Communiqué 75: Media as a means to an end

You have heard it said, “Anyone can be a media company.” But I tell you, “Media companies can be anything — if they choose to be.”

Key points

1. The notion that a media company should solely be a media company is outdated, just as the idea that anyone can become a media company is more true today than ever.

2. The future media entrepreneur is not building a publication — they’re creating a platform for experimentation, monetization, and expansion. The product isn’t always the content; sometimes, the content is just the gateway.

3. Most people view media as a product. However, for the smartest entrepreneurs, media can serve as a foundation for testing, launching, and scaling new business lines.

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1. Everything is everything

It used to be much easier to define what a media company is. If you produced content, packaged it (however you saw fit), and distributed it to an audience, you were a media company. Ideally, you’d have a defined set of equipment and resources (cameras, radio masts, printing presses, etc.) and a specific group of people (journalists, production crew, studio engineers, etc.). What you were was never in doubt. Who qualified as “media” was never a question.

But that’s all in the past. We are in a new era. You hear things like, “Anyone can be a media company.” Or, “Everything is media these days.” Often, this is backed by clichés: anyone with a smartphone can become a media company, media is now decentralized, everything is democratized, and so on. None of these statements is false.

In today’s world, content production and distribution have become commodities. While it is sometimes possible to strike gold with content ideas, the general concept of content creation has become so ubiquitous that it is increasingly challenging to convince consumers that it is worth paying for. And so, you find media companies stretching the boundaries of what is possible as businesses. Events are the lowest-hanging fruit. Then you have agency services (consulting, content marketing, etc.). With time, however, this has become a crowded house. Walk into a room full of media professionals, and you will bump into someone whose company offers one or both of these services.

As the definitions of media expand and the parameters for who or what qualifies as a media company stretch beyond elasticity, one must wonder what is next. We know what the past and present look like. But what does the future hold?

2. Paystack’s media threat, revisited

I spent most of 2021 obsessing over the idea of media as a growth lever for corporate entities.

It first culminated in an essay titled “Paystack’s media threat.” The central idea was that tech startups with more resources and dynamic problems to solve could build in-house operations to rival the media companies that covered them, to the point of competing on talent, production, and distribution.

At the time, Africa’s tech ecosystem was flush with cheap and foreign capital. Business fundamentals were less of a priority to investors in lieu of growth potential. VCs were more likely to invest in startups purely based on how fast and large they claimed they could grow, rather than on how they would actually achieve it.

This push for growth sparked several background conversations, one of which was the possibility of in-house media teams producing content solely as a means to an end: driving business growth.

In that essay, I wrote:

If a company with little to no pressure to monetize its media properties begins to tread deeper into the territory that was erstwhile occupied by traditional media companies whose livelihoods depend on reporting news and creating content, what happens then?

I added that:

For companies like Paystack, this is one more upside to the Internet. It allows them to bypass traditional middlemen and go straight to customers. The advent of the Internet means they can now achieve the same scale of engagement previously attainable only by the media. Now, individual organizations can, in theory, wield just as much influence as the media has on how people think and behave.

During that period, there was an uptick in vacancies for editorial and content strategy leads at tech startups. Even I was so compelled by this idea that I joined a startup to test it out. Since 2021, however, that wave has subsided. Cheap capital has dissipated and been replaced mainly with tougher investor relations and more challenging pre-investment conversations.

But the idea that media could serve as a growth engine for other business interests remains fundamentally true. What has changed is how that idea manifests itself.

3. Platform or product

In 2017, Big Cabal Media’s then-CEO, Seyi Taylor, made an interesting announcement. The company was launching its own content management system (CMS) and moving away from WordPress because the team was “spending so much time and energy modifying it to fit our purposes and dealing with performance issues.”

