e-Readers
If you work in specialist consumer or business media markets I am sure you have a list of new ideas that you think might present good opportunities for the development of your business.
I’d be happy to wager that at least one of the following topics was on that list:
- How can I build up a community around my brands and where’s the payback for my time?
- What extra information should I be collecting from my readers – and what should I then do with that data?
- Can I develop mobile applications for some of my products?
- What part of my marketing process can I automate – including setting up a series of trigger e-mails?
- If e-Readers gain mainstream acceptance does this open up a new distribution channel for my content?
- As I develop new content offerings what is the best model to pursue in a digital world – free, freemium or paid?
Paid digital content
The problem is that a lot of these areas work around technological change and the business models are just evolving.
But if you have one day free on November 19th and can get to London then I have a solution.
The Specialist Information Publishers Association’s next Online Publishing and Marketing Summit takes a different format to most media events. Alongside some great formal presentations there is a twin track programme of roundtable discussions led by media industry leaders.
The programme features speakers from both the UK & the US including representatives from: Incisive Media, Electric Word, Euromoney, Ink on Dead Trees, eConsultancy, Brando Social, Silverpop, Canonbury Publishing, Harvard Health, Emap Inform, Melcrum Publishing, Qube Media and Informa Pharma. The day will be hosted by my ex-coleague and all round good egg, Louise White.
Mobile apps
If you’re a SIPA member you can register at a discount rate of £270 if you do so before the end of October. It’s £350 for non-members (but ask about how to join and benefit from the member rates).
Numbers will be limited to ensure that the roundtable sessions are manageable.
Full programme details can be found here. I hope you’ll be able to join us.
If you have any queries drop me a note in the comments section below (I am a SIPA board member) or contact Karen Hindle
Fish and chips don’t taste the same out of a laptop
Originally uploaded by Rory Brown
Over the past few months I have done a few pieces of consultancy work for a range of media companies. Most of it has been around managing the transition from an analogue to a digital world.
We talk about the different ‘publishing’ disciplines involved online and of incorporating new tools into their websites with community elements, social media, blogs and video.
We talk about search engine optimisation to open up the content to a raft of new visitors; about different advertising opportunities and the various models for paid content.
We talk about moving our content up the value chain so that it can really become ‘must have’ rather than ‘nice to have’.
It’s all good and exciting stuff. The things that a modern media company must be doing and yet we are still left with a problem.
The problem is that there are hardly any examples of print products that have transitioned online and been a commercial success. Print pounds get turned into digital pennies and publishers are forced to prop up their declining brands rather than turning them off.
In fact the only people who seem to be able to make an online world work are the ones who start from scratch – look at the examples of TechCrunch, Mashable or eConsultancy.
So maybe we need to start looking at things in a different way. Maybe instead of looking at the transition of a product that was successful in a different medium we should be actively looking to bring those products down. We should be launching the very start-ups that threaten our eco-system around the edges of our brands.
If we don’t do it, then someone else undoubtedly will.
As Claire Enders of Enders Analysis said recently “The expectations that the online model is going to replace the print model are totally erroneous. We know now that these are not substitutes. It’s basically an extra feature one way or another.”
During the course of my career in media I have been involved in the work of a variety of trade associations – as an attendee at events, speaker, committee and board member.
Generally my experiences have been positive ones and I have learned a lot and made some great connections as a result of my participation. However, I am constantly amazed at how old fashioned a lot of them are and also, how resistant they are to change.
This week I saw the news about the Chief Executive of the PPA leaving the trade body with immediate effect. I have heard of similar travails at ABM in the US. The large media trade associations are clearly struggling so it got me thinking about what their role should be and how they can grow in the future.
Here are some of the key pillars that I believe media trade associations should be built around:
Championing the industry – the media industry is a huge sector, employing hundreds of thousands of people and contributing greatly to the wider economy. However, because it is so diverse it is often misunderstood and disjointed. A dominant trade association should define the scope of the industry, quantify and publicise its importance.
Lobbying – directly linked to ‘championing’ is the role of a trade association to lobby governments, commercial suppliers and regulatory bodies on behalf of its members. An industry that has no strong central voice is weaker and vulnerable to ill thought out pieces of legislation.
Being both welcoming and adaptable – I have dealt with some trade associations that feel as though they only cater for a section of the industry. Either through its membership dues structure, key activities, or the make up of the board they can sometimes feel only relevant to a narrow group of companies, or organisations of a certain size. This is a recipe for extinction. You must welcome the startups, the new business models, the multi-platform nature of the businesses you serve and not stick to the entrenched way of doing things.
