As an emap employee I suppose it's inevitable I get drawn into this one. The Daily Telegraph* - commenting on the departure of emap CEO Tom Moloney in the article 'emap still twitching but needs to be put out of its misery' says of niche brand Bird Watching's website:
"Visiting the magazine's website is less interesting than a visit to those Victorian glass cases in the Natural History Museum. Museums were the 19th century's version of interaction and too many of Emap's myriad media brands are way behind the curve when it comes to 21st century publishing.
"Birdwatching.co.uk ought to be a teeming community website for what I imagine is Britain's rather large bird-watching population. It should be swarming with readers' blogs, videos and pictures, reader offers, adverts, events - you name it, Emap should have it to publish the definitive bird-watching website."
Why yes, of course it should. But let's be fair. emap's media brands might be a tad slow on applying Reed's law (see group forming network theory under 'resources', left col), but they (we) ain't exactly unique in this.
Please show me a specialist traditional media brand which has activated this and (small, but important point) has done this while retaining or even growing its brand's profits as a whole? Off the top of my head I can't think of one. I am genuinely interested in seeing examples - please do share.
emap's issue has been to find a scalable solution worth the investment. If Moloney had sanctioned full social media plays for every single one of his brands the financial pages would soon have screamed foul.
I take the general point - emap should have built the ideal community platform for those with a shared interest in bird watching. But it should also have done that for model railway enthusiasts, trout fishermen, classic car enthusiasts, Land Rover owners, etc etc etc (and a truck-load more of a etcs).
The brand-focused approach has (it seems to me - and I'm just a humble employee - I haven't set the strategy) resulted in a focus on the 'big brands' driven by the 'big revenues' already earned - not necessarily the big potentials (eg Bird Watching).
I think (and we'll all hear more with the statement to the city on May 22) emap is shifting to a market-focused approach which ought to change our priorities. If we couple that with a community-dominated approach - hurrah!
Some may conclude that protecting legacies is just too great a drag for media companies faced with start-ups who don't have these issues, are prepared to cede control to their communities and have no 'core business' to protect.
But I think their advantages are neatly counter-balanced by our access to audiences and insight into niche markets. Which is why I wrote 'End of the retreat: How Media is the new business' only last week.
Don't get me wrong - there are lessons to be applied - but I do believe we've learned them.
*The Daily Telegraph is not owned by emap - could you tell?
The further ahead you look - the faster you go | davidpcushman AT gmail.com | These are my views and my views only.
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The rate of change is so rapid it's difficult for one person to keep up to speed. Let's pool our thoughts, share our reactions and, who knows, even reach some shared conclusions worth arriving at?
In my own biased opinion the Practical Fishkeeping is an example of this on a similarly geeky, unglamarous and specialist title. It's one of Emap's smallest titles in terms of ABC with just over 15,500, but it's website is one of the bigger ones with 55,000 pages and 160,000 visitors a month.
ReplyDeleteIt's also very profitable and has, I believe, been at least partly responsible for the title's first ABC increase in well over a decade.
Hi Matt, thanks for posting. Might be worth you listing out for us what you think the success factors have been?
ReplyDeleteFirst of all David, apologies for the typo on unglamorous and for missing out the word "the" after the Practical Fishkeeping link! I was multitasking as I typed...
ReplyDeleteWhile part of the Practical Fishkeeping website's success is down to the community attached to it, the content we're providing is probably the key. We've tried to become (and I believe we have become) the definitive site on fishkeeping, so we've crammed the site full of bespoke content based around what we know our readers like through monitoring usage statistics on the site. Our community now produces a massive proportion of our content and our user-generated content areas, such as Your Tanks, are among the busiest bits of the site, so we're giving them more prominence in editorial as a result, and we're reacting to what our users tell us.
We know what they like, and what they don't, so we focus on providing the right content for them. Without a community, it's much more difficult to tell, as magazine readers invariably only write in to complain when they don't like something, rather than praise you when you get something right.
I think you're exactly right when you say that the focus has not been on the brands with big potential. Had I not developed this site myself, we would undoubtedly still have a tiny, community-less and largely static website. I can completely understand the need to focus on the potential revenues, but I think we're an example of what tiny, niche titles can do if they're given adequate resources. I am sure that our leaders recognise this and will react accordingly.
According to Alun Cathcart:
ReplyDelete"Plagued by weak advertising and the threat to magazines from cyberspace, he has a turnaround plan to pour more cash into its best brands while culling more of its stragglers."
from http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/investing-and-markets/article.html?in_article_id=420471&in_page_id=3
This seems to pour water on the move away from big-brand focus. I can't help by be concerned if this is true.
jwos - today's statement to the city includes the line: 'Unleashing our growth brands'
ReplyDeleteLike the majority of emap employees,I get to hear a bit more about what that actually means over the next couple of days. It also refers to 'going digital together' and 'building e-businesses' - which some might conclude has the potential to result in internal conflict if some of the interests of those 'going digital together' are distracted by legacy revenues.
Let's wait and get the detail before jumping to conclusions - positive or negative.