Book a Great Event for Christmas!
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We are looking forward to Christmas but also to a series of great events taking place next year! Don't miss the chance to hear from Google, Petspyjamas, Ocado, Zappos and more. Please have a look at all the details below and book your places.
We are delighted to announce our February Internet Leaders Dinner with PetsPyjamas: More than just a Website! taking place on Thursday 26th February 2015 at Pescatori Restaurant in Charlotte Street. At tonight’s dinner the CEO of PetsPyjamas, Gracia Amico, will talk to us about the importance of truly understanding your customers and creating a shopping experience that (over) delivers on their needs. She will explain the approach PetsPyjamas have taken to achieve this, covering various channels of the business with emphasis on the ability to book pet friendly breaks. PetsPyjamas is the ultimate shopping destination for pet lovers and a great social network and online information source for pet owners. They recently won the 2014 Retail Week Award for Customer Services Initiatives so it’ll be an insightful evening on how this brand has and will innovate.
Cost: £99.00 + VAT per person
Click here to book your place.
We would also like to invite all you retailers out there to the MetaPack Delivery Conference: Europe's one-stop-shop for innovation in Delivery and eCommerce. The event showcases how retailers can encourage collaboration and innovation in the retail industry and use delivery to generate repeat purchase, customer loyalty and ultimately a better consumer experience. Register here to secure your place. Retailers attend for free but agencies and vendors can sign up for a fee too.
Taking place on Tuesday February 3rd 2015 at Park Plaza, Westminster Bridge, London, The Delivery Conference will showcase:
· 40 Inspirational sessions from European retail and delivery leaders
· Latest trends in Online Strategy and Delivery Innovation streams
· A diverse exhibition showcasing 45 global, niche and start up providers
· The Delivery Excellence Awards
· Recognising Retail and Carrier contributions to Delivery
We also have some great keynote speakers including Sir Stuart Rose from Ocado, Sir Charles Dunstone founder of Carphone Warehouse, Jonathan Wolske at Zappos and many more.
Please register here.
We are looking forward to seeing you at the events.
Charlie Lines
Director and Founder
Mixing Digital
0208 9854249
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This article is the first in a series looking at some of the key issues and topics which will feature in our Digital Media Strategies event next March.
Quartz and The Economist are two quite different businesses serving broadly similar audiences.
The Economist is a 171-year old print magazine that has a circulation across print and digital of more than 220,000 in the UK alone, complemented by both traditional and innovative digital and print ad formats and partnerships.
Quartz - despite being founded by equally venerable print magazine business Atlantic Media - is a two-year-old, digital-only, mobile-first startup focussed on social sharing and high-value native ads. Last month it hit an audience high of more than 10 million uniques.
Both are going after high-value professionals with a global outlook, but there's another similarity between the two publications. They are media brands that have business models seemingly suited to the current turbulent environment for publishing, and they also look like they're set up to keep growing, rather than slip into decline.
That position of strength makes them two case studies other media businesses should be able to learn from, so as part of our interview series with speakers for our forthcoming Digital Media Strategies event, TheMediaBriefing decided to speak to their presidents, The Economist media divisions's Paul Rossi and Quartz's Jay Lauf. While they have different angles on what makes a media business fit for the present day and the immediate future, there are also clear common themes.
Present sense
screen-shot-2014-11-20-at-12-07-20.pngPerhaps unsurprisingly for a man working for a company with a healthy and loyal paid customer base in print and online, Rossi (pictured right) believes the underlying economics of advertising mean it is vital to have a core product people value and are willing to pay for:
"That's the key differentiator. If you look at the long-term prognosis for [print and digital] advertising, it is going to decline. We're particularly seeing that as print moves to digital and within digital, the pressures of programmatic and price. But there's also the underlying issue, it's not a shift from print to digital it's a shift from scarcity to abundance."
Quartz doesn't currently have a paid option, though Lauf says it is something he would eventually like to see in some form. Instead, his take on the characteristics that make a strong modern media business involves structure, focus and belief.
