Design Once, Publish Everywhere_ How to Accelerate and Elevate Your Newsletters, Social Media, Video & More: Otter Voice Meeting Notes

Design Once, Publish Everywhere_ How to Accelerate and Elevate Your Newsletters, Social Media, Video & More

Online News Association1h 23min

Speaker 1

10:07

Hello ONA. Lovely to be with you today. Hello everyone. Great to be here. Greetings from, well, a not so sunny Sydney, well, winter Sydney morning, 4:15 am in Sydney, so up bright and early to be with you today and really looking forward over the next 80 minutes going through a bunch of content, which I'm hoping is going to be super valuable for anyone working in a newsroom in journalism, and dealing with trying to tell the best and most visual stories they possibly can. My name is Jonathan Harley, I lead the news initiative at Canva as well as the media initiatives, sports a bunch of stuff across the content space and industry space. I come to this having worked as a journalist for more than 20 years, ABC Australia, 60 minutes Australia in production, docuseries. So a lot in the content space. Led news partnerships at Twitter, across Asia for three years. And my passion is really helping digital transformation to support great journalism and great news businesses. And there's no better place to do that work than the world's biggest design platform, which is Canva. What we're going to look at today is really the fundamentals of what anyone in a newsroom is dealing with, which is how do we create, manage, and deliver really compelling visual content and storytelling, at speed. At speed, and on brand. And we're going to be doing a bunch of stuff that I think is really going to be of high value because of the great use case we're finding for value in the new space. So I'm going to talk a bit about how Canva is pairing newsrooms everywhere, we're going to do a really great deep dive into seven top tips for social media newsletter production, with Canva, thanks to Ronnie, our absolute sopremo in the community space. Then we're going to have a great little chat with Danielle Woodward about Gannett and AZ Central around catching audiences and success that AZ Central has had at u sing Canva. What the future holds. Give you a little sneak peek around how we're thinking about product for newsrooms, and then we'll have time for a bit of q&a. So lots to get through. So let's get into it. First up, let's take a look at how Canva is pairing newsrooms everywhere. When we look, let's just go big picture. Because when we look at the world, you know, there's lots of different economies, the obviously in journalism, you're in the information economy, the ideas, economy, there's the share economy, you name it, there's an economy for everything. But a Canva, when we're looking at overarching all of that is what we think of as the visual economy. And that's because the digital revolution is actually a visual revolution. How we consume and create visual content is unlike anything before in human history. When you look at the arc of time, you know, the Gutenberg press, say, for example, in the 15th century, that was so key to what eventually became the transformation of societies with democracy. Without the Gutenberg press, it's so hard to see how the democratic process could have unfolded. And of course, the unleashing of the Free Press. With the digital revolution, we now have this visual revolution, which of course, is largely mobile as well. And what we'll explore today is asking the question and really exploring, do we have the tools to make that moment, the traditional tools we think, aren't fit for purpose. And that's why Canva is so powerful in a newsroom setting, you know, we are still visual creatures. That's the thing. visual content, as many of you will know, in this space is so much more likely to be shared and remembered, in fact, 40 times more likely to be shared and remembered, in fact, 65% of us are visual learners, 90% of the information transmitted to the brain is visual. And of course, visual information is processed so much more quickly than text, in fact, 6,000 times faster. And of course, in the new space, in the breaking news space, that piece of speed is capable. We'll come back to that in more detail as we come through. Now, what this means that I think this is a is a real unlock in how we think about it, because traditionally, we think about visual content as really being, you know, especially the news space, pretty much social or what goes to screen, in video. It's actually much broader than that. Everything we are now doing in this space is visual. Now, you know, newsletters is a really obvious example that still got a really visual component to it. But when you look at crossing news business, and especially for executives, the reality is that everything has this really compelling visual component to it. Whether it's the actual editorial content, or it's a business proposal, or it's a strategy document, or an infographic or database. And that's where Canva can help across that board. And, of course, the visual economy in 2020, was, let's just say it, was pretty active. Of course, there was COVID, you know, the transformational story of COVID. But there were also major civil, political, and cultural shifts, environmental catastrophes. There was the economic story, of course, we'll come to that. But also environmental catastrophes and stories, such as the bushfires we saw here in Australia, and catastrophic forest fires in California. But we also saw a seismic shift in the way people and businesses are creating, collaborating, and communicating. Of course, we saw newsrooms completely change the way they worked because of COVID. We were all dispersed to work from home to work remotely. That was such a big piece of it. But that was just the start, in many ways. It was a public health challenge. But it was also an information production and distribution challenge. And of course, everyone on this call, felt that and experienced that. And it was such an intense journalistic year, but it was also a year in which everyone was telling me a COVID story in one way, shape, or form, you know, whether it was a cafe, putting up an information sheet, whether it was, you know, people communicating with customers, etc. And so in Canada, we actually saw 14 million COVID templates being downloaded across 2020. As I touched on, it was a medical calamity, but there's also a story of an economic disruption, and reinvention. And so we saw a lot of businesses as they pivoted, you know, think of just for example, the way schools had to be. Think of how so many businesses like yours had to rethink the way they did it. And for a lot of businesses that also saw that the start of new businesses and new pieces. So not surprisingly, we saw this explosion of logos on Canva. In fact, 65 million new logos across 2020. Now, what that is telling us is a couple of things, obviously, there's a lot of people doing a digital pivot. Obviously, there's there's a lot of side hustles coming up a lot of new businesses. But I think one reason why this is so important in the news and journalism space, is the fact that this is, because this is brand explosion, the battle of the brands only gets more intense. You're not just competing with news brands, when you're out there with the content, you're competing with every brand. Every business is a content business now. And of course, you're really in the game of how do you cut through and how do you imprint, the integrity, the authority and the independence of your journalism brand on everything you do? Now, we've got a lot of really fantastic media brands that have brought Canva into the heart of their workflow. And one of the reasons for that is because these are these brands that, like yours, have been built over generations, and built on trust in journalism, more than anything in media, I think brand is bond. And the way Canva helps strengthen that brand proposition is really key. Let me give you an example from here in Australia. Network 10 is a freeware broadcast, traditional broadcaster. It's owned by Viacom, CBS now and so it has been going through this tremendous pivot, if you like, digital pivot. It's gone through the digital transformation pace in recent years.