Educating – at the heart of a successful association should be a learning programme. Setting best practice standards; training new entrants; providing formal qualifications; organising seminars and conferences; recognising excellence through awards etc.
Leading – during a period of rapid structural change I look to a media association to be open and honest about what is happening. I’d like it to be able to act bravely, to be able to highlight the commercial challenges faced and not put out misleading statistics (sorry Tim) to paper over the cracks. I’d also like it to be at the forefront of experimenting with new technology – social networks, online video, personalisation etc.
Conversational – a large part of the value I have received from participation in trade associations has been nothing to do with committees or formal events. Instead it has come from talking to other people who work in the same industry that I do. Some of these are competitors but often they are not. The abiding principle should be that by being open you get more back than you give. An association that encourages conversation and sharing ahead of corporate posturing will always do well.
Charitable – all industries go through periods of upturn and downturn. During the boom times associations should build up reserves and they should not be scared about drawing down these assets in harder times to support bursaries, fellowships and grants. At the recent SIPA conference in Washington regular attendees who were out of work or whose companies were in financial difficulty could apply for their registration fees to be waived. If they were successful there was an implicit understanding that they would support the association in other ways in the future. This has to be a win/win.
Career enhancing – throughout my career I can point to two jobs I have directly got as a result of contacts made through industry associations. At various stages I have heard about members having problems with poaching of staff as a result of contacts made at associations but let’s face it, there are now so many ways to contact employees at competitors. If they’re open to being wooed there’s very little you can do about it. An efficient recruitment site and introduction service should be at the heart of a trade association’s services.
Non – bureaucratic – I was recently involved in a process to review the articles of association for a media trade body. It was enough to make your eyes bleed. I have also sat in committee meetings where there were so many proposers, seconders, yays and nays that I felt I should be wearing a frocked coat and wig. While I understand the need for rules – especially where member dues are involved – surely we can cut out a lot of this bull? Associations should be run like a modern business, with a flat hierarchy and a commitment not to waste your members time or money.
Open & visible – basic marketing here but I bet many of the readers of this blog have never heard of some of the associations I’ve linked to here (logos are clickable). Even if you have heard of them do you really understand the difference between them and the constituent communities they serve? Trade bodies need to make sure they do a much better job of marketing to both members and non-members.
One of the major problems I see is that trade associations are often run like sub-standard media companies. We accept a lot of the quirks because they regularly rely on volunteers or part-time staff. But for people working in the media and communications industry that’s not good enough. Trade associations have a huge role to play in the evolution and development of our industry. Their strength benefits us all.
Comments welcome.
This recent presentation by Steve Outing nails a lot of the issues.
It is now a little over 8 months since I left Incisive Media. At some point in the future I will do a ‘reflections on a post-corporate world’ post, but for the time being I wanted to share some thoughts on what has happened to the media industry this year. I’d also like to discuss where we might be going & highlight some bright spots.
Looking back, I am still amazed that there was any debate about whether this media downturn was cyclical or structural. Patently it was both but companies that didn’t accept this early are undoubtedly the ones who are now panicking the most.
Having said that there are no easy answers here. No-one really knows how the business models are changing online. Even those organisations who waded straight in to structural change have struggled. I remember one commentator describing the process as being like ‘changing the tyres on a moving truck’ – a pretty apposite analogy.
Over the course of the last few months I have been in a lucky position to step back from the coal-face and observe. My work as a board member of SIPA and my tours round medialand in both the UK & US have allowed an interesting perspective. I have seen both the struggles and success stories first hand and, probably because I am not currently affiliated to any company, I think that I have had more open and honest discussions with media business leaders.
The tone of most of those conversations has been one of steely determination to get through it combined with underlying fear that they’re not sure how.
Whichever way you dress things up we’re going into unknown territory. The shift from an analogue to a digital world of content, collaboration and communication is gathering pace. The skill-sets required by media employees are ever changing and the power that many once formidable media brands had is on the wane.
So, should we sell up, give up, go and do something else?
Some would already seem to have chosen that option. Private equity players are suddenly less keen on the sector. Business Week was confirmed to be ‘on the block’ this week. There has even been talk about a sale price of $1 in spite of having nearly one million paid readers!
Reed Elsevier have made no secret about wanting to sell RBI and have now started selling bits off piecemeal & I am speaking to a lot of the media brokerage businesses about publishing assets that are in the pipeline. But, at the same time…
… I am still hearing very positive stories from a lot of publishers whose businesses, while affected by recession, are structurally sound and doing very nicely.
