4000 words by tomorrow

KING’S COLLEGE LONDON Department of Digital Humanities

7AAVDM09 18-19 SEM2 MANAGEMENT FOR DIGITAL

CONTENT INDUSTRIES

PROJECT ACADEMIC YEAR 2018-19

Title: Model and write a management strategy for the content industry The student has a total of 4,000 words over two sections to describe and model an example management strategy relating to the digital content industry. This report style document will take into account the different activities, business processes, cost-benefit relationships, people involved, constraints and enterprise-level governance issues. This project will build upon a series of smaller exercises worked upon during the Module. Section 1: The Market for Digital Content The first 1,500 words must be an assessment of the general world market for digital content in which the strategy for the Business Scenario (Section 2) will take place. Section 2: A Strategy for the Business Scenario The remaining 2,500 words require the student to directly address and provide solutions to the Business Scenario detailed below.

Important Notes

Your assignment should take the form of a report, of no more than 4,000 words, divided into two major sections as described above. In Section 1 (1,500 words) you will provide a clear and concise overview of the digital content market as it exists today, with an assessment of how you think it will develop in the next 5 years. You should give greatest focus to the digital content markets (images and video) addressed in the Business Scenario (Section 2). In Section 2 (2,500 words) it is important to provide a strong, persuasive argument and justification with a clear rationale for your proposed management strategy. As the Business Scenario cannot include all relevant information – this would both be infeasible and defeat the object – where additional information is necessary you should describe how you would obtain it (e.g. by asking a user) and make it clear how your strategy and solutions are based on their hypothetical responses.

Writing a Report

Please note that this assignment should take the form of a report rather than an essay. This means:

 A very structured document, with good sub-headings to direct the reader.

 Use an Executive Summary to summarise your strategy in a very short form at the beginning of the work.

 Ensure there is a set of Recommendations in Section 2 to summarise the actions that the strategy suggests be taken.

 You can speculate on the future market sizes in Section 1, but Section 2 must be evidence-based and build upon a clear strategic focus.

 Your ideas must be clear, concise and relate to the Business Scenario.

 Especially in Section 2, please note that all your writing must be about your ideas and plans, how you will resolve the problems raised in this Business Scenario and what success would look like if your ideas or plans were agreed to.

 You should use bullet points, graphs, tables, graphics and other visualisation means to illustrate your work. Words in graphics will not count to your total word count, but note that unnecessary graphics which do not appear to serve a purpose to amplify or simplify the understanding of the reader will be ignored or downgraded.

 You must use bibliographic references as per usual. You do not have to cite the Scenario itself. Bibliography will not count to the word count total.

 You cannot make up your own scenario or address a different problem than the one set in this assignment.

Assume that you are writing for company Director’s. You are trying to make an evidence- based persuasive case for your strategy to address the Scenario provided. Examples of report writing style and substance:

1. Visit here and download PDF http://strategy2020.europeana.eu/

2. http://www.jisc.ac.uk/media/documents/aboutus/strategy/strategy1012.pdf

Marking Criteria: The major criteria are:

1. the quality of the analysis of the Business Scenario, the proposed solution and the resultant strategy;

2. the clarity with which item 1 is presented, including the use of judicious examples to enhance this where appropriate;

3. the ability to link the strategy presented in Section 2 to the global market analysis in Section 1 as an evidence base; and

4. conformance to the word limit of 4,000 words (divided into 1,500 words for Section 1 and 2,500 words for Section 2).

Secondary considerations are:

 the report should be written in clear and correct English

 the report should aim for relevance to the analysis and the Scenario throughout.

