How I do it – article from Flashes & Flames

This is the copy of an article published on Flashes & Flames – an industry website from Colin Morrison. It’s a subscription service which is well worth subscribing to if you are involved in the media and information industry.

Rory Brown was CEO and a co-founder of the UK-based AgriBriefing which was acquired by food price specialist Mintec last month, almost 13 years after being launched as MediaBriefing. The price was an estimated £275mn (c20x EBITDA).

A startup (with ex Reed and UBM executive Neil Thackray) had begun in 2010 as a publisher of media industry analysis and organiser of highly-rated digital conferences. It shifted into medical and agriculture publishing through the £10mn acquisition of Farmers Guardian and Pulse medical weekly from UBM. It quickly narrowed down into food-farming, principally in the UK. Then came the climb up the value chain with the acquisition of coveted Price Reporting Agencies (PRA), notably in France and the US.

In 2021, AgriBriefing sold its UK business including Farmers Guardian to Arc Media Holdings for £20.5mn (10 x EBITDA) in order to became a data business.

Along the way, it had been funded by three cycles of private equity investment, each of whose participants enjoyed the sharply rising price multiples for a company transformed from an advertising-funded B2B magazine publisher into a subscription-rich PRA.

To confirm the soaring values of PRAs – and the wisdom of AgriBriefing’s strategy navigation – a majority of Mintec itself was sold a year ago for an estimated enterprise value of £210mn – 16x revenue, 32x EBITDA. AgriBriefing’s own exit price is believed to have been 3x its last funding round in 2019.

Previously, Brown had been a marketing, research and managing director variously for Metal Bulletin, Middle East Economic Digest, Risk Waters and Incisive Media. He had graduated in geography from Newcastle University, in the UK.

“I’m excited for what’s next”

What were your earliest ambitions?

To be honest, I cannot remember ever having any career ambitions. My father was managing director of a division of Tate & Lyle and disappeared to Africa for about four months of the year working on agricultural projects. My mother was a Russian-speaking spook at MI5 (Britain’s secret service) who also ran an antique stall on Portobello Road at weekends (almost certainly a cover). They were not around much and I had to be very independent from an early age, but the world of work was not on my radar, and I had no concept of ever ‘wanting to be something’ when I grew up.

What, when and how was your first job in media? 

My first job in media was as a marketing assistant at what was then an obscure company called Metal Bulletin. When I joined, it was a relatively small, privately-owned twice-weekly magazine publisher of metals and steel prices. It was not glamorous in any way. But, to my friends, I traded on the fact that I worked in ‘marketing’ for a ‘media’ company. During the 10 years I was there, the company listed on the London Stock Exchange and expanded rapidly. We bought a series of companies around the world, expanding further into the financial sector with the first database of hedge fund performance, and my share options soared in value as the business became a stock market darling.

I became fascinated not only with the job at hand but the whole business of B2B media and information. I learned from some great people – Di Little (who first took a chance on me), Tom Hempenstall the CEO and Phil Baker who joined as Marketing Director. I met my wife, Sarah, there and made some lifelong friends. But I was more interested in my social life than my career. My 20s are ‘a bit of a blur’ but, somehow, I kept on being given more responsibility. I became a half-decent copywriter, had my first exposure to management and grew my skills as a commercially-focused marketer.

In the mid-1990s, I was heavily involved in the first wave of B2B websites. It was an energising time, full of promise & entrepreneurial ideas. I would scour the annual reports and strategy presentations of the major publishers for tips and insight. I also became heavily involved with one of the industry trade associations – learning business models and techniques that worked for specialist/niche subscription publishers in the US and around the world. 

Like everyone else at the time, I had my own naïve plans to launch an internet business fuelled by seeing the purchase of digital start-ups at Metal Bulletin (and the valuations they commanded). Unfortunately, someone else had the same idea and executed it much better.

What were your highlights before launching Briefing Media? 

After leaving Metal Bulletin, I spent seven months at Middle East Economic Digest (MEED), then published by EMAP Plc, working on subs and digital development before joining Risk Waters – a specialist group for the risk management and fintech sector – as marketing director. Suddenly I was responsible for a global team of 70 product and events marketers with a large direct telesales team. I was in my early 30s and realised that I had developed a half decent career despite ‘dicking around’ for a decade. What would happen if I really went for it? How far could I go?

At Risk, I fundamentally restructured the department, built a great team of senior managers and put marketing firmly at the centre of the commercial activities for the group. We were winning but also dealt with a lot – including the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks (Risk Waters was holding a conference on the top floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center on that fateful day). 

Despite the challenges, the business grew strongly through the dotcom bust and ended up being acquired by Incisive Media in 2003. I became marketing director for the combined group – and the real fun began. Incisive Media had a very different culture from the other places I had worked. Tim Weller, the founder, was /is a maverick. A wheeler dealer investment banker in disguise as a publishing CEO. He explained over lunch the strategy of the group. What he was trying to build and how. I’m not sure I understood most of it but I was sold, nonetheless.

Incisive was on a real growth spurt and I started becoming involved in diligence projects for acquisitions. In 2005, we bought a business in the US called Search Engine Strategies. It had a very different business model, with highly trafficked and optimised websites supporting multi-million-dollar confexes for anyone who was trying to understand the opportunities to promote their businesses via search engines. We would host many thousands of search engine marketers at events in Silicon Valley, Chicago, New York, across Europe and in China. Google was starting to challenge Yahoo for search dominance, and they were desperately trying to out-promote each other and win share.

Because I was the most senior marketer at Incisive, they asked me to integrate the operations and then to run the business full time. It was stressful. I was effectively commuting back and forth across the Atlantic for 2½ years, but I learned so much. It felt like doing an accelerated MBA on the job. I was exposed to a new world and met some great and really interesting people along the way.

How did you become an entrepreneur? 

During this period, I felt I was getting an exclusive insight into a different B2B media model. One with digital communities at its heart. I began thinking about how I could build my own business and started a personal blog talking about the opportunities I saw. By then Incisive was backed by Apax and had bought the UK operations of VNU. I was given what was known as the information division to run. We organised the Online Information Show and I set up a new event called the ePublishing Innovation Forum in 2007 looking at different models for digital media. 

