Digital Works Podcast

Episode 034 - George Montagu (FT Strategies) on getting to 1 million digital subscribers, creating meaningful metrics, and working with NT at Home

• Season 1 • Episode 34

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A conversation with George Montagu, Head of Insights at  FT Strategies. FT Strategies is the consulting arm of the Financial Times. 

George and I talk about the shift from print to digital at the Financial Times and the related shift from ad to subscriber revenue, how leadership at the FT galvanised the entire organisation around a single goal (getting to 1 million paid subscribers in 3 years), changes in journalist workflows, the 'creative enabler' effect of digital working, the role of data and insights at the FT and creating meaningful blended metrics (and taking inspiration from Tesco Clubcard), and the work FT Strategies did with the National Theatre on the NT At Home platform.

Speaker 1:

<silence>

Speaker 2:

Hello and welcome to the Digital Works podcast, a podcast about digital stuff in the cultural sector. My name's Ash and in today's episode, episode number 34, we talk to George Montague. George is the head of insights at FT Strategies, which is the consulting arm of the Financial Times. We talk about taking a pragmatic approach to data and insights, creating meaningful metrics, measuring engagement, how journalists at the FT use data to inform their approach and lots more. We recorded this conversation in person at our usual studio in London. Enjoy. Good morning, George.

Speaker 3:

Morning. Nice

Speaker 2:

To see you on the sunny September morning in London.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, thank God the air con's on. Exactly.

Speaker 2:

Exactly. So George, you work at FT Strategies, what do you do there? What is FT Strategies? How did you end up working for a newspaper? Sure,

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so I'll start with FT Strategies. So FT Strategies is basically a specialist media consultancy that the Financial Times created about three or four years ago. Interestingly, I was already at the FT when FT Strategies started. So I was actually part of the team that helped to like ideate through what we were going to create. Basically, the FTE knew that we was , we sat on a lot of intellectual property. We sat on a lot of technology that we thought we could monetize, but we weren't really sure what we could offer or what was the highest opportunity for the fte. So what we did is we went about a big exercise to understand, okay, if we provided something to media companies, what is it that we could provide that they would be willing to pay for? And what we soon realized was a lot of news businesses have tried to commercialize their tech very unsuccessfully, and we would much rather try to commercialize our expertise. So we started advising a few media companies to see if they were interested, you know, leveraging the experience of the FT. And it turns out they were. So that was kind of the founding story of FT Strategies. Since then, we've advised over 500 news organizations around the world. We've grown to a team of 70 and it's a really, really exciting business to be a part of in terms of where I fit into FT Strategies. So as I kind of alluded to, I used to be part of the actual Financial Times itself. I basically started my media career at the Financial Times around seven or eight years ago now. So a long time sitting across anything really data focused and subscriptions focused . So that was really my, my emphasis was like the intersection between data and subscriptions. And then about three years ago now, I got the offer to move over to FT Strategies. It felt like a great move at the time because I just completed my M B A and yeah, that was when I moved. But yeah, since then I've taken on a new role of Head of Insights. The responsibility is broadly to grow FT. Strategies brand and also to support in our client work.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and it's such an interesting origin point I think, for all that work. You know, you mentioned the tech and the IP that the Financial Times itself sat on, as you said, but I think there may be some people listening to this that are unfamiliar perhaps with that success story really about the big pivot that the Financial Times made. And it would maybe be interesting just to, to fill in that gap if people are unaware that the Financial Times has this, you know, huge digital subscriber base now of , of paying subscribers.

Speaker 3:

Sure, yeah. So I mean, up until the 1990s you can basically think of print newspaper as a way of printing money. I mean, I think that's probably where the expression comes from as well. You know, print advertising really had a monopoly overreaching specific audiences, and it was really, really easy to sell. You know, there was some competition in tv, but you know, none of the social media platforms existed then. So basically all of the money flowed into one of two places. So it was a very easy business to run. But obviously when the internet came about, when audiences moved online, the world changed and the FT realized that it had to change as well. So there were kind of two real fundamental disruptions to our business model. One was the declining print circulation. So you know, the ft, I think at its peak had well over I think 500,000 print subscribers and a really large circulation. But ever since about 2001 that's been in systemic decline, there are ways that you can manage that by increasing prices. But you know, we knew as a business that wasn't going to be our future. The second driving force was digital advertising revenue. Whilst we saw that as a growth area and a way of moving out of print revenues, ultimately we were up against some competition that cannot be beaten. It turns out, so some of the big social media platforms like Facebook. And so we realized that we really had to pivot our digital business model to being subscriptions focused . I think it was back in 2015, the FT set itself a goal of achieving 1 million subscribers, the majority of which a digital. So we achieved that actually ahead of time, I think a year or two ahead of time where we reached a million subscribers in 2019. And we've really just kicked on from there. So I think in the last year or two we've reached a million digital subscribers. So digital only subscribers, which you know, is a huge landmark for us. And if you actually look at our revenue splits between 2005 and today, it's, you know, indescribable the difference. So we used to be a majority print business, you know, be like 70, 80% of our revenue. It's now the reverse in terms of digital. And we also used to be a predominantly ad-based business, again, similar numbers, but we're now far more subscriptions as a source of our primary revenue.

Speaker 2:

And I think there are some really, you know, one of the reasons I wanted to talk to you is I think there are some really interesting parallels in that or between the situation the FT found itself in and the situation the cultural sector finds itself in with declining audiences across certain demographics with the sort of opportunity threat duality of digital with needing to unlock new revenue streams. And as someone who has been at the FT from the moment that that sort of, that pivot was seriously undertaken through to now, what, from your perspective, are the major things that have changed to help bring about that? Because structurally, culturally, philosophically a organization focused on writing things to print in a newspaper and sell advertising around that is, I imagine quite different from an organization focused on a million digital subscribers and and servicing that audience.

Speaker 3:

Sure, yeah. There were some really existential changes within the business. I think the first and and most important change was setting what we call the North Star goal. So at the ft you know, we obviously had multiple revenue sources, whether that be advertising or prints or or whatever. And to be honest, everyone was pulling in different directions based on, you know, where their position within the organization and what their own KPIs are. And I think that's probably a very familiar story for most organizations including cultural organizations. So what our c e O and our leadership team did, which I think was really transformative, was they just said, okay, in the next three years we want to achieve 1 million paid for subscribers. And you can imagine the reaction amongst our advertising team, our events team, you know, our print circulation team, you know, they weren't particularly happy, but what they did understand is there was actually a , a real clear direction that the organization was pointing towards and that was where they were going to focus their resources. So that led to like a real change in mentality in terms of what our future revenue model was going to be. The second is cultural, especially the transition to digital first. You know, this is one of the most complex and multifaceted things to change in an organization. I'll try to draw on one anecdote I suppose, which was our editorial team. So our editorial team used to write for the newspaper. That means they wrote, you know, a certain length article to fit within a certain slots that we'd already imagined at the newspaper. They used to work to deadlines that would basically align with when we were getting the newspaper printed. So they would basically rock up late in the day, have a nice coffee, think about what they're going to write about rapidly write it before let's say the 6:00 PM deadline so that it would be in print the next day. Obviously in digital there's no such thing as those print led deadlines. And so it completely changes the workflow of like a , a journalist, they can create as much or as little content as they want. We don't have to fill a newspaper every day . We can actually take our time over things and be more considered. And I think it's, it's like a really important step change. And actually an an enabler for people that are creative is that rather than like, let's think about the performing arts sector, you know, rather than thinking about, you know, we've got this performance coming up that we have to prepare for. You know, there's lots less, I suppose, professionalized ways of showcasing your creativity without that massive amount of like pre-investment. So yeah, it's a huge change, but hopefully an exciting one for creative people. And

Speaker 2:

Your role ahead of insights, I am making an assumption here, but I imagine maybe insights and having some sense of how readers are responding to the things that you're writing was maybe less of a dynamic in the print focus days than it is now. Is it a completely new discipline? How have you found, you know, creative people, journalists, storytellers, their response to suddenly your you , you can, and you are measuring how people are engaging with their work?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I think this is genuinely the most fascinating topic that we cover. So obviously back in the, the newspaper days, as you alluded to, there was no feedback loop. You know, the circulation number was the feedback loop, which is how many people read the entire newspaper, not your article, what topics they read, what sections they go to. So there was really no data. Whereas now in the digital age, obviously with, with really mature data analytics and, and web analytics, you can really easily understand what users are valuing just by judging on what they're reading. That can get you into really weird places, to be honest. Like having all the data available at an article level or at a topic level. You know, you can imagine that the FT could just suddenly start writing about Bitcoin the whole time or whatever the latest trend is. You know, that's really not the purpose of the data. And actually you need to look beyond just like really rubbish metrics like page views for example, as a proxy for the value that people are getting from your content. You need to look at multiple metrics to build up an understanding and also compliment that with some qualitative metrics that you get from audience surveys or or interviews or focus groups. But the way in which journalists are responding to that is, is an interesting one. I think the more forward-thinking, well actually I'll, I'll take a step back. I loved a quote from someone called Douglas McCabe who's, who's a real thought leader in this space. And I think he said that ultimately all journalists are quite egotistical and so they quite like being able to see data around their own performance. So I , I'd say that's the first thing is like journalists are interested, but they are concerned about how that data is translated into the creative process. So we always say be data informed rather than data led as a journalist. So, you know, think about what topics are resonating, but don't feel like you have to write, you know , specifically to what people say all the time or what the data says. And there is continued concern. What we try to move away from is like connecting subscription acquisitions to individual articles because it's so blunt, like a user or a reader goes through so many steps before they decide to subscribe. And just measuring that like point of conversion and attribution value to that is pretty bad, to be honest. So we're really careful about what metrics we show journalists and we try to focus on the good engagement ones, which are, you know, page views as one metric. But then we also look at what we call quality reads at the ft, which is the percentage of content that people are reading, looking at their scroll depth and also the amount of time that they've spent on pages. And that gives us a feel for both like the popularity of an article in terms of page views and then like the quality of the article in terms of keeping people engaged.

Speaker 2:

And I think that's a really important or two really important points that you made there because certainly I've been a part of conversations with creative people in the cultural sector where the idea of data is brought up and people react quite strongly against it. 'cause it feels to them that they're gonna be boxed into a corner where they are told to do whatever the audience wants, you know, and as you said in a, in a journalistic context that's articles about Bitcoin or whatever that , you know, that zeitgeist is at at that moment. And I think it's not about that, it's about understanding how people are engaging and using that as one of the creative constraints that goes into them , that your process. But I think the second point you made about being able to build a picture using a combination of metrics that actually tells you something useful rather than just a thousand people looked at this thing actually blending metrics to give you some level of insight that can then actually inform activity on, on a wider level. And I did just want to hover on that point briefly because you know, cultural organizations now are doing more, it's a very broad term , but so I suppose artistic digital content, whereas perhaps before digital content was focused on marketing and information, now there is more qualitative content out there. And I do think organizations struggle with understanding how to measure how that content is performing because you know, a piece of marketing you're trying to drive to a very clear conversion, whereas with a , you know, a deep dive on something or a piece of video that's maybe creative in nature, it seems less apparent on how you measure the success of that. And I wonder if you could just talk a bit about how you've arrived at some of those key blendings of metrics at , at the ft. Sure,

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so I'll talk about the FT and then I'll talk a bit about the work that we've done with the national theater on , on the national Theater at home platform, beginning with FT and uh , <laugh> not a great forum to use some axes as a podcast, but here we go. If you imagine, I guess on one axes you've got page views. So you've got low and high page views on each end of the axis . And then on the other axis you've got high quality reads and low quality reads. So I talked before about how you measure each of those metrics, but what we've done at the FT is we plotted topics or even specific articles if people have asked for it on this axis to show what are the things that we're writing about that are both not very popular and also don't actually get a great deal of engagement or quality reads. Once people do hit that content and you almost leave it open to the creatives or the journalists to make of that what they will, you know, I'm not going to force people to stop writing individual articles or write about specific topics, but if they feel that they can reallocate some of their effort to produce something that is to some extent of greater value to the audience judging by those metrics, then I think that can only be a good thing. To be honest talking in terms of national theater at home and and the challenges that the cultural sector face in terms of digital metrics, you know, it's not totally translatable. When we were working on NT at home, you know, they were looking at subscriber numbers as their key success metrics. I think one of the good things that we did is help work with the team to imagine some engagement metrics that would work. So I think one of the best metrics in video on demand and something that's used by Netflix is total number of hours used or viewed. And I think that's a , a reasonable proxy for obviously the value that someone's getting from your service or your, whatever you're putting out there. There were other metrics, you know, like the percentage of something that someone's engaged with, which I think is interesting, especially for shorter form creative formats. And of course like video starts is like a , a pretty broad brush metric but does have some value to get a sense of popularity or or interest levels.

