How did you reinvent yourself for the digital world?

Reinventing oneself for the digital world

Alright, let's see."How did you reinvent yourself for the digital world?"

Well, I must say, coming from a degree in advertising where we barely had one class on digital advertising, I learnt it all the hard way, really.

Learning on the go, "Okay, this is Playground,it's a digital magazine, let's try to monetize it,let's create branded content campaigns..." "Branded what?" At uni we'd been told: "Yes, a branded content campaign,BMW, Madonna..." It was nothing like that, it was a short film online and that was the first big branded content campaign.

And I think the best part of being at the beginning of a new stage is that you can make as many mistakes as you want,you can just keep trying and failing, over and over.

And that's really the philosophy we have at Código Nuevo,like, oh, Meta just launched a new format? Great.

Tomorrow we're already testing it editorially,seeing how it performs, and by the following week, we're seeing what brands want to collab.

It's constant trial-and-error mindset and staying fast all the time.

That's how I'd say you reinvent yourself for the digital world.

Our team, I'm repeating myself, but I always say,we're not afraid of uncertainty and we're always on point,looking for new things to create.

So yeah, being quick, being fearless, and knowing that our business model could change in a month, two, or six.

Are we doing vertical videos now? Great.And maybe in six months it'll be carousels,but in video form? Great, we're ready.

No idea about next year, but we're not scared.So let's keep testing things.

And it's also my job to say, "Right, let's redistribute the figures so that this remains profitable in the current model, like it was before." I actually think it's really cool to put a price on these new digital formats.

And to stay hands-on with the work, like, "Okay, for this kind of video,I need a cameraman for X hours, a scriptwriter who's worked on...

this outline X hours, an editor..." It's about pricing all these things.

Having a good margin that lets you experiment with other things and make mistakes, it's a cool way.

Or at least, for now, I'm really enjoying it.It was amazing creating branded content for a media outlet like Playground,because brands eventually realised that we were also reaching a young audience, and they were like: "Why don't you work with us as our advertising agency creating content for the brands' profiles?" Not just what you can do for the media outlet, but act as a creative agency for the brand itself.

At Playground, we even made Netflix trailers in our own style.

They'd give us their raw footage, and we'd write our own script, talking like we did to the Playground audience,branded content campaign.

With music, a script, our font, our logo.It was a dream.

And I'll tell you, one of the campaigns I remember most fondly was one for Beefeater, at music festivals.

Picture it: the whole team, all of us in our twenties,suddenly having to shoot at every music festival in Spain.

It was a campaign where we had to take people with completely different music tastes into the same festival.

I remember being at Primavera Sound with a massive trap fan,and a guy super into indie, it was a scripted piece, of course,where they had to spend the day together and they'd argue about whether to see Yung Beef or Arctic Monkeys.

It was really cool.And the fact that a brand like Beefeater dared to host that content on its digital platforms, we were honestly really proud of the trust the brands had in us.

And then came 2018, Meta's famous algorithm change.

We'd all been used to seeing content appear chronologically in our Facebook feeds, and at Playground,every 15 minutes, we'd post something, an article,a video, whatever,and suddenly the algorithm changed, and media outlets had to pay for their content to be seen.

Imagine the chaos it was business-wise,going from not needing to invest a cent to "I need to invest so my content is seen." Of course, the whole thing collapsed.

So, in terms of digital learning, also, when it comes to video production online.

In our previous outlet, when we went to shoot at festivals,we'd take a full crew, a cameraman, a sound tech,sometimes even a gaffer to film a piece, and then editors...

And gradually, we realised that the digital space didn't really such a big crew, with a phone and a good light you can make it work and even edit it faster.

So it was that evolution, like, let's leave behind that professional side when it comes to visuals. We believe that with a phone we could make this content just as entertaining and fun, and that's how it's been.

Working in digital means always staying open to change and never being afraid of it.

And I always say, I think the most important thing when you work in digital is to pay attention to what young people are doing.

Show me your references, what's on your TikTok feed,what are you consuming, why is your Instagram feed empty,you only post on Close Friends. So it's about constantly paying attention to that.