In just a few weeks, Mx3 Barcelona will take place in Spain. In this interview, Jennifer Schivas, CEO of 67 Bricks – an Mx3 event partner – outlines how advances in AI are empowering media brands to create new products and solutions with the assets they already own. (P.S. there are still a few tickets left for Mx3 Barcelona).
At Mx3 Barcelona (March 12th/13th 2024), one of the key event partners is 67 Bricks with both Jennifer Schivas, CEO, (left) and Will Bailey, Head of Partnerships in attendance.
Headquartered in Oxford, UK, 67 Bricks helps information companies build new digital products to diversify revenue streams, with specialist expertise in blending complex content and data sets into insights that customers will pay for. Clients include The Economist Intelligence Unit, Chemical Watch and The British Medical Journal (BMJ).
Ahead of Spain, we caught up with CEO, Jennifer Schivas to get a pulse of the market, as well as learn about both the significant disruption and opportunities that AI presents…we started by asking Jennifer what were the key trends she was witnessing. TL;DR: With AI here to stay, change is the new constant and being agile is key.
Mx3: As technology experts, what are the key trends you are seeing right now? Are there key goals, questions or issues you’re finding clients are coming to you with?
Jennifer Schivas: At a societal level AI is driving a rapid and wholesale shift in user expectations in terms of how they expect to interact with information in all facets of their life and so without a doubt the biggest question we are being asked is “what impact will AI have on my business?”
That question stands equally for private equity firms seeking insights into how AI could enhance the value of their investments (or potentially render them valueless) and media companies exploring the impact of generative AI on their relevance and considering how to leverage it for a competitive edge through efficiency improvements or the development of new products and services.
As a result of this societal shift, consumers now expect to do less work to get more value, and many in our space are playing catch up to meet these expectations.
For example, our users want to be served answers based on the knowledge contained in multiple places – not to navigate to different places to trawl through disparate datasets and articles; they expect to be able to interrogate results instantly and conversationally; for content to be personalised, highly relevant and curatable. To this end we’re seeing an increase in companies wanting to create new products that blend their existing content and data and are flexible enough to pull in new content types and sources, to create a more valuable asset that helps them better serve this change in behaviour.
Finally, in an environment where change is a new constant, the companies we work with want to move away from restrictive off the shelf platforms towards a technology ecosystem they have control over and that gives them more flexibility and agility to adapt to continuous change. As information companies get more tightly focused on niche communities (another trend!) so their value proposition gets more individual and requires fine-tuning to ensure a standout customer experience. That’s hard to do with a generic platform, so we’re seeing more people come to us to design something that can deliver the ambitions they have for their content, data and customers.
MX3: You mention bringing together content and data together to create a more valuable asset, can you say more about what you mean by that?
JS: It’s fairly standard for companies in our space to sell large, static datasets and then produce – for example – typically long form content such as reports, analysis or journalism alongside it. Over time this has led to siloed storage and management of these assets and discrete products serving different legacy needs which are not joined up – this is not an ideal foundation from which to build new products, services or revenue streams.
There’s a big opportunity to pull these things together and enrich them to create a stronger, more unified and useful foundation to build on. From there, opening up new opportunities for better user experiences, new sales models and new product creation becomes much easier. This might include value-added services like visualisations and analytics that deepen the story the data tells for your customers. The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) are doing a great job in this area. They’ve got fantastically well-respected data and insights to share, and we have helped bring them together really successfully with their Viewpoint platform which has had a significant impact on their clients’ ability to make critical business decisions with confidence and speed.
Another great example from a smaller, niche publisher would be our work to transform Chemical Watch’s content into a data asset. Their data now powers personalised user experiences, advanced content notifications, related content displays, and tailored discovery options. This enabled them to relaunch a higher-value service offering resulting in a 40% increase in repeatable revenues, ultimately increasing the value of the company ahead of their sale to Enhesa.
Mx3: It sounds as though the benefits of thinking about data and content in this way are quite wide ranging? Are there other benefits you can touch on?
JS: When data is treated as a strategic asset, revenue opportunities go beyond subscriptions to consume content via your own products. We are increasingly helping information companies with their data-as-a-service strategy as a route to build new revenue streams, for example by serving valuable data and content straight into third party products and services via API. There are internal benefits to be realised too, as this kind of technology can streamline internal operations, such as content tagging, news identification, trend spotting, and automated marketing efforts.
