When targeting the lucrative and influential female market I have lived and financially died learning how hard it is to monetise news, especially in the digital environment. Basically most advertisers who want to engage women do so though the categories of beauty, health, fashion, homes, lifestyle
(NB: Women do read the news).

This has largely been because the environment of digital news (which is where the majority of news is consumed) is an unpredictable and negative environment for advertisers e.g. next to Teenage White Supremacist Shoots 24 School Kids is an ad for their luxury jewellery range.

To date the opportunity to create branded content and content marketing to natively fit  within the news category is almost non-existent which is frustrating because the reach/scale is so large with a cost effective CPI. The pivot to positivity and news with solutions is welcomed as a marketer and content marketer. But you don’t have to look far to join other dots to have seen the ‘Perfect Positive Storm’ rolling in. 

New York Times best seller, Factfulness: Ten Reasons we’re wrong about the world by Hans Rosling is slowly waking the globe up to the fact that yes, sure there are some terrible things happening in the world today but if you stand back and take a wider view, the world has actually never been in a better place. Over the past 20 years, the proportion of people living in extreme poverty has almost halved. Research shows, in most countries, less than 10 per cent of people knew this amongst many other surprisingly positive facts.  Sure plane crashes, preventable deaths, climate change deniers, racists/chauvinists, dictators, house prices, and girls not getting an education still happens and we cannot relax. But as Rosling says, it is ridiculous to look away from the progress that has been made.

Add to that the wellness revolution as anxiety eats up a couple of generations and the focus on the positive where  repelling people, places and things that could ‘trigger’ negative reactions are avoided at a rate we have never seen before.

Truth in marketing and journalism is becoming  non-negotiable as BS radars are so finely tuned that selling a lie, or tapping into a fear isn’t getting the traction it used to. We live in a world where consumers are demanding truth and the A word, (authenticity… it’s so hard to write without gagging) refusing to be hooked in by the fear of a headline and marketers face the same challenges.

Not surprisingly a TV show like The Project has shown success with a unique formula of ‘news delivered differently’ for over 10 years. However the personalities and humour presented in a 30 minute TV show format is very different - and not how the majority of people get to consume their news.

So I intend to not leave you with alarmist prophecies of where news, media and marketing are going but rather highlight how we are on the wave of emerging solutions to help change a behaviour that no longer serves us.