These are the businesses that, on my travels, everyone wants to pick my brains about and so I thought I would point to a few and try to categorise what has made them more robust:
These are just a few examples of media brands which are well positioned in the current economy. There are plenty of other niche and smaller players I have come across that are also growing nicely. It is undoubtedly a challenge but not all doom and gloom.
So, coming back to my original question, should those who currently work in the media all give up and go home?
Some probably should. If you work in an old school media business, and haven’t got the energy to reinvent yourself and your products on an almost continual basis, the next few years aren’t going to be much fun. You should probably look to go off and do something else instead.
If, however, you can learn some lessons from the examples I have listed above then the publishing and media world remains a great place in which to work & an environment which is full of opportunity. I’m looking forward to leaving home and getting back into the fray.
(Photo credit – Columbusneon)
Eventually, I have got round to constructing a proper blogroll. You’ll see some of the sites I enjoy reading added to the right hand column. Generally they focus on media, technology and search but there are a few other random ones in there.
When I first set up this blog it was really only meant to be a way of collating my various activities online. Hence the fact that my blogroll only links to me…
Now, as I have started blogging I realise that this looks incredibly ego-centric. So, over the next couple of weeks I’ll be doing a little spring cleaning and adding a proper blogroll of links to other sites I find interesting.
Generally, I like to follow blogs and news services about the evolution of media markets – especially b2b – but also in newspapers, search and social media marketing.
A while ago I posted some links to various sites I enjoyed. Here are a few more:
Let me know if there are any others you think I’ve missed in the comments.
A really good video interview with Tim Books of Guardian News and Media.
It’s quite long but well worth watching for Tim’s thoughts on newspapers, magazines and the digital evolution.
Unless you have been living under a rock for the last 18 months it cannot have escaped your attention that big changes are afoot in the media world. Changes that have been accelerated by the current recession but most of which would have been taking place anyway. Some traditional revenue lines are under significant pressure, business models require reinvention and technological developments are changing the way our customers both consume information and market their products and services.
Against this backdrop should we all put on a tin hat and hide under the nearest desk?
Instead of adopting the Private Frazer approach I strongly suggest that you get out there, meet your peers and learn from others in the industry. On this basis I would like to recommend 3 upcoming events – all of which I have had some involvement in.
The E-Publishing Innovation Forum. Marriott Regents Park, London. 19-20 May.
This 2 day event is organised by my old division of Incisive Media in conjunction with Outsell. Last year it was one of my favourite events of the year and I wrote about some of the presentations I found particularly enlightening. For 2009 Laura and Lorna have again put together a great programme. Featuring speakers including:
… and many more influential speakers. Click on the title link above to see the full programme.
Entitled ‘Deal with the Now. Navigate the Future’ the SIPA Washington Conference looks set to be a cracker. While I have never been to a Washington conference I am the current chair of SIPA UK and sit on the main board of directors. This year I was asked to programme the online marketing track and am very much looking forward to attending. There’s a great line up over the 3 days including keynotes from:
alongside track presentations from:
and many more over the course of the 3 days.
UK Specialised Information Publishers Association Annual Congress. Tower Hotel, London. 7-8 July.
I finish my tenure as chair of SIPA UK at the end of June and am delighted to hand over to Nick Laight of Canonbury Publishing. Nick’s first job will be to chair the SIPA UK Annual Congress and he has already been working hard to put together a great programme.
One of the sessions I am particularly looking forward to attending is a keynote presentation by Bill Bonner of Agora Publications Inc. Bill’s presentation is entitled “A perfect swarm: total integration marketing” and from what I understand it will outline the concept of combining marketing and editorial pieces to come out incredibly fast in response to topical events in the markets publishers serve. The aim is that within 2 hours of a story breaking pieces are published and marketing promotions are in the hands of prospects – both increasing the topicality and response rates of the promotion and ensuring that the publisher receives the full SEO benefits of their efforts. I can’t wait to hear it.
With roundtables, discussion forums, and tracks on marketing, publishing and content the SIPA UK Congress is without doubt my favourite of the year. Full details are on the link above.
UK edition of Wired launched last week
Last week the UK edition of Wired magazine hit the newsstands for the first time. I have long been a fan of the US version and was interested to see how they had taken the format and adapted it for a UK audience.
Generally I was impressed. It’s a brave company that launches a glossy consumer mag in this environment but the team at Condé Nast have done a pretty good job.
UK Wired kept a lot of things that I liked from the US magazine but toned down the bleeding Sillicon Valley edge – maybe focusing a bit more on design and media instead of gadgets and west coast internet celebrity.
