I hear management consultants McKinsey & Company are going into Condé Nast to try help the current situation.
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I am not sure there is any particular strategy for current employees to do things differently but below are my thoughts on what Condé or other publishers should do TODAY without any delay. This could apply to almost any print conglomerate right now going through a dip, and the right team can turn things around.
I am writing this as a marketing, technology, and startup VC person and it should be looked at as a manifesto to fix what is currently going on within these organizations. I did not touch on the writing or publishing departments as I am not as well versed in those, and they could probably be left as is with the right digital team behind them. (perhaps even hire back some of that lost writing talent let go in the past)
From now on hire Net Natives – these are people that live and breathe the Internet and understand the underlying platforms, accountability, and plumbing of the connected web.
Take control of your web properties – now. The web needs to be embraced first and foremost and the physical products (read: magazines) need to be seen as a part of this new ecosystem.
Hire someone that is net native to handle and run all the hiring of Sales, Business Development, Engineering, Designers, and Project Managers. This is most likely a major role that would have each digital head reporting to her. Reproduce this role where appropriate with each property you have – some overlap or multiple properties can go to one person. Have this new team meet with folks like UnderCurrent and Reprise Media immediately.
Reorganize the sales force
Everyone should be selling strategic ideas not full page print ads with added value banner spots on the web properties. This means your sales force has to be net native too, and has an understanding of brand needs, engagement, conversations, and accountability back to their customers and who they serve. They need to understand how to use Business Intelligence systems, tracking pixels, and ad delivery networks all work together. Demographic and psycho-graphic targeting should be a walk in the park.
Have IN HOUSE developers
Working with the best digital team of developers\designers in NYC? Great – hire them all and have them work 100% on your properties. Take their entire team, a well oiled machine that is used to cranking out projects on time and under budget, and have them start working in tandem with the sales team to get amazing things accomplished.
Don’t have a team in mind? Hire net native engineers and designers that have shipped completed projects.
Let them have 10%-20% time to work with new technologies, the latest startups API’s, and other cool projects as long as they touch your properties. Give them a sandbox of your data and previous assets to play with and they will come up with interesting things.
Expose their work to your more adventurous readers. This is a virtuous cycle that will pay off.
Hire agile business development people
BD guy for 20 years? Probably a bad candidate. You want people who EMBRACE the latest technology, and can work with your new in-house developers to integrate the latest and greatest solutions to make your lives and your visitors lives easier. This means taking risks. You are going through a dip right now and the way out of it is not to continue the status quo and get blinded by FUD.
Cap the deal cycle process. Cut it to 1/3 of whatever it is today. 90 days from meeting to SLA? Do it 30 days next time.
No more wasting your own companies time, or the time of the other companies.
No more brain sucking meetings to get strategy, synergy, and strategic partnerships done.
Boil it all down; Does this BD initiative create a better experience? Yes – continue. No – move on.
Have great project managers
These are folks that can run and produce a project with a competent team of designers and programmers at their disposal. They are tightly integrated into the sales process – TALKING TO CLIENTS – and then translating their needs back to their team that trusts them.
Gone are the days of micro-sites that disappear after the brand promotion is over.
SEO is now your friend and you build on the foundation layered from each project that comes before it.
But how do we integrate all these people together?
Make up small teams of people that each own a project within the organization. Every project has a specific lead and small team behind it.
A flat organization with small teams working on solving problems allows you to comprise each team with one of the following described above;
1. Digital Manager would have the following direct reports:
a. Sales person
b. Project manager
c. Engineer
d. Designer
With this system in place every initiative and business line is accounted for. The organization can scale, as well as provide growth opportunities to go from smaller groups to larger groups with bigger projects. Leadership roles will emerge, and promoting executives from within as well as outside the company would become more viable.
Small groups would own projects, yet be contributing to the great family of products they would be a part of. Accountability and healthy competition would be in place and hopefully lead to a productive and great new culture.
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July 27th, 2009 at 1:57 pm
As a Creative Director who has spent his entire career in digital publishing I can tell you that these are real issues plaguing the publishing industry. In my experience, the driving factors behind the lack of progress are fear of taking risks, giving the wrong people too much power over things they don't understand, and plain old indifference.
