Notes From the MPA Digital Conference
It's always interesting to hear what magazine brands on the other side-- consumer--are doing online. Or, shall we say, not doing online. At the MPA 24/7 digital conference last Wednesday, the mood was one of "yes, we can do it," with a resounding admittance that "we're not there yet"--"there" being anything from leveraging the social media tools that Facebook offers (if you can't beat 'em, join 'em) to motivating ad sales staff to sell integrated products (it's like sex--but more on that at the end of this story).
If you're still reading this article and haven't skipped to the ending, you're in for some sound advice, which was liberally dispensed by the magazine experts at the conference.
Facing Facebook
Owen Van Natta, chief revenue officer of Facebook (though he's leaving the social media company in two weeks for an adventure he wouldn't or couldn't disclose), offered some insight on magazine brands: Magazines need to take the dialogue among its readers to Facebook. Sounds self-promotional on the face of it, but he had a point: That is, why build it when it's already there for the taking? Facebook is about authenticity and reputation systems, and people trust it in a different way than they trust giving this personal information to a magazine brand, says Van Natta.
"The magazine brand is not a strong enough value proposition to get people to make those connections," whereas "Facebook is one of the few places online where people are providing 'real-world information about themselves,'" he said. As such, magazines (perhaps B2B magazines too) should set up Facebook pages to promote events and special issues and can even advertise through Facebook using the site's very targeted demographics and profiling information.
Fortune senior editor David Kirkpatrick asked Van Natta the question posed at most magazine conferences these days: "Does print have a future?" It was nice to see that Van Natta didn't skip a beat with his answer: "Absolutely. What magazines deliver, in many ways, cannot be duplicated on the Web...Magazines have portability, it's tactical." Magazines, he advised, need to figure out sooner rather than later where the dialogue is happening among their community of readers, and become a leader there.
Games People Play
One panel at MPA made this writer want to play solitaire online, and it wasn't out of boredom. Online games, it turns out, offer a great opportunity for many magazine brands to build traffic and community. Eighty-eight million people in the U.S. play online games, representing 48% of Internet users, with as many females as males playing. That represents 3.3 billion minutes--time not spent reading your content, by the way. However, if people like playing games, why not put some on your site (cost could be an issue--read on)? Admittedly, this strategy works better for consumer sites than B2B, but with some creativity and research, many B2B brands can leverage the appropriate games on their sites to build the brand and traffic.
Nicola Bridges, online editorial director at Prevention.com, says the 20- plus games (all simple Flash) offered on her health site are complementary to the content and true to the mission of the brand (i.e., brain games and puzzles for mental health and memory enhancement). The games that appeal to Prevention's demographic are those that are "easy to learn and hard to master," noted Bridges.
Nicole Stagg, director of Web content strategy at GoodHousekeeping.com, said visitors usually stumble upon the games on the GH site while looking for a recipe or stain removal advice. Yet, once they find the game, they'll spend on average 22 minutes playing the game--"quadruple the time spent on other areas of the site." Both Prevention and GH.com are looking for the right revenue models around the games, as neither site is currently allowing advertisers to sponsor the games. That said, the world of advergaming and rich media advertising is growing at a rapid-fire pace.
Moderator Robert Nashak, online gaming expert and former VP and GM at Yahoo! Games, noted that when "Sponsored by Crest" was added to a daily game on the Yahoo home page, the number of users increased exponentially because, in his opinion, the game "looked more credible" with a sponsor.
Jessica Rovello, chairman of Arkadium, which develops and licenses online games to Web sites including GH.com, said the cost to run games on a site can range from $5,000 (for a basic game) to $1 million to a customized, multiplayer, complicated game.
Ad Sales: In the Mix
The latest stats from the IAB pointing to $21 billion in expenditures for online advertising should get any publisher evaluating their sales structure and ensuring they're positioned to get a sizable cut of that. First things first: Are your salespeople selling integrated programs, are they incentivized to sell online inventory (and vice versa) and are your salespeople "digitally curious," as Jacki Kelley, EVP of media sales at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, noted.
Philippe Guelton, EVP and COO of Hachette Filipacchi Media USA, described a centralized digital sales team at Hachette with a brand ambassador for each client--"a key sales rep on each brand who has incentive to grow the business." By show of hands, no one else in the audience said they have brand ambassadors on their sales teams.
At MSLO, Kelley described a successful structure of "pods"--salespeople who surround a client, a sort of workgroup for the client.
Compensating staff on integrated program sales is a continuous struggle. The strategies are as varied as the brands, with Kelley and Guelton describing various incentives, from print sales people having a digital quota, while others having an incentive based on overall ad revenue growth. Other publishers are paying double commission just to get the sales staff on the right track and with the right mind-set.
When hiring sales leaders who understand integrated sales, Kelley says an "A" player on the sales team is one who "stays with the marketer's problem" until he or she understands the problem, and someone who can "articulate the importance of their own products and recommend the right mix." Guelton echoed Kelley, noting that the A players understand their client's brand, their client's audience and the metrics.
So, what does sex have to do with integrated sales? Mark Dacey, senior client partner at Korn/Ferry International and moderator of the ad sales panel, recalled a conversation with a publishing client who compared integrated sales to sex: "Everyone's talking about it and no one's doing it."
[Copyright 2006 Access Intelligence, LLC. All rights reserved.]
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