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Associations and Publishers Look to ‘Unify the Experience’ by Going Beyond Content Offerings

by Media

Welcome to the age of the experience. Associations and publishers are not just offering content anymore; they’re selling an entire “experience”—especially as we all look to move forward from the past 16 months.

“The future of news media is one in which we deliver more than what subscribers [and members] think they paid for,” wrote Renée Kaplan, head of digital editorial development of the Financial Times, in NiemanLab’s annual Predictions for Journalism 2021. “We compete with not only other similar news media but every kind of frictionless and dynamically adaptive content experience that users get from all the other content apps on their phones. As always—for better or for worse—excellent journalism, even the perfect customized mix of journalism, isn’t enough anymore… We need to learn how to anticipate a specific kind of content need and develop an adapted editorial product for it: the capacity to offer our journalism in a content experience suitable to any (ideally all!) of a user’s needs.”

Customer experience is emerging as a top driver of growth and brand differentiation for organizations in the post-pandemic world, a Forrester-led webinar recently concluded. Content may still be king, but all the better if part of an overall experience. Here are more examples:

Sell your event as an experience. The Professional Convention Management Association’s EduCon: We Are Better Together began yesterday both in person in Phoenix and virtually. “EduCon will show the world how business events can be a catalyst for bringing us back together to create deeper, meaningful, and safe interactions through a fusion of both in-person and digital experiences.” In fact, the headline for the virtual portion is EduCon Digital Experience. “…participants aren’t getting the full experience that could be created in the virtual medium,” Sherrif Karamat, president and CEO of PCMA, told Informa’s MeetingsNet. PCMA also has a VP of knowledge and experience design.

Bundle to add the experience factor, part 1. CEO and founder Jessica Lessin (pictured) of The Information, told Axios that they are launching a new standalone publication about batteries and electric vehicles. “It’s the first time the high-end business and tech media company is charging for content separately from its roughly $400 annual subscription fee,” writes Sara Fischer. “’The Electric’ will consist of a weekly newsletter and email updates, as well as possible industry briefings, conference calls, events, and more—all geared toward a specialized business audience.”

Keep the conversation going. The National Council for Behavioral Health launched a hashtag alongside its conference hashtag to enforce the message that the content presented during the event is designed for discussion 365 days a year. They held Twitter chats with speakers and assigned staff members and volunteer “ambassadors” to keep conference content in circulation. “We learned that people were craving that year-round conversation around behavioral health,” said Alicia C. Aebersold, senior vice president of communications and strategic development.

Bundle to add the experience factor, part 2. “Even Disney now is adding perk benefits to Disney+ because they know you have to integrate the experience layer with the content layer,” Robin Thurston, CEO of Outside, said in a business article in The Washington Post this week about Outside Plus, his company’s new $99-a-year bundle. “I felt like there was an opportunity to bring it all together under a single umbrella and really unify the experience for the consumer. When you combine the services like Gaia GPS, and the discounts to events, and you add in video-on-demand courses and all of the premium content, I felt like this was an offering for consumers that truly could be a foundation for their active lifestyle world. It really is about creating a completely new consumer experience….”

Make virtual an experience, part 1. A 2021 Neal Awards finalist for Best New Product was FreightWaves Virtual Events. In a promo video on their site, CEO Craig Fuller says that “the idea of the FreightWaves Live Experience is to bring you into the action, make you a part of the experience—letting you see how technology is going to shape the future of our industry.” They must be successful because virtual events are planned through this year and even into 2022.

Make virtual an experience, part 2. The chief marketing officer for Reuters, Josh London, told The Drum that the high level of interest in their Reuters Next event—which debuted in January and is scheduled again virtually for December—was a culmination of a strategy which “all stems from customer experience… Thousands of hours’ worth of research [was conducted] to understand the needs of the delegates and match that with a speaker agenda so that we can make sure that the time that they are investing is best spent.”

Devote a brand to experience. Questex has relaunched and expanded XLIVE, “a brand at the nexus of the event experience.” XLIVE will provide year-round engagement via newsletters, website, events and virtual solutions. Its new content hub, XLIVE Global, will cover two areas of the live experience: XLIVE B2B Experience for corporate/event planners, venues, and facilities; and XLIVE Fan Experience for event management, production professionals, producers, marketing agencies and more. “As we return to in-person gatherings this is the perfect time to rethink how professionals can deliver better experiences,” said Paul Miller, CEO, Questex.

Concept du travail d’équipe avec les cadres dirigeants qui discutent pour définir la stratégie de l’entreprise au cours d’un brainstorming.