In theory, the idea was great: the system would allow users to experience content based on their format preferences, location, browsing history, time of day, and other factors. So, Formation was born. Zikoko, Big Cabal Media’s prized possession at the time, was growing at a geometric rate, almost like BuzzFeed had been doing globally. It required a CMS that could meet its many dynamic editorial and distribution needs. The business strategy was also straightforward: test Formation on Zikoko and then adopt it for TechCabal. If successful, it would be easier to onboard external clients and partners.

While Formation never really took off, the underlying concept was sound. The notion that a media company can look around and find opportunities to build products or services that turn its default state into a competitive advantage is more valid today than ever, especially with the industry’s dwindling fortunes.

In 2021, Axios, the U.S.-based new media company, launched Axios HQ, marking its entry into the SaaS business. Its flagship product, Smart Brevity, generated $1 million in licensing fees within the first eight months. But software products aren’t the only proof of concept here: Barstool Sports owns betting platforms, and The Skimm expanded from a newsletter into a lifestyle brand. In Africa, Multichoice has invested significantly in sports betting, fintech, and insurance over the years.

The notion that a media company should only be a media company is outdated, just as the idea that anyone can become a media company is significantly truer today than ever.

4. What would Bloomberg do?

The concept of media as a means to an end is simple: media companies can use the skills they’ve developed in audience engagement, trust, and distribution to test, build, and scale other business ventures. It is the idea that content doesn’t have to be the final product. Instead, it can serve as a platform — a lab, if you will — for testing ideas that have the potential to scale.

For most of us in this industry, Bloomberg is the north star: a successful media company with a successful consumer-facing product.

But what makes this possible? What does it take to become a company where media is not the end, but a means to a portfolio of successful business outcomes?

I. A mindset shift: The most significant transformation is philosophical. The notion that media is a self-contained end must give way to a more expansive view: Media is the engine, not the destination. This concept won’t apply to everyone, nor should it. However, for those who believe it is possible, it is worth ruminating upon.

Take Bloomberg, for example. It primarily produces content as a signal to its audience that it understands the markets. The terminal — the actual revenue driver — rides on top of that trust.

II. Audience intelligence: Media companies possess a unique advantage: they live inside the cultural and intellectual minds of their audiences. However, in most cases, this insight is underutilized.

For those who play their cards right, the audience is the biggest source of market insight and consumer patterns.

The goal is to transition from publishing for an audience to building for a community, informed by the kinds of insights that most startups pay a premium to extract from third-party data firms.

Everyone who consumes content has a need — a problem they’re trying hard to solve. Perhaps there is a business opportunity there. However, if you don’t engage with them, you wouldn’t know.

III. Owned distribution: Owned distribution grants media companies the power to launch anything. It’s why newsletters have quietly become one of the most effective channels for audience engagement. They enable media companies to connect directly with their audience. Beyond that, they provide a platform for understanding what that audience wants.

When executed correctly, they also create an avenue to seed ideas, products, and services without relying on external gatekeepers. Email lists with segmentation and intent tagging, community platforms where ideas can be incubated and refined, and multiformat reach (text, video, audio) enable more exhaustive experimentation and testing — all of which are only possible through an owned distribution strategy.

IV. Content as R&D: At Bloomberg, the terminal evolved directly from a deep understanding of financial professionals’ daily pain points. At Axios, the SaaS product Axios HQ emerged from their obsession with brevity and clarity in business communication. At Big Cabal Media, initiatives like Formation stemmed from content-led workflow bottlenecks.

Media companies don’t need to stop at just writing or talking about problems; they can build solutions for them.

Every comment section, open rate, or community thread presents a chance to ask: What are we learning that no one else knows? Then: How do we turn that into a product that only we can build?

5. Neatly in a bow

The idea that anyone can be a media company is now mainstream. However, what is less appreciated is that media companies can be anything — if they choose to be.

The opportunity now lies with those who are bold enough to ask: What else can we build with this audience, trust, and influence?

How can we turn our audience relationships from a finish line into a runway?