The entrepreneurial flame was alight but, as is often the case, it took an external event to push me over the line. The financial crisis of 2008 hit Incisive hard, and I was made redundant. It is never nice to be told your job is disappearing. But, in many ways, I was delighted. Here was a lump of seed money and the chance to put some ideas into practice.

I initially looked at several ‘old media’ properties to buy and built a decent network in the corporate finance industry with brokers and bankers. During this time, I came across a kindred spirit, Neil Thackray, and we decided to try something new together. We launched a site called TheMediaBriefing with a plan to build up a series of digital communities using semantic search/natural language processing to scale without the cost base of traditional media. We did OK as a ‘kitchen table start up’ launching events, research reports and awards to the community we had built but soon realised that we needed to scale faster. It was taking too long.

In 2012, an old discussion with UBM about buying some of their traditional trade assets came to fruition and we acquired Farmers Guardian and Pulse (a magazine for medical doctors) with the backing of a small private equity firm. Rupert Levy joined as our CFO and we now had the scale and the team required. A customer base and a decent margin to play with. We set about a reinvention of the business.

When did you realise your company would be successful? 

That initial period was intense but great fun. Nothing was scary but it was very hard work. The challenge was not only about adapting business models but also changing the mindset of our great teams. Re-programming them. We explained that their job was no longer to produce a magazine but rather to ‘help their communities do their jobs better’. Publishing a print title might be part of that offering but it was not the end of the task. 

This opened a whole load of new possibilities. We launched data services, digital tools, events and a membership proposition. We bought a small tradeshow called LAMMA and an agri-commodity newswire. Doubling the profits of what had already been a high-margin business along the way. We felt we had succeeded; the business had a sense of purpose and energy again and it culminated in us delivering nearly 4x money to our original investors in a secondary deal. After just three years.

The question then was ‘what’s next?’ 

How easy was it to develop the Price Reporting Agencies? 

By that time, we had decided to concentrate on just one market – agriculture. We sold Pulse and our media strategy events.We discussed with our new investors the opportunity to internationalise and to move away from just a focus on farmers, further up and down the supply chain for agriculture.

A business based in France (Feedinfo) came up for sale that had a focus on spot pricing for nutritional additives for animal feed. It was a $20bn traded market but was very opaque with only Feedinfo providing any transparency for the markets. This felt very much like my time at Metal Bulletin, I could see the opportunities and we bought it. This was the big turning point and the start of the evolution of the company into a PRA (Price Reporting Agency). We re-branded as AgriBriefing (deliberately removing the word media from our name).

Feedinfo flew. We set about professionalising the business – appropriate technology, product and sales teams, internationalisation… We quickly doubled the size of it, rapidly expanding the commodities covered and launching an global conference series for leaders in the industry. It was great and a lot easier to forecast and manage than an ad supported business. We wanted more…

In all other commodity sectors, there were large, established PRA’s – Argus, S&P, FastMarkets, ICIS etc. In the agri-food sector, there wasn’t a real leader and that was clearly a huge opportunity.

With the help of our investors and a strategy consultancy we spent the next 12 months mapping the world for other companies we could add to the group, knocking on doors and telling our story. This led to the acquisition of Urner Barry, a family-owned protein pricing business in North America with 160 years of data covering nearly 4,000 proprietary prices for red meat, poultry, eggs and seafood. Again, this was a great business that just needed an external impetus to realise its potential. The focus of AgriBriefing was changing, and the pricing segment was becoming dominant with high-value, enterprise subscriptions now our main revenue source.

What did it feel like to sell the UK business? 

In 2019, we went to market again to change investors. It was clear during that process that, while all our activities were in the agribusiness space, we were effectively running two very different businesses. The UK media and events side, centred on Farmers Guardian and LAMMA (an ag machinery and services exhibition at the NEC), was great and still very profitable but we were starting to have to make excuses for it. It dragged our valuation down. The investor community were much more excited about the dynamics of our price reporting assets. We knew that the next time around we had to simplify the story.

Covid then ‘got in the way a bit’, but we continued to acquire – with Stratégie Grains joining the group in 2021. That was just before we started a process to sell our UK business, concluding a deal with Simon Foster’s Arc Network in the summer of that year. 

It was clearly the right thing do but, nevertheless, it was very hard to say goodbye to the team who had helped us build the company. 

Farmers Guardian has been around for over 170 years. I like to think that our 10-year period in charge fundamentally reinvigorated it and kept it relevant. But I am very conscious that we are only ever temporary custodians of some of these great brands.

What’s your advice to anyone contemplating a pe-backed startup? 

I have worked in private equity-backed media/information businesses for the past 15 years and have found it the most creative and fulfilling environment of my career. Even when it went wrong at Incisive Media!

The most important thing is to start from the right place. You must have a robust platform (either launched or acquired) upon which to grow. You also must pick the right partner for the stage of the journey you are at. The advice I would give anyone contemplating a pe-backed business is to start with the end in mind. Have a clear vision of what you are trying to build, simplify it into a few bullet points and try not to get distracted from that mission. It’s OK for your strategy to evolve and adapt, but you must have a core belief to which you stay true – your north star.

Understand what drives value. Why is £1 of advertising revenue worth so much less than £1 of enterprise subscription revenue? How can you take something and not just grow the business but also benefit from some form of multiple arbitrage? What can you do at pace and where is the best return for your effort. What are the KPI’s you need to measure – is there a ‘hero metric’ that can cut out some of the noise? Are there any companies you could buy to accelerate your progress?  Have you picked a sector with resilience because the economic environment will inevitably change during your ownership period? 

Which companies do you most admire?

In listed media, I admire what Duncan Painter has done at Ascential, what Zillah Byng-Thorne has done with Future and what Mike Danson is building at Global Data. I appreciate brave transformation and reinvention – especially when carried out under the glare of regular public reporting.

But, above all, I applaud every single one of the specialist media, data and information services businesses that most have never heard of, but which command hugely-important positions in the industries they serve. These are my people.

Outside of media, there are a few obvious ones, the FAANGs of this world who have created new categories or radically simplified things that used to be difficult. However, it is the curse of several of these businesses that they start to be seen as evil as they scale and abuse their power (directly or indirectly) in the market.

