A Kodak Moment or, What Business Are You In?

For over 100 years, Kodak dominated the photographic scene in North America.

At one point, the filmmaker commanded an 89 percent market share of photographic film sales in the U.S.  

Its slogan, a “Kodak moment,” became part of the common lexicon.

But in 2012, Kodak went bankrupt.

Why?

The simple answer is digital photography—nobody needed film anymore But that was just part of the reason.

The main reason was that it forgot what business it was in.

Since Kodak had been so successful selling film for so many years, it made the mistake of thinking it was in the film business.

It wasn’t.

The business Kodak was really in was the memory and image preservation business.

Film was just the way people preserved their memories and made images until the digital revolution took over.

By not remembering what business it was in, Kodak was steamrolled by the digital revolution.

It didn’t have to be this way.

Few people know it, but it was a Kodak employee Steve Sasson who came up with the idea of digitial photography—in 1975.

In 1989 he built the first workable digital camera. Kodak rejected his invention, fearful it would destroy film sales.

As Sasson told the New York Times: “When we built that camera, the argument was over. It was just a matter of time, and yet Kodak didn’t really embrace any of it. That camera never saw the light of day.”

If Kodak had remembered what business it was in, it could have embraced Sasson’s new camera and ridden the digital wave into the future.

But it didn’t. Kodak was held hostage to what was working for it at that time—film—instead of what would work down the road.

As a result, Kodak missed it’s moment—the moment of a lifetime.

What does the mean for communicators?

As communicators, we can also forget what business we are in. If we have a magazine or newsletter, we can think we are in the publication business.

Since all of our organizations have websites and Facebook and Twitter accounts, we can think we are in the website or social media business.

We aren’t. We are in the information sharing and content creation business.

How that information is shared involves magazines, newsletters, websites and social media. But those are just the channels we use to reach our audiences—and they can change.

This is the challenge facing newspapers and denominational publications today; some of them are stuck because they think that is their business. They can’t imagine their lives without their paper products.

But like photographic film, paper as a main means of sharing information will fade away one day, too.

The trick is to be nimble and flexible, adapting to new ways of sharing information as they come along—not held hostage to what has worked in the past.

Otherwise you might have a Kodak moment—the kind of moment that lasts forever, but in a bad way. 

2016 State of the News Media

The annual State of the News Media report is out, and the main take-away is social media and mobile.

The report, published by Pew Research Center, found that 62 percent of American adults get news on social media, with 66 percent of Facebook users getting their news there.

As for how they find it, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram users are more likely to get their news online mostly by chance, when they are online doing other things. 

For daily newspapers in the U.S., circulation fell 7 percent from 2014 to 2015, and newspaper ad revenue fell 8 percent over the same period. 

Most of that revenue is going digital, with the majority of the money going to Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Microsoft and Twitter.

When it comes to how people access news from traditional media, it's digital. A study by Pew of 110 newspapers, magazines, national TV organizations and digital-only publishers found that 99 had more unique visitors to their mobile sites than their desktop sites.

Other findings from the report:

There are now more Americans working for online-only outlets than newspapers.

Prime time viewership for cable news grew in 2015 for the first time in three years, while Network TV news (ABC, NBC, CBS), grew by one percent. The increase was attributed to the wild presidential campaign. 

Local television news lost viewers in every time slot—morning, supper and evening. The report also says that their audiences tend to be older.

Podcasting continues to grow, with 21 percent of Americans age 12 and older saying they listened to a podcast in the past month.

For radio, 54 percent of all listening occurs on FM.

For news magazines, circulation continues to shift from print to digital.

What does this mean for non-profits? It is confirmation that the conversation has moved online, and that mobile is becoming a main way to reach people.

It also means that non-profits will need to devote more time to figuring out the best ways to use digital channels, and keep up with trends and changes in Facebook's preferences (currently it's video).

At a time when groups are hard-pressed just to meet the budget, that is a tough challenge.

There is so much more in the full report. Click here to read it.

For a precis of the report, go to Nieman Lab.  

Image above from the Pew Research Center. 

The Challenging Future of Denominational NGOs

Sometimes I think there are only two types of denominational NGOs today: Those that are in trouble, and those that will be. 

Earlier this year I interviewed fundraisers and some executive directors from 14 Canadian denominational NGOs—international relief and development agencies that are owned by church bodies like the Presbyterians, Anglicans, Adventists, Baptists and others.

