If you can’t beat them, persuade them to join you. In a world where traditional media has been disrupted by digital content creators, this is the response of specialist media company Future Publishing.
The aim of its new cross-portfolio initiative, Collab, is to spotlight creators in a way that is consistent with the brand values of leading franchises such as Ideal Home, Homes & Gardens, Marie Claire and Who What Wear. For example, Grace H, whose Instagram account @fromlondontomanchester featuring her colourful and cosy home has over 100k followers, has written for Ideal Home’s Open House platform about where to source lighting and unexpected ways with wallpaper.
Jason Orme, managing director of Future’s lifestyle brands, explains the thinking behind the new venture. “The overall strategy is to navigate rapidly changing media environments, making sure that we provide audiences wherever they may be with advice, information, ideas, then really help them achieve the home of their dreams using whatever content platform we can speak to them on, whether that be social, email, events, magazines, websites and many more yet to come,” he says.
People relate to people
He adds that Collab is an evolution of this strategy rather than a brand-new direction. “It’s based on an old truism in media: that people want to take advice from people.” This could be interior designers, architects, and building professionals, but it could also be those who have renovated their own homes and have become an expert on plumbing by installing their own boiler. Orme points out that at their industry events such as the Homebuilding & Renovating Show, people will queue up for hours just to spend 15 minutes talking to an expert.
“That expansion of the talent pool means we can bring interesting new voices to our audiences, rather than the traditional route which was journalists interviewing them as experts. Enabling those experts to have their own voice within our platforms is an exciting and interesting addition to the mix,” he says.
Currently, editors on Future titles are finding and selecting designers and influencers and then reaching out to them, forming a relationship, and asking them to contribute to the website. Nothing is uploaded to a site without an editor having first approved it.
But, in the long-term, that model is not necessarily scalable. The end game is to have many more people contributing content, in a way that is not so dependent on a top-down editorial structure. Options they are exploring include taking applications from writers to use their platforms, or even moving towards a true open platform system.
Whatever it eventually looks like, Orme is determined that Future will not lose sight of one of its greatest strengths, which is the credibility of its brands. “We’ve got these amazing heritage brands that inspire loyalty and trust, and speak with authority in a way that is very valuable to us. We want to make sure the voice that goes through those brands is credible and authoritative and trustworthy,” he insists. There is an interesting discussion to be had around how you do that in an environment where suddenly you have 100 voices rather than ten, or 1,000 rather than 100. Although they may not have yet worked out exactly what this will look like, he explains: “The red line for us is that the brand credibility is absolutely critical.”
Value exchange
In terms of how content creators are reimbursed for their contribution, there will be several different models depending on the platform. It could be that people who have got a service to sell such as architects, designers and builders provide content in return for advertising their services. Others might be paid directly for content. At present, they are exploring all the different options available, depending on the vertical.
Orme says: “We’re trying them all and seeing what fits and works well. Always with a view of two or three things, one of which is ensuring that we’re getting quality, and secondly that the brand is protected, and third, that there is an exchange of value between the contributors and the brands.”
While they have looked at open-source platforms such as Substack, Medium and Ghost, they want to do something substantially different. “We believe that they are interesting, but it’s also true to say that none of those brands have a brand equity in the way that our brands do,” says Orme.
Future’s brands have existing audiences with which they have built up trust and the key is working out how to maximise on that without eroding any of that confidence. “You’re talking about brands like Country Life, Homes and Gardens, Ideal Home, Marie Claire, brands that have got an awful lot of equity in them. That equity is potentially extinguishable if you mess around with it, so we need to be very careful about how we use that,” he says.
Over the next few months, Future is planning to continue to experiment with the strategy of creators using a brand to amplify their voice in an equitable way.
Orme started out as a young journalist in the magazine industry in 1999, when it was “very much a closed shop where publishers were able to be the only source of information to a defined audience and therefore hugely powerful”. But even by the late nineties, the digitisation and therefore the democratisation of media had already begun, leading to established publishers “fighting for eyeballs” with newer players. Old certainties have been eroded; for example one of the main competitors to Future’s lifestyle brands is now the Reach stable and other national newspaper groups who are writing about interiors and drawing an audience that would once have gone to magazines.
Social media content meanwhile has the advantage over desktop devices of being mainly consumed on phones which are light and accessible in the evening. It can also offer personalised content through the algorithm, posing a challenge to traditional publishers which offer a prepackaged product that doesn’t always speak to individuals.
Maintaining relevance
“The biggest problem we always face is being relevant and interesting to an audience that always changes. The job I have is one of constant change management, balancing what works now with what we think is going to work in two years’ time or even a year’s time,” he says.
One response is to create more niche content such as Cucina, a newsletter within the homes and interiors arena focusing solely on kitchens, formatted to appeal to a segmented audience. Another recent brand launch is ROOMS, tapping into the reality that to be a homeowner in the UK and the US, you generally have to be at least in your mid-30s and maybe even older. “As a result, we weren’t speaking to a significant amount of people who were buying homes products whether they’re house sharing or renting. So, we launched ROOMS last year on the back of that as a social only brand and we had a tremendous response both on Instagram and TikTok,” says Orme. If he has a criticism of much homes content, it is that it isn’t fun enough. ROOMS on the other hand engages a younger audience by providing content that both entertains and evokes an emotional reaction.
“It’s been interesting dealing with that as a reaction to an audience segment that we recognised was exciting and a content solution that’s very different to the text and pictures format that we usually do,” he says.
AI is a challenge facing the entire media industry, Future included, but it is also an opportunity, particularly when it comes to offering personalised content, such as a bespoke design service, or enabling people to search for the products they want more easily.
Another major shift in the homes market has been the rise in popularity of short form video; once homes brands offered nice images of interiors, now consumers want to be shown around a property, and hear what the owners have to say for themselves. Orme believes there is a lot more for Future to do in this area. “Homes come to life when you walk through them,” he says. They already produce dozens of short videos for social media every month, and are also experimenting with longer form video, such as a new series for Homes & Gardens called ‘How I Host’ interviewing interesting and influential people about how they give a dinner party. These videos are good for top of funnel brand building and attracting a wider audience.
Although there is a still a huge amount of money coming in from traditional advertising, Future is also well known for generating income through affiliate revenues. An important area of development for Orme is going beyond that and thinking about how to create real shopping experiences on their website, backed by content and brand. “There’s a huge opportunity in the homes market because there aren’t many single portals where you can go to find every single yellow sofa in Britain and decide which one’s best for you and get advice from interior designers on how to choose. That’s big for us but will be a lot bigger.”
There has also been a post-covid return to events that advertisers appear to really value, whether that is the large-scale homebuilding shows or small salon suppers for twenty interior designers. Events also have a valuable afterlife on social.
Why has Orme stuck with homes and lifestyle media for the best part of three decades? He explains: “I’ve got a personal interest in it. I don’t think we’ve solved it yet. I half joke that I’ve sat in the same seat for 26 years, but the world has changed around me. Just as you feel you’re getting comfortable, then something happens, and it becomes addictive to try and solve that constant challenge.”
This article was first published in InPublishing magazine. If you would like to be added to the free mailing list to receive the magazine, please register here.
