The 2018 Conference of the Pan African Media Research Organisation, (PAMRO) might have come and gone, but its memories and myriads of knowledge pushed on the platform will forever be memorable to all attendees.
The three-day conference which saw a conspicuous presence of SBI Media and the Masscom Global Network has some invaluable takeouts that are worth sharing:
- TV is not dead but having babies. Despite the simplistic conclusions that television has fizzled-out due to the overbearing and additive nature of digital media, it is instructive to note that TV is more or less the most influential medium in the digital age.
Today, TV has morphed from basic TV to pay-TV, extended TV and video. Extended TV platforms are Netflix, Showmax and iFlix. Video elements are no doubt making social media thick. So if you think TV is dead, think again.
- The shorter the content, the better. While this is conventionally incorrect, it is actually the fact and based on available data from various analytics sources, shorter contents are performing better than their longer versions.
While this is not unconnected with the fact that Millennials now form the majority of Internet users, informed content makers and marketers are also backing their decisions with this insight thereby making the Internet filled with shorter video contents.
- Most digital and media innovation in Africa that is succeeding is driven by scarcity and what is not available. The success of Mpesa and USSD-based mobile banking in East Africa has been driven by socio-economic and infrastructure challenges confronting people of the region.
The remarkable influence of Internet/digital banking in Nigeria and major parts of Southern Africa has also been driven by what people need.
This further shows that media innovation that would work will not be driven by over-flogged ideas from the West or over the Atlantic, but locally-driven and customized.
© SBI Media. This article was published by SBI media in their Nextgen newsletter of September 3, 2018