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Frenemy" (alternate spelling "frienemy") is a portmanteau of "friend" and "enemy" that can refer to either an enemy pretending to be your friend or someone who really is your friend but is also a rival. The term is used to describe personal, geopolitical, and commercial relationships both among individuals and groups or institutions. The word has appeared in print as early as 1953. Frenemies fits well with another term called coopetition, which is most easily described as cooperative competition.
One of the reasons tech startups can be so successful and move with such speed is because they have no legacy mindset or culture to change. There is no need for a paradigm shift or realization that the way business was / is conducted has changed forever. In a startup one doesn't hear "but this is the way it has always been done" echo down (increasingly empty) hallways of companies who just won't let go of the past. In today's tech driven world companies must not see technology as a threat or even a competitor. Technology is the great enabler of doing things differently and often more efficiently. An open mindset must be embraced as resistance is not only futile but for many companies has proven fatal.
Most successful tech products are disrupters. They have disrupted how things were previously done. Look at the Hailo app disrupting the taxi business while embracing mass adoption of smartphones and in particular utilizing the location functionality available on smartphones. Look at Skype and Whatsapp both disrupting international calling and indeed the once lucrative text market by embracing peer-to-peer technologies. Now look at Blockbuster. Blinded by and focused on its huge profits the company did nothing about Netflix until it was too late and ultimately faced a final curtain call with 2010 bankruptcy in the US followed by the UK in 2012.
All of these disruptive innovations have technology as their common thread. However, they also make life easier for the consumer, both from a user experience perspective and usually an economic one. Most disruptive innovation exemplars did not start out to be disruptive. They simply focused on the consumer facing product and service attributes that then led to the consumer adopting a new behaviour, thus a disruption in the way things were done previously.
Competitors will crop up and threaten incumbents more and more in the coming months, years and decades. Traditional Media in particular has been threatened severely by the growth of digital platforms, which in turn lowered barriers to entry and enabled so many disrupters. For media companies and publishers alike the replacement of analog dollars with digital dimes, coupled with the cost and maintenance of legacy resources have forced media companies to change their mindset whether they want to or not. The clever companies launched fighter brands, small R&D projects and looked to disrupt themselves. In the words of Steve Jobs "If you don't cannibalize yourself, someone else will." This does not mean throw the baby out with the bath water, but it does mean you must continually reinvent your business and look at it with new eyes.
Print publications, Newspapers in particular must still maintain and resource the print edition as well as produce a digital edition, which is worth a fraction of the advertising Euros. A frenemy of print is Twitter; so many people now get their news from Twitter and don't even buy a newspaper. However, print has recognized the value of Twitter as the source of breaking news (once curated of course). Print has embraced this frenemy and used it to its advantage, not only to source content and engage with its audience, but also to break its own news and use Twitter as a hook to bring people back to the brand as a trusted opinion-led and analytically-led medium.
A radio station still has to pay license fees, transmission costs and fork out for top end talent while many low cost alternatives battle for the audience attention. A lot of this audience log in to and check Facebook many times per day. Incredibly, one will still see many radio stations not embrace social networks such as Facebook. Facebook users are logged in and already interacting with each other, the brand (station) just needs to be become part of the conversation and in fact lead the conversation. The brand leads what is called a Trialogue, a three-way conversation where the brand suggests a topic and the audience debate that topic. This is the real value of social media, before such tools, only a two-way conversation was possible between the brand and the listener (if the brand even responded to a listener). With social media, peer-to-peer or listener-to-listener dialogue is possible and thrives.
Facebook connections map the world. Image/Facebook
TV companies must see social TV (second screen) apps as a frenemy, there are so many great tools such as Zeebox. It is a fact that friends’ recommendations (known as reco- friendations) are so much more effective than that of a publisher. A lot of TV execs I have spoken with are skeptical of such tools seeing them as a threat or a fad that will fade. TV should not only embrace these tools, but look at developing their own custom versions. Why not equip your own stations app with technology that will communicate with the airing shows, for behind the scenes footage, surveys etc.
Yes there are many choices for the consumer today. Yes they have many brands vying for the same consumer attention. Yes there are many alternatives to any media. This is why focus should be put on the brand itself, making that brand as strong as it can be. The brand must become a destination, a trusted voice amidst the haystack of noise.
This is why we must embrace competitive technologies and explore what could be done via cooperation. This is why we should all make some new Frenemies.
Aidan McCullen is Head of Digital for Communicorp Group. He is an ex-Ireland rugby international, who played for Leinster and Toulouse. Aidan is responsible for Digital Revenue, R&D and innovation for Communicorp.
This article originally appeared in Newstalk Magazine for iPad in July, for more details go here.