What are the best lessons you have learned?

• Always start with putting the customer at the centre of what you do. How can you help them, entertain them, educate them, solve a problem, make them more money, save them time etc. Research directly with them, spend a day in their shoes, ask for feedback constantly. If you start from there, you will find a way to build a profitable business.
• There’s riches in the niches (said in an American accent).
• Work at pace, build a great team around you and network like crazy in your industry and further afield – every meeting and connection will pay back in ways you often couldn’t anticipate at the time.
• In subscriptions, you only ever make money from renewals. Retention is everything.
• Do your diligence properly – on the business, acquisitions, partners, investors and product launches. Don’t be afraid to spend money to buy in the right external expertise that can speed up your journey, but also put in the time yourself.
• Deliver your numbers, everything is a lot easier if you do.
• Don’t work with clones of you. But do choose to work with people you respect and want to be around. Build the right culture.
• Anticipate problems and be open about them early. No one (especially investors) like surprises but generally people love and feel flattered about being asked for their ideas to help fix things.

The final bit of advice I would give is that, if you fancy an entrepreneurial journey, try to start early. Time is precious. Youth might be wasted on the young, but experience is also wasted on the old…

What’s next?

In January this year, shortly after making our sixth acquisition (Tropical Research Services) we announced the sale of AgriBriefing to Mintec.

Over the course of a decade, AgriBriefing had built a company over 20x the size of our original investment. And what a ride it has been, transforming a sleepy traditional media business into a fast-growth and dynamic global price reporting agency. The combined Mintec-AgriBriefing company becomes by far and away the largest PRA focused on the agri-food sector globally and it is a deal which is much more than the sum of its parts.

This is a fantastic combination for our customers, staff and investors but I will shortly be stepping back from an executive role in the company. 

I firmly believe the combined business is on track to be a multi-billion-dollar enterprise in the very near future. I plan to remain involved both as an investor and in an advisory role on the other side. However, for the first time in the last decade I have been able to lift my head a bit and consider what comes next.

Several people I respect have suggested taking some time out, but I am already getting itchy feet. I get my kicks from working and from new challenges. I like getting my hands dirty and it is all about the intellectual challenge of learning something new. I am lucky to have always been a generalist. My world is specialist media, data, information and subscriptions rather than any particular end-user market and I cannot wait to get involved again.

So, lots of meetings, lunches, dinners, drinks and possible projects to discuss. 

I’m excited for what’s next.

British Media Awards 2012 Video

When we launched The Media Briefing we wanted to use it to recognise innovation and excellence across the industry.

As part of our related programme we decided to also launch an awards programme.

The inaugural British Media Awards were held at Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium on April 26th 2012 with huge support from all sectors.

Here is a short video of the highlights.

British Media Awards 2012 – the video highlights

The winners on the night were:

• Social Media and Marketing Innovation: N-Photo, Future
• Online Advertising Innovation: The Economist, for its Phillips campaign
• Paid Content Innovation: Lloyds List Group, Informa Business Information
• Most Innovative Technology for Media Owners: Scribble Live
• Consumer Magazine Innovator of the Year: N-Photo, Future
• B2B Innovator of the year: Estates Gazette, Reed Business Information
• Best Use of Mobile: British Journal of Photography, Incisive Media
• Commercial Team of the Year: InSkin Media
• Digital Media Innovator of the Year: InSkin Media
• Media Innovator of the Year: Carla Buzasi, Huffington Post UK
• Media Company of the Year: The Economist

Well done to all those winners and the short-listed companies. We’re already looking forward to next year.

TheMediaBriefing’s Paywall Strategies Conference in Video

Following the TechCrunch / Aol fall out…

Apologies for the lack of posts here recently. Most of my thoughts are being posted as columns on TheMediaBriefing.

Today I wrote a column on the site asking if big media companies will ever be able to successfully absorb digital media entrepreneurs into their corporate structures. Is it inevitable that the founder will leave? and can anyone point to success stories?

You can read the column here.  

I’d be interested to hear your views – either in the comments section of the article itself or over on our thriving LinkedIn group.

Rory.

What advice would you give to a younger you entering the media industry?

I’m starting to write more regular columns for TheMediaBriefing. If you want to follow them please head over to the site – and while you’re at it sign up for some of the weekly newsletters.

My last column followed a question on our LinkedIn group where I asked “If you could go back in time and meet yourself as a fresh-faced graduate about to enter the media industry, what advice would you give?”.

We got some fantastic responses and I have added some of my own thoughts as well. Check it out.

http://www.themediabriefing.com/article/2011-07-07/what-advice-would-you-give-a-younger-you-themediabriefing-readers-share-tips-for-young-professionals

Let’s go back to the 90’s…

A quick story (please bear with me here  friends…)

Imagine it is 1997

Back in 1997 I was running a small marketing team for a global B2B publishing company.

We were developing online versions of our print publications & starting to experiment further with e-mail marketing.

Web sites were very unsophisticated – tending to be little more than facsimile versions of our magazines. There was very little interaction with readers and we really treated the Internet just as a distribution channel rather than a great disruptor of business models.

We had little idea of the emerging advertising/sponsorship models. Pricing decisions were agreed without any science or bundled in with physical products. User data was rarely gathered or intelligently used.

Remind you of anything?

Let’s fast-forward to today. We have a new and fast growing development in media consumption. The mobile web.

With the increasing penetration of smartphones, tablets, eReaders, apps and mobile enabled websites, all the rules are changing again.

Media companies are facing the same challenges that they faced in the 90’s and I know from personal experience that many are going to be taken by surprise by the speed at which things are moving.

All too often significant decisions about mobile are being left to tech teams or rushed into as part of a ‘me too’ stampede to get a press release out about ‘our latest app’.

STOP. You need to spend some proper time setting your mobile strategy..

Rob Grimshaw, the Managing Director of the FT’s digital operations said recently that he expected 50% of the FT’s digital readers to access content via a mobile device within the next 2 years.

That’s a fundamental shift in consumption habits and really shows that the mobile web has arrived.

The commercial realities associated with this shift in consumption mean that everyone in media needs to be involved in mobile product development – tech; marketing; sales and content creators.

Set the right strategy. Right now.

