DTNfarmer

Neal Award Finalists Offer Replicable and Powerful Examples for Other Publishers

by Media

With the Neal Awards celebration set for noon, Wednesday, June 9, I looked through the finalists to see what interesting ideas—it is Ideas Wednesday here—I could find. Well, this might just have to become a series with all of the innovative and exciting work that we’re honoring. It will definitely be worth your valuable while to attend the presentation.

Besides seeing the incredible work that your fellow AM&P Network members are doing, there will be myriad ways to connect at the Neal Awards such as: interactive networking – mini breakouts during intermissions; video booth fun with sponsor Gather Voices – create a video to share your win on social media! #NealAward and @siia; MIRO – contribute to a community-driven art piece by doodling on the #NealAward MIRO board; or just to cheer on your favorite finalists and winners.

Register here. Attendance is free. See all the finalists here. Here are some replicable and effective ideas from a few of the finalists:

Run video interstitials. A finalist for Best Single Article, Teachers Are Getting Schooled on Retirement from Informa’s WealthManagement.com begins with a powerful tale of a Long Island teacher given bad investing advice from a life insurance rep when she was just starting out. “He said he had an easy way for her to save for her retirement beyond her pension.” After the first four graphs, there’s a short video promo for a succession planning discussion they held on May 11 between contributing editor Maureen Wilke and Advisor Group (the sponsor) SVP Todd Fulks. There are ads later in the story, but that short video is a smart way to promote more good content.

Provide tools/content for our audience – part 1. Industry Dive’s Restaurant Dive is a finalist for Best Series for its series of six articles on successive Mondays with the first story titled, Mapping the Rise of Ghost Kitchens. “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.” We are here to meet audience needs, and this sounds like a big one. Think about what value-add you can give to an article you’re doing.

Provide tools/content for our audience – part 2. For Best Profile, American Chemical Society’s Chemical & Engineering News is a finalist 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. “We asked her to share her best advice for budding academic entrepreneurs,” writes Lisa M. Jarvis. One story presents the person, and the second story presents how to help their audience succeed.

Adding diversity – part 1. Haymarket Media’s PRWeek did a great job of enlightenment and outreach during the pandemic with a video series called Lockdown Life—also a Neal finalist for Best Series. You can see from the small photos that accompany each week’s video that there is diversity of all kinds: age, gender, ethnicity, activity—headlines range from TikTok Influencers Overnight? to PR Pros Flocking to Buy Chickens to 3 PR Pros Recall Their Bouts With COVID-19. Showcasing a variety of your members or audience just makes content more interesting. Oh, here’s the best episode: “Your Job Seems Too Boring” – Kids and Partners Observe PR Pros in Quarantine.

Adding diversity – part 2. What an engaging lead paragraph in DTN’s Progressive Farmer from Chris Clayton, ag policy editor, for his Neal-finalist profile titled Grappling With a New Farm – Young, Black, First-Generation American Determined to Succeed as a Farm Owner (pictured above). “Like a lot of children growing up in a small Nebraska town, Zemua Baptista remembers playing with tractors in the living room as a boy—’carpet farming,’ as he describes it.” And later in the story a quote from Baptista: “I still see it when I tell people I’m a farmer and they kind of look at me. For me, to give a face to a minority farmer is a good thing.”

Offer daily engagement. For Best Podcast, Crain Communications is a finalist for its Automotive News Daily Drive. This must be quite an undertaking to produce every day, though topics could be endless. (At least they took Memorial Day off.) They’re rewarded by a strong audience and sponsorships—on the podcast itself (the brief intro of the sponsor sounds warm and welcomed) and with ads on the site. “Daily Drive is our daily podcast series. We speak with industry experts, insiders and Automotive News reporters about events and trends impacting and reshaping the automotive industry.” These are also good avenues to amplify the voices of your editorial team.

Build creativity into virtual events. A finalist for Best New Product is 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.

Congratulations to all of the Neal Award finalists; it’s well-deserved! Please register and attend the Neals celebration next Wednesday at noon to see the winners and some of the faces behind this amazing work.

Mind Map Team - Illustration

‘It’s Up to Us to Foster This New Reality’; Events Are Back on With Audiences Top of Mind

by Media

KC Crain, president and CEO of Crain Communications, told my colleague Matt Kinsman last week that “we will have our first in-person event in July, and this fall we will have in-person events all over the world. There will be different aspects to our events such as live streaming, and we will see a hybrid model for a while yet.” Co-location, series of content, more creative virtual offerings, and, of course, hybrid are all in the air, as many people—though still not all—appear ready to return.

