The Nature and Source of Vice’s Competitive Advantage

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Summary

Vice has established a unique and effective competitive advantage based on creating content for young people between 18-34 years. After realizing that the people in this age bracket mostly consume their content, Vice decided to focus on making content that was explicitly aimed at the demands of this target market. This made them more connected with their audience than any other media company (Alvi, 2014). In addition, Vice was keen to follow content related to this age group, such as fashion, music, and expression of their views.

The source of Vice’s competitive advantage was its reporting style. While other competitors used the traditional reporting style, Vice adopted a character-driven and emotionally transparent reporting method that relied on facts (Alvi, 2014). The company could lead the reader through the story by explaining what happened and how it felt without altering information to suit the audience’s expectations. This method of reporting gave Vice a lot of credibility among its target market, which enabled it to thrive. In addition, Vice’s strategy to give its content free to its readers was a significant boost during the introduction of digital media.

Vice’s other competitive advantage source was based on its business culture. It has a culture of free flow of information, hard work, and cost savings. Instead of the company executives positioning themselves in expensive high-end offices, they shared a small office with a glass door in the reception area to save on costs (Alvi, 2014). Additionally, the company did not rely on debts and believed in making its revenue. That is why the owners of Vice had to repurchase the share of the company that they had sold Richard Szalwinski, the founder of Discreet Logic because they felt he made the company spend more money and get into huge debt. The first step they took after repurchasing the business was moving to a lower-rent, less unfashionable neighborhood so they could save on expenditure (Alvi, 2014). This enabled them to stay afloat and gave them a competitive advantage over other competitors, especially in the 2008 financial crisis.

How Vice Can Sustain Their Advantage

Vice can sustain its competitive advantage in three ways: keeping its unique reporting style and adapting to new demands and diversity. The media industry has become much more competitive; therefore, for Vice to sustain its competitive advantage, it must maintain its narrative approach with ethnographic research, which gives the audience facts and emotional connection. Vice is known for promoting the free flow of ideas and covering the most important and dangerous stories.

Due to the dynamic factors of the media market, audience preferences are changing, encouraging them to view more innovative media. Therefore, the more people watch and read content from other evolving media streams, the less the demand for its content. For Vice to tackle this challenge, it has to ensure that it adapts to the changing needs of the consumers to avoid them migrating to other digital platforms. This implies that Vice has to enhance diversity and stay on its edgy, softheaded, and freestyle approach, which helps to keep its content unique (Alvi, 2014). Further, Vice has to pay attention to changing consumers’ needs and adapt to avoid its market share shifting to other media streams.

Vice’s Competitors

Vice has a wide range of competitors, including The Arena Group, which focuses on software development and creates an invite-only channel targeted at a specific audience. Another competitor is Vox Media, an online publisher specializing in personal technology, sports, and gaming. The Mic Network competes with Vice because it is an aggressive media and internet company. Vice competes with Yahoo, a global communications, technology, and media company. Other competitors include BuzzFeed and Mashable, who provide social news and the voice of digital culture respectively.

Why Vice is Difficult to Imitate

One of the reasons why Vice is hard to imitate is because it has its unique style of telling its stories. While many companies tell their stories to the world, Vice has stood out as an emotionally transparent and character-driven company that uses the experiential approach (Alvi, 2014). It has mastered a way of leading its audience through the story without noticing that they are storytelling. This makes their articles and documentaries very interesting and appealing to their target market.

Vice has invested heavily in brand acquisitions, which have given the company leverage in the global market. It has centralized its operations, which includes changing its Williamburgs office layout, unifying its web plays, and consolidating its pages, which has significantly increased its online traffic hence more revenue. In addition, the company is adapting to changing technology, and its massive capital makes it difficult for new entrants to venture into their business. If some minor brands successfully enter the market, Vice can acquire them, making imitating their business very difficult.

The other reason is that Vice has been able to tell localized stories on a global market. This is a very complex feature that many media outlets competing with Vice find challenging to imitate. Vice ensures that it captures a story from the local market perspective and brings it to the global market. It enables many people to connect with the story originally without the audience noticing. For instance, in 2013, the company sent one of its correspondents to North Korea to play basketball against the North Korean national team. It created a unique impression about the North Korean culture, making many people start to disbelieve the mainstream media (Alvi, 2014). This move showed the audience that it could tell localized stories globally, which many other media outlets find hard to do.

How Vice Can Strike A Balance Between Standardization and Customization For Its Global Business

Vice should balance standardization and customization to provide each audience with the required content. To achieve this, it must consider various factors, such as the number of websites it needs. This will be done by analyzing the differences and similarities of its target markets to understand if they can be serviced by one website or if they need multiple websites. Additionally, Vice should evaluate the size of each market and customer expectations to ascertain if they can be serviced by one website or if they need different websites. If the size of each market is large, it shows that they need independent websites; however, if there are small markets, they require a single website.

Another essential factor to consider is the cultural differences between the different markets. The more diverse the cultures are, the more they are likely to have varying languages. Thus, if the cultures are similar, the company can adopt a standardized method; however, if they are different, it should adopt a customized one. For instance, the Western and Asian cultures are significantly different, which implies that their language is very diverse. Therefore, the company can decide to use customization for the two varying markets so that each market can be served independently.

The other factor that Vice can consider is the marketing strategies used in the local markets. Cultural considerations are essential in running Ads campaigns; thus, if the markets have varying cultures, they require a customized approach. This helps to ensure that each market is reached by relevant marketing content that makes sense to it. Finally, Vice needs to consider local legal requirements to establish if to use a standardized or customized strategy. For instance, China has many restrictions on political criticism compared to western countries like the US, which implies that each of the two markets will require customized content regarding political matters (Alvi, 2014). Considering these factors using a transnational approach, Vice will be able to strike a balance between standardization and customization.

Recommendations

Given the increasing competition in the media, Vice needs to decentralize some of its services to regional headquarters so that each region is served with customized information. The company will still have its main headquarters in New York, but other regional headquarters can make decisions on their own based on the company’s overall model. This implies that the regional headquarters will still run under the company’s main guidelines; however, they will be able to make stories and release them regionally without consulting the head office. This will give more autonomy and flexibility to the managers, which will increase innovation and enable the company to compete effectively with regional media outlets.

Reference

Alvi, F. (2014).Vice Media: Competitive advantage and global expansion. Retrieved from Richard Ivey School of Business. Western University

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