On June 14th The Media Briefing will be holding our second major conference.

Mobile Media Strategies takes place at The King’s Fund in London’s West End and will hear from some of the most innovative companies in the mobile field.

Companies including: Thomson Reuters * BBC Magazines * Guardian News & Media * The Economist * Incisive Media * Telegraph Media Group * Screen Digest * comScore * Microsoft * YUDU Media * Bonnier * DK Books * BSkyB * ImpulsePay & MobileTech.

There’s a fantastic line up of attendees already confirmed (here’s a link to our advance delegate list) & we have limited places still available.

Register today

The mobile media marketplace is developing so quickly. There are huge opportunities for the companies that can stay ahead of the curve. Register for Mobile Media Strategies today and we’ll help you on your way.

The Media Briefing nominated for 2 major awards

I was delighted to hear recently that our new company had been shortlisted for 2 major awards by the Association of Online Publishers in the UK.

It’s quite an achievement for a young, growing business like ours.

The awards we are nominated for are:

• Patrick Smith – TheMediaBriefing’s Editor & Chief Analyst is shortlisted for Digital Editorial Individual 2011
• Briefing Media – is shortlisted as Independent Digital Publisher of the Year

When you look at the shortlists and see that we’re up against representatives of AOL, Emap, Econsultancy, The Guardian, IPC, UBM & News International it really puts into perspective how far we’ve come in the last 12 months.

As we’ve built the business I have kept in mind some advice given at launch. Something I’d like to pass on.

I can’t remember who it from but I was told to make sure “to spend 95% of your time on content and relationships”. Everything else was likely to be a distraction.

That advice has proven to be invaluable and I’d like to thank all those who have worked with us along the way (you can see I’m already practising the acceptance speech…).

Looking forward to the dinner on 9th June & hearing how we get on.

Quick plug:

If you work for a media business and are looking at the opportunities for the mobile development of your brands you should come along to Mobile Media Strategies in London on the 14th June.

We have a fantastic line up of attendees already confirmed and it’s an area of crucial importance for all media firms. You really should come along – there are early-bird tickets available until May 20th.

United Business Media, Informa and Reed Elsevier results – the health of big B2B media?

I know. I’m a bit odd. But I love ‘results season’.

Watching the results come through from the big media firms you get a unique perspective on how the industry is shaping up. They give you a pretty forensic view of markets, strategy and platforms. An overview you never usually get unless you’re employed directly in those firms.

In previous years I have covered the results of UBM, Informa and Reed Elsevier individually on this blog. This year I’ve been a bit busy building our new business – The Media Briefing – so it wasn’t until today that I got a chance to catch up and watch the board presentations to analysts.

Each year I try not to read analysts reports or look at share-price movements. I don’t claim to be a financial analyst. Instead I am far more interested in:

1. How the strategy is presented
2. What levels of confidence are the management team giving off
3. Which parts of the business show opportunity or weakness
4. Are there any wider industry trends being highlighted

After watching the webcasts this is my feeling about the health of the big three.

Reed were the first of the companies to release their results. You can view the full report and view the webcast here.

Reed have been through the wringer in recent years. Chief executives have come and gone. Reed Business Information has been up for sale and then not. The company has spent big to buy a ‘non-traditional’ media company – Choicepoint. There have been continual questions about Reed Exhibitions…

All of this has meant that the analyst presentations have been made very much on the back foot.

This year Erik Engstrom was able to put on a more confident show. You could almost see his relief.

Broadly the company’s results were fairly static year on year with a small growth in revenue and a small decline in profits. On the surface, stable.

But under the surface there are clearly some big issues. The main one seemed to be the weakness of the Lexis Nexis part of the business and the high level of investment required. The legal markets are obviously still struggling, the Westlaw platform seems to be taking market share and their profits were down 12%.

It was interesting that the Choicepoint part of the business had managed to grow margins from 24% at the time of aquisition to a staggering 38% now. At the same time Lexis Nexis margins were just 14%.

So, what I took away from the Reed presentation was a perception of a company still very much in transition. Choicepoint and the re-bound of the exhibition business were collectively masking some deep underlying problems in Lexis Nexis and the continual re-positioning of Reed Business Information.

Informa’s results felt more predictable. They are still benefitting from cost control measures implemented across the business – especially in the events field where it is easier for a conference and training company to quickly cut marginal events and overheads.

Overall Informa had flat revenues but a decent growth in profits. Peter Rigby and his management team projected confidence and an uncomplicated outlook for the business. Clearly there are still challenges – for renewals in academic markets and Datamonitor sales – but this is a company firmly looking forwards.

They will continue to focus on large events, geo-clone successful formats to new territories and move subscription products up the value chain.

A theme that came from the presentation was that Informa were concentrating on premium intelligence and increasingly looking at enterprise sales of subscription content. I hear this more and more from business media companies as they search for the ‘holy grail’ of data and ‘workflow’ based products. The move from providing information to intelligence…

All in all I felt that Informa were the strongest and most confident of the 3 companies.  They announced unequivocally that they “would have a good 2011” and that “interesting acquisition opportunities were opening up”. Their debt was under control and Adam Walker joked that for the first time in a long while the phrase “under-leveraged” had been used to describe them in an investor meeting.

We recently interviewed Peter Rigby on TheMediaBriefing and asked him what worried him most. His answer was geo-political risk and so I suppose that whilst the company seems strong he is keeping a close eye on events in the Middle East.

The UBM results yesterday (1 March) were the most intriguing. Last year I wrote about a company that was weathering the global storm pretty successfully. I suggested that they were transforming themselves steadily – and via a long stream of acquisitions – into an emerging markets exhibition company.

It’s pretty easy to understand the strategy here. Whatever is happening in individual business verticals it appears clear that the strength of growth over the next 10 years is going to come from the emerging economies of, in particular, the Asia Pacific and Indian sub-continent. Exhibitions are a market that really benefits from scale and by acting as a consolidator I thought UBM was putting itself in a good position.

A strategy of acquiring assets in these regions – as well as the Americas – seems sensible and David Levin has always impressed me as a no-nonsense leader of the business.

But…

… looking at their analysts presentation today gave me some cause for concern. In spite of the company’s “fastest rate of revenue growth in a decade” their profits were flat. This was put down to an increasing investment in new products, sales and IT systems but I suspect it is much more than that.