There are still many variables to consider as we all decide when, where and how to plan our in-person events. In a survey we conducted in May, 60% of our AM&P Network respondents said they would be comfortable attending in-person events this fall—with the proper safety protocols in place. Of the 40% who said either “no” or “it’s too early to say,” 65% of those said 2022 sounds more realistic to them.

As for when their own organization has scheduled an in-person event, 31% said this summer and 33% said this fall. The two biggest factors driving their own attendance of an in-person event—by a fairly wide margin—are “content mix” and “travel budget” with “networking” and “not having to travel” next. Just over 40% said they would prefer a smaller regional event to a larger one, but the same percentage said it didn’t matter. And 44% said their organizations have not yet issued a policy on attending in-person events.

Here are some other event trends I’ve seen:

Virtual has its virtues. “If people didn’t figure out a way to enhance their digital business during the pandemic, then shame on them,” said Crain. “The pandemic 100% accelerated our digital strategy, namely in the data and analytics around our audiences, which we will continue to push in 2021.” While the company plans to do only a fraction of the 900 virtual events they hosted in 2020, Crain did say that “we will continue to see virtual events where the topic and the market make sense.” Added Peter O’Neil, CEO of ASIS International: “The pandemic made the world an even smaller place and global engagement has increased. Now it’s up to us to continue to foster this new reality through our programming and international engagement strategies, and focus on what truly makes us more successful.”

Co-locating. Associations Now reported that the Audio Engineering Society (AES) and National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) will co-locate for a conference in October in Las Vegas, something they also did in 2017. Previously, it “enabled us to exponentially increase attendance and expand the show floor—a win-win for our attendees and exhibitors,” said Chris Brown, NAB EVP of conventions and business operations. Now it’s a show in strength. Adds Graham Kirk, director of sales and marketing at AES: “…we made the decision that it was vital that we be present again in some form.” Adds Jeff Calore, portfolio director, event services, at SmithBucklin: “There’s certainly more activity around co-location, particularly groups that bring synergies and are additive to one another in terms of content, audience reach, and buyer segments that one single event was delivering before.”

Communicate often with your venues. “Hotels are in the middle of trying to align their service levels correctly, and planners have every right to dive deeply into that during contract negotiations,” said Kaaren Hamilton, VP of global sales for Red Lion Hotels, in a recent virtual session run by Meeting Professionals International. Added Teresa White, senior director of global sales for Wyndham Hotels & Resorts: “Planners should not assume anything—ask questions that you might never have asked before about how staff levels, social-distancing rules, and other factors will affect the room-set changeover process, the food-and-beverage delivery process, and other meeting elements.”

Plan now. You can see from our survey that a majority of organizations are returning to in-person events soon. That means a mass run on event venues. In our recent webinar, both Kelly Helfman, commercial president, Informa Markets Fashion, and Desiree Hanson, EVP, Clarion Events, said that if you are planning events for the fall or winter of 2021—or even 2022—get space now!

Hybrid takes center stage. While the Society for Laboratory Automation and Screening will still have its in-person event in Vienna this month, attendance from outside Europe will, of course, be down. Organizations will have to start experimenting with hybrid events—for this, maybe add a 5-minute Vienna travel video or a raffle for a trip next year or special dialogues with in-person exhibitors. If content mix is still the biggest draw for people and travel is not in everyone’s comfort zone or budgets yet, then a creative virtual option to your in-person event should be included. In a new survey, “2021 and Beyond,” by Factum Global, an international consultancy, a majority (55%) of C-suite leaders say they experienced increased participation in their activities internationally. Can’t let that slip away.

Create ongoing events. The idea of a series of content as opposed to a 2-3 day event has taken hold. By doing a spread-out series, one event planner in our webinar said that by the third month this year, “the audience had become larger. And by the time you get to June, the next event is only six months away and not a year.” “Keep the brand alive 365 days” was a common sentiment expressed in a CEIR survey. In the past year, “we’ve developed new products that are here to stay; content we run as a series in our energy sector has done very well for us,” said Hanson. It’s brought Clarion “a new audience. Eighty percent of the people have never been to our [in-person] events. It’s keeping our audiences engaged throughout the year.”