For a start, he says it is important to avoid falling into the middle ground between true mass scale plays that let you monetise huge audiences, and the "laser focussed" approach that lets you target a particular audience or subject area effectively. Quartz, he says, falls more in the latter category, despite attracting a large audience.
jay-lauf-head-shot-1-.jpgLauf (pictured right) also says that one of the things that has enabled Quartz to build a sustainable media business is simply the fact it has been able to scale up its cost base in line with its audience and income, rather than having to service a big organisation and infrastructure built for a different time:
"One of the critical components of a strong media business is being absolutely right-sized on the cost side of the business. What you see a lot of the struggling legacy players dealing with now is trying to retro-fit their cost structures to a completely new paradigm.
"And I think that's one of the benefits for Quartz being able to explore a model that isn't the subscription model is that we've been built form the ground up, we don't have a lot of legacy cost and infrastructure to tear down, but can build scale to the opportunity."
He also believes that a "sense of purpose" is an often overlooked requirement for a modern media business.
"A reason for being, that helps you focus on who your audience is and how you serve them, is an often unstated part. Having a purpose or mission, rather than just aggregating the eyeballs. That’s a big piece of it."
Keeping ahead
Many media businesses have struggled to keep pace with technological change, shifting consumer behaviour and a volatile ad market.
Rossi describes The Economist as a "fast follower", taking best practice from other media businesses and different industries. That incorporates hiring from areas such as ad agencies, while instilling a culture across the business where staff are keeping an eye on what's going on:
"There’s not always a benefit in speed. We try and work out how you would do something in the context of The Economist brand. It’s about understanding what is going on in the markets and as much as anything it's about bringing in the right people. We are hiring agency people. We are hiring people who don’t necessarily come from media.
"I think it’s everybody’s job to keep track. On the editorial side we have people in the product development team who are actively talking to people about new technologies. How to deliver content, how to deliver video. We have dedicated resources internally. But I think on the commercial team everbody’s looking out the window. It comes from a realisation you've got to be experimenting and try stuff."
As part of that experimentation, Rossi says the Economist is prepared to invest in new products that might not be be big revenue generators on their own, but help expand the Economist brand and potentially drive subscriptions to the magazine. One product that looks like it will perform that role is The Economist's new Espresso daily roundup, which comes in app and email format and takes a few cues from Quartz's own successful daily briefings.
Hiring the right people is also a priority for Lauf, and he's similarly keen to bring in people who aren't blinkered and fit into a culture of experimentation:
"It's about ensuring you have a culture that is not afraid to take chances, to test and learn, fail fast. It very much gets down to the people, who are experimenters, who don’t have an ego about trying certain things, can move quickly."
However, he says Quartz is also benefiting from a relatively flat management structure and few dividing lines between different roles such as journalists and developers:
"The editors and developers sit next to each other. There is not a separate centralised team where you have to take a ticket to try something and told we'll have it in six months."
Round the corner
Future gazing is inevitably a risky past time in such a fast-changing industry, but then part of the job of the president of any media company, or indeed any company, is making some bets on what their business needs to look like a few years down the line.
What both Rossi and Lauf agree on is the need for media businesses of the future to have a diverse range of revenue streams.
While Rossi believes paid is a cornerstone of a strong business, it's clear from the way he splits his businesses priorities into "defend" and "grow" that diversificiation is a priority.
The "defend" part of that strategy involves making the most out of The Economist's core print business while also building digital subscriptions:
"I recognise money is coming out of print, the landscape within online is changing. We need to defend and maximise our revenue from those spaces, but not be denial about the structural changes that are happening in mobile and programmatic. Print is still a hugely important part of the business, it will decline but not to zero. We need to make sure we are not walking away from that faster than the market."
The "grow" part involves "four pillars": Content marketing in the form of client and Economist-branded content such as its work with General Electric, events in the form of global franchises such as The Economist Insights series, marketing services such as its TVC video PR unit, and other Economist brands such as Intelligent Life and it's MBA courses.
