World Digital Media Awards winners unveil the viral nature of innovation

Transcription

1 World Digital Media Awards winners unveil the viral nature of innovation Best News Website Winner: Malayala Manorama Company Ltd, Kottayam, Kerala, India Project: Manoramaonline.com About the project: With 127 years of journalism legacy and a circulation of 2.3 million subscribers, Malayala Manorama Company Ltd is a large regional media house with operations in print, TV, radio, online, mobile & 50+ publications. Malayala Manorama believes in journalism with a human touch and are pioneers in developmental journalism. Manorama Online has emerged as the convergence hub of Malayala Manorama and all its wings in the digital age, offering a slew of products for PCs, tablets and mobile. It is now the No:1 regional language news portal with 19 years of online news reporting. The unparalleled coverage is powered by Malayala Manorama daily. It comprises of 30+ dedicated channels on reader interest areas. The Mission is to serve local & hyper local news content to the readers across the globe and to engage the audience through multi media, and empower the users to participate and contribute in the news making process, and also obtain and highlight multiple perspectives of news stories. Best Entertainment and Lifestyle Website Winner: Media24, Cape Town, South Africa Project: Kick Off About the project: Initially developed in 1998 as an addition to the successful KICK OFF magazine, KickOff.com is now the brand s first point of contact for readers, bringing them all the daily PSL football news that a magazine no longer can. KickOff.com has become the number one trusted source of PSL and South African football news keeping more than 1.2-million active users up to date 24-7, fielding close to 30-million page impressions every month. KickOff.com has 80% of its audience reading on mobile devices, with an important upgrade to the mobile site in 2012 resulting in less data consumption for readers a critical decision made to cater to our audience that has resulted in high time spent on site stats (04:51), an average of 3,21 pages viewed per session and a very low 19% bounce rate. 90% of readers return every day to get their local football news. Best use of online video Winner: Guardian News & Media, London, United Kingdom Project: Building the Atom Bomb: the full story of the Nevada Test Site About the Project: Building the Bomb is a video-led interactive which tells the story of the most bombed place on Earth, the Nevada Test Site an area 65km from Las Vegas where the US government carried out almost 1,000 nuclear tests during the Cold War. With rare access to the test site itself, the interactive brings together original interviews with atomic veterans, dramatic high-definition archive and evocative sound design. Each 1

2 chapter takes the audience along a fascinating journey to witness an atmospheric test, and examine its devastating aftermath. To fully immerse the user in the story, each video is scrolled into at full-screen. As the story progresses, the user is taken inside the ghostly remains of Survival Town, an artificial village populated with mannequin families, built by scientists and engineers to examine the effect of a nuclear blast on urban areas. The experience builds towards a terrifying countdown, as nervous soldiers scramble into their trenches and suddenly you're hit by the thunderous shockwave of a nuclear explosion. For many Americas, the Nevada Test Site is a place of unparalleled historical importance to their national security the battleground on which the US fought, and won, the Cold War. But for others, the legacy is far more painful and disturbing. Atmospheric testing produced fallout radiation which many scientists believe contaminated local areas, and affected the health of millions of Americans. These communities, known as Downwinders, believe the price of winning the Cold War is still being counted today. Building the Atomic Bomb was published on the home page of theguardian.com, across all of our international platforms (UK, US, Australia) and received more than 180,000 views via Facebook. Best Data Visualisation Project Winner: Muscat Press and Publishing House SAOC, Muscat, Oman Project: About the Project: To mark the 45th National Day of Oman in November the team at timesofoman.com wanted to explore a subject very close to Omani hearts. We created an ambitious online project that broke down into intricate detail not just the history and evolution of the nation s traditional dress for men and women, but also the complex differing styles, dimensions, regional differences and locations. This was also sponsored by the Zubair Corporation who were so impressed with our results. The national dress of Oman might not seem like a starting point for Best Data Visualation however to mark the 45th National Day of Oman in November the team at timesofoman.com created an ambitious online project that broke down into intricate detail not just the history and evolution of the nation s traditional dress for men and women, but also the complex differing styles, dimensions, regional differences and locations. This was all brought together in a highly interactive microsite on timesofoman.com which blended video, interactive graphics, photo galleries, text and quite simply beautiful works of art by the creative team. The project was delivered across the adaptive platforms at Best News Mobile Service Winner: Clarín A.G.E.A. SA, Buenos Aires, Argentina Project: Clarín Balotaje en Telegram About the Project: In October 2015, Clarín decided to join the small group of legacy media that covered a news event through a messaging app. Clarín started from the knowledge that people mainly use messaging apps on their smartphones and from finding out that Clarín s readers had spent the general voting round of the presidential election checking the news frequently on their phones. Clarín decided to cover an historical presidential campaign (the first that was 2