There was an emphasis on ‘targeting, distribution and monitoring’  (PR Newswire) side of the business that I hadn’t seen before. I cannot see how the margins for this type of service are not going to be adversely affected by the easier distribution of information online and social media. In previous presentations I got the feeling that this service was not seen as core to UBM’s future.

Likewise the focus on virtual events and development of better marketing services with print and online platforms combining to generate leads for sponsors was different. I suspect that the old CMP business is really struggling.

There was also the announcement of the sale of The Publican (and some related brands) at what sounded a virtual fire sale price compared to the valuations it enjoyed relatively recently.

I suspect what has been happening at UBM is that everyone has been extremely busy running around acquiring and integrating businesses. I know from bitter experience what a time-consuming task this can be – especially in overseas markets – and it must have been a significant management distraction. One which wasn’t helped by the global downturn and writedown of the print portfolio.

UBM’s analyst presentation was by far the most confused of the three. It felt over-long and complicated. Sometimes less is more and the clear strategy that they had shown last year seemed to have been muddied.

David Levin also gave an exclusive interview to TheMediaBriefing in October last year in which he highlighted the fact that there would be inevitable ups and downs for the company. I can’t help but feel that UBM could do with a period of stability to really concentrate upon building a world-class emerging markets events business.

I admire the company and am a long-term shareholder but David’s assertion that the re-focus of the company was done had a bit of a hollow ring to it.

Paywall Strategies 2011 – an overview of our first conference

Apologies for the lack of activity on this blog over recent weeks / months. I have been knee-deep building our new business – Briefing Media Ltd.

We organised our first conference last week – on digital publishing models and how media owners can best monetise their online content.

I thought it went pretty well. There was a very senior and engaged audience and we aim to make the event an annual one.

Now on to the next projects – a new website for the telecoms industry and a conference in June on Mobile Publishing Strategies for Media Owners.

Here’s a video overview of last week.

A quick update on how my new business is going

I wrote a quick piece on TheMediaBriefing today talking about how the new business is going and sharing some stats from our first 10 weeks.

We also announced our first conference: Paywall Strategies 2011 – looking at how to monetise content online. Paywalls, registration systems and freemium models.

I hope that readers of this blog will be able to come along. There’s a great programme – and we even offer a money-back guarantee off your registration fees if you don’t love it!

My top tips for getting ahead in the media business – or any other for that matter…

About a month ago I did a short video interview for Propeller – a media PR firm in London.

I really went in to give them an overview of our new business The Media Briefing but they asked me to do a quick film for their talking heads series.

I was asked for my top tips for getting ahead in the media business & also my most embarrassing moment.

Here’s mine – but you can also see other far more worthy opinions.

Paid Content – it’s not about ideology but rather strategy and execution

This month the news has been awash with stories about paywalls – particularly the initial results of News International’s experiment with The Times and Sunday Times.

The numbers have been pored over enough by now but I would highlight Clay Shirky’s analysis (together with the comments) as being a ‘go to’ article on the subject. You can also follow a wide range of debate on The Times’ page on TheMediaBriefing.

To my mind though the problem with the paywall debate so far is that it largely seems to be centred on ideology. Murdoch shouts that quality journalism has to be paid for. Alan Rusbridger talks about the ‘mutualisation’ of content at The Guardian. Arianna Huffington stresses the importance of being part of the ‘link economy’. Really the debate has to be about business. Hard cash. Making profits.

So, quietly, and with little fanfare I was interested to read the results of the business publisher Euromoney, released today. There’s been no Twitter frenzy of comments. No polemic pieces about search engines stealing content. In fact I bet the majority of people reading this post would struggle to name either their Chief Executive or any of their major products. As I write this Robert Andrews of PaidContent seems to have been the only journalist or web commentator to cover them.

But, let’s have a look at some of the highlights and key phrases from their statement:

Adjusted profit before tax up 37% to £86.6m – a record

Adjusted operating margin improved from 25% to 30%

The resilience of subscription income, combined with a good recovery in advertising and sponsorship revenues… produce record profits…

These record profits, coming so soon after some of the toughest and most volatile financial markets in many years, underline the success of the group’s strategy to build a more robust and higher quality information business

…strategy continues to be executed through increasing the proportion of revenues derived from subscription products; accelerating the online migration of its print products as well as developing new electronic information services; investing in products of the highest quality that customers will value in tough times as well as good; eliminating products with a low margin or too high a dependence on advertising

In the announcement you’ll see no mention of ideology or waiting to see how business models settle down online. Instead you see a business talking about strategy, implementation and driving profits.

Sure, Euromoney’s traditional business model is in the midst of disruption. They talk about a changing emphasis from advertising to subscriptions and about a migration from print to online. They share many of the challenges that other media businesses face. But the customer-focused approach to these challenges has been to see the opportunity created by a move online and shape the business to take full advantage.

I know a lot of the people at Euromoney, admire the company greatly and have been a long-time shareholder. When higher profile media companies talk about how they can monetise their content online they would be well advised to pay a bit more attention to their B2B cousins. The lessons I would say that newspapers could learn from companies like Euromoney are:

• Accept that the world has changed and the things that customers will pay for online are very different from those which they did in print.
• Invest in those new information products and make them of the highest quality.
• Never set a strategy based upon ideological principles. It must be about profits.
• Plan for the long-term.
• Realise that whatever business strategy you do set will ultimately depend on great execution – maybe you should be going out and poaching those B2B marketers and publishers who really understand user-centred product development, detailed subscription acquisition/retention/upsell/cross-sell programmes and lifetime value calculations?

For any media business currently planning their online paid content strategy can I recommend TheMediaBriefing’s first in-depth intelligence report which is published this month. You can request a free executive summary by clicking here “Paywall Strategies for Online Content“. We will also be hosting our first conference on the subject (and hope to have a speaker from Euromoney) at the end of February 2011 – announcements coming soon on the site.

www.TheMediaBriefing.com – our first site launches next week

In my previous post I talked about a new company that I have co-founded with Neil Thackray called Briefing Media Ltd.

We aim to take a different approach to the business media industry.

