| Something’s Gotta Give Last year, global media spending was forecast by McKinsey to top $2 trillion. The investment was evident in television, as 2019 saw more than 500 original scripted series in the United States — a 52% increase from 2013 when streaming services went mainstream and a 153% increase from available series in 2009. Gaming also showed a sizable uptick, with more than $43.4 billion in sales last year. Collectively, this represents a massive amount of content vying for our attention. We’ve read about the often-disturbing implications of this information overload in eye-opening books like Brad Smith and Carol Ann Browne’s Tools and Weapons and from think tanks like danah boyd’s Data+Society. As the race for attention escalates, mental well-being and personal productivity have taken on new challenges related to tech. Innovators are looking toward new avenues as a result. With so much content available to overwhelm us, they see less opportunity in escapism, and more in insight and action. In the television space, Discovery Communications and its collection of unscripted, educational series takes on the essence: don’t just view, do. Discovery CFO, Gunnar Wiedenfels, recently told Bloomberg, “We’re not in the game of spending $5 million an hour to generate scripted shows. We’re in the game of passionate audiences that we super serve in smaller niches.” The strategy appears to be working, as the company’s free cash flow has grown by 28% year over year (2019 vs. 2018). |
| In the health sphere, companies like Whoop differentiate themselves in a another crowded market by providing actionable perspective through curated lessons and personal analytics. Other newcomers like Mirror and Tonal use data to fuel smart home workout equipment, along with the community-focused Peloton, which at the end of last year had more customers than SoulCycle and a higher retention rate than Equinox. For these companies, insight becomes the product. And we’re seeing this play out with the growth of genres like perspective-shaping podcasts, which have risen sharply in popularity over the last year. And lifestyle guides that provide recommendations for how to live better lives — see wellness powerhouse Goop, which started as a newsletter and is now worth $250 million, or renovation empire leaders Chip and Joanna Gaines, who have recently acquired an estimated $18 million combined net worth. These innovators owe their success to goals that focus less on gobbling our attention, and more on providing niche, personal value. The abundance of addictive content fueled by the streaming wars, social media and short-form videos like Tik Tok (fun and dark as the memes may be) are the antithesis of what we need right now. The rise of content options in parallel with user and creator burnout rates prove the current media landscape is not sustainable. Something’s gotta give. We don’t need more. We need better. There is a huge opportunity for companies — in media and beyond — to innovate as insight agents that help people learn, discern, act and give back. We’re seeing some intriguing early efforts. What do you think will be next? Chris Perry |