3 facing a second vote in Argentina), the first presidential debate and the day of the election through a Telegram Channel, a messaging service that allowed it to keep citizens informed through that exciting month. The opportunity gave Clarín the chance to experiment on mobile journalism through messages; test users resistance to push notifications (every message was going to be pushed), and to associate its brand to a platform committed to tech innovation and free speech. A Mobile Editor who created content from traditional sources and curated content from other media (Clarín s properties, and other s broadcast and social media) was in charge of the production strategy. Content formats included: texts, links, emojis, stickers, photos, photo+quotes, graphs, charts, a/v clips. Also the feed included a daily evening bulletin with news brief and special coverages during the debate night and the voting day. Clarín distributed more than 300 messages that were only related to the campaign from 30 October to 22 November 2015, including around 130 images, 80 links, 20 audio and video clips, and even a PDF file. The channel peaked at 1,800 subscribers at the time, much more than other major global players with a broader focus. The experience gave Clarín s newsroom pioneering knowledge about messaging news services, push notifications and news fandom. Best Entertainment & Lifestyle Mobile Service Winner: Media24, Cape Town, South Africa Project: Men s Health Belly Off About the Project: Idea: To create a mobilefirst, payment-based 12-week workout and diet plan for readers to lose their belly fat, on brand with the Men s Health philosophy of a guy s guide to healthy living. Launched as a sub-brand, it was promoted across all Men's Health platforms in Spring 2015, strategically timed for summer training. Reader success stories formed the backbone of the campaign which appeared the magazine, website, newsletters and social media. Objectives were to build the Belly off brand as a mobile payment app, to build an alternative content and revenue stream for unique weightloss advice. This project has been Men's Health's most successful mobile project. Within eight months the R499 plan had sold over 1,300 units, surpassing budget expectations and delivering a healthy return on investment. Results: This is the first South African "paygate" fitness plan and has pioneered a new platform for fitness/weight-loss instruction as well as a new revenue model for service-based content. This paygate template will be used as a model for other health brands within the group. 1,424 plans were sold in 10 months. The project surpassed budget projections and established a new revenue stream and content distribution model outside the traditional print and web products. Best in Tablet Publishing Winner: WeltN24 GmbH, Berlin, Germany Project: DIE WELT Edition About the Project: In 2015, DIE WELT decided to reinvent the digital newspaper. The goal was to create a finishable appexperience that targets a mature audience of loyal users that have grown up with print newspaper. As our most important paidproduct, DIE WELT Edition emphasizes a luxurious look and feel with an intuitive and simple navigation. We aimed to be highly interactive, elegant, innovative but classic. 3

