IN CoNVERSATIoN
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THE CHANNEL
t
Francine
Lacqua, editor-at-
large, Bloomberg
Television,
hosting the
Bloomberg
debate at Davos,
2015 with
Christine Lagarde
them to spend time with the brand
which is why we've launched the
new edition of our website. We’ll be
upgrading our mobile apps and
launching more live events across
the region, to bring those audiences
to us and bring us to the audiences.
Everybody is trying to get hold of
those people that they don't have
access to at the moment. How do
you keep up and ahead?
You're right, a lot of people are
competing for new audiences. We
have a lot of catching up to do but
we have a strong and interesting
starting point. We already own a
successful global TV network.
We’re in over 350m households
globally. We have studios in four
cities – New York, Hong Kong, San
Francisco and London – as well as
remote cameras in many of our
bureaux which span 72 countries.
Our starting point in a world of
audio-visual storytelling is a really
powerful one. We can produce
audio-visual content 24 hours a
day, in all the major economies of
the globe. We’re now the world’s
biggest producer of business digital
video and reached 16.5m unique
viewers worldwide in June, putting
us ahead of Yahoo! Finance,
International Business Times,
CNBC, CNN Money and more.
We make hundreds of videos a
week globally. That takes huge
investment, and it’s an investment
we've been making for 20 years. We
have 2,500 journalists; they are
everywhere and they are leading
authorities on the industries,
sectors and companies they cover.
So we can ask questions editorially
that no one else can ask.
When we put all this together
and focused our attention on how
to serve our business audiences
quicker and in more depth than our
competitors – which is at the heart
of our new strategy – we’ve found
we’re in a really good place. We're
going to make mistakes, other
people are going to beat us in some
ways but we’ve got the building
blocks here of something really,
really quite powerful and it's up to
us to deliver it.
What are you doing in different
parts of the world?
We gave a lot of thought to how we
prioritise in EMEA and in Asia –
these are big territories with
diverse opportunities. Where is our
core Terminal customer, where's
the growth for that part of the
business, where are our business
audiences, what state are the
different channels in, is it a digital
first opportunity or a TV first
opportunity?
In Europe, we are producing
more TV coverage from London,
Berlin and Brussels because we
think they’re the three big centres
of business and geopolitics for
Europe. We've got a new studio in
Berlin. We've upped our TV hours
out of London. We’re testing some
new weekly formats.
Then, in areas like the Middle
East we've worked on brand
licences. We’ve got a joint venture
in the Middle East with Al-Arab
which is owned by Prince
Alwaleed. It’s aimed at the Saudi
market, the biggest economy in the
region. We’re increasing live TV
coverage from Dubai and Abu
Dhabi ourselves. We think there’s a
really interesting link between the
Asian business market and the
European business markets and the
Middle East because Middle East
markets are open at the same time.
One thing that’s changed in our
thinking is that we want to partner
with people – people who have got
access to audiences and facilities we
don't have. We're not going to be
selling licences to our brand as our
first and only thought. We’re much
more interested in the longer term
relationships in those emerging
markets.
How have advertisers reacted?
So far, really, really positively. We're
being quite clear that our business
models are advertising based.
We've invested in new teams to
help create ad-funded
programming and sponsored
content – native advertising –
which is not something we've ever
done from the region before. We’ve
also been doing a lot of work to
raise awareness within the broader
media community of who we are
and what we do.
We’re seeing very good revenue
growth. We’re seeing great digital
t
Bloomberg
Business Europe
launch event:
Nate Lanxon,
Senior Editor,
Bloomberg
Business Europe,
AdamFreeman,
MD Bloomberg
Media, EMEA,
Justin Smith, CEO
BloombergMedia
THE CHANNEL
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ISSUE 2 2015
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19
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