The benefits of this approach are tangible. From the customer side, they get the answers they need, faster, with added context and personalised experiences. For companies, you will deepen the strength of your brand by engaging with your customers in more places across the value chain, allowing for more sophisticated sales, partnership and licensing models and creating pathways to increase retained revenues. It also sets you up with the flexibility required to take advantage of emerging technologies and to more successfully create responsive new products to be launched at pace to support a changing marketplace.
Mx3: We hear a lot of talk in our industry on the impact of GenAI in content creation, but as product specialists, how is GenAI impacting product development?
JS: Ultimately for the end user of your products it’s helping us build capabilities and features that are reducing time to value. One of the most obvious improvements here is to search – we’re increasingly working on products that don’t rely on or stop at traditional keyword search requests – for example by allowing conversational based search and refinement, or search through uploading a research brief or hypothesis (e.g. Case Genie – AI-powered search to help time-poor users). That’s been revolutionary for our clients, because it removes the burden of their users having to know exactly what they need to search for to get the results they need. Typically this not only drives usage and engagement but also means people are uncovering more ‘unknown unknowns’ – things they would never have found with traditional search because they didn’t know to look for it.
From an internal perspective, generative AI is already showing that it can play a crucial role in various aspects of the product development process. Not only can it accelerate the process of shipping code, but it can also play a role in gathering and analysing customer feedback, user behaviour data, and market responses, providing valuable insights into customer pain points, opportunities and product strengths and weaknesses, helping you to identify targeted improvements. In short, when used well as part of the process it can decrease time to market.
Mx3: For those companies looking to do more with their products, data or technology, but are feeling out of their depth, where is the best place to start?
JS: If it hasn’t been done for a while, or ever, then a strategic audit of your technology capabilities is a good place to start. This doesn’t need to be a long and expensive process – a rapid diagnostic allows you to sense check your technological readiness to meet your business goals and survive in a data and AI-driven future. We always aim to assess – and would recommend everyone considers – not just technology in the very traditional sense but also your people, culture, product, processes and data – all of which are either drivers or blockers of innovation. Doing this can give you all the essential information you need to tackle the right opportunities quickly and strategically, match your business goals with actionable next steps to achieve them, and make sure you have a solid plan for the future.
Technology and business goals should always be in lockstep, so any audit must be set against your company’s strategic aims, but alongside stepping back and taking stock there is a need to commit to being agile and responsive.
You must keep firmly in mind that technological change is now a constant, so even though you might do an audit and create a roadmap, it will be fluid – you should expect the goalposts to keep moving as new technology, business opportunities and user needs emerge. When it comes to technology, product and data your aim should be to build a set of capabilities that allow you to move quickly and flexibly with these changes.
Mx3: As we look towards a future driven by AI what final advice would you give?
JS: When it comes to AI in our industry we need to accept that it is here to stay. It isn’t just a new technology or a business case you might try to make – it’s becoming a key part of our society and the products and services we use throughout our day-to-day lives. Expectations from content consumers, from your staff, from your board are therefore increasing at pace. And while it’s true that the results are not yet perfect, they don’t need to be perfect to be extremely disruptive to the status quo.
That being said, when thinking about AI, as with any technology, always focus on business and customer needs – what problems are you trying to solve? Never see AI as a solution looking for a problem. Start with the problems you are trying to solve and then think about whether AI could form part of the solutions. Make space to learn and evaluate as you go and for user feedback to be part of that process.
Our old print mindsets that involve crafting a perfect finished artefact prior to publication won’t translate to our new world – iteration, feedback and learning is a necessary part of the process.
Finally, if we consider what people are using generative AI for – surfacing insights from content and data; helping time poor users find answers; creating and curating trusted information – it’s clear that this is our territory! Years of creating content, building strong communities and developing deep domain experience give many media companies a head start – but we need to be on the front foot and be leading the charge – if we do then we have the potential to create truly powerful new content experiences.
Mx3 Barcelona 12-13th March 2024 is an off-the-record international summit focusing on innovation in and across media verticals (Consumer & B2B). Come and join us!