Business Scenario

Overview of Poppycock Images The business to consider in this scenario is named Poppycock Images. This is what their marketing information says about themselves: Poppycock Images licences images for commercial use in books, newspapers, magazines, adverts, web sites and all manner of other media. Our images cover a broad range of topics and subject areas which, although coming under the umbrella classification of history, in fact extend far beyond most people's perception of historical pictures. We also carry video and audio content of oral histories. Our material has traditionally been used in an editorial context to illustrate news stories, magazine articles, documentaries and the like, but today it is increasingly sought by creatives looking for different and stimulating imagery around which to base advertising campaigns or commercial design projects. We mainly offer services to business and corporate clients. We offer a full digital online service, enabling you to search and order images via the internet. Unlike some of our larger competitors we still offer a very personal, professional picture research service, for those occasions when you can't find what you're looking for, don't have time to search yourself, or are not sure what it is you are looking for. Every time you call Poppycock Images, the phone is answered by an experienced and knowledgeable picture researcher. We currently have more than half a million images online, most of which are scanned in high resolution and available for immediate download. We continue to add new images at a rate of 500 each week. About Us Poppycock Images began life in 1984, and its core philosophy has remained unchanged for over 30 years: to make available and accessible all the wonderful images created for people to enjoy over the centuries which were originally published in books, on posters, in advertisements, or as prints. We also hold video and audio of people telling stories of their lives from history. You can visit galleries and exhibitions to see art and illustration from the past, but these tend to be dominated by great works of fine art. Poppycock Images provides a unique space through which people the world over can enjoy all the 'ordinary' images which display such skill and creativity on the part of the artist, and the style, medium and texture of which defined the era in which they were created. By making these images available to publishers, broadcasters and designers today, we hope to provide an insight into the past for anyone who comes across any of our pictures reproduced in a contemporary context. In 2014, we celebrated 30 years as an independent family-owned historical picture library. While our core values have not changed, our methods of putting them into effect are almost unrecognisable today.

Poppycock Images business clients include Abbott Mead Vickers Air Creative Communications Aspire Design Axis Design BBC History Magazine BBC Proms BBC TV Blacker Design Blue Design Consultants Bottom Line Design Brill Design British Medical Journal Cactus TV Capstone Press Carlton Television Cassell Plc Celf Creative Designs Ltd. Channel 4 Television Chapman Design Ltd Chrysalis Books Cinenova Productions Inc Cogent Elliot Contagious Design Creative Concepts Crown Agents Stamp Bureau Deep Blue Graphics Design Partners Dewynters Advertising Diverse Productions Dorling Kindersley Ltd. Eaglemoss Publications Elmwood Design Emi Classics English Heritage Event Communications Faber & Faber Flashback Television Folio Society Fortean Times Foster & Partners Furneaux Stewart G W A Design General Practitioner Generator Graphics Ghost Design Ltd Granada Television Guardian Harcourt Education Harper Collins Hat-Trick Design Head Design

Head Design Headland Design Associates Hodder & Stoughton Hodder Headline Ibm United Kingdom Ltd Ic Design Ltd Indent Design J Walter Thompson J.O.Marshall Design Jack Rouse Associates Jev Fine Arts John Murray Ltd. John Wiley & Sons Katapult Ltd. Lady Magazine Lawrence Edwards Designers Lime Marketing London Weekend Television Mail On Sunday Marshall Cavendish Mccann-Erickson Manchester Mccauley Design Meme Design Ltd Morgan Radcliffe Moti Roti Mousemat Design Mudpie Design Myridium Design National Geographic Society Naxos Records Nelson Thornes Ltd Neoco Design O'Reilly Richardson Octopus Design Ltd. Open University Orion Press Oxford University Press Palgrave Publishers Ltd Pan Communications Pan Macmillan Paperwork Corporate Design Performing Right Society Philip Allan Publishers Prentice Hall Prentice Hall Publicis Blueprint Quantock Design Querceus Design Ltd. Random House

