The big news:
On 29 June 2015, Microsoft Corp announced that it is shutting down its display advertising business and handing operations over to AOL and AppNexus. About 1,200 advertising sales jobs at Microsoft will be impacted, with some positions to be moved to AOL and AppNexus.
The not-so-relevant backdrop:
“You don’t understand: Willy was a salesman. And for a salesman, there’s no rock bottom to the life. He don’t put a bolt to a nut, he don’t tell you the law or give you medicine. He’s a man way out there in the blue riding on a smile and a shoeshine. And when they start not smiling back – that’s an earthquake.”
…well, that was meant for Willy Loman, the salesman, a magnificent career option until recently. Willy’s death in Arthur Miller’s 1949 play ‘Death of a Salesman’ definitely was not intended to forecast the collapse of an exciting profession of display advertising salesmanship. But the world seems to be rapidly moving towards a similar situation with the information businesses, although Miller had possibly no clue of what was coming up 50 years down the road.
The must-told story (oops, the obituary!):
It’s a story of a successful advertising sales person and his employer, an eminent trade publisher. (Novice note: A trade publication, unlike a consumer publication, covers a specific industry for people who work in that industry. Trade publications therefore cover an industry in more minute details than a consumer publication might.) The successful sales person’s remarkable sales career started with a local yellow pages publishing company, an iconic sales job for the freshers and wannabe media pros. His tireless efforts on telesales, numerous cold calls a day and his amazing influence over the street corner businesses made him a super star phone book advertising sales guy in no time. He soon upgraded himself with the know-hows of display advertising, became skilled at advertising agency/ media planners’ game …and like many moved to a bigger publisher, a renowned trade press who used to ‘respectfully’ identify their publication as the bible for the industry. Our successful sales person was almost a magician who mastered the art of promoting, presenting and persuading any prospects into a new campaign and hypnotizing the existing ones for massive upsells. Both the publishing company and the successful sales person were real sense business builders. They brought amazing creative branding opportunities to the print publishing business, such as, belly band advertising, inserts, innovative double-spreads, artistic gatefolds – they did it all and seen it all, happily and successfully!
Unfortunately they had quit and breathed their last recently! Honestly they have not been keeping too well nearly a decade. They had a lot of potentials and could have done much better for much longer. But their deaths were inevitable – largely for their own mistakes.
Technically today I should be talking of their celebrated past and not the flaws. After all their vividly flourishing glory days lasted for decades! You are allowed to hate me for criticizing and judging them at this e-wake. They, at the end of the day, did not take good care of themselves and that’s just not cool to me.
The great trade-press company the successful sales person worked for were the kings of their industry. They never were and never did strive to be the glossy shiny consumer magazine to be picked up at the supermarket payment counters or at the gas stations, but they were ‘strong’, ‘proud’ and ‘needed’ by the industry leaders. They had offered exclusive content, hard news, excellent features and industry gossips for insiders and wannabe insiders alike.
During the beginning of the new millennium when the content migrated to online, they did not know what to do. They were not organized and equipped to go to a war with the free online content (may not be of same great quality of the great trade publishers) era. The successful sales person and his team were badly slapped on the face by the abrupt transformations in the buying and selling habits. They kept on blaming on the economy/ recession and kept pushing the old loyals only to get negligible positive outcomes.
Then this great new concept of having-a-website-of-your-own in the name of being e-revolutionized got into them in an already somewhat complex information dissemination ecosystem. Like most early days conventional publishing houses, this great trade publisher put their print content on a website. We can’t blame them for not learning the user psychologies or not comprehending search engine power during the e-infancy days. These things were just developing as the internet started to overwhelm the conventional news and information businesses. Our publisher grew up this big with the intelligent thinking of ‘stick to your core competencies to excel greater heights’ and internet was not one of their favourite domain. They refused to accept the fact that internet was all set to bring in a ground-breaking new media revolution. They did not realize putting their content online and behind a pay-wall is far from being digital publishing.
A news website was made and launched, however lousily, the publisher needed to earn money to cover the losses in the print. The sales team including our hero, the successful sales person, also went thru’ several classroom trainings to learn the necessary industry jargons. Selling banner sales on their website soon became their forte.
(Novice Note: Theoretically, the health of the trade media has been driven by both advertising and readership. The profitability of trade media depends on market expertise and revenue from subscription and advertising both (since as most costs are fixed). While large media companies benefit from economies of scale in sharing resources between publications, trade publishers must compete successfully by serving smaller focus group/ industry as an expert, investing heavily into a unshakable content strategies – develop content unparallel, create authority and strong niche – so that subscription revenue is not compromised with.)
The nail on the coffin was when they decided to find the middle ground with their content strategy as a result of intense pressure from the successful salesperson and his colleagues in the commercial team (also due to the anxiety over a prolonged depressed economy and gradually tumbling print revenue). Of course, compromising content is the easiest way to tarnish their long standing reputation as an industry’s knowledge bank. The editorial staff, embarrassingly for any publishers, made joint calls to the clients to sell package deal/ advertorials/ buy-this-get-that-that-that-free kind of services (value added editorial support in exchange of a few extra advertising bucks? Well, not a bright idea!) Sooner the editorial integrity and clean/ unbiased content strategy went for a toss, which quickly was discovered the readers. After all, who wants to read articles and reports in an expensive business publication manipulated by the advertisers? Circulation, as a result, took a nosedive.