Speaker 2:

And it sounds like what you're saying both there with the , the NT at home example, but also with the work you've described at the FT is , and correct me if this is not what you're saying, but it's almost about never just looking at one metric. It's about understanding that sort of constellation of different things that you're measuring and understanding what that's telling you in the whole , rather than really focusing in on, as you say, video starts or only focusing on, you know, the average view percentage of this was 56% or something like that because those points in isolation don't really tell you very much.

Speaker 3:

I can use a , a really nice anecdote actually that shows the value of taking metrics from other industries and applying them to your own. So at the FT I worked with Tom Betts who was previously our chief data officer. You know, he was a real thought leader in the metrics space and what he brought over when he joined the FT was a compound metric called R F E R F E is an engagement metric actually used in retail originally by Tesco's as part of their club card engagement metric. But at the FT what we did is we slightly bastardized their metric and we turned it into three components. So the R F E stands for for three things, the first is recency. So how recently has someone visited your content is that gives you a sense of, you know, whether they're currently engaged or not. The second is frequency, which is the number of times they visit your content. We see that as the biggest predictor in terms of subscriptions. So acquiring new subscribers and and keeping your existing subscribers or even membership. So donations and things like that. And then finally, and the one that is often paid most attention to is volume. So the volume of the content that you're consuming over a specific period, so over a 30 day period. And the idea is is that we use this compound score, this engagement score to give us a sense of the health of our business because quite frankly your subscription numbers don't tell you the full story and also they're not forward metrics. So we see engagement as actually a really good predictive metric for whether we're going to convert more people in the future or whether our customers are going to cancel. So I think the more the arts organizations can take on board these more engagement based metrics, they'll get a a healthier view on their business at this time. And

Speaker 2:

Going back to the NT at home work that you did, you know, I think people listening to this will absolutely understand the value of the types of measures that you've been describing. But let's get a little bit nerdy for a moment. You know, the technology that was in use on the NT at home project and maybe that you introduced to the NT cultural organizations are resource constrained, <laugh>, you know, a lot of these analytics packages and metrics platforms can be very, very expensive. You know, and cultural organizations are often using free off the shelf tools, you know, good analytics, things like that. There are lots of good agencies and consultants working in the sector that help cultural organizations to configure those tools to measure whatever seems most useful. But what sort of tools were you working with with the NT on N NT at home? I think that's driven by Vimeo. Was that the sort of native Vimeo tools? Was there a something overlaid on top of that? If so, can you tell us what that was?

Speaker 3:

I think you are totally right. You know, arts organizations are constrained but there are many free platforms to use for the purposes of experimentation. So NT at Home, the original story for that is based on YouTube during the pandemic. And what I love about that story is it shows that you don't have to have an expensive tech stack to validate demand for digital cultural experiences. I think that's a really important thing to say because a lot of organizations and news organizations do the same is they'll come up with an idea and they'll be like, this is the best thing that's ever gonna happen to us. We're gonna grow so much digital revenue, let's invest a million pounds in our tech stack. And before you know it, they don't have any viewers or any people visiting any of their digital content. So what I would say is, you know, YouTube was and is often a perfect place to start if you just want to validate demand amongst audiences. There are so few barriers to entry, it's , it's a very easy access point. But then obviously once you do start to build some traction and potentially you want to monetize your content, you do need to start thinking about, you know, different tech platforms that can help you meet those needs. So I know at the NT they were using Vimeo, I think in practice off the shelf platforms like Vimeo obviously provides you with a lot of helpful things. So you know, it's a content management system. They have some monetization like support within the platform, but you know, you are obviously limited by their product development cycle . So when we were working with NT at home for example, they still hadn't built out like registration as an option before subscriptions, which we know in the news industry is like a really important thing to developing the customer funnel. So it comes with its challenges at the time, and I can't remember exactly what systems they were integrated with, but I knew that they were working with a separate third party to basically do payment processing. They were working with another third party to do like email campaign management just because of the, I guess lack of flexibility like within the core system. But that's understandable. Vimeo isn't designed for, you know, every single organization out there. And there were definitely conversations about, you know, what replatforming might help to achieve, but that always needs to be seen in the context of like the additional investment that would be required not only in the actual license fee but obviously the total cost of ownership and also all of the migration costs that come with replatforming. So it's a complex question and something probably you are better to help with than we are <laugh>

Speaker 2:

For bits of it perhaps <laugh> and the NT project was a success, you know, I know because, so we spoke to Nicholas , director of IT about the project, I spoke to him last summer now and at that point it was coming to the , the end of year one and they were sort of evaluating whether it warranted further investment. They worked with you, they built a case for investment, it has kicked on into year two and now into year three it was a success. But the N T E is a big organization, it had a back catalog of content, you know, from its NT live program which had been running for, you know, over a decade. I think having worked on that project and having some sense of the challenges across the sector and also some understanding of the fact that the NT is not like every other theater. Yeah . <laugh> . Do you think there are learnings, insights that you can take from that project and that could be picked up by other cultural organizations?