"Those are the growth pillars," says Rossi. "But you've also got to focus on defend because there's still growth in those markets."
For Lauf, it's a similar case of building a range of businesses, though inevitably they will be more heavily weighted towards digital - and especially mobile - as time goes on:
"I don’t think there’s any one model or solution that I could point to. I think there will be varieties of models that will be suited to different publishers. Those revenue streams will look different for every company. For The Economist, they have this rich history of being able to charge for this magazine, so for them that remains an important part of what their business may be. It may be a less important piece for someone like Quartz.
"Five years from now my hope is we will have some sort of revenue stream from the user. It's hard for me to say what that might be but I can say it won't make the contribution to the top or bottom line that it will for The Atlantic or The Economist. Every company will be different, but there's no question digital will have to become a large portion of the revenue stream for these companies to look solid in five years."
Rossi agrees:
"The Atlantic has diversified into events, but it's also diversified into Quartz. The Guardian is diversifiying with its membership model in the UK. We all have different versions of the same idea and some of those diversifications are more digital, but I think broadly we are all dealing with the same thing."
There's no guaruntee Quartz will grow into a sustainable business, or that The Economist won't see a precipitous drop in sales revenue that it's unable to replace.
But right now these two publications look better prepared than most of their peers to build businesses that will deliver growth over the next few years. For media, that's a pretty good outlook to have.
Paul Rossi and Jay Lauf will both feature at the Digital Media Strategies session What Follows the Revolution? Building a Business Model for the Long Term on 11 March 2015. You can find more details here.
By Jasper Jackson
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The MetaPack Group, the leading provider of eCommerce technology for delivery services, today announced that the next Delivery Conference will take place on 3rd February 2015 at the Westminster Park Plaza in London. The event, which attracts the top influencers from the retail industry across Europe, will showcase how retailers can encourage collaboration and innovation in the retail industry and use delivery to generate repeat purchase and loyalty as well as provide better customer experience.
Each year the Delivery Conference attracts the best of the retail world and has a higher retailer to non-retailer ratio than any other industry event in the UK. Last year the event was attended by more than 1,000 people from the retail industry. Speakers at this year’s event include John Roberts, Founder of AO.com, Dino Rocos, Operations Director at John Lewis, Brian McCarthy, Home Delivery Director at the Home Retail Group, Jay Klauminzer, Vice President at Groupon Goods, EMEA, and Chris Haighton, Head of Supplier Relationship Management at Shop Direct Group.
Delivering choice in a customer centric world will be the key theme of the 2015 Delivery Conference, with particular focus on the impact of delivery on customer loyalty and on the latest developments and trends in delivery services from a pan-European point of view.
UK and European retailers are increasingly adopting multi-carrier delivery strategies to provide consumers with better choice and control over their delivery experience. A recent study, conducted by Forrester Research and commissioned by MetaPack, revealed that 85% of UK retailers reported measurable improvement of customer satisfaction as a result of offering multiple delivery options.
“The Delivery Conference attracts the best voices in the retail industry and offers a great opportunity for attendees to stay on top of the latest eCommerce trends,” said Patrick Wall, CEO of MetaPack.
“As retailers are increasingly investing in improving delivery experience, understanding where the industry is going and how to meet emerging customer demands is key to remaining competitive in the eCommerce market.”
MetaPack works with over 80 per cent of the top online UK retailers to help them provide the best delivery experience for shoppers. Backed by Index Ventures, MetaPack has experienced more than 50 per cent annual growth for six consecutive years and continues to drive innovation in delivery services
www.thedeliveryconference.com
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Inventor of the first Video Game Console dies
Video-game pioneer Ralph Baer has died at the age of 92. Mr Baer is widely seen as the "father of video games" for his pioneering work that led to the creation of the Odyssey games console.