ProductShots_Reset (1)

‘Captivate Your Audience From the Very Beginning’; Steen to Showcase Storytelling Skills at Virtual Event

by Media

“Pay particular attention to the first and last sentences of a story. People tend to remember the first things you say and your concluding thought. Make sure they are as powerful and memorable as possible. I don’t necessarily use the same words when I am telling a story, but I typically know what the first and last words will be.”

Those carefully chosen words come from Scott Steen, executive director of the American Physiological Society, in a white paper he wrote titled Becoming Your Association’s Storyteller-in-Chief. Steen will be one of the featured keynote speakers at the upcoming Reset, Reinvent, Revenue 2021, AM&P Network’s virtual event for association publishing professionals, online everywhere June 16-17.

While Steen’s talk—titled MarComm as Change Agent: How Brand Drives Organizational Change—will delve into other areas, his proficiency at and commitment to the art of storytelling will serve him and his audience well. You’ll hear how he’s led associations through major transformation and why association communicators are perfectly positioned to be the catalysts of change within their organizations. (Can’t wait? Tune in here to learn more from Steen on how communications drives change.)

“Effective associations tell stories to: promote their profession or industry; attract new members; trumpet their accomplishments; honor their members; sell their experiences and products; and more,” Steen wrote. “But few leaders take the time to hone their storytelling skills.”

While Steen’s doubling-down on storytelling is not a revelation, its emphasis is well-warranted. In December 2019, after speaking to our media group for 30-plus minutes about the vital nature of digital design and the reading revolution that digital has thrust upon us, Mario Garcia—a Columbia professor and author of the book, The Story—closed by saying: “The takeaway is if you have a good story, people will stay with you… I don’t sit here and lament what was. I celebrate what is. These are the best times to be a storyteller, but you have to explore all that is there.”

The pandemic may have amplified the value of storytelling even more, as we all experienced things for the first time over the last 15 months.

The Food Marketing Institute opened its virtual meeting last year with footage of members talking about the importance of grocery stores and communities during the pandemic, the role they played, and how they gave back to their communities. “Opening the event with the stories was so powerful,” said Margaret Core, VP of marketing and industry relations. “That’s engagement: We let the actions of our members tell our story.”

Steen lists 5 Principles for Telling a Great Story, based on a version by Stanford Business School Professor JD Schramm. They are:

Parachute In. You have seconds to capture your audience’s attention… Captivate your audience from the very beginning by jumping right into a story.

First & Last. (This is the lead quote about first and last sentences.)

Goldilocks Principle. Not too hot, not too cold, just right. Use too few details and you’ll prevent your audience from truly experiencing your story and lose emotional connection. Use too many and your story will become confusing and (worse) boring. Make your details count.

Poetic Language. Poetry uses carefully chosen and powerful words to communicate both information and emotion. It also uses language economically, conveying tremendous meaning with the fewest words possible. The best presentations and speeches do, too.

The Sound of Silence. [Interesting on the day that A Quiet Place Part II opens up.] Silence tends to make Americans nervous, but it can be an incredibly powerful tool when you are telling a story. It gives people time to “get the joke” when you say something funny. It intensifies the moment when the point is profound or poignant.

As with all of our content, measurement must be considered. In a whitepaper titled, Storytelling 2020: What You Need to Know About Storytelling in Marketing, the Atlanta chapter of the American Marketing Association wrote: “Be prepared to isolate the data that matters to your storytelling efforts. Then analyze what messages had an impact, which ones didn’t and where there is room for optimization. Also, leverage this data to get a better picture of your customer and where there are opportunities to extend the relationship to create stronger, even lifelong, connections.”

Speaking of data, Emily Laermer, managing editor for Ignites at Money-Media, told us this a couple years ago: “Data and visual stories are pretty consistently among our most saved and forwarded content. In the most basic sense, data stories are ones that just have a ton of information. So they can be generated from a huge spreadsheet or Excel file. But they don’t necessarily have to be numbers driven. They can be stories that have a lot of facts. So for example, new rules and regulations are great data stories. The first story I worked on at Ignites required that I read a 400-page rule on mutual fund regulation and how the funds were going to have to change their reporting. That’s a data story.”

Suggesting you read 400 pages of rules is not the best way to encourage data stories, but there are easier ways. Timelines can be very effective. In reporting on a company that had been acquiring other companies, Laermer went through annual reports, press releases, etc., and built out a timeline that proved very engaging.