An approach that combines many of the disciplines of traditional niche media publications with the latest semantic technology to aid the discovery of the very best third party content.

Marrying old and new media if you like.

The team are currently developing dedicated sites for six industry verticals, but our first covers the media industry itself and is due to launch next week.

It will be called TheMediaBriefing and if you work in any aspect of the media industry – B2B, Consumer Magazines, Newspapers, Radio, Digital Media, Mobile, Agencies, TV & Film or Finance – then please come and take a look.

Patrick Smith, our editor and lead media analyst, is currently refining the content and taxonomy for the site. He is also gathering up a faculty of experts from  the industry who will be providing exclusive interviews, video commentary and regular columns about what’s really going on in their businesses.

If you’ve got something to say about the strategic aspects of running a media business in today’s digital world we’d love to hear from you. Please e-mail: contributions@briefingmedia.com

Our site is not live yet but if you would like to register to see it first please leave your e-mail address in the box on the homepage and we’ll be in touch.

Much as I hate the concept, we will be launching in beta so if you spot a glitch or miss-classification please do let us know.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Briefing Media (businessmedia.co.uk)
• Jon Slattery: Patrick Smith signed up for new business venture (jonslattery.blogspot.com)
• Neil Thackray’s Business Media Blog: A Future for Business Media (neilthackray.wordpress.com)

The Michaelmas Itch – and a new beginning in business media

I took my kids back for their first day of school today. They were kitted out in new uniform and it felt like a new start to the year – but it’s not. It’s September. So why that feeling?

Then I remembered a phrase I had heard in the mid-1990’s in my first management job in B2B media.

I was working for a company called Metal Bulletin in the armpit of Surrey (apologies to Worcester Park residents). I had just been promoted to Head of Direct Marketing & had built a good team around me. The company was growing fast and we were doing well. I was young, extremely cocky and thought I was not only the world’s greatest marketer but also a ‘natural’ at this management game.

Then, during the space of about 3 weeks, half my team resigned. And it was not only my team, a lot of good people from other parts of the company all seemed to leave as well.

In a slight panic I went to our Chief Executive, Tom Hempenstall, and said that something must be wrong. We needed to up our pay scales and do something drastic to stem this loss of key people. I remember Tom smiling at me and reassuring me that the sky was not falling in “It’s just the Michaelmas Itch” he said “it always happens at this time of year because people have been brought up with the new academic year signifying change”.

So now, as the Michaelmas (Autumn) term begins I am pleased to announce some new plans myself.

In the coming weeks I will be launching a new business media company – Briefing Media Ltd.

My co-founder is Neil Thackray who was previously CEO at both Quantum and Nexus Business Media. Over the past few months Neil and I have been discussing the opportunities to launch a series of niche B2B sites without the legacy issues that many traditional publishers face. Neil has already written a post on his blog explaining a little more about what we are trying to do, but in summary we are looking to combine some very clever semantic technology with traditional niche publishing disciplines to create a series of websites. I’m delighted that Patrick Smith has also recently joined us as our first Editor.

The initial site aims to launch towards the end of September and I will post further information on this blog as we gradually open up the curtains on what we are doing.

It’s exciting, hard work and fun. Like starting a new academic year at school. Just without the hurty shoes.

Wired UK – How is the UK’s magazine launch of the year doing?

Just over 12 months ago I wrote a couple of posts on this blog talking about the brave and exciting launch of Wired UK.  In them I suggested that the publishers (Condé Nast) were missing a bit of an opportunity to build their subscriber base.

Last year the magazine won the British Society of Magazine Editors “Launch of the Year” award. They also released their audited circulation figures recently so I thought it was an opportune moment to review how they had done.

The numbers

Average circulation for the last 6 months was 50,009 copies per month. The circulation was broken down as follows:

17,488 subscription copies of which:

• 793 were sold at full rate
• 13,659 were sold at between 50% of full rate and full rate (the current sub offer is at 51%)
• 2,869 were sold at between 20% and 50% of full rate
• 166 were sold at less than 10% full rate
• 49 were sold as multiple subs

Full rate for a subscription is listed as £47.88

In addition they sold an average of 22,472 copies per month on the newstand – largely at the full cover price of £3.99 per copy.

The Money

So, let’s make an estimate of the current annual circulation revenue for the magazine.

Subscription revenue = c. £425,000 per year.

Newstand revenue = c. £1,075,000 per year minus (say) 30% for the retailers = c. £750,000 per year.

Total circulation revenue estimate = £1,175,000 per year.

Now, clearly Wired UK is a great advertising vehicle for brands wishing to reach an attractive demographic. I can only guess what they charge for a page (anyone who can find a link to their print media pack online please leave it in the comments below) but the latest issue has an advertising/editorial ration of 1:5 with 31 pages of advertising.

They’ve obviously sold their advertising on the back of a circulation of 50,000 because they are currently giving away 10,000 free copies per month on airlines, in clubs and spas. They also have an interesting web offering that I would hope brings in some decent revenue and which I know they are looking to develop.

How should we judge the launch?

As I said previously you have to admire any company launching new publishing products in early 2009 – especially a big, expensive print glossy. Hats off to them.

Wired UK had been tried a couple of times previously with no long-term success. In 1997 it was closed with an average paid circulation of 40,000 (similar to today). It was suggested that it needed to be selling double that amount to break even – mind you, it did have a staff of 32 at the time.

At launch the editor claimed a £2m first year promo spend. I doubt it was that much but even so their production, distribution and marketing costs must be pretty sizeable so the company probably haven’t seen a return on their investment yet. It will be interesting to see now if their momentum can be continued.

I still firmly believe that they missed a massive opportunity to sign people up for subscriptions at launch, when the buzz was highest. I like the magazine but have never seen a single piece of subscription promotion for it (and god knows I’ve now written enough to show up on someone’s radar…).

As a result I have probably only bought about one in four of their monthly issues.

So, it’s great that Wired UK has established itself. The editorial team have done a great job with the product but I think the subscription marketers need a bit of a kick up the backside!