When ‘paid’ circulation almost got to an alarmingly unsustainable level, the great trade publisher toyed terms ‘selected distribution’, ‘exclusive mailing list’ and ‘focus distribution’. They gather the audacity to claim a large print numbers to the advertisers for a free distribution to a ‘carefully handpicked industry leaders’. However, sadly, numbers claimed were not true. Unethical business practice does not have a long run. The faithful advertisers obviously spotted this quickly and their support in form of advertising dollars started to evaporate in no time.
Interestingly, by this time the advertisers understood the real game in the world of changes and started employing communication experts/ qualified marketers who understand the knowhow of ‘result oriented’ and ‘measurable’ marketing weapons. Digital marketing, business blogging, white papers, social media, content marketing are the stories thereafter. Marketing became more sales oriented than ever before.
One day, they decided to give up! And story ends here with the sad downfall of a great era of trade publishing and display adverting selling.
Or does it actually?
Well, honestly, ‘death’ is a hugely exaggerated term to use here! Not all of them died and not all of them will give up. The better ones will live with their past splendor and dazzling core competency of great content even if they will have to change their turfs or get out of their comfort zone. They will realize and act on the revolution and be brilliant with their business yet again:
- Evolve or get eliminated. Be pro digital or simply just retire – the traditional publishers don’t have a choice left. I will not elaborate on this point on the how’s and why’s. Fact of the matter is – being digitally wise is not a destination anymore, nor is it’s a matter of a media platform(s). The new media concepts will continue to progress and there will forever be e-innovative ways of reaching out the target audience and the conventional publishing houses need to come to terms with the changes. The Association of Magazine Media (MPA) launched Magazine Media 360° Report in 2014. Digital magazines are going strong and growing – 14 of the top 15 highest grossing Lifestyle iPad apps are magazine brands. While MPA’s reports are focusing on US and only for consumer magazines, but they are excellent way to understand global trends for magazines (and link with trade press). The report has also further proven deep engagement of the readers with digital edition magazines.
- This is not even news that the biggest growth area in local media this year also will be in online marketing, growing from 30% from 2012 representing a little more than $24 billion. Newspapers, trade press, consumer magazines, radio stations, cable TV, local TV, direct mail and OOH continue to lose share because their clients are investing dollars in new media that they used to spend in traditional.
- Marketers are looking for added value – not just some free publicity or a free write up/ interview of their bosses. They need efficient and effective media products at the right price. The advertisers’ ultimate goal is to get help in generating leads and increase sales. Everyone is concerned with the bottom-line implications these days. The publisher’s approach must be to ‘exceed customer expectations’, period.
- The publishing house needs to develop and recruit Account Managers and Sales Directors capable of operating as “business partners” to the marketers, rather only an ad salesman. They need to listen to their customer’s needs and address them so that they don’t make the advertiser fit the salesperson’s offering and available inventory.
- More business will come from key accounts. Endless surveys said key clients contribute up to 70% of the total adverting revenue in a trade media business, a figure which never was more than 30% just a decade ago. Account Managers need to have high relationship management skills and a high level of understanding of the customer’s business needs, problems, pressures, priorities, uncertainties and ambitions for the future.
- Content Marketing already is playing a major role for the marketers in reaching out to the target audience without actually ‘hard selling’ advertiser’s brand. The traditional advertising money is being reallocated to SEO, business blogging, white papers, technical books, smart emails, PPC, banner advertising and other online ad services that generate website traffic – which is ultimately where potential customers do their research before they buy and readers keep themselves updated. As a result, digital media apparently become more measurable and successful for business owners/ marketers. Are the trade publishers facilitating business blogging to the content writers? May be they should!
- Sure, many traditional trade publishing companies behaving contemporary these days (else they wouldn’t have survived thus far)! They sell online inventory that competes with alternative online channels. However some these traditional publishing companies find that online revenue is not predictable and yields small margins. To make it further more complicated, advertising sales managers don’t always understand how to sell the online business options competitively and they can’t be bundled with the traditional media offerings to cover up the revenue the publisher is losing elsewhere.
- There is this enormous new focus on inbound marketing last few years. Other than spending most of their marketing budget on outbound marketing on banner ads and traditional ads like TV, radio, print ads, inbound marketers attract visitors, convert visitors to leads and leads to sales. The trade publishers will have to be expert to enable their advertisers to analyze data by identifying ways to increase traffic to their website, thus, generating more leads and sales for the business owners. Businesses that have figured out how to use the internet to “get found” by potential customers and then convert them to customers, are shifting their budgets away from traditional advertising to inbound marketing. Big Data already have started showing its power and it will have to be a part of trade publishing business soon. By embracing big data is getting down to business with the nitty gritty, publishers will have now access to information on everything from sales to search terms.
I would like to end this rather lengthy article with a simple thought. The trade publishers and their advertising sales people will have to understand that eventually advertising revenue will go down or possibly dry out totally. The content has been the king and will be the king again and also will be their brand identity and bread-earner. Until whenever possible to stay ahead of this advertising sales game, they will have educate themselves of ‘digital marketing’ tactics and will have to empathize with the business-owners. Evolving the sales approach will require the sales person to become a customer advocate, helping facilitate the purchase, pricing, implementation, and stakeholder education necessary to achieve progress.
Publishing is indeed an exciting industry and will remain so for the smart ones…
All the best/ Pranjal
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(This article was first published in LinkedIn PULSE on 3 July 2015)
(Images borrowed from the internet)
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