Finally, Steen believes that everyone can be a storyteller, especially publications pros. “While there are naturally gifted storytellers, storytelling is a skill,” he wrote. “As such, storytelling can be learned and improved with practice… Ask yourself story prompts. What is the worst trouble you ever got in as a kid? What was the best journey you ever took? Who do you admire most and why? What is the most daring thing you ever did? Believe me. You have stories.”

It will be enthralling to hear Steen tell his story on Wednesday, June 16 at 3 pm. Make sure that happens by registering here.

KC Crain

Crain Communications Emerges from the Pandemic Focused on Subscriptions and On the Hunt for M&A

by COVID 19Media
KC Crain

Last November, KC Crain became president and CEO of Crain Communications, representing the third generation of leadership at the 105-year-old, family-owned publisher, whose brands include Advertising Age, Crain’s Chicago Business and Modern Healthcare.

AMPLIFY caught up with KC to talk about his vision for the company, such as changing revenue streams (including digital and print subscriptions, which for the first time will exceed print advertising revenue for Crain this year) and a desire to expand into new markets through acquisition.

AMPLIFY: KC, how has Crain responded to the crisis over the past year and how has that positioned the company as we start to come out of the pandemic?

KC Crain: Like everybody else, the biggest fire was our events business. In a typical year we do about 200 events across all our brands and as it became a reality that we would be canceling all our events for the year, we made a massive pivot. We did over 900 virtual events over the last year and kept about half of our overall events revenue but the margins increased significantly. On the digital side, we had to get smarter about the analytics around our audiences and we paid a lot of attention to our audience strategy. We saw some nice increases in paid digital audience.

AMPLIFY: You’ve mentioned that audience strategy is the key to Crain’s future—can you expand?

KC: When we look at this business, it’s always been based on audience—your events audience, your digital audience, your print audience. We’re trying to get as smart as we can about who is engaging with our brands and on what platforms. We doubled down on our journalism. After 105 years, journalism is integral to our strategy, but now more than ever, it’s fundamental. If you have good journalism that people can’t get anywhere else, then they’re going to have to subscribe.  We’ve put in place a great team, we got smart about the analytics around our audience and their consumption habits and we’ve seen a huge lift.

AMPLIFY: As part of Crain’s prioritization on audience, you made a major hire in Veebha Mehta, who ran audience and marketing at Financial Times, Pearson and Cengage. What is her role with Crain?

KC: We had to look at how we were marketing to consumers and for the first time we have a global CMO in Veebha, whose main focus is our audiences. She’s a great hire and put together job functions we haven’t had in the company before.

AMPLIFY: What’s the revenue mix today for Crain?

KC: For the first time, our audience revenue—print and digital subscriptions—in 2021 will be greater than our print advertising revenue. Our revenue mix really changed from trade print advertising and event revenue to digital and audience revenue and the margins were significantly better. We saw a huge improvement in our first quarter numbers and I think we’ll see that trend continue. We’re up 50 percent year-over-year in our digital business coming out of the pandemic. As we’re focused on audience, digital, data, and custom, those business lines will continue to grow.

AMPLIFY: How does Crain look at the relationship between media and events as events start to come back?

KC: If people didn’t figure out a way to enhance their digital business during the pandemic, then shame on them. The pandemic 100 percent accelerated our digital strategy, namely in the data and analytics around our audiences, which we will continue to push in 2021. Coming out of 2020, nobody knew what 2021 would be like. We originally budgeted for zero in-person events but we will have our first in-person event in July and this fall we will have in-person events all over the world. There will be different aspects to our events such as live streaming and I think we will see a hybrid model for a while yet. We have no interest in running 900 virtual events again; it’s not sustainable. But as we move forward, we will continue to see virtual events where the topic and the market make sense.

AMPLIFY: KC, you are the third generation of leadership for Crain. What’s your vision for the company?

KC: We’ve got the business to where we are 100 percent focused on growth and we’re looking at verticals outside our traditional businesses. When you think about Crain, you might think about healthcare, automotive, marketing and manufacturing, our city brands. We made an acquisition in 2019 in the genomics space—life sciences are a new market for us. You’re going to see us make acquisitions that are adjacencies to our current business but then we will also get pretty focused on growth markets as well. We are in the market and looking at deals weekly. This is an exciting time; there’s a ton of opportunity in our space.

AMPLIFY: What are you excited about?

KC: Our audience strategy. I’m so fired up. We’re a 105-year-old company and we’ve never been so analytical. We’ve got great team members doing things to grow the business and for the first time in a while, we’re having fun. We’ve put ourselves in position to take advantage of these market opportunities out there. We’ve got wonderful traditional brands, great legacy markets and we’re looking to grow into new markets.