‘Share Journalism [You’re] Proud of’; How the Journal Sentinel Mobilized its Reporters to Grow Subscriptions

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I once asked Dan Fink, managing director of Money-Media, a division of the Financial Times, if he’s transparent with his staff. He said that, “when it comes to how the business is doing, yes. It creates accountability and keeps people on the same page.”

Mike Grebb, publisher of Cablefax Group, an Access Intelligence division, also once touched on that idea of the benefits of staff knowing more about their company’s inner workings.

“What’s made it better for us is the [open] way it’s done across the company,” he said. “You get the sense that editors are generally well-versed in the financial part of the business. We try to keep everyone abreast, not segmented off. I’ve worked at other companies—I came from the editorial side. As a straight editor or reporter, I never knew what was going on or how revenue was generated.

“[Here] I run a weekly meeting and bring the entire staff in—ad sales, subscriptions, marketing, events and awards as well as editors. We share as much information as we can every single week. We don’t get too much in the weeds on revenue; it’s more, ‘How’s that conference doing?’ ‘How’s the next awards program doing with nominations?’ Editors are constantly aware which are doing well and which aren’t.”

Grebb added that “generally, that sort of knowledge, even though it’s not directly part of their job, is good knowledge to have because I think they just have a better understanding of what the business is—say the necessity of working with sponsors. And they have to be part of the fold if it’s an event.”

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel recently adopted that transparency—meaning they emphasized to the newsroom that growing their subscriber base is the responsibility of everyone—and put their journalists on the frontlines of social media, writing about their work, how they do it, and most importantly, asking for people to subscribe.

Sensing that their digital audience was bigger than their digital subscriber base, Rachel Piper, digital news director at the Journal Sentinel, said that leaders there “asked our individual journalists to be ambassadors for digital subscriptions on social media.” In an article on the site Better News—a project of the American Press Institute and the Knight-Lenfest Newsroom Initiative—Piper outlined how they significantly increased their subscriber base:

Empowered their journalists. “Over time, individual reporters have built a strong sense of ownership over digital subscriptions…” Piper wrote. “Advocating for the Journal Sentinel brand and asking people to subscribe no longer seems like the responsibility of someone else in a different department. And when these reporters ask their followers and fans to subscribe, it has a different power than our other asks and offers.”

Gave them specific—and easy—ways to help. The paper’s loyalty and engagement news director wrote Twitter threads and asked reporters to, at a minimum, retweet these. She also wrote tutorials for how to change email signatures to include a link to their subscription offer page.

Made sure it was always about the content. Consultant Jim Sinkinson has always preached that subscribers need to be reminded and led to the great content you do sometimes. This is similar to that push to subscribe. “When encouraging those in the newsroom to share subscription callouts, we’ve made sure to tie it to our journalists’ excellent, important work,” Piper wrote. “Rather than telling reporters just to hawk the cheapest deal, we’ve asked reporters to share journalism they are proud of …and note that people can ‘support work like this by subscribing to the Journal Sentinel at jsonline.com/deal.”

Here’s a typical tweet: “By the way, if you’re happy that the @journalsentinel has a reporter here covering this floor debate, another in the Senate, and two covering tonight’s State of the State, please subscribe!

Allowed the reporters to be more personal. They found that readers were interested in how reporters worked and wanted to know what stories they could look forward to. “Calls for subscriptions were key to these columns, but they were also a chance for us to be transparent about the work we do and for reporters to build their brands and connect with readers as individuals.” Some reporters even posted photos of their kids and pets.

Made it competitive. The Journal Sentinel runs subscription contests for their various newsrooms with prizes ranging from cash to ice cream socials. “…we stoked internal competition with updating tallies and pointed to successful efforts.”

It worked. Dozens of new subscriptions were tracked to individual pleas from reporters. They use URL codes to track the source of subscriptions. A big push during a contest typically brought in more than 100 subscriptions tracked to the newsroom. And in one contest that used promo codes for tracking, a photographer brought in 25—the most of anyone in Gannett.

Emphasized subscriptions over page views and created new measurements. Because page views are nice but subscriptions pay the bills, the Journal Sentinel kept that top of mind for the newsroom through celebrating milestones. “But we’re only now building measures like ‘associated new subscriptions’ into author-level analytic reports alongside page views.”

They asked for subscriptions, and that’s okay. I always hark back to this one independent movie theater here which shocked people a few years ago when it announced that it was going out of business but never asked for help. They had hundreds of people show up at a farewell the next week—ready to contribute—but it was too late.

They included all their journalists. Who knows what segment of your audience may feel the most loyal? Some of their most successful subscription calls were from their sports reporters. As a former sports writer, I’m not surprised.