4 DIE WELT Edition is built to offer a handpicked selection of the best and most intriguing stories, videos and web-features from DIE WELT. We wanted to bring together high quality content, various new news formats and engagement tools, making our new brand available across all mobile devices and platforms: smartphones and tablets, ios and Android. During the development process, we engaged our existing users through user tests and survey with more than 500 participants and keep collecting user's feedback in a closed Facebook beta group with >400 members. One of the key factors during the development process was the establishment of our all new User Experience Lab of "DIE WELT in which products are regularly tested by our users. Personas helped summarizing and sharing the insights throughout the company and made our team even more effective by reaching our goal: reinventing the newspaper. Due to the chosen visionary approach and constant user feedback our interdisciplinary team was able to develop an app which has been rewarded by Apple as "Best of 2015 in the App Store the only publisher's app throughout the selection (ipad). Our app reaches 60,000 users on a weekly base and gained a growth of 100% new subscribers per week. In 2015 it is among the top grossing apps in the App Store (ipads) - as the better of two media apps in a group consisting of games only. A rapid market growth of 20% on mobile phones verified our strategy: build a unique, elegant, engaging product, match it with high quality journalism and get rewarded by massive subscription revenues. DIE WELT Edition is rated 4.5 stars by 1,031 users in the Apple App Store (V. 6.2 in Jan. 2016). In the European media landscape, DIE WELT Edition is regarded as a showcase product of mobile publisher s apps. Or as Apple put it: one of the most visionary, inventive, and irresistible apps of the year. Best Reader Engagement Winner: Pictoline, Ciudad de México, Mexico Project: Pictoline About the Project: Pictoline is an exclusively visual media company. Through a careful design, Pictoline transforms news and data into images and info graphics that it distributes directly through social media platforms. Instead of centralising the content on its site, Pictoline takes the advantages that are offered by images and snapshots of reality to grow its audience organically. Pictoline has experienced one of the fastest growth in the region. In less than a year, it has gained more than 1 million followers on Facebook, 200K on Twitter, 100K on Instagram and has a reach of 25 million a month. All of this has been obtained organically without the need for any investment in advertising. Thanks to readers engagement, Pictoline content is one of the most shared on the Internet. The viral essence of the format has allowed Pictoline to distribute information without losing freshness or relevance, from hard and difficult pieces of news to scientific advances. We have submitted the whole Pictoline project instead of specific pieces because we believe it is reader engagement that validates Pictoline s model and takes it beyond a successful case study. Best Digital Advertising Campaign Winner: Quartz, London, United Kingdom Project: Quartz/GE World in Motion 4

5 About the Project: In 2015, GE, MEC and Quartz partnered to create World in Motion, a global destination for GE storytelling and content discovery. Its technology-first, social approach creates a fluid home for GE content of various origins and formats. The simplicity of its design and execution reinvents the traditional content hub to support GE s businesses globally, while establishing deep relevance in local markets. Quartz, Atlantic Monthly Group, UK (together with offices in New York), worked together to implement the program. World in Motion lives on qz.com as an ENGAGE plus advertising unit, which recognizes the visitor s location and pans the globe to that region. Upon expansion, the user is immersed in an interactive, 3D globe built with the WebGL graphics library and cutting edge HTML5 technology which allows users to spin, tilt, and zoom the globe in an infinite number of ways. The globe spotlights over 275 pieces of content, spanning 12 regions around the world. Visitors can navigate and filter their experience via region, theme and content format. Filter themes align with the core areas of GE business including energy, healthcare, manufacturing and the industrial Internet Marketing, Sales and PR teams worked together to complete the project. Engaged users are spending an average of 8+ minutes per sessions exploring content within the interactive globe, the equivalent of actions per session. After four months, World in Motion has generated over 200,000 actions which include: clicks to view content cards, spins of the globe, video views, clicks to read full length content from original source, and more. Quartz is able to share insights with GE on the top themes, formats and articles trending each month. The launch generated a tremendous amount of coverage in the press, including feature pieces in AdAge, as well as buzz on twitter for the innovative approach. Readers praised World in Motion as A glimpse of the future of brand journalism and a beautiful and interesting world powered by GE. Best New Product Winner: S.A. La Nación, Buenos Aires, Argentina Project: MUY LIEBRE About the Project: MUY LIEBRE is a product for the millennial audience created by LA NACION. It works as a user generated space for all social media platforms. Just a few months after being launched, MUY LIEBRE achieved a loyal community of youngsters that follows the brand on all its platforms. The project is supported by branded content. Despite being a project from LA NACION, the brand is disassociated from the paper and its current digital content portfolio. 5