Readers Digest Red Letter Design Robert Dudley Agency Rodrigo Corral Design Inc Rose Design Associates Ltd. Rosen Publishing Group Routledge Royal Mint Royal Opera House Saatchi And Saatchi Scholastic Inc Shannon-Rose Design Shaun Webb Graphic Design Splash Design Sunday Times Swedish Television Ab Synergy Communications Tatham Pearce The Argument By Design The Creative Partnership The Daily Express Daily Mail The Economist The Independent The Sunday Telegraph The Telegraph The Times The Work Design Consultants Thomas Cook Publishing Thyme Design Associates Tiger Aspect Tiger Design Time Warner Books Totem Advertising Transworld Publishers Tuch Design Unlikely Suburban Design Utd. Design W W Norton & Co. Wagner Design Wall To Wall TV Weidenfeld & Nicholson White Gate Design White Noise Productions Ltd. Zenith Print & Packaging Ziccardi Partners

Summary of key features of the business Poppycock Images – the business at the centre of this scenario has the following key management and market contexts:

1. The Business is a Picture and Media Library that sells its content both online and on request.

2. Its main business revenue is currently from selling the rights to content and from use of its content in marketing and advertising campaigns or commercial design projects.

3. It also engages in some very small scale consumer product sales: mugs, t-shirts etc.

4. Poppycock Images content includes images and video.

5. The nature of the content will mainly appeal to an audience interested in history, culture or heritage.

6. The Business has 23 staff currently and is based in the South East of England (within 35 minutes travel of central London). The Business owns its own offices.

7. The Business has 3 Directors who manage all aspects of the company. One is the CEO, another is the CFO and the third as CTO. They will be key decision makers in relation to the strategy proposed. The CEO and CFO are the family owners of the business – they are sisters. The CTO has part ownership and is not a family member.

8. There are 12 staff who carry out rights and licensing and sales activities for the company. They also do some ad hoc digitisation, collection development and create metadata to describe content.

9. There are 2 digital asset and media management staff. There is 1 content specialist who creates metadata and manages collection development.

10. The remaining are administration, financial or project staff who all may deal with digitisation, sales administration, accessioning new content, customer support, invoicing and looking after the physical analogue collections.

11. The Business has a dedicated Web presence using a Content Management System supported by sophisticated e-commerce. They are starting to use cloud services and social media for a number of its sales and marketing activities.

Business Goals The main business model currently is a business-to-business model (B2B) based on rights and licensing sales. Poppycock Images would like more sales directly to consumers (known as B2C opportunities). The goals to be addressed in the strategy are how the Business might achieve the following:

1. Increase revenues to £4.5 million per year by increasing market share and new product offerings.

2. Reduce costs and improve efficiency.

3. Improve customer service.

The Financial and Management Context

 Current revenues are in the region of £3 million per year.

 The market share is less than 5% of the total available in the UK and less than 2% in relation to the international market.

 The B2B market is saturated with competition.

 Poppycock Images is highly profitable – the profit margin on every sale is currently around 20%.

 Whilst highly profitable, the Business needs to grow revenues to the £4.5 million or more per annum region to be sustainable over the longer term.

 Poppycock Images could get external investment if required. However, it will not sell assets or part ownership in the business in return. Therefore it must show a considerable and speedy (less than 3 years) Return on Investment (ROI) to satisfy any investors.

 Currently Poppycock Images has a healthy surplus each year and few significant debts.

Business Accounts Overview Total cost of 23 staff = £1,120,000

 3 x Directors @ £95,000 cost per year = £285,000

 12 x sales, rights staff at average cost of £45,000 each per year = £540,000

 2 x DAMM staff at average cost of £55,000 each per year = £110,000

 1 x content specialist at average cost of £35,000 each per year = £35,000

 5 x administration, financial or project staff at average cost of £30,000 each per year = £150,000

Total operational costs = £1,294,600

 Mortgage/electricity/gas/business taxes etc. = £103,000

 Systems and digital architecture (including web presence, e-commerce) costs per year = £140,000

 Content creation and digitisation costs per year = £310,000

 Rights and Licensing costs per year = £260,000

 Other supplier costs and sundry outgoings per year = £160,000

 Operational costs (sales, taxes etc) = £120,000

 Pensions and other staff costs at 18% of total staff costs = £201,600 Total costs = £2,414,600 Total Sales and Revenue = £3,000,000

 Sales of rights content and IPR = £2,250,000

 Sales of consumer products (for example, t-shirts, mugs etc) = £50,000

 Advertising, marketing and branding sales = £700,000

 Online sales = 35% of total

 Phone-based on request and bespoke sales = 65% of total

Content Information

Here are some examples of how Poppycock Images have recently been used by our clients, in newspapers, magazines, for book covers and shows some oral history and digital content.