It should also be noted that there is a Cold War of sorts being waged within many traditional publishing companies between the print side and the web side. Print people fear they will lose their jobs to web people, and web people resent the fact that they are not treated with the same level of respect as their print counterparts. This stalemate stifles progress and becomes a major drain on a company.
I believe that over time, as more and more young professionals enter the workforce who have lived their entire lives with the internet, a lot of these issues will iron themselves out. But it will always be a top down approach where executives need to recognize that they cannot understand and control their entire web operations alone without the help of skilled and knowledgeable web professionals. They must hire smart people who care, plan well, and accept when something isn't working and change it.
Bottom line is you can't be afraid to take risks. The web is a pretty flexible medium. Even more so today with more agile methods of project development taking root.
Even after all the obstacles I've had to overcome, I still love working in web publishing, and I'm pretty optimistic about its future.
July 27th, 2009 at 2:39 pm
I think cold war is the perfect way to put it. There will be a regime
change in time in most places, some by default as they grow into a new era,
while others will be forced to change because of economic or other reasons.
Risk taking is half the reason I point to net natives as a solution – as I
believe it is within their DNA to try new and innovative things.
Thanks for the great comment.
July 28th, 2009 at 7:52 pm
Eric, when I was in Galway, I spoke Irish. The Gaelic Irish. I thought, being agile, that I was accent free. Nope. Everyone could tell I was a foreigner. It was transparent. Never did get rid of my accent.
Brilliant conclusion about the need to bring in a “Net Native.” It's amazing how much we know when we try to teach it to a non native.
July 28th, 2009 at 10:01 pm
It is absolutely a question of training – its the “bring everyone up to a
certain level” that keeps me focused on net natives. There is enough
training to do on others things, and having people up to speed on the web is
very helpful.
July 30th, 2009 at 12:12 pm
Great read. Especially agree with the pt about the sales force selling strategic ideas.
July 30th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
Thanks Seth. Hope someone is listening!
July 31st, 2009 at 5:38 pm
there is one other big fear that as every day goes by becomes smaller and smaller.. ad dollars. Before they feared that moving online would cannabalise on their offline print ads.. pretty serious stuff as the revenue from print ads is much much more than online.
Of course every day the revenue from print ads decrease as the readership falls.. leaving only one place to go. online.
August 1st, 2009 at 12:45 pm
This reminds me of an article by John Dvorak on Microsoft:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/is-the-party-o...
Essentially, he makes the argument that Microsoft keeps trying to re-invent itself. The the reality is that it must stick to its core-competency: making software. Software is its blood, and trying to redefine their business is fruitless.
I get a similar feeling from Conde. Critics may argue that Conde is in the “information” business rather “publishing.” But its blood is paper. Moving to a new digital culture will be one of extreme difficulty, and if I was a shareholder, I'd rather bleed the business dry, distribute dividends, and have a closing party for the awesome ride. It seems to me that this is no different than any other industry that has failed, be it type-writers, sewing machines, rail-roads, etc.
In short, does it really makes sense to invest all of this money to evolve into a digital company and go against the wind?
August 4th, 2009 at 1:26 am
You have a great point. It may be too late, but your suggestion to
distribute all the assets accordingly wouldn't pass through the BOD. I
doubt any of this will come to pass, but if you have large consulting firms
on board to try to turn the aircraft carrier, you might as well try to make
a real go of it.
Conde could stick with its core competency – and bring in a new breed of
business systems to help monetize that. My hope is that they will see this
as an option vs. a slow death of refusing to change.
August 4th, 2009 at 6:26 am
You have a great point. It may be too late, but your suggestion to
distribute all the assets accordingly wouldn't pass through the BOD. I
doubt any of this will come to pass, but if you have large consulting firms
on board to try to turn the aircraft carrier, you might as well try to make
a real go of it.
Conde could stick with its core competency – and bring in a new breed of
business systems to help monetize that. My hope is that they will see this
as an option vs. a slow death of refusing to change.
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