Earlier this year, we interviewed some interesting media service entrepreneurs (Janne Airo, Gerd Leonhard, Timo Ylitalo and Heikki Leskinen). Now, as a sequel to this series, Elina went to meet Eero Anhava and Anders Stenbäck (Sanoma News) in Sanomatalo to discuss upcoming trends in the media industry, Sanoma’s partnership with MBL as well as Eero’s and Anders’s views on what makes s media service successful.
Could you briefly introduce yourself and describe your professional background?
Anders: I joined Sanoma in 2002 to write my master’s thesis on communications technology (Aalto University School of Technology). In those days, my task was to build a mobile strategy and its implementation for Sanomat. Later on, I started working with online trading site, oikotie.fi, and from there, I moved on to establish the product development unit of Helsingin Sanomat, both newspaper and its online version, hs.fi. I was doing that until the beginning of this year, when I took over the development of online advertising at Sanoma News.
Eero: I graduated as a marketing major from Helsinki School of Economics (current Aalto University School of Economics) with a minor in International Design Business Management in 2008. Then, I joined Sanoma, first as a Product manager of oikotie.fi Jobs and currently I am working as a development manager for Sanoma News strategy office, doing everything between strategy work and implementation of operative development initiatives.
What does your company do? How do you provide value for your customers?
Eero: First and foremost, we need to make sure that we listen to our customers in everything we do. The interactive and dynamic nature of online media services requires that we stay in touch with the most important people in our operations, customers. This is done through a variety of research methods as we conduct all kinds of market and usability research among consumers and business customers. We need to keep improving our services constantly according to the behavior and feedback of our customers. Also, we need to be quick in everything we do, we need to do constant product development in our existing services and also be prepared to terminate our ventures if it turns out that they are not profitable for us or interesting for our customers. This is done through constant monitoring of how people use our services. Our online auction site, huuto.net is a model example of this, how users are sincerely excited about our services and how their active participation has enabled the social aspect for the core service. For instance, its users are very active in discussing the products and are selling anything between heaven and earth apart from just socializing with each other and browsing for things, without their enthusiasm and interest, the service would not be a success it is nowadays.
Based on your experience, what aspects make media service a success?
Eero: Briefly, whatever the service is, it needs to have three things, interesting, enticing content, usability and a great business model.
Anders: I fully agree with Eero. In addition, it’s always good to keep in mind that for a media service to be truly profitable, we need at least 100 000 users, that’s quite a lot in a small country like Finland!
I would also be interested in hearing about your current projects and how do you apply the concepts you mentioned in them?
Eero: For instance, as I am working closely with many different Sanoma News websites, we need to consider that the major part of the content and commenting comes from the users. We need to maintain their interest in the service and enable them to share their thoughts and make the service as usable as possible. Of course, we need to also maintain the consistency in the user experience, and offer them interesting ways to use the site. In addition, we need to think about the revenues, for instance, we want to enable our corporate customers to increase their trade over the internet. For this we need to also understand their business.
Anders: Right now, my main ambition lies in the social media and how to establish a beneficial presence there. Currently, the advertisers are still a bit lost with what to do and how to behave in social media to best utilize its potential. For this purpose, Sanoma has an active role in creating its own social media, for instance, omakaupunki.fi, omamaailma.fi, online discussion boards and huuto.net. Through these ventures we can gain cutting edge insight into social media and create new ways in encouraging participation and utilization in social media.
What kind of trends do you see for your industry?
Eero: Most importantly, media in the new age is about sociality as internet is becoming more social every day. It is no longer about one-way pushing of information, but it is an interactive process between the content providers and the audience. Actually this divide between audience and producers no longer applies as producers have a key role of providing the means of sharing and creating for audiences.
Anders: Indeed, people seem to spend significantly more time online and internet reaches broader audiences than ever. Also, through new means of accessing the internet, the day of consuming media becomes longer as people check news headlines and email first thing as they wake up, and update their statuses just before they fall asleep. Also, through these new mobile devices, such as tablets and smart phones, usage of internet becomes more ubiquitous and media practices expand to a variety of platforms. Here, these practices are changing as different forms of media, both traditional and digital, come together to provide user with a coherent transmedia experience. To facilitate this user experience and make it a pleasant one, we need to find ways to utilize user profiles and find new models of operation.
Eero: All in all, we need to design new kinds of services with a customer as our main focus. These new media services should be directly designed into digital context, what used to work in the traditional business, does not necessarily work on these new platforms. Also, as the barriers of entry in this new line of business are low, we need to be first one’s to act and implement great ideas fast.
The MediaBizLab is about creating comprehensive transmedia experiences and commercializing that content as services. What’s your take on that?
Anders: The concept of transmedia is evident in our business. As we think of our customers, they use a variety of our services during one day. As an example, he wakes up and checks the news from his smart phone using hs.fi, browses Helsingin sanomat with his morning coffee, listens to Radio Helsinki on his way to work, checks out hs.fi for news during his work day, checks out the cultural events in the afternoon from Nyt or menokone.fi. The day is structured around a variety of medias. We need to find a way to provide them with a consistent, fluent, and customized user experience to best suit their needs.
Finally, what is your message to the cross-scientific group of Aalto University students that are taking their first steps in becoming media service entrepreneurs?
Eero: Consider this as a great learning experience for the working-life since this is what you will be doing everyday he rest of your life, that is working in teams with a variety of backgrounds.
Anders: Think big! More practically, think about your own everyday behaviors, challenges and problems. The best service concepts arise from these. Of course, you should also find out if everybody else has the same problem through market research.
Eero: Finally, you should embrace cross-disciplinary teamwork! It’s a great opportunity to learn how to argument your ideas for others, how to make your co-workers as enthusiastic about your idea as you are!
