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- Media is one of the
great inward-looking,

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naval-gazing businesses out there.

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And businesses fail when they look inward.

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(happy music)

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- [Narrator] It has never
been a more challenging time

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to be a media company.

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The landscape is littered
with competitors,

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especially online.

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Many of them well-funded,
with teams of analysts

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evaluating every click.

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So how does a niche brand
like Fast Company compete

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in such an environment?

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- To use an older example,
like Blockbuster Video.

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They were perfectly
content with VHS tapes,

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and they had no idea as this
small company called Netflix

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came along and released DVD rentals.

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Before they knew it,
streaming became a thing

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and Blockbuster was
completely out of business.

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So you constantly need to
look towards the future

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with your brand.

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- [Narrator] With that goal in mind,

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Fast Company is embarking on a redesign.

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But, in addition to the usual methods,

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this time they will
attempt to leverage their

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greatest strength, their audience.

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- Fast Company has a
vibrant community of people

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that see us as one of
the beacons for design

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and for business innovation.

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And our connection with that community

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is more important now
than it has ever been.

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- I think it's really
fair to say that editors

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and readers have, in some ways,

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grown a little bit farther apart.

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Part of it is because
we rely a little bit,

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perhaps too much, on analytics and clicks

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to tell us what we think readers like.

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But that really doesn't tell
you if they're really learning

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and they're getting content
that is valuable to them.

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- Whenever redesign projects start,

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in media companies they're
usually editorially driven

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or they're Design Department driven,

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and there's not a whole lot
of user feedback involved.

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The great think about this
is that we're bringing in

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the user into the design process,

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where we haven't in the past.

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The danger in it is that
you ask leading questions

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that irritate them and turn you off

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and make your brand seem
completely unauthentic.

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So we're working with people at SAP

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and our own independent researchers

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to help us get away from our
own biases and assumptions

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and testing what's real.