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A Guest Editor, Poll, Contest, Timeline and Calculator Add Heft to Neal Winners

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“Designing for those who aren’t typically considered.” What a great quote by Alda Ly in the Neal-Award winning issue of ARCHITECT Magazine, guest edited by Architecture 2030. Going over some of the Neal Award winners I found replicable examples of design, wordplay, social media, polls, partners and contests. Check them out below.

Audience polls, a non-profit organization as a guest editor, floating graphics, a reader photo contest, a ghost kitchen calculator and a timelined story are just some of the successful ideas used by the Neal Award winners highlighted below. There’s a reason that winning a Neal Award is such a prestigious honor—the work truly stands out.

Here are some replicable ideas that 2021 Neal Award winners demonstrate:

Find special partners and highlight diversity. Zonda Media’s ARCHITECT Magazine won for Best Single Issue of a Tabloid/Newspaper/Magazine for The Carbon Issue (pictured above) – guest edited by Architecture 2030, “a non-profit, non-partisan and independent organization established in 2002 in response to the ongoing climate emergency.” Here’s the lead-off: “This special issue of ARCHITECT… is meant to help architects get CO2 out of their systems, for the health, safety, and welfare of us all.” What a great idea to partner with a non-profit! It gives the issue more heft and another vehicle to amplify its profile. I especially like the Next Progressives Q&A where they spotlight Alda Ly Architecture. “What led to the founding of the firm: I’m a woman of color working in a field traditionally dominated by men. Initially, this launched me on a path designing for women, but it quickly morphed into designing for those who aren’t typically considered.”

Do a summer social media campaign. Advertising Specialty Institute won for Best Use of Social Media for its #PromoInTheWild campaign. They asked industry members to be on the lookout for logoed products, tag a photo of it with #PromoInTheWild and share it to ASI’s online platforms. Four people were awarded $25 gift certificates for their posts. “The campaign generated tens of thousands of positive impressions on social media and even helped some promo newcomers get a better sense of the scope of the industry,” ASI wrote. Said Tim Andrews, ASI president and CEO: “One of the best ways to convince people of the power and reach of our industry’s affordable, effective products is to showcase them wherever and whenever we can. A summertime social media campaign is a perfect way to celebrate our industry when we need it most.”

Augment a major story – part 1. SHRM won for Best Instructional Content for a comprehensive story titled How Should HR Handle Political Discussions at Work. “It was just a picture, and it was in an employee’s cubicle,” the story by Susan Milligan begins. About a third of the way through the article refers to a “SHRM poll conducted last October [that] found that 42% of employees have had a ‘political disagreement’ at work, and 12% have experienced political affiliation bias.” The link led to an 11-page, beautifully designed pdf with results from that poll. We learn that “over half of working Americans say politics and the discussion of political issues have become more common in the last four years.” Between the poll, excellent pull quotes and fun wordings—“While HR can hardly have Aretha Franklin’s iconic song ‘Respect’ playing on a loop, there are some actions HR and legal experts advise”—it’s a valuable story for members, especially in this day and age.

Augment a major story – part 2. Winsight won in Best Subject-Related Package for Making Sense of Evolving Kitchens. As you progress through the story, you get links to other stories that delve further, such as: How Small Chains Are Growing With Ghost Kitchens; The Kitchen as Filming Studio; and COVID-19 Clears a Path for More Restaurant Robots. I also encourage you to check out the digital design—graphics and photos float in as you scroll, video and pull quotes pop up. It’s a fun and informational read.

Provide tools/new ideas for our audience – part 1. Industry Dive’s Restaurant Dive won for Best Series for six articles with the first story titled, Mapping the Rise of Ghost Kitchens. (Who knew ghost kitchens were such a thing?) “Dark. Ghost. Host. These are just a few of the names for the budding restaurant segment rising from the economic upheaval of the novel coronavirus pandemic,” it begins. Not only do they go in-depth, but they also created a “ghost kitchen calculator to help operators assess the financial profile and determine profitability of a ghost kitchen before developing their own concept.” Talk about meeting audience needs. Think about what value-add you can give to an article you’re doing.

Provide tools/new ideas for our audience – part 2. For Best Profile, American Chemical Society’s Chemical & Engineering News won for a wonderful profile titled A Day With Jennifer Doudna: Trying to Keep Up With One of the World’s Most Sought-After Scientists. It chronicles the day she spoke at the University of California, Berkeley campus. “It’s clear that being considered the Beyoncé of science has reshaped Doudna’s life. But has it reshaped how she views herself?” The article leads to a sidebar story titled Jennifer Doudna’s Tips for New Entrepreneurs. One story presents the person, and the second presents how to help their audience succeed. The main story is written as a timeline of her day. This would also work well as a video.