Goals Related to Digital Management of Content

Access & Participation

1. Create a new brand identity that will promote the new business model.

2. Promote and market the collections and knowledge of them.

3. Improve access to and widen use of the collections.

4. Improve the finding aids to the collections and work within the collections.

5. Consider how to promote innovative use of the content to drive new revenue models.

6. Improve the consumer capability to remotely access the content and use it on any device.

7. Consider the advantages of enabling a transition in the consumers to personalised, participative engagement. What would be the business advantage if content creators and stakeholders can contribute via user-generated-content and can become story makers as well as receivers/consumers? Is there a market demand for this?

Content Management & Development

1. The Business must improve the extent, coverage and value of digital collections through a clear content development strategy aligned with business needs. How do we achieve this?

2. The Business must improve the levels of content management generally, including digital preservation and conservation.

3. The Business must have better backup and redundancy operations in place to protect assets.

Business Scenario Current Situation (SWOT Analysis)

The Business Asset Portfolio

Examples of Business Content for Potential Exploitation

 Photography and images. Held in photography repositories. The Business holds all the rights to the images in its photographic collections.

o Photographs of heritage sites, buildings, locations and tourist venues

o Photographs of news, historical and social significance from 1920 to current day – professional photography of events, demonstrations/riots, parades, carnivals, street theatre/performance.

o Images of posters, postcards, illustrations, historical books, maps and similar highly visual materials.

 Video and moving images in both analogue and digital formats.

o A collection of documentary footage about culture in analogue format plus Microsoft Access database of metadata relating to it.

o An independent news archive from 1970-1999 in digital form.

o Oral history collections – these are mainly audio collections with associated images.

IPR and Rights

 Poppycock Images holds all the rights to the images in its photographic collections.

 It holds some of the rights in the video and audio collections and must negotiate with rights holders for commercial transactions.

 Poppycock Images will have to buy or negotiate a rights deal for any new content it wants to bring into the collection.

Poppycock Images Critical Digital Systems

● Content Management System (CMS).

● Website: includes external hosted service governed by contract.

● Picture Library: Stored on Networked Addressable Storage and backed up.

● E-commerce system

● Some locally created MS Access databases that should eventually be imported to CMS.

● Photography Repositories

● Finance & payroll: Oracle based system, Integra.

● Human Resources: Sage Snowdrop KCS system.

● Pensions Database: Microsoft Access database.

 Corporate records: Annual reports, board reports, corporate records, accountability data, business plans, corporate strategy and audit materials.

Real world examples Please note: Poppycock Images does not exist. This scenario is an amalgamation of a range of businesses to create a unique module assessment that can be changed each year. These exemplars are simply provided to illustrate the nature of the business in this Scenario – they are not supposed to be used directly in the exercise. Listing these businesses are not an adequate response to the market research section of the assignment. Exploration of these exemplars (especially the many image suppliers listed by BAPLA) will give you a sense of the marketplace and how business is transacted in the content industries. You can use your deep analysis to show how these kinds of business operate and transact with the public. Some exemplars:

 BAPLA: Members of the British Association of Picture Libraries and Agencies Explore the 200 members sites to see examples of these kinds of business https://bapla.org.uk/en/pages/find_by_name.html

 Bridgeman Art Library http://www.bridgemanart.com/

 VuBiquity http://www.vubiquity.com/

 BBC Worldwide http://www.bbcworldwide.com/