Sorry team – with a better early promotion schedule I think you could have easily had  50,000 subscribers by now.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Wired UK launches website ad campaign (guardian.co.uk)
• Magazine Circulation Free Fall Slowing a Bit (marketingpilgrim.com)
• Magazine ABCs: the report card (guardian.co.uk)
• At a glance ABCs: how the big magazine publishers fared (newstatesman.com)

My top 10 highlights from SIPA Washington

This week I was really pleased to attend the recent Specialized Information Publishers Association annual conference in Washington. Many of the sessions could be blog posts on their own but I don’t really have time to write them all up so, instead I wanted to give a list of my top 10 takeaways.

1. The icebreaker recruitment challenge. When hiring salespeople Richard Londesborough of Business Monitor explained the development of their assessment centres. Generally they try to screen the initial batch of candidates into a group of around 15 people who show promise. These candidates are then put through to a half day assessment centre where they are paired off with eachother. The pairs are set an icebreaker challenge of meeting eachother for 2 minutes and having to pitch back their partner to the group.
2. Create a holiday. If you have a product line that needs a boost then Adam Goldstein of NIBM recommended that you declare an ‘official week’ and gave the example of HR Professionals Week that they had in Singapore but not in the US. You can then bundle a package of products, webinars and events into a week long period and offer time limited discounts. It gives extra emphasis to your marketing and a real opportunity to excite your customers and prospects.
3. Don’t call virtual events ‘webinars’ if you want to charge. Torry Burdick of Mortgage Success Source talked about the success they were having with virtual events but recommended that the word ‘webinar’ had become too associated with sponsor led, free to attend events. To charge a registration fee she recommended coming up with another name.
4. Delve into your site analytics to get new product ideas. Matt Bailey of SiteLogic gave a great presentation looking at the site analytics reports of a travel company to see what people were searching for. From this his client got a wide range of of ideas of existing reports that should be featured more prominently on their site and also new products to create.
5. Look to syndicate other people’s content on your pages. David Schwartz of 2Market Information suggested that publishers look for other organisations in their field who provide content but don’t necessarily think of themselves as publishers. He highlighted consultancy firms, lawyers & academics as rich seams of content. His company approached these firms and re-packaged / co-branded content to sell – generally at premium rates and on a 50/50 split.
6. Apply ‘good enough’ technology & publish fast. In a great presentation Kevin Delaney from the Wall St Journal talked about the importance of speed-to-market for news providers in a web-first operation. The WSJ set up a speedy@wsj e-mail address for reporters to file to and gave their journalists simple Kodak Z18 video cameras to record stories on. He highlighted the success of the WSJ Now edition on the iPad which auto updates in the style of the paper every 30 minutes.
7. Change what you call your journalists. Another tip from Richard Londesborough at Business Monitor. As the company had developed its online information services all of the editors had been re-named analysts. Richard said that this gave a higher perceived value to their content and also encouraged customers to contact the company for consulting level services.
8. Make sure your mobile products are suitable for an Android platform. James McQuivey of Forrester Research suggested that Android would be the dominant smart-phone mobile platform by 2011.
9. Your audience development team should evolve to take on an analyst role. Sean Griffey of FierceMarkets gave a great case study of how online metrics formed the bedrock of his company. Their audience development team circulated the best performing headlines of the week around their team. All editors were targeted and bonused on key metrics like open rates for their newsletters and internal teams competed each week by product.
10. Don’t assume the old product pyramid still applies. Publishing models traditionally look at their audience in a pyramid with prospects being taken on a journey from casual to registered user, paid customer and then consulting client. David Foster of BVR said that because of well-optimised sites they were seeing more and more clients coming straight in at the top level. He recommended that you highlight your premium services prominantly.

All in all it was a great conference. Huge credit goes to Andy McLaughlin & Matt Salt for their work in putting together such an engaging programme.

If you’re interested in seeing more of what SIPA events offer please remember that the SIPA UK Congress takes place in London on 12th & 13th of July. I recommend anyone in the European specialist information industry makes a point of coming along.

Media owners – learn the lessons from other disrupted industries

One of the things that I find most irritating about media industry ‘punditry’ is the fact that a lot of the commentators tend to exist in their own little bubble.

There are endless articles written about paywall strategies; CPM rates for online advertising; must-have vs. need-to-have content and whether our current problems will resolve themselves as the economy turns. These are all well and good but only get us part of the way.

To cut to the chase, can we all please agree that we are still only in the early stages of radical disruption of all media businesses?

A radical disruption that has been brought about mainly by the internet & its ability to change media consumption habits and reduce the power of old media models.  

If we all agree and start from this point then maybe we can look outside our media world and look at some of the lessons from other industries that have experienced the same disruption in the past.

How did companies in tech, music, transport or telecoms industries cope? Which companies survived and prospered? Which ones withered and died; and what can we learn as a result?

With all this in mind I was particularly interested to hear a keynote from Simon Waldman at Incisive Media’s E-Publishing Innovation Forum recently. Simon has recently left a senior digital position at The Guardian newspaper and joined LoveFilm.

His presentation “Creative Disruption – or OMG! The Internet ate my business” was based on an upcoming book of the same name. I wanted to list a few of the highlights for me and suggest that you pre-order his book (due out in October this year).

Simon started his talk by highlighting that a process of creative disruption is an essential fact of capitalism. He quoted Joseph Schumpeter from 1939 explaining that a railroad through new country “upsets all conditions of location, all cost calculations, all production functions within its radius of influence; and hardly any ‘ways of doing things’ which have been optimal before remain so afterwards.” 

He then asked the audience to replace the words railroad with the internet.

Imagine that a railroad has just been built through our industry. That railroad has opened up the market to a load of previously unknown competitors from other territories – many of whom we have never heard of. It has changed the cost base of doing business. It has reduced the price point that we can charge for what was previously scarce content. It has allowed our commercial customers to do more of their own marketing and provided access to new tools for publishing and distribution.

That’s disruption on a grand scale and Simon highlighted 4 possible hazardous reactions to these changes.

It’s possible you might recognise some:

• Denial – the numbers are getting fewer but I still hear some senior publishers who refuse to accept that this process is taking place. They talk about a cycle that they have seen before.
• Bewilderment – aka the Private Frazer school – we’re all doomed and there is nothing we can do.
• Delusion – OK. So I accept that this is happening to some parts of my industry (maybe controlled circulation titles?) but those trends don’t apply to my niche, premium content subscription business. We’ll be fine. We’re too good to fail.
• Distraction – Yup. I get what’s happening, and we’ll get on to it, but first I’ve got a couple of important conferences to promote, we’re redesigning a website and then have to do a budget re-forecast.

