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NMK New Media Exports Survey
StumbleUponThe UK new media industry may have an international reputation for creative and technical excellence, but how can companies translate this into export earnings? Our survey outlines key trends and opportunities...
New Media: Entering the Global MarketBy Tom Campbell
The UK’s new media sector has a well-established reputation for its creative and technical excellence, but this is only just beginning to translate into international clients and earnings. For many new media agencies, it seems that the potential for overseas work is considerable, but still largely untapped.
The UK’s creative and media industries have traditionally been strong export earners. Television content brought in more than £500million in international revenues in 2003, while export sales for computer and video games are in excess of £1.2 billion. Similarly impressive figures exist for advertising and design services, for which the UK enjoys a strong trade surplus.
How well is this success translating into new media? The industry is evolving quickly and defies easy definition and measurement in the same way. However, research recently undertaken by New Media Knowledge provides some indication, and suggests that new media agencies are beginning to seriously consider the potential for overseas work.
Levels of Activity
According to NMK’s research, two-thirds of agencies have completed commercial new media work for an overseas client, with more than half believing that their export activity will increase over the next 12 months. However, levels of export activity are very uneven across the sector and remain low in most firms. For 50% of respondents, export earnings account for less than 10% of total turnover.
Of course, new media covers a diverse range of creative and technical activities, and the precise nature of work being undertaken for overseas clients varied considerably. Those most cited were marketing, production, design, content and technical services, but more specific activities were also identified as particularly important, such as e-learning, content localisation and search engine marketing.
Key Markets
As the findings show, there was a strong feeling that the EU was the market with the best potential for new media products and services (over 80% of companies surveyed saw the EU as a key market), almost doubling North America. Together, South East Asia and China, was considered the next most promising region (20%).
Export Activities
Businesses had a clear idea of their perceived strengths abroad. Perhaps not surprisingly, most agencies felt that their reputation was most strongly based around the more creative and highly skilled activities, such as design, content production and technical solutions, rather than value for money. Over 70% cited design, content tipped 50%, while 45% rated technical as their key perceived strength. In fact, for the less value added services, there is now considerable outsourcing taking place. More than half of all agencies have used a supplier from outside the UK, and this is predominantly for development or low-level technical services and administrative tasks: hosting, database management, and customer support. As yet, there is relatively little outsourcing of design or creative services.
Getting Better at Export
Clearly, many UK new media agencies are exporting their services and regard it as a growing market with considerable potential. However, levels of activity vary and there are a number of barriers in place that are discouraging businesses from exploring commercial opportunities overseas. The most frequently cited were a lack of knowledge about markets, and an inability to identify clients, agents or partners in other countries. For many of the smaller agencies, it seems that the required investment in time and money are such that exporting is not something they can consider at the moment.
Clearly, better support and market intelligence is needed if new media agencies are going to realise their potential. The UK government already invests considerable amounts in promoting the export activities of British business in established industries such as manufacturing, defence and medicine. It is time that those in the UK’s new and fast-growing media and technology sectors are also given the same opportunities to participate in the global economy.
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