(Image: Shutterstock – Jack Frog)

Our MD, Stu Smith, gives his thoughts on the recent announcement that Sky will outsource its activation teams to India…

As the bombshell of Sky deciding to outsource it’s activation teams to India settles in this morning, there are rightly rumblings of ‘is this the tip of the ice berg and the start of a very slippery slope to oblivion?’

Granted most of us were fully expecting a much lauded and heralded AI solution to do the entry level jobs, one we all know would have been fraught with problems, pain and frankly wouldn’t work, but a logical direction of travel. I’m not sure anyone was expecting a step back into the early 90’s. Let’s face it when has anyone said ‘that call centre they had overseas was a tremendous experience, 5*, would buy again.’

I would suggest cutting 100+ jobs and saving £4m a year looks wonderful on an accountant’s spreadsheet, but this is simply a sticking plaster on what is becoming a rather nasty wound.

But for me, this is a red herring, and symptomatic of legacy broadcasters taking their eye off the ball.

It is obviously sensible to invest in tech to streamline operations, follow viewing trends with addressable solutions, offer incredible data led targeting solutions BUT, and it’s a big BUT, this is not the product that advertisers buy.

Advertisers want audience. The bigger the audience the better, and even if we are talking about 1:1 personalised audiences, the more of those 1:1 conversations the better.

How do we get more audiences? Simple: Great Content.

So whilst legacy broadcasters are full steam ahead with tech solutions (and outsourcing core components that are essential to deliver successful campaigns), they have forgotten the very essence of what they do and what they have to sell – create great content for people to watch. The very thing that made them Legacy Broadcasters. A viewer is not tuning in because of a tech stack or some clever and slightly ominous targeting, a viewer is tuning in because they cannot wait for the next episode.

What of the new age streamers and tech companies… they get it. Netflix creates great content, people subscribe, they either pay more for no ads or accept the ads, either way the content has driven the subscription. The subscription drove the money. Amazon, Apple, Disney and of course You Tube, they all get it. They are in the content business. Eyeballs and subsequently the advertising £ will follow.

TV isn’t dead but viewing patterns have changed massively.

What is blatantly obvious is the companies that invest in great content are delivering the viewers that advertisers want.

This is my simple take, and I obviously don’t know the balance sheet pressures, but I’m pretty sure getting rid of a few grads that do the leg work will not turn the ship around, but if you deliver some world class content you might just avoid the ice berg (that is rather self created).

Credit: Stu Smith, MD