After the launch I was curious about what others were saying about the magazine and so did a quick Twitter search to see feedback from others. Again, it generally seemed to be fairly complimentary and a lot of people were talking about the possibility of subscribing – in fact I was one of them.
But I haven’t.
Now this doesn’t mean that I won’t. In fact Condé Nast have some pretty attractive subscription options and competitions for new subscribers that I still might take advantage of but the chances of me doing so are getting lower by the day.
You see the main problem that consumer publishers have is that they lose direct contact with their prospects. No matter how good a job the Condé Nast marketers and PR machine have done to get me to buy the first edition they have no idea that I did so and have therefore lost any ability to follow up.
It got me thinking about what I would do differently if launching the magazine.
My first job would be to build buzz in the run up to the launch. Now this should be fairly easy. There aren’t many high profile magazine launches around at the moment & the topic areas are eminently ‘PRable’. I’m sure Condé Nast have a team of in house and agency PR’s who can do this job in their sleep but I was slightly disappointed in their use of social and online media.
This for example was the magazine’s Twitter feed. It only went live on the day the first edition hit the streets and even now, nearly a week later, there are no real conversations taking place. And where are the Facebook / LinkedIn pages for fans to congregate and show support? – they may be there somewhere but I couldn’t find them and there are no links from the magazine’s webpages.
Now, how about that webpage? What’s it for? There are some nice articles on there and a video introducing the magazine from the Editor but really; what’s it for?
As I have said already the major disadvantage the consumer publications have is that they lack direct contact with their customers – who generally purchase via a newsagent. The website should be a great way to get round this. It should be used to capture information about customers and prospects and it should offer a chance for dialogue. There is a section that asks you to ‘Join Wired‘ but what is that and why should I?
What I would like to see here is that data capture becomes the primary purpose of the page. With the buzz you can make about the launch I would be disappointed if a decent B2B marketing team couldn’t get tens of thousands of people to register on these pages – what about a free downloadable white paper, a regular weekly e-mail alert or even a free sample of the first issue? There have been lots of great books written about creating effective landing pages, it’s not difficult but is so important.
At the same time a lot of people are already going to be converts. Let’s get their money now & lock them in before launch with a special charter offer for anyone who subscribes by the end of March. The website already pushes subscription options widely but there’s no urgent call to action. When you get through to their subscription landing page it hardly inspires the customer (one of the problems with subscription bureau that try to standardise everything). I bet it has a high bounce rate.
I’ll leave this post here. But let’s assume that it is now 2 weeks before the first edition hits the newsstands. We have 60,000 people registered via our webpages, 12,000 charter subscribers and active communities on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other social networks. Now the real fun of launch starts – I’ll come back to it in part 2 (and also let you know if I’ve subscribed yet).
I really enjoyed SIPA’s Online Marketing conference yesterday. We had sessions covering social media, developing online stores, best practice e-mail marketing, monetising online communities, mobile, video & podcasting. Thanks very much to the speakers from Electric Word, AI Digital, E-Consultancy, Nature, Magicalia, Incisive Media, Communicator, Euromoney & Babyworld.
While all the presentations were great the one session which got me thinking most was from Chris Blake, the Chairman of babyworld.co.uk. Chris highlighted some of the history of Babyworld from a launch in 1998 with £750K of seed capital to the sale one year later to Freeserve for £3.7m and the subsequent re-purchase in 2004 for £1. It was a great story.
The site is a direct rival of other parenting publications like Mother & Baby (published by Bauer). Mother & Baby has a circulation of just over 50,000 print copies & 166,000 unique users. By contrast Babyworld is generating nearly 560,000 uniques per month.
While Babyworld is operating like many other specialist media sites – publishing guides, news, reviews & forums for new parents – the really interesting thing that they are doing is operating as a full retail outlet. Not just acting as an affiliate but taking orders, stocking and despatching goods.
From their base in Oxfordshire Chris and his team run a warehouse and shop with stocks of buggies, car seats, clothing etc. They take advertising as well but from the figures shared it looked like they were generating over 70% of their revenue from the direct sale of goods.
Now this is interesting on a load of different levels. It harks back to a previous post I made about the commercial future for newspapers that were successful in driving a lot of traffic but were not able to monetise that traffic effectively. Maybe publishers need to start looking at their business from a very different perspective and, if we believe that the advertising model is broken, consider retail?
Another quick plug for a great SIPA event in London tomorrow.
Come along – there are still a few places free.
It’s the Cheltenham Festival this week – the real start of the year. I’ll be there Thursday & Friday if anyone’s around. Can’t wait.