Speaker 1

19:35

As I said, you know, it's a major new sport and entertainment provider, and it's put Canva at the heart of its newsroom of its digital transformation piece. And that has just been so important to the way it's really been able to deal with the challenges that it's had. How does it do more with less by working with the best, because we all know any news stream like 10, or your own challenges, especially over the last 12 to 18 months, the content demands only keep going up, often your resources are going down or they're being consolidated. And you've got to do more with less, you've got to be creating more content, it's got to be in more places. And with 10, they found Canva was a really key piece of that solution. And so the feedback from Tim has been really consistent across the board, the simplicity and creativity of Canva allows for greater creative control, and an ability to increase engagement through visual design. We're going to have a great breakout with Danielle of Gannett, she's going to walk us through how AZ Central in Arizona has been a real leader with Canva and the results that they're getting there. And one of the things we're also finding is these really powerful strategic results. And also the ability to actually, as Rochelle says from 10, the social and digital editor, that we're able to focus more on the story, that because we're not spending as much time having to reinvent the wheel, at a design side of things, were able to focus on the story and focus on the audience and what's meaningful to them. And that's a real breakthrough. Because traditionally, the tools that we've been using for content creation in the newsroom have been for professional designers, they haven't been for journalists, right. And those tools have been really fragmented, and not focused on what's going to empower your whole ecosystem to make visual content. And that's really, really key. Because when you're looking at journalists, you've got this really broad spread of design skills. And Canva really flattens that by making the production process so much more accessible for everyone. Because the reality is that in the visual economy, when you look at the just the sheer volume of content that we need to create, content creation is now everyone's job, right? It doesn't matter if you're a designer or a journo, or you're in comms or operations, or you're the Chief of Staff, this is actually everyone's business. and Canva makes that happen. And we make that happen by integrating the entire design ecosystem into one simple page, right? And, and that's really key that whether it's stock photos, fonts, editing, content management, it's all under the one roof. Now, for those who might not have used Canva, let me just give you a really quick insight into how it works, a quick overview. At its core, it's a simple and easy to use design platform for all. And the simple drag and drop editor means you quickly update your text, you quickly update your image, you drag and drop across, and you're ready to go and it gives you all the design assets you need. Remember, we talked about, you know, traditionally, that you had your fonts over there, you had to go somewhere else for your your templates for design elements, you name it, with Canva, you've got two things, you've got the biggest template library on the planet. But you've also got the Getty, the full Getty stock image library, the full Getty stock video library, all the design elements you could possibly want, and infographics, charts, that's all there under the one roof. And you don't need to leave the Canva environment to do it.

