Jean Ellen Cowgill, general manager of TicToc by Bloomberg and global head of digital strategy and business development for Bloomberg Media, spoke at SXSW Interactive about TicToc’s strategy.
Here are some excerpts:
On the success of TicToc by Bloomberg as a new format:
“We launched TicToc, which is intended to reach a new audience, a younger audience…In terms of what it represents from a larger media perspective, I think it represents the ways in which large companies need to think about their portfolio and the different ways that they have initiatives that complement one another in reaching specific, different, but complementary audiences. I mean that definitely is the story in media right now, especially where we’re seeing success in experimentation and diversification, trying things that don’t just rely on additional streams of revenue. Not all of them are going to work in the long term, but there are clear trends, and if you don’t get on board with them then you are missing opportunities for audience growth, for engagement, for revenue even if that trend dies.”
On TicToc’s platform strategy:
“For TicToc, in particular, we are in a unique partnership with Twitter which has afforded us a lot of benefits in terms of audience growth. We have a post sales model with them on the platform and we’re still in partnership — and that’s a really good partnership for us and I think it’s a good partnership for them. But we always knew that we wanted to expand to multiple platforms because if we’re going to be a media brand that you trust and that you can find wherever you are, then we have to live and float across this very fragmented news day that now exists. That really is the challenge for TicToc today — using what we learned during our incubation year, year one on Twitter, and figuring out how we expand to other social platforms and other forms…We don’t want you to think of us a magazine brand, or a Twitter brand, or a social brand. We want you to think of us as a news publisher that you can trust to help you understand what’s going on. Whether you give us 60 seconds or as we expand in the future, whether you are willing to give us 30 minutes or an hour of your day.”