Another day; another set of results. This time the Q4 results from Thomson Reuters which seem to be pretty robust.
You can listen to Tom Glocer on his investor call here but I wanted to highlight a couple of very similar comments to those heard in the Reed Elsevier call the other day (not direct quotes).
Worth a listen.
In my last post I had a look at Reed Elsevier’s results presentation and suggested that the real growth area of business media was in building tools and workflow solutions for customers. It is an area that a lot of B2B media companies highlight as part of their strategy and an area that I was working to develop with Incisive Media before I left the company.
Whilst you will hear plenty of senior publishing figures talk about ‘embedding their products in their customer’s workflow’ & ensuring that they are providing resilient ‘must-have’ information; in my experience very few of the people working in business media have much of an idea of what this involves.
I do not claim to be an expert on the subject but my interest was really piqued at an e-Publishing innovation forum which my division organised in May 2008.
One of our presenters, Josh Bottomley, MD of LexisNexis, explained how his company had evolved from providing information in print; to print and online; to print, online and knowledge driven solutions. Josh showed several examples of how these products were developed and the commercial results in terms of subscription fees which could be charged and renewal rates that were achieved when you get these products right.
One example I remember him using was for the process of residential conveyancing. He showed a flowchart of what was involved for a solicitor undertaking this task on behalf of a client. The flowchart mapped all of the forms that needed completing, in what order and with the relevant points where they had to go outside the firm for relevant bits of information – land registry searches etc. A lot of these tasks were relatively menial but time consuming and each was being carried out in a fairly regimented fashion over and over again. By spending time with solicitors to map this process LexisNexis could start to look at ways in which they could automate and speed up the tasks.
Josh explained that the process was very much an iterative one. Researchers sat with clients to watch and document all the tasks they undertook. These were then presented back to the research participants in a flowchart to check that nothing had been missed. The agreed flowchart was then used as the basis for creating a technology driven solution – ideally embedding some of the proprietary data that LexisNexis already held – that could be presented back to the client on a subscription basis.
The aim was to create a product that sat on the desktop of their community. A product where it was easy to demonstrate the ROI of their spend. A product that their community couldn’t do without – real ‘must-have’ information.
Josh was at pains to point out that just producing a fantastic product didn’t guarantee its implementation. A large part of LexisNexis’ job was to push the concept of behavioural change within the end-user organisations. However, when they worked, these knowledge driven solutions were incredibly successful.
It was interesting that Sir Crispin Davis highlighted this area as a real focus of investment at Reed Elsevier in his results presentation – specifically mentioning a research performance visualiser for academic institutions and a tool for the health service that allowed easy ranking and trend information for the performance of their staff.
I believe knowledge driven solutions may well be a phrase you hear a lot more about once business media companies are able to come up for air. As news distribution, recruitment and advertising models struggle to grow – even in buoyant markets – the search is on for an area of reinvention.
Subscription based workflow products could be the solution.
Over my years in business publishing I have always loved monitoring the reporting season for publicly quoted media companies. You gain an enormous amount of insight into the broader trends in the industry & it gives a much better perspective into the general market conditions – away from your particular coal face.
Today, one of the largest business media companies – Reed Elsevier – announced its results and Sir Crispin Davis, their outgoing CEO gave his commentary on the numbers. For anyone involved in business media it’s worth a listen.
Reed Elsevier is obviously a robust and well managed company. Their results today, and the reaction of their share price to those results, clearly show that Reed is a lot more resilient to market conditions than other business media organisations.
Why is this?
Sure, they have scale & a depth of resources but ultimately they are serving many markets that other publishers also try to serve – the legal sector, pharma, insurance etc. It’s just that they are serving these communities in a very different way.
The vast majority of Reed Elsevier’s revenues and profits do not come from a ‘buyer meets seller’ introduction service that a lot of publishers cling to. Instead they are providing valuable data and workflow solutions that help their customers do their jobs better, more efficiently, with more transparency and faster.
This is the growth sector of business media. This is the reason that Reed Elsevier have been trying to sell RBI. And this is the reason why they have announced today that they are taking £100m of costs out of the RBI business between now and 2011 in further preparation for a sale.
I wouldn’t be surprised if next time the sale comes around Reed Exhibitions aren’t added to the pot.
A quick plug for an event which SIPA are hosting at the end of Feb in London.
There are lots of these type of events around at the moment but this will actively focus on the specialist media community.
It is designed to be very interactive and limited to 20 participants. Hosted by Robin Crumby of Melcrum Publishing. Details here.