All of them are facing fundraising challenges. 

For some, the challenges are severe. For others, not so much right now—but they likely will be in the future.

What are those challenges? 

An aging donor base. Many Canadian churches are greying. As churches age, the best givers—older people—are dying. The next generation is not nearly as generous or as loyal in their giving. 

Shrinking donor base. Along with growing older, many churches are getting smaller—the pool of donors is declining. The decline is more precipitous for the mainline churches, but even some evangelical churches are experiencing a downturn in attendance.  

The decline is felt in all age groups, but most among younger adults. At the same time, there is a growing loss of longtime members—a group known as the “dones.”  

These are people who have gone to church all their lives, but now, in the 60s and older, feel there are better ways to spend a Sunday morning.

Declining denominational loyalty. The older generation was loyal to denominational agencies. Church-related NGOs would only have to win them once; after that, their support could be counted on.

Younger donors are different. They may be as generous as their elders, but they spread it around to more organizations. They are also more cause-driven; something attracts them this month, something different appeals to them a few months from now. They are not necessarily loyal to one group.

What this means for denominational NGOs is that they can’t assume that because someone is Anglican (or Mennonite or United Church or Adventist) they will support their denominational agencies. They will give to the best and most compelling offers, wherever they come from.  

Falling donations through churches. When I started in this sector in the early 1980s, all we needed to do was send a letter to supporting churches once or twice a year and the money would come back.

Those days are gone.

Today it’s all about raising money from individuals; no more relying on pastors and priests to do our work for us—for free.

Not only that, many churches once had their denominational NGOs in their budgets; a portion of general giving was always sent to the agency, along with any special appeals.

That too is going, or gone. When a church has trouble paying the pastor’s salary or fixing the roof, the first thing to go is giving from the budget to external groups. 

What this means for denominational NGOs is that they have to be more proactive and marketing-oriented. They need to hire more people and spend more money on fundraising. 

Changing attendance patterns. Twenty-five or 30 years ago, it you asked someone if they went to church regularly they would assume you meant weekly. 

Today many churchgoers are what University of Lethbridge sociologist Reg Bibby coined as “monthly plus”—people who attend once, maybe twice, a month.

What this means for denominational NGOs is that even if they are successful in getting to preach on a Sunday morning, or hold a special giving Sunday, they will reach only part of the congregation. 

Internal competition for dollars within denominations. For a long time, denominations exhorted congregations to get involved in the community. The good news is that churches took the message to heart. The bad news is these new ministries cost money—money that now stays home.

The most recent example of this is Syrian refugee sponsorship. Hundreds (maybe thousands) of churches across Canada applied to sponsor a family (or two). It costs $30,000 to $50,000 to sponsor a family for a year—money that will stay home in 2016.

This is a good cause, to be sure, but every fundraiser I spoke to expects to receive less money from their churches this year because of it.

Then there are the special international projects supported by churches—how many sponsor an orphanage, clinic or school, or send their youth on a missions or service trip?

It’s always easier to raise funds for ministries close to hand, or for youth in the church—again, money that doesn’t make it to the denominational NGO.

Another source of internal competition is within denominations themselves. 

The denominational NGO may need funds for a program in the developing world, but so does the missions department and the youth department and the denomination’s administration itself (paying for the Bishop’s or moderator’s salary and the rent).  

There can be a fierce debate within a denomination about who can mail out an appeal and when and how many times. 

If the denominational NGO mailed out an appeal once already this year, it doesn’t matter how successful it was or how much It appealed to donors—it won’t get another chance, even if a golden opportunity to raise more money comes along. It’s someone else’s turn.

Growing external competition. World Vision is still the biggest church-related NGO in Canada. But since 2010 their fundraising is down $24 million ($283 million to $262 million.) 

People with inside knowledge at World Vision tell me the agency is busy developing very ambitious strategies to reclaim those missing dollars and donors.  

What does this mean for denominational NGOs? 

While they are required to play by the internal rules of when they can issue appeals, or how often they can mail to churches, external parachurch organizations like World Vision, Samaritan’s Purse and Compassion Canada (groups that are independent of denominations), are unburdened by such rules.  

They can contact a denomination’s churches and its members whenever and however they please—and they do. 

Speaking of Samaritan’s Purse and Compassion Canada, these two growing parachurch NGOs are also actively fundraising from Canadian churches. 