Video-game pioneer Ralph Baer has died at the age of 92. Mr Baer is widely seen as the "father of video games" for his pioneering work that led to the creation of the Odyssey games console. The Odyssey, licensed to TV-maker Magnavox, went on sale in 1972 and inspired many other firms to make their own consoles. Mr Baer also created the first peripherals for consoles and invented many popular electronic games. Born in Germany, Mr Baer and his family fled the country before World War Two and emigrated to the United States. As a teenager he took up electronics and trained as a radio service engineer. After the war, this background led him to a career in electrical engineering that, in 1966, saw him create a "brown box" console that let two people take each other on in several different games including a crude, by modern gaming standards, version of table tennis. The brown box became the Odyssey and went on to become a huge hit. Its success helped to kick off the first wave of TV-connected gaming consoles and inspired an entire industry.
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Metapack have organised this event for 6 years now and we have seen it grow into what it is today.
That last event was a huge success with over 1000 delegates attending and 66% of delegates being retailers. From those 1000 delegates 60% of them are in fact decision makers.
The event consists of a conference, exhibition and awards.
Two conference streams, Delivery Innovation - a platform for the carrier and postal industry to present their latest innovations and developments. Online Strategy - a forum for top retailers from across Europe to discuss their strategy for keeping pace with consumer demand and lessons learned along the way.
In between break-out sessions you will have the opportunity to check out the exhibitors and see what they have to offer. We have exhibitors such as Hermes, Parcelforce Worldwide, Citysprint, Royal Mail and more.
You will hear from speakers across Europe such as Ocado, Groupon, Zappos, Carphone Warehouse and more
At the end of the day you can enjoy networking over a few drinks and enjoy our very own awards ceremony: The Delivery Excellence Awards.
Please click here for more info and to register.
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8th Loyalty Summitaims at how you can create a truly customer-centric business. The theme of this year’s edition is “‘Engage Customers Like Never Before: One Customer, One Experience, One Enterprise’. This edition would have 70+ Senior level professionals who would share their views & expertise on pre–decided topics and would have close to 350 industry leaders and practitioners of Loyalty, CRM, Marketing, Customer Experience, Social & Digital Media, Mobile Solutions, Employee Engagement, Big Data & Analytics. The entire event coverage alongwith a brief of last 7 years proceedings is available on the website www.loyaltysummit.net For more information please email on harish@loyaltysummit.net or call +91 9969428590
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Digital Media Strategies 2015 - Develop a profitable and sustainable media business model for the digital era Digital Media Strategies takes place 9 – 11 March 2015 at Kings Place, London. It brings together a global audience of over 400 CEOs and senior leaders from news, magazine, broadcast, B2B, STM and digital pureplay media businesses. Over three days of case studies, analysis, workshops, training, round table discussions and tailored networking opportunities, it focuses on the key strategic challenges behind developing a profitable and sustainable media business in a digital world. Now in its third year, it has now become the key venue for addressing the big-picture challenges facing the industry, focusing not on PR pitches, but instead on honest, in-depth case studies which go deeper than the surface trends.
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Get a free mobile performance analysis from MoPowered today. This will involve statistical analysis of all mobile commerce KPIs and an in depth report detailing key breakpoints or areas of improvement in the current user journey. Please visit our website https://www.mopowered.co.uk/ and contact us.Get a free mobile performance analysis from MoPowered today. This will involve statistical analysis of all mobile commerce KPIs and an in depth report detailing key breakpoints or areas of improvement in the current user journey. Please visit our websitehttps://www.mopowered.co.uk/ and contact us.
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Take part to Smart Insights' Survey and get the chance to win a free copy of The Managing Digital Marketing 2015 research report from digital strategy expert, Dr Dave Chaffey of Smart Insights, which will include practical advice on improving the effectiveness of digital marketing.
If you complete the survey you will also have a chance to win one of six prizes in our free prize draw:
- First Prize. £100 Amazon voucher
- Second Prize. Two “Save my Seat” tickets at TFM&A
- Third Prize. Three copies of Dave Chaffey’s new Digital Business and Ecommerce management book
For all the details and to complete he survey, please click here.
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