Ignore The Competition and Focus On Yourself

Years ago, I had a boss who loved to quote former Intel CEO Andrew Grove, saying, “I am paranoid because only the paranoid survive.” At the time, I had no idea what he was talking about, but I quickly realized what that was code for. I’d get random emails that would say, “did you see what competitor is doing” or “we need to be doing this thing too” right after a competitor had announced something.

By nature, media people are competitive. Journalists are fighting for stories. You don’t want to be second. And so, you’re constantly aware of what your competition is doing so that you’re not chasing the same story that they are.

However, I would argue that it is unbelievably counterproductive to spend energy on what the competition is doing outside of the newsroom. On the contrary, you should ignore their decisions—right or wrong—and continue executing the strategy you’ve set out.

Not doing this is a big contributor to why media companies consistently struggle to grow long-term. When you’re focusing on what someone else is doing, you’re pulled in new directions and deviate from your strategy.

This explains so many pivots over the years. First, some media companies figured out how they could make money on video. Suddenly, a few more followed. Then, before you knew it, the entire industry had pivoted hard into video, and everyone was doing it. No-one stopped to ask if they should be; since everyone else was, they were too.

And it’s not just the pivot to video. Think about how aggressively everyone pivoted into subscriptions. Everyone and their mother launched a subscription product. But was it the right decision, or were operators simply following what others were doing?

It’s essential to make decisions based on the right move for your business rather than looking at what the competition is doing. Here are a couple of examples of that in practice.

Industry Dive

What I have always admired about the Industry Dive team is how much they seem to ignore what everyone else is doing. Perhaps that’s because they’re in Washington D.C. rather than New York. Whatever the reason, for ten years now (happy birthday), it has been hyperfocused on executing its strategy.

That strategy is straightforward: pick great industries, tell meaningful stories to acquire niche business audiences, and sell advertising and marketing services for partners targeting those readers. That’s it. It’s really simple. And it hasn’t deviated from it for ten years.

I remember early in the pandemic, being on a Zoom with one of the co-founders of Industry Dive, and the conversation came up about credit card transactions. The co-founder commented that it was something he was working on it, and I immediately zeroed in on that.

“Are you about to launch subscriptions?” I asked. He laughed and then said, “No. We’re creating a press release product where people can pay to submit their releases on the site.” I have no idea if it’s a profitable business for them, but while everyone else was launching subscription products, they found different ways to monetize their business.

And it’s working. As I said, it’s ten years old, and it’s reported that the business will do over $100 million in revenue this year with solid profit margins. You could argue it’s worth as much as, if not more than, BuzzFeed (I know I’d rather own Industry Dive at $225 than BuzzFeed at $225m).

Industry Dive could have easily expanded into events. It’s such a no-brainer strategy for b2b publications. But that would have come with increased cost and uncertainty and distracted from what it’s trying to accomplish. Instead, the team focused on what they believed was the right strategy and didn’t deviate.

Dotdash Meredith

Unlike Industry Dive, which may benefit from being in D.C., Dotdash is squarely in the world’s media capital. And yet, for the past five years, it has focused on what it does well without trying to deviate from it.

Back in 2020, Fast Company did a profile about Dotdash, and these parts really jumped out to me:

“People call us a tech company, but the reality is we are a publisher,” says Vogel. Dotdash developed a formula that Vogel has turned into a corporate mantra: the freshest content on the fastest sites with the fewest ads.

By focusing on text rather than 24/7 social responsiveness or expensive video production, the company keeps its costs down. More than 1,000 remote, part-time contributors across the brands use tools built by Ellerson’s team to help identify story ideas that resonate with audiences.

…

The sites load very quickly, and the company’s proprietary content management system is designed for efficiency: Designers and editors can choose from fast-loading templates that include images, video, and interactive applications.

Like many other digital-first media companies, it could have chased the flashing video. I’m sure CEO Neil Vogel would love the recurring revenue that comes from subscriptions. But instead, it focused on what it wanted to do rather than what its competition was doing.

And it’s working. Its strategy works so well that it was able to buy the much larger Meredith. But even then, it didn’t deviate from its system. Instead, it shut down the failing print magazines, and it has worked to get the entire portfolio onto the same technology stack.

Not an excuse not to innovate

None of this, of course, is an excuse not to innovate. That’s what contributed to so many of the print magazines of yesterday failing so miserably. There was an unwillingness to innovate and recognize that the internet was the future.

But you also don’t have to be first with the innovation. Media companies got excited about crypto and NFTs over the past year. Time, for example, leaned in pretty hard, and the results were impressive. According to Digiday:

Fourteen months after launching its first NFT project, Time has sold more than 20,000 individual NFTs that have netted the publisher a profit exceeding $10 million, according to Time’s president Keith Grossman. That profit margin can be attributed, in part, to the NFTs’ resale in the secondary market, with Time earning royalties on each resale. Sixty percent of Time’s NFT sales happened in the secondary market and totaled $50 million, and from that, Time earns a portion of the sales that happen outside of their ecosystem thanks to a built-in royalty structure.

That’s great, but I would be positively floored if it generated $10 million in year two. Have you looked at the crypto markets?

And yet, all anyone could talk about last year was how all media companies needed to figure out how to do an NFT. It was a massive distraction for many companies, and the long-term revenue potential is not likely to exist.

But does that mean that companies should never do anything related to NFTs? Of course not. But I would wait until the use case makes sense for your strategy rather than just because someone else is doing it. Time made money, but were there others that flopped?

If you have a strategy rooted in creating great content, don’t get distracted by what your competitors are doing. What works for you is different than what works for them.

My boss was wrong to say that “only the paranoid survive” as an excuse to focus on the competition rather than our business. Instead, be paranoid about executing your strategy and ignore what the competition is doing. You’ll be better off.

Thanks for reading today’s AMO. If you have thoughts, hit reply or join the AMO Slack. Have a great weekend!