Speaker 1

23:55

So you've got all those assets, which are really key. And the result is that you're able to create stories in seconds. And we know how important time is. So the way I think about it is that Canva gives newsrooms the muscle to create, manage and deliver content with speed, ease, and brand consistency, speed ease and brand consistency and the brand consistency piece is such a key part of it in the b attle of of the brands, you need to protect and grow your brand. That brand integrity, as we've said has been built up over such a long time. So in the enterprise environment for Canva, there are brand controls that mean you can switch ON or OFF color control, font control, and you can even apply design approval so that your editorial lead ensures that nothing is published without approval from the relevant person. And that's obviously really powerful. And so that also will, by enabling everyone to collaborate in real time because that's okay, especially when you're working remotely. And by integrating seamlessly with all your existing platforms. And if there's something that's not integrated, then of course, because it's an open, there's an open API, it's easy to plug in, you, therefore effectively become plugged in to the Canva ecosystem. And that is really powerful and broad. Now, let's just break out to a couple of things that we also saw last year, that have been so shaping the way we're creating content, and stories. Black Lives Matter was obviously a defining social, political and cultural moment, we sort of sweep across every aspect of society, not least in the world of sport, but we also saw a significant shift in the way the world expressed ideas with the rise and rise of the infographic influencer. Powerful, impactful stories and explainers that informed, educated raised awareness. A really good example of this is Avery Francis. She's a talent strategist who works with startups to navigate talent acquisition, she's also a champion of diversity, inclusion and belonging, and her posts on Instagram created with Canva spread like absolute wildfire. Now, we've seen that major social justice organizations have been doing these sorts of posts before, but you know, many of them had their own editorial or design resource. And that can be said, too, of newsrooms. What shifted at scale last year was the ability for just about anyone, and the share ability and the virality of these sorts of stories, content created these infographic influences that engaged and resonated with a much wider audience, and did so at the speed of culture. Because anyone in a newsroom knows that things are moving faster. Stories are moving, cultures moving faster than ever before. And that's why so many journalists report the Canva is the fastest content creation tool that they've used. And for us, it's about democratizing design. You know, I think, you know, examples by Francis show how design is being democratized. And that's been a core mission for Canva. And we're also seeing the same dynamic power, a new generation of new startups and news brands, particularly talking to a younger audience, and particularly talking to them on Instagram. So take, for example, here again, in Australia, a really great case study of the Daily Aus, a little new startup, and was a couple of founders who have built this entire product and business entirely on Canva. They started out using Canva, a few years ago, to create these little stories and infographics on Instagram. And they've had absolutely phenomenal success. They've used these very simple, engaging, quick hit visual language, with the text and color palette that you can see here, that's really focused, on how do we inform a younger, news consuming audience. And then as you can see, they've had phenomenal growth. I think, these guys were just getting going when I spoke at ONA last year. And back then though, around the 25,000 follower mark, they're now at 125,000. So phenomenal, use case and case study of really compelling visual content. Let me show you.

Speaker 2

28:41

Our shoes again. This happens every time. My name is Sam. I'm 26. And I'm Zahra. I'm 24. And we're the co founders of the Daily Aus.

Speaker 3

28:48

We were those friends who were always asked what's going on in the news. And we wanted to take that to a bigger platform. So we started an Instagram four years ago. And now we communicate the news to 80,000 people every day.

Speaker 2

29:00

The whole news environment is experiencing the same challenge. And that's just trying to keep people engaged. And we know everyone's on mobile. And we know they're reading the news on mobile. So our challenge is to keep them engaged on their phones with a really interesting visual content. So I think of Canva as the hub of the content, and the imagery and the social aspects all coming together. We worked really hard to set up the right template so that we didn't have to reinvent the wheel every time we wanted to design.

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