Last week, we shared a few top line findings from GolinHarris' initial Trusted Media Index survey.
Today, I read another new study from McKinsey & Company focusing on related themes. It's worth a look. (Available HERE as a free download for registered users.)
In their article titled, "What Consumers Want from Online News," McKinsey's authors compare and contrast how different audience groups consume news from multiple media sources, and in multiple formats.
While McKinsey spends a fair bit of time focusing on digital media, the takeaway isn't myopic: different audiences consume information in very different ways -- not just online or offline.
The implication? Thinking big in communication today is more about thinking small and understanding the subtly nuanced ways micro-groups within your target audience get information. One-size-fits-all consumer targeting and mass marketing is becoming less and less effective.
What McKinsey found -- also echoed in our own Trusted Media Index research -- is that today's audiences gobble up information from scores of different sources. They call it "media promiscuity" -- the idea that there is little loyalty to a particular media outlet, and that audiences increasingly compare and contrast news from a variety of sources. We found exactly the same thing with our research, particularly when we examined media trust of influencer groups. Tastemakers who share frequently with peers are news junkies and rely on a multitude of sources to formulate their opinions.
In McKinsey's study, the majority of survey respondents reported dividing time between 12-16 different news sources each week. These are largely "mediated" sources and don't take into account first-person information sources such as direct experience and word of mouth. Add those into the mix and the number of places most Americans look for counsel and news grows to a remarkably high number.
McKinsey's paper wisely posits that a well-built news aggregation product -- which pulls together information from a variety of sources news seekers choose -- will be highly valued in the future. We're already seeing the underpinnings of this, with great news aggregation services like Google News and Adobe Labs' "MyFeedz" social newspaper already available.
As consumer control over what we watch, listen and read increases, so too must our understanding of how, where, and why audiences ferret out news from different sources. Communicators must become conversant in each of these channels to remain relevant and influential.