Speaker 3:

Yes, I think coming from a news business that obviously runs quite a mature and thoughtful subscription model, I definitely see like membership revenue as something that's quite often overlooked in terms of an opportunity. You know, I think when you think about the funding mix, it's obviously government funding, there's potentially funding from large donors, ticket sales, the membership is seen as like, you know, the nice bit on the side that very kind people give up, which is definitely the case. You know, and I can understand why organizations might be mindful of optimizing the membership revenue because they may feel like they're taking advantage of people that are kindly supporting them. But I think the reality is is there's, there's lots of quick wins within the membership space that we see that could really help. So even though NT at home is obviously a streaming platform, I feel like a lot of people, and I think national Theater would agree with this, I think a lot of people see it as almost a bit of a donation in some ways because they really want to support something that's interesting and that aligns with their values. So one of the things that we talked through is whether they could transition a greater proportion of their subscribers onto annual subscriptions rather than monthly because monthly has much higher churn rates and a much, much lower lifetime value, you know, multiple X lower lifetime value. So I think what some other cultural organizations could learn from that is, you know, think about how you could improve the member experience and also think about tactics to improve the lifetime value of those members. So whether that be transitioning to an annual membership rather than a monthly one, whether that could be improving, you know, your customer marketing to keep them more engaged in your product and keeping on paying those for me feel like really obvious worthwhile investments.

Speaker 2:

And this is sort sort of I suppose a switch of focus back to the ft, but the n t at home project was a video driven project. You know, video is Quite a high cost to produce. And I think also, and this is something I've talked to others about on this podcast, is as soon as you are into a delivering video content, your context is Amazon, Netflix movies. Yeah . Video games, you know, industries that spend billions on achieving the highest production values. And it's maybe difficult for cultural organizations to sort of put a stake in the ground in a meaningful way. And in that space, unless as I say, you have the expertise and the, the momentum of someone like the national theater mm-hmm. <affirmative> , however, and this is where the switch comes back to the the ft, you know, the FT is a, you know, written media article driven at its heart. And that is a space that I think cultural organizations, particularly museums and galleries can play in much more confidently. And I'm, I'm interested whether you think the opportunity that you talked about around members is applicable even when you don't have a catalog of a hundred mm-hmm You know, plus videos for people to pay and watch on their smart tv. Do you think there are other ways of delivering value through content to a subscriber base?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so I think I'll go off on a tangent and then I'll, I'll come back and answer your question. That's probably most of my answers. The one thing we learned actually through the NT at Home case and also we've learned at the FT and we've also learned at Apple TV is that there's this misnomer that the content library size dictates like how successful you are as an organization. If you actually look at the number of movies that Apple have, I think it's like 30 movies or something the the last time I checked on Apple tv, you know, and then plus TV shows and that is tiny compared to Netflix and I know that Apple will have a very large production spend. But I think in terms of where to focus, I think there's two things when it comes to creating content, which isn't catalog size. The first is creating things that are really valued by your audience. So going after the big prizes I suppose, rather than trying to cover everything or trying to create content about everything . And then I think the second is this concept of freshness, which is the audience always wants something new and that can be real or perceived. So the one thing we talked about with national theater is how they can like almost substitute in and out some of their content through their platform to give this perceived feeling of of freshness. And that's like a beautiful thing that all arts organizations have is they've got a great catalog and yes, they may not be able to invest in constantly new things, but they definitely have that back catalog that they can substitute in and out. So I think that's one way of solving the catalog size and the investment issue. In answer to your question on whether arts organizations can go with lower production value content, I think definitely, I think one of the really exciting things that we've seen in news that could translate into media is basically the rise of niche topic interest publications. You wouldn't believe how many people are interested, for example, in like the business of airports, you know, people create these really niche, I know that's a B two B example, but there are plenty in B two C as well like subject matter interests, publications, and they all start from newsletters. And newsletters to be honest, are an amazing delivery mechanism for content that we're increasingly seeing can be monetized. And the audience is getting more familiar with paying for newsletters because of ck . So yeah, I don't see why there's not an opportunity for digital or cultural institutions to basically explore that as a delivery mechanism, at least as a way of building like digital audiences to begin with, if not a further route to monetization or cross-selling back into their, for example, physical ticket sales. I was actually advising and , and I've worked with a lot the founder of Boom Saloon, which is a cultural and architectural magazine based up in Edinburgh. And I guess this was the advice that I gave Rachel, who's the founder, you know, you may not have a website that people come and visit and explicitly seek out because you are in such a niche, but if you do have a way of reaching people like a newsletter, that could be really exciting. And so I can't wait to see how she gets on with that. She's really close to launching it and already got a lot of interest, so, so that is cool. Yeah,

