The 2014 LMA Innovation Mission: What Tech Leaders Can Teach Traditional Media

When a traditional media executive visits Google, Facebook and other tech leaders, there is always a lot of oohing and ahhing and a bit of envy.

You can’t help but notice the great perks, such as free dry cleaning and gourmet food. Add to that their relative transparency; open seating that bust out the cubicles; first name relationships with the executive team; grand vision statements that go beyond profit; the distribution of company equity; and their trust in employees.

But these tech perks have been around now for years (and copied.) What are the real revelations that traditional media company executives can gain from a tour of tech leaders, circa 2014? That’s the question posed by The Local Media Association’s Fifth “Innovation Mission,” a six day, multi-city adventure that included on site briefings at tech and media leaders such as Google, eBay, LinkedIn, The New York Times, Buzzfeed, CBS Local, Gatehouse Media, Automattic, RussMedia and others

BIA/Kelsey spoke on last year’s tour, and we have been eager to see the report from this year’s edition. Here’s the summary: The new wave is all about sharing media; the widespread use of mobile has given rise to omnichannel publishing; and the next wave of internal communications and news gathering is quickly moving from email to messaging.

The tour’s focus on shareable media especially caught our attention. BuzzFeed – which gets 23 million of its 57 million daily views from shared posts –goes so far as to say that share data has become “the most important metric.” The report says this about Buzzfeed: “As ideas surface, they ask themselves: ‘would you share this with your friends?’ For Buzzfeed, share data is seen as a stronger indicator of audience engagement than HuffPo-like “click bait” that fools you into checking out an article, but doesn’t ultimately engage you.

What drives sharing? For BuzzFeed, the biggest driver of shared media has been YouTube; but Pinterest is #2 – much more impactful than live media such as Twitter. Facebook is also a big driver, although its impact is not immediate: it takes several days to build.

Is Buzzfeed’s relentless focus on shared media an apples-to-apples “best practice” for traditional media companies? Probably not. After all, it says its real focus is grabbing people who are “bored in line, bored at work and bored at home.” (One of its biggest traffic drivers is Miley Cyrus.) Still, as mobile’s share of media usage gains, and “boredom breaks” pre-dominate, there are definite lessons in studying its model.

The LMA Innovation Mission Report can be purchased here.