Okay, maybe not all of us are but it’s fair to say most Isentia employees are a little more tapped into what’s happening out in the world of news (no matter the channel). Beyond that, we could be described as a bit ‘tech-happy’. We also love to ask questions and find answers – so we thought we’d ask some of our people about their habits to shed some light into how differently we all consume or engage with media. We also wanted to understand the contrast (or lack thereof) between our different offices around the world when it comes to how teams stay ahead of the media. After all, we’re powered by tech, inspired by people.
Here’s what we found through some of the Q&A with our Isentia colleagues:
Isn’t it amazing that smartphones became ‘mainstream’ just over ten years ago – what would we do without them now! Aside from the convenience, our people cited that the enhancements in screen resolution, size and speed were all reasons for being mobile-first. Plus, being a device that is designed for a multitude of activities including watching videos, surfing the web, checking emails, texting and messaging via WeChat or similar, appealed (funnily enough nobody actually mentioned calling!). Beyond mobile devices, laptops and iPads were also on the list. Even a Kindle and smart watch got a shout out.
Like many around the world, our people wake up and surf social media sites like Facebook, WhatsApp and online news sites before their day begins. This was closely followed by emails, which is understandable given a 24/7 news cycle and business. In saying this, we enjoy a little Zen too with one colleague from Malaysia enjoying a cup of tea while perusing the online news, and a colleague from Korea waking up and playing music before anything else!
When surfing for news, we are also on-trend using a mix of social channels (such as LinkedIn and Facebook) for our news updates with some traditional news sources in online form (such as BBC and CNN). We’re also big fans of using alerts to stay up to date to save time and keep us updated on the things we really want to know – Google Alerts and notifications from the New Zealand Herald were a couple that were referenced.
YouTube, Instagram, Facebook are top choices for inspiration.
“YouTube is an unlimited source of inspiration. You can watch TED talks, listen to music and even enjoy a fireplace.”
– Isentia Korea
However when it came to welcoming 2018 and sharing the experience, we had mixed results. Many didn’t post anything on social media or chose to only share with close family or friends via messaging services, while the other half chose to share via Snapchat, Instagram stories and one person even wrote a blog!
It was a split between President vs Celebrity, but we all generally felt big names, like Forbes or ABC, influenced us more ahead of local news. We also noted social influencers or KOL’s (key opinion leaders) were likely to influence us – which makes sense given our social-first nature described above.
Access. The term ‘news travels fast’ has never been truer and the combination of speed and increased accessibility is something our people are celebrating. Information is everywhere, at a click of the button, and has no ‘geography’. There’s also new ways in which individuals can interact with media. For example in Korea, ‘Kakao talk’ sometimes opens up chat rooms to openly group chat issues. Also, lots of us noted how quickly the Facebook news bot had integrated into their daily behaviour.
Thanks to all of our Isentia participants for sharing with us – #oneteam
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In the second of our Communicating through Change webinar series, we chat to Bec Brown from The Comms Department about working from home during this time. We also chat to Isentia’s ANZ Head of Insights, Ngaire Crawford about the traditional and social media conversations around the largest working from home experiment.
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