Speaker 2:

And I think, you know, every cultural organization to a greater or lesser extent has some real subject matter experts and I think it's going to be interesting to see if cultural organizations can widen their understanding of what is valuable. It's not just as you were saying earlier, everything focusing towards curtain up at seven 30. Yeah . Actually everything that happens before that, everything that's in people's heads around the building, you could with the right format, approach, et cetera, build an audience around because people are super interested in culture , the work of cultural organizations and the internet allows you to reach them at scale.

Speaker 3:

Definitely. And uh , if you think about it, you know, these organizations already produce a lot of content that just needs a delivery mechanism. You know, you go and pick up the program each time you go to the theater and it's 30 pages of things that you don't have the time to read in the interval because you're eating your ice cream <laugh>. You know, I think if you can think about ways of reaching audiences in a digital format, even if the sole purpose is to just build a digital audience to begin with, I think that's a great route .

Speaker 2:

Brilliant. And lastly, you know, we sort of started off talking a bit about the fact that you've been at the FT through this period of change and you now, you know, you work at an organization that has made a very successful digital pivot. You talked earlier about the importance of there being a , a north star ambition as as you said, that the whole organization can focus around standing where you are. I suppose having come through the change that you have, are there any other key lessons that if you could go back and speak to yourself 10 years ago, you would go, okay, this thing is more important than you think it's going to be. This is gonna be really hard.

Speaker 3:

<laugh>. That's a great question. I think the big challenge for us right now, and it's way harder than you would've thought is reaching younger audiences. The problem is the ways in which you can reach young audiences is often ways that aren't necessarily aligned with like a successful business model <laugh> , which is challenging. So I think a lot of people in the early two thousands and , and you kind of see it with buzzfeed in the news industry, is they really reached young people and they created content that resonated with them and they used memes and all of those other types of things and funded that through advertising. The reality is, is I think the creative industry and the news industry will never, or potentially never have volume sizes or audience sizes that are enough to basically maintain a large cultural institution or newsroom that delivers content to young audiences just because you're in competition with social media. And so, you know, at the FT we've tried many things. We've found a corporate sponsor that underwrites access for school children between 16 and 18. I think that's a great starting point, but to be honest, how do you change your content to better meet the needs of younger people without ostracizing your existing audience that are probably, I mean, talking from the fts experience in their fifties and sixties, you know, and are so different to the young people of today, we're currently doing a study at the moment actually into what are young people's consumption preferences, some of which is quite interestingly translatable to the arts, which is, you know, young people typically do prefer shorter form content. They're social media natives, so they want it in ways in which they understand, for example, reels or memes or scrolls and and those kind of things. And I think that's going to be the mega challenge for arts and news , which is like how do you cater for those change in preferences, which by the way aren't going to change format. Preferences don't change. We haven't seen that whilst staying authentic and we'll see where that goes. <laugh>.

Speaker 2:

I think that is a great and big challenge to end on. Thank you so much, George.

Speaker 3:

Cheers Ash . Thank you.

Speaker 2:

And that is everything for today. Thanks for listening. You can find all episodes of the podcast on our website where you can also sign up for the digital works newsletter, subtract.com/digital works . You can also follow us on Twitter, which is what we will continue to call it. We are at Digital Works and I'm at Big Little Things. Our theme tune is Vienna, beat by Blue Dot Sessions. And last but not least , thanks to Mark Cotton for his editing support on this episode . See you again soon .

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