jarre’s advice to HSBC.

 

Growing pains

Yet audio technology is still lacking universal appeal, with some panellists expressing doubts, mostly hinged on its infancy.

 

Bloomberg’s Lanxon questioned the genuine usefulness of voice-activated tech as it stands, arguing it is “reminiscent of telephone message trees, because you still have to wait for polite responses before you can comment”.

 

HSBC’s Goulding had more sobering concerns over security and the intrusiveness of voice-activated devices, calling for greater rigour in voice identification, “so you know which customer is which”.

 

But Mindshare’s Pounder outlined a major challenge for publishers and worries around the sheer might of the tech giants —”the trade-off, the distribution of content to the biggest audience possible and the loss of control”.  “I guess the issue for many publishers is that it’s difficult to get people to come to you directly unless you’re a brand of a certain scale,” he said.

Photo: L-R Clancy Childs, Hamish Goulding, Jeremy Pounder, Nate Lanxon, Brenda Salinas, Sebastian Tomich

Alex Delamain, President of the World Media Group (WMG) and SVP, Head of Client Sales and Services at The Economist, reports back on the key themes from the WMG ‘Journalism 2020 Breakfast Briefing’ featuring a panel of senior media experts and journalists discussing the future of media and journalism in a world of ‘Fake News’.

‘Fake News’. We all hate the term but the issue is going nowhere as darker forces continue to get paid for creating it for commercial or subversive means. Yet, panellist Tom Standage, Deputy Editor & Head of Digital Strategy at The Economist pointed out that ‘Fake News’ is by no means a new phenomenon.
‘Fake News’ is not a modern day problem.

He believes it goes back to the early days of the printing press when, if you had nothing to print, you would dust off an old pamphlet about a witch trial or terrible disaster, change the names and locations and print it. It was essentially rubbish, but people loved to read these stories and it kept your press busy.
The big change came when the first daily newssheets were set up in the 18th century. The owners realised they had to convince people that they were reliable and trustworthy if they were to get them to buy their paper every day. These fledgling media brands worked hard to build their reputations and credibility. It was the beginning of trusted journalism as we know it today.

The return to ‘Fake News’ has been driven by the internet’s disaggregation of newspapers. Today, the provenance of a story can be impossible to find. You click on a link on social media and get taken to somewhere that looks like a news site to see a story and are unlikely to ever go back there again – so we’re back to the days of the pamphleteers who pumped out content to make money and didn’t care about getting you to return.

Quality journalism is essential for society
Clearly it’s worrying, but the panel agreed that it has led to the big media brands focusing more than ever on quality journalism. Hayley Romer, Chief Revenue Officer and Publisher at The Atlantic, believes that this is not just for commercial reasons but because the sustainability of trusted journalism is paramount to society. For instance, without it people would not have exposure to topics like climate change and so there would be no behaviour change.

Bénédicte Autret, Head of Strategic Relations at Google concurs, explaining that this was why Google is providing publishers with tools. Obviously, as a search engine they rely on good quality information, but also they believe they are part of the same ecosystem and as such have a duty of care to quality journalism.

The importance of education around the value of journalism
Autret also believes that it’s important to show consumers that good journalism comes at a cost. Phillipa Leighton-Jones, Editorial Director Innovation at The Wall Street Journal, commented that the big media brands need to do more than ever to educate the public about what the media does and how to know who to trust. For instance, with an increasing number of state-owned media channels coming into play, such as the Chinese Global Television Network, Russia Today and Al Jazeera, it’s important that consumers understand the context and implications of where their news comes from.

It’s not only important to educate consumers about the media, though, according to Medhi Benchelah, Senior Project Officer, Division of Freedom & Media at UNESCO. He explained how, as part of the UN’s Plan of Action on the Safety of Journalists, it is important to train national security forces about how and why they should respect and understand journalists. Yet, for those that worked for previously totalitarian regimes this requires a huge cultural shift as journalists were viewed as the enemy before.
Corporate brands apply journalistic rigour but, for quality media brands, church and state remain sacrosanct.

It was heartening to hear from Kunal Dutta, Chief Editor of Digital Channels at Shell talking about the factual rigour being applied to corporate content too. His team members all have journalistic backgrounds which means they take a journalistic approach to information inside the business. They apply strict checks and balances to all their stories and truth always outweighs marketing messages.
However, the panel agreed that there were still strict guidelines delineating ‘church and state’ (i.e. commercial teams versus news rooms). That said, innovation is leading to more ‘bridge roles’ between the two. Creation of products requires input from both sides of the wall, but new products and closer ties with corporate news rooms will never be at the expense of their brand integrity.

Innovation must align with core brand values
Interestingly, Alex Wood, Europe Editor at Forbes believes students and cub journalists are much more commercially aware right from the start, which he thinks will be a catalyst for innovation. Dutta said that journalists should not just be thinking about how to develop a great story or podcast but look at what innovations they can use to tell a richer story – suggesting that what delivers the news could become just as important as the news itself.

AI (artificial intelligence) was seen as the most exciting innovation at the moment, providing huge opportunities for new products through its ability to delve deeply into information and also its ability to score quality journalism and monitor ‘Fake News’. However, as Standage pointed out, innovation has to be measured with a yardstick that is bigger than revenue alone. It must be in line with core brand values and do what your audience wants you to do.

https://mediatel.co.uk/newsline/2019/02/28/the-adaptation-and-reinvention-of-journalism/

Alex Delamain is President of the World Media Group (WMG) and SVP, Head of Client Sales and Services at The Economist

Photo: From L-R Hayley Romer, Alex Wood, Bénédicte Autret, Kunal Dutta, Phillipa Leighton-Jones, Tom Standage
Photo Credit: Jane Clipston