Written Word give way to Multi Sensorial Content:Shafi Saxena, NewsRepublic

News Republic is a disruptive global news syndicator with mobile apps for smartphones (iPhone, Android, Windows phones), tablets and wearables (Samsung Galaxy Gear and Sony SmartWatch). Its mission is to provide information with purpose for engaged citizenship. News Republic offers news from 1,100 licensed content partners, shares 50,000 unique articles daily and generates the reading of half a billion articles monthly. Over 12 million people around the globe read their news on News Republic.

Shafi Saxena, Chief Brand Officer, News Republic is a brand crafter and a business builder who has drafted and deployed strategy across three continents at Fortune 500s and at start-ups.  She started her career at P&G and worked on several of their billion dollar brands. She was then a Cola warrior, helping Pepsi steal market share from Coke. Thereafter, she started her own business, Better Botanicals, based on Ayurveda. Upon selling that business she joined Unilever as Global VP for Dove, where she evolved the ground breaking Campaign for Real Beauty.  Before joining News Republic, Shafi was CMO at Microsoft India.  Shafi is a strong proponent of distilling complexity into simplicity, of purpose driven brands and of making bold bets across product and media palettes.

Adgully Spoke to Shafi Saxena, Chief Brand and Communications Officer, News Republic on changing news consumption, power of digital, key trends and more. Excerpts, 

AG: What, as per you, are the key trends in digital news consumption?

Shafi Saxena: The trends are:

• News is Mobile, Social and Ubiquitous.  More people have access to news today, and more bump into news today (via alerts, notifications, FB etc.) than ever before. 
• News is some of the stickiest contents around. That is why you see all tech companies (FB, Apple, Google, Snapchat etc.) making big plays in this content sector.  
• Non mobile forms of media consumption are declining rapidly – more time is spent consuming content on smartphone screens than TV screens or on the printed page.  
• The written word is giving way to multi sensorial content: images, video and newer, more immersive platforms like VR. 

AG: And what are the challenges faced?

Shafi Saxena: The challenges are: Monetization. Monetization. Monetization. Journalists risk their lives to bring us the news that everyone takes for granted and no one seems willing to pay for that. This is not sustainable for the health of the news ecosystem. If we, as a society, don’t find robust monetization mechanisms for objective journalism, then news risks devolving into propaganda: less fact and more spin.

AG:  Do you believe digital is the way forward for news?

Shafi Saxena: Yes. The industry needs to shift from a broadcast to a nano cast mindset. Each consumer’s news stream will have to become as unique as his/her fingerprint. This is only possible with digital. 

AG:  Tell us about News Republic's presence in India?

Shafi Saxena: We have over 200 high quality content partners that provide full spectrum news in eight Indian languages (Hindi, English, Marathi, Telegu, Tamil, Bengali, Kannada, and Gujarati.  Important Genres in India Edition are - Politics, Cricket, Bollywood, Technology and also football and other sports since we have a very deep content in sports genre courtesy our global presence

AG: How you customize the content across countries? 

Shafi Saxena: By geographic, subject and linguistic relevance. We will have more news on Cricket in India, UK and the Commonwealth countries and more on baseball in the US and Japan, for instance. Our algorithm also tracks reader interests by region and optimizes content flow to suit reader interests.

AG: Where everyone is going digital, how would you distinguish yourself in this clutter and create your own space?

Shafi Saxena: We build our USP around user experience. We pride ourselves in offering the best user experience on the planet…fast, fluid, beautiful and hyper personalized in real time. We don’t scrape or abbreviate…we offer full content that can be saved, shared, commented upon. We offer only ethically sourced content- only content that we have the full rights to distribute and for which we offer transparent revenue sharing.  It is for these reasons that we not only have the highest user ratings on both Android and iOS, but we are one of the most highly lauded and awarded news apps in the world. This year, in addition to many other awards, we won “Best Mobile Media Publishing App” at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.  Our ethical approach to content sourcing also means that we have very strong alliances with elite media organizations and OEMs the world over. 

AG: How important is story telling in delivering news?

Shafi Saxena: Very important. People forget facts, but they remember stories. Storytelling has always been, and will always be, important. Stories might get shorter to cater to shortening attention spans. And, some might get longer to cater to increasing appetites for substance over fluff.  They might be told in pictures and sounds rather than written words. The craft of storytelling will evolve and adapt to consumer preferences but it will always remain of critical importance to communication.  

AG: You disseminate news on multiple screens, which one provides maximum viewer engagement?

Shafi Saxena: The smartphone. It is everyone’s most intimately prized device. Many sleep with it. No one leaves home without it.

AG: How has your learning during your stint in FMCG helped you at News Republic?      

Shafi Saxena: FMCG hones your focus on getting things right for the consumer by gathering and analysing consumer data with curiosity and discipline – then leveraging that data to intuit new and compelling insights into evolving consumer habits and preferences. It teaches you to put consumer over product in your decision making. Tech can often value product over consumer. But, if you have FMCG training, you know the consumer should always come first.