All of these reactions will get you to only once place – a spiral of pain.

So, what lessons did Simon learn from other industries that have been through these disruptive phases? What should media owners be doing about it?

1. Start with change in mind. Right from the top. He highlighted the Fast Forward change programme that Tom Glocer introduced on taking over at Reuters to make very clear where the company was coming from and going to.
2. Fix the core first. Don’t spend time searching for something that is too radical. Lou Gerstner, the IBM Chairman said that “the last thing IBM needs now is a new vision“. His (ultimately company saving) approach in 1994 was to get the company’s core business right by adjusting their product mix, working on the cost base and getting the business profitable. That allowed him to generate cash and buy time to move away from the mainframe and into the services business. Smart things come from stable cores. They are very hard to do when you are fire-fighting.
3. Look for key adjacencies. Where are the opportunities at the edges of your markets to expand? What do you do better than your competitors and how can you move those skills into new areas? This is something that media owners have generally been good at with brand extensions, taking advantage of new platforms, geo-cloning products to other territories etc.
4. Innovate around the edge. You might need to do this away from the main business (anyone up for another Euston Project?) but these activities should be focused experiments to test and feed back into the core business. It was interesting that upon becoming acting CEO of Apple, Steve Jobs cut their research and development budget in half but gave a much clearer focus to the spend. They could only develop the iMac/Pod/Phone/Pad after they had reduced headcount by 1/3, sorted out their supply chain and made their desktops profitable.
5. Build your teams to enable change – this required a combination of Firestarters, Rockstars and Fixers (combined with great leadership at the helm).

All in all I thought it was a great presentation and provides a good roadmap for anyone wrestling with the changes in the media market.

I look forward to reading the book when it is out in October and cannot help but see a little irony in the fact that Simon has chosen to leave the media industry prior to it being published…

4 great events coming up for media folk

Apologies for the brief hiatus on blog posting, I have been incredibly busy with a range of projects over the past couple of months.

Normal schedule will be resumed shortly but in the meantime I wanted to highlight some great media events that are planned for the coming weeks.

1. The Frontline Club will be hosting an event tomorrow evening (May 19th at 7 p.m.) covering “Will Apple save the news business? Apps, iPads, paywalls and how to make money from news“. It features Gurtej Sandhu, the digital director of The Times who will discuss News International’s upcoming launch of its paid for online services. Should be fascinating. I’ve only been along to one event at the Frontline (in Paddington, West london) but they are starting to put on some great events under the able direction of Patrick Smith.
2. Incisive Media’s E-Publishing Innovation Forum takes place next week (May 25-26) in London. This event was launched by my old division of the company and is in its 3rd year.  They’ve got a great line up of speakers and I am particularly looking forward to hearing Simon Waldman talk about his upcoming book Creative Disruption.
3. In early June I will be heading over to Washington for the Specialised Information Publishers Association (SIPA) conference. Always an inspiring meeting and nice to catch up with my U.S. colleagues in the association.

and finally I wanted to flag up the SIPA UK Congress (opens a PDF) on the 12-13 July in London. This is probably my favourite event of the year and features some amazing speakers, roundtables, discussion forums and the SIPA awards presentation.

I plan to write up coverage of some of these events on this blog and will also post updates on Twitter.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Times paywall could go up as soon as May, say media buyers (guardian.co.uk)

SIPA Website Conversion Secrets from the Experts workshop – Monday April 19th, London

I wanted to give a quick plug for a Specialised Information Publishers Association (SIPA) event that I will be hosting in London on Monday April 19th.

This half-day workshop is designed to give publishers a range of practical tips on how to get their websites to convert better – whether that be registrations, subscriptions or e-commerce. We’ve got a great line up including:

• Graham MacFadyen of the Financial Times, who will explain how the FT maintains its astonishing conversion rate for trialists. You’ll get a ‘behind the scenes’ look at how their marketers transition occasional readers to registered readers, and then paid subscribers
• Karl Blanks, co-founder of Conversion Rate Experts, will explain the specific strategies you can implement straight away to increase profit from your website visitors, and show the power of video in converting visitors to customers
• Daniel Rowles at Art Review and Graham Ruddick from NEC Group on the key stats you need to monitor on your analytics reports to segment your customers and improve your conversion rates
• Simon Nixon and Jason Buck at Econsultancy how to design your website with your user in mind to increase conversion and ROI
• Jon Bentley of Incisive Media will explain the methods Incisive are using to successfully up sell and cross-sell their website customers
• Angus Phillipson from WORKSsitebuilder will draw all the strands of the morning together, using practical case studies from his experience as both a publisher and a supplier

For a full programme and biographies of our knowledgeable speakers, click here.

Companies sending delegates include the following: BNA International * Business Monitor International * CityWire Holdings * CRU Group * Electric Word plc * Euromoney Institutional Investor * Global Water Intelligence * Guardian News & Media * Incisive Media * LexisNexis * Melcrum Publishing * Newsquest Specialist Media * Report Buyer

We only have 8 places left, so if you want to come please e-mail Karen Hindle as soon as possible.

The workshop will take place on Monday 19 April between 09.30 and 13.00, followed by a complimentary networking lunch.

The venue is the Novotel London Tower Bridge, Pepys Street, London EC3N 2NR. Price for SIPA members: £147 + VAT; non-members £247 + VAT.

Book your place today – call Karen on 020 8288 7415, or email: uksipa@btconnect.com.

Related articles by Zemanta

• A new era for specialist media? (fasterfuture.blogspot.com)
• How do we start from scratch? (businessmedia.co.uk)

Ashley Friedlein of eConsultancy talks about the Times plans for paywalls

Really great interview with Ashley Friedlein on the Times / Sunday Times plans for paywall implementation.

Related articles by Zemanta

• That Times paywall: how young is it expecting its readers to be? (guardian.co.uk)
• Times and Sunday Times will be paywalled from June – £1 a day (blogs.journalism.co.uk)
• New Media Age experiments with first click free (malcolmcoles.co.uk)