From 2010-14 Compassion Canada grew from $44 million in donations to $59 million. In the same time period, Samaritan’s Purse grew from $43 million to $51 million.

Growing Secularism. When a business sees its customer base dry up, it usually goes out to look for new ones. Church groups that watch their numbers shrink may want to do the same thing—grow their market. In church circles, that is called evangelism.

The problem today is that growing numbers of Canadians have no interest in the church or religion in general. 

In his recent book, The Meaning of Sunday: The Practice of Belief in a Secular Age, Joel Thiessen of Ambrose University notes that “‘demand’ for things that religious groups offer is not as strong as most assume. Regardless of what religious groups do to their ‘supply’ of religion (e.g. more relevant preaching, more and different programs, or contemporary music), few Canadians are likely to respond with greater levels of church attendance.

He notes that the fastest growing “religious” group in Canada are the “nones”—those who say they have no religious affiliation. 

This group now represents 24% of Canadian adults and 32% of Canadian teens, and it continues to grow.

What about churches or denominations that claim to be growing? The reality is that almost none of the growth is from people who have no church background.

A recent study by two evangelical authors, Sam Reimer and Michael Wilkinson, has confirmed what Reg Bibby said 35 years ago: 90% of church growth is people from other churches.

In other words, if a church is growing it is likely doing so at the expense of churches that are shrinking—they are just shuffling the same pool of people from one church to another, not actually growing the total number of religious givers.

This all sounds like so much bad news. 

I don’t mean to suggest that the task is impossible. Religious Canadians are generous, and they like to respond to needs in the world. Staff at denominational NGOs are dedicated and devoted to their tasks. And denominational NGOs have faced tough times before, and got through them somehow.

But the road may be steeper this time, the future more uncertain. With their fortunes tied to the success or failure of the churches that own them, many denominational NGOs will struggle. Not all may survive.

So: what to do? That’s a topic for another post.

When it Comes to Media Coverage of Drowned Refugees or Dead Gorillas, We Have Met The Enemy And He Is Us

There’s an old black joke in the NGO world that goes like this: Never hold your famine or natural disaster in summer. North Americans are on vacation and aren’t paying attention.

It’s a harsh statement, but there’s a measure of truth in it. It’s hard to think about hungry people or refugees when we’re off to the beach.

Same goes for when a child falls into a gorilla enclosure at the zoo—especially if there is good video.

A lot has been said lately about how the drowning deaths of hundreds of people last week got almost no attention, but the gorilla and child dominated the media.

This is an old and hard truth about the media, and about the interests of North Americans—about us.

Fact is, a story like the one at the Cincinnati zoo will always trump a tragedy like the drowning of refugees, for several reasons.

One is that the war in Syria is now in its sixth year. It’s hard to keep anyone’s attention for that long.

Second is one person in danger versus thousands. It isn’t easy to wrap our minds around large numbers. We can much more easily relate to one child in danger closer to home.

Familiarity and proximity is a third reason. We all go to zoos like the one in Cincinnati, and the same thing could happen to us. (Although we hope not.)

But a main reason is that the media knows we care more about people who are closer to us and more like us.

It’s a normal human reaction—and it’s something the media has known this for a long time. (Even before the Web allowed them to know exactly what people clicked on and read.) 

In the 1960s, reporters at a major U.S. network put it more cynically with what they called the “Racial Equivalence Scale.”

The scale showed the minimum number of people who had to die in plane crashes in different countries before the crash equalled the death of one person closer to home.

According to the scale, “one hundred Czechs was equal to 43 Frenchmen, and the Paraguayans were at the bottom.”

(BBC journalists had a similar scale, in which “one thousand wogs, 50 frogs and one Briton” were equivalent.)

In other words, the media is only giving us what they know we want to pay attention to—something they know because we tell them every day by what we click on when we visit their websites.

And when it’s a contest between dead refugees, a dead rock star, or a dead gorilla, you know who is going to win.

None of this diminishes the tragic deaths of the refugees who drowned trying to get to Europe. But it does put it in perspective.

And it reminds us, in the words of the wise sage Pogo, that when it comes to what we see in the media, “we have met the enemy, and he is us.”

For more on this topic, see Why So Much News Coverage of Paris, but not Beirut? Maybe it's Time to Look in the Mirror and Why Your Brain Wants To Help One Person, But Not Millions, both on this blog.