PinkWhen

Reaching audiences and driving revenue: Reset, Reinvent, Revenue 2021 keynotes urge creativity

by Media

In his book, When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing, best-selling author Daniel Pink gives our typical day three stages: a peak, a trough and a recovery. He wants you doing analytic tasks in the morning, administrative tasks—emails, expense reports, etc.—in the midday, and insight problems in the afternoon. “…We’re less vigilant [then] than during the peak,” he says. “[But] that looseness—letting in a few distractions—opens us to new possibilities and boosts our creativity.”

Two of the keynotes for our June 16-17 Reset, Reinvent, Revenue 2021—a virtual event for association publishing professionals—Denise Burrell-Stinson, head of WP Creative Team in the Creative Group at The Washington Post, and Scott Stuart, CEO, Turnaround Management Association, also emphasize the importance of creativity—not the first characteristic you think of for CEOs and brand marketers.

“We’re looking to see how our creativity and ideas and how we reach audiences can be a driver of revenue,” Burrell-Stinson said on a recent Associations Council podcast. “When that’s done well, it’s a good marriage of business and creativity. We used to think that they have to live very separately—the person who was the creative mind was not the business mind, and the person who was the business mind could not be counted on to be creative. I’ve found that as absolutely not true. Everyone can embrace [those two attributes].”

Asked how the Turnaround Management Association was able to pivot so well to put on a successful virtual event, Stuart simply said, “Creativity. We know that a certain percentage will come [to an event] for education. We also know that people are Zoomed out. They also want to have some fun; they’re used to going to Las Vegas for a TMA event.

“How can I give them a feeling that they’re not just stuck on Zoom,” Stuart asked. “We created 24 [short, interactive] sessions on industry topics, built a networking room, covered DEI. We had Colonel [Robert J.] Darling who was in a bunker with Dick Cheney on 9/11. We added a casino experience and dueling pianos, had an illustrator doing drawings while sessions were going on.

“We created variety and”—Stuart slowed down here to accentuate—“actionable optionality. [We brought] you as close to in-person networking as you could ever imagine. Sponsors saw they got value out of it. The only downside was that because people expected the ‘same old,’ it caused us to market louder to get the message out. But once people saw it, they were our great evangelizers.”

That’s something all of us strive for. How much better is it when someone else talks you up, especially a member? That human connection is something Pink also addresses in his book, written before the pandemic but probably more on target now. “Research shows us that social breaks are better than solo breaks—taking a break with somebody else is more restorative than doing it on your own,” he said.

With the water-cooler conversation still mostly out for now, finding a neighbor, a nearby friend, or just a visit to the local barista might be Pink’s restorative recipe. He calls afternoons “the Bermuda Triangles of our days,” citing a Duke University study that found that harmful anesthesia errors are three times more likely at 3 p.m. than 8 a.m., and Danish test takers who scored significantly lower in the afternoon than morning. “Regular, systematic breaks—especially those that involve movement, nature and full detachment—reduce errors, boost mood and can help us steer around this Bermuda Triangle,” Pink said.

That connection to the audience is something Burrell-Stinson came back to time and again during her interview. Before reaching out, she said it’s important—especially during these times—for staff to feel aligned with the organization’s message.

During the early stages of the pandemic, “I was one of those people showing up and asking, ‘What is my job right now?’ I can’t sit here selling. I really wanted to know that I felt right about what my job was.” Fortunately, the Post felt the same. “Let’s talk to our audience and see what they need right now,” she said.

“We did this deep, intentional engaging of the audience. ‘Tell us what it is you need to know. Tell us what’s helpful. Tell us what’s respectful. Tell us what empowers you.’ And they did. And when we listened to the audience we had our North Star. They told us what was going to work. When we had that information, we were actually able to take it to brands and say we’ve heard from this audience, they’re vocal, they’re smart and let’s do more than just market to them. Let’s really engage them on their terms.”

You will want to engage—creatively or otherwise—with Burrell-Stinson, Stuart and the third keynote as well, Scott Steen, executive director of the American Physiological Society, on June 16-17 and hear more of what we can take out of the pandemic to help our organizations to Reset, Reinvent (and grow) Revenue. Find more information and register here.

Listen here as Burrell-Stinson discusses the challenges and opportunities brought by the current publishing climate. And listen here to more with Stuart on how he’s led his organization through this pivot with creativity.