DMI: How telling stories has become 24.com's big earner

Mar 03, 2021 at 02:11 am by Staff


Jerusha Sukhdeo-Raath is a great storyteller, with a great story to tell. Or actually, several of them.

There's her own story: the bright-eyed girl reporter in South Africa's historic Pietermaritzburg, who notices that newsroom colleagues were losing their jobs and, seeing the writing on the wall, heads off to get herself an MBA so she can work on "the dark side".

There's the different young woman who gets the opportunity of a three-month sabbatical, living out her "passion project" and launching a health care app.

And there's the proud members of a young nation who have their own impact in the development of a national anthem. And more, of which virtual delegates to WAN-Ifra's Digital Media India event today might have heard if time had allowed.

The common denominator, of course, is native advertising and the role it can play in delivering a new revenue stream for publishers... 15-16 per cent of total revenue in the case of Sukhdeo-Raath's eight-person team at Johannesburg's BrandStudio.24.

She makes the case that everybody has an impactful story to tell - even advertisers. "Our job is to find that story and leverage it in a way that has impact," she says.

South Africa's largest publisher is generating revenue from "beautiful storytelling that matches our editorial standards", without compromise in their relationship with brands and partners. "There's a strict Chinese wall, and we never ask journalists to get involved in commercial work".

Instead, she has her own independent team of journalists who "realise we have to make a sustainable future", and who better to do so? The reality stories are what hooks the user through emotion or delight, "making a social statement".

Generally video, podcasts, and other tools are used to highlight a brand's value and build consumer trust, "not to quickly sell a product, but to educate about the sentiment around the product," she says.

Sukhdeo-Raath takes us through the marketing funnel: "I like to tell people there is an element of storytelling to meeting any brand's needs. Sometimes sentiment is more effective than a quick sell."

Special editorial products are aligned to editorial calendars, and events such as parliamentary activities and the budget, a partnership enabling a brand to act as explainer, have a share of voice, "trusted experts who just care enough to give you the information".

It's a seductive image, and it's working well for 24.com, where she says she "realised we needed people who knew about journalism" and reskilled in order to provide journalistic content with commercial value.

"We say, have a look at this, see the benefit of taking a journalistic approach," she says, "and finally we bring our content together on our trusted platform".

Watch for the BrandStudio.24 name later in the conference, where they are likely to be among WAN-Ifra Digital Media Awards winners, as they have been since 2017.

And note from the projects above, the "crazy" sabbatical idea sold 472 Volkswagen Touregs for about the cost of one of them, and the national anthem project was a partnership with an insurance brand.

"My goal is always to create a campaign that makes my journalist colleagues jealous, and I've done it a few times," she says.

It seems the perfect opportunity to segue into some of the conference's 'sponsored content', with THG Publishing chief technology officer Suresh Vijayaraghavan here to talk about The Hindu's installation of StiboDX's Cue CMS and DAM installation... perhaps a story for another time and place.

• Watch out for more #DMI2021 coverage to follow.

Peter Coleman

Sections: Digital business

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