Pit Gottschalk: how much transformed is your newsroom? (video)

Pit Gottschalk, Head of CEO Office in Axel Springer (Germany), was one of the speakers at the INMA European Conference in Cascais, Portugal (19-21 October 2011). Watch Pit explain his measurement system of newsroom transformation process.

Pit Gottschalk studied over 50 newspaper newsrooms in Germany and prepared report helping media managers to compare their improvements with other players on the newspaper market. Now, he is rolling out the analysis to other countries. If you would like to be involved in the survey, you can contact CEO Office of Axel Springer in Germany.

Video recorded on INMA European Conference in Cascais, Portugal, 19-21 October 2011. Pit Gottschalk was interviewed by Artur Karda from 112MEDIA – consulting, training and outsourcing for media.

Outlook 2012 – interview with Earl Wilkinson

Earl J. Wilkinson, Executive Director of INMA, USA concluded the INMA European Conference in Cascais with his Outlook for 2012. Watch what his advice for newsmedia companies are.

Publishers need cultural change, and only in that matter with new oxygen, new growth can be expected. Watch the storyline for media publishers in 2012, and make sure you read the summary of Earl Wilkinson’s speech from Cascais.

Video recorded on INMA European Conference in Cascais, Portugal, 19-21 October 2011. Earl Wilkinson was interviewed by Artur Karda from 112MEDIA — media consulting, training and outsourcing.

How publishers can challenge Groupon? (video)

Marc Leimann, Group Consumer Sales Director from Mecom (UK), was one of the speakers during INMA European Conference in Cascais, Portugal (19-21 October 2011). He told the story of SweetDeal – watch how helpful this strategy can be for newsmedia company.

SweetDeal is a social buying online system started in 2010 by the group of European newspapers. In the interview below he tells how to develop such a business, is it possible to compete with market leader Groupon, what are lessons learned one year after launching the Sweet Deal project.

Video recorded on INMA European Conference in Cascais, Portugal, 19-21 October 2011. Marc Leimann was interviewed by Artur Karda from 112MEDIA — consulting, training and outsourcing for media.

Why newspapers in India are growing? (video)

Ravi Dhariwal, CEO Times of India, was one of the speakers at INMA European Conference in Cascais (Portugal, 19-21 October 2011). Exclusively for Forum4Editors.com he reveals the secrets behind successful newspapers in India.
Most of Indian publishers continue to grow the business every year on every platform: print, online and mobile. Ravi Dhariwal explains reasons why Indian newspapers’ circulation continue to rise and why new media does not eat traditional newspapers.
As INMA International President with professional experience in FMCG industry (Unilever, Pepsico), he gives some advice to publishers from Europe and US.

Interview recorded on INMA European Conference in Cascais, Portugal, 19-21 October 2011. Ravi Dhariwal was interviewed by Artur Karda from 112MEDIA — consulting, training and outsourcing for media.

Guillermo Schmitt received the Golden Tie award

Every year INMA Europe honors one person with the highest possible honor in this organization, the Golden Tie. The 2011 award was presented to Guillermo Schmitt, the CEO of Segodnya Multimedia.

The golden tie is an award which has a long history and is given every year to one special person that made a significant difference for newsmedia industry and for the INMA Europe organization. The honoured recipients are always carefully selected by the ones who received the golden tie in earlier years.

Guillermo Schmitt who was awarded with the Golden Tie during INMA’s European Conference in Cascais, Portugal this year is the CEO, and editor-in-chief of Segodnya Multimedia. He has a long history in consulting and business management.

Bart de Proost, the Golden Tie recipient from 2010, said:

“This year the committee choose to give our Golden Tie to a humble person who operates most of the time from the shadow. (..) Based on evidence and experience. He ,or she, cannot live with discrimination in any kind it exists. He or she will defend the values of a free press , even if it could cost him his job. Yes , its a man. A man with a connection with Spain. (…)

He is not the person who plays the first violin, but he is the piano player. He is the man that leads the orchestra by being the companion and the coach.
The weaker players, if they have more potential will receive all the chances hey need to grow to solists and stars. (…)

In the second part of his career he moved to a European country in full development and became Inma Europe board member. Our recipient this year opened a huge market for Inma and brought new promising persons into our network. We will always call him our pioneer in Ukraine.”

The former recipients of the Award were:
2010: Bart de Proost, Francis Hirn
2009: Olivier Bonsart, Directeur Déléque, Rennes, France
2008: Mark Challinor, g8wave international, London, UK
2007: John Thomson, The Irish Times, Dublin, Ireland
2006: Jan Damgaard, Ekstra Bladet, Copenhagen, Denmark
2005: Hans-Dieter Gärtner, Munich, Germany
2004: Angelo Gallo, Milano, Italy
2003: Herman Verwimp, De Financieel-Economische Tijd, Antwerp, Belgium
2002: Maeve O’Reilly, The Irish Times, Dublin, Ireland
2001: Earl Wilkinson, INMA, Dallas, Texas, USA
2000: Inge Van Gaal, INMA, Antwerp, Belgium
1999: Erik Hansen, Oslo, Norway
1998: John Bilton, Bristol, United Kingdom
1997: Bo-Christer Lundquist, Stockholm, Sweden

Newsmedia companies need a cultural change

Earl J. Wilkinson, Executive Director of INMA, USA concluded the INMA European Conference in Cascais with his Outlook for 2012. He said that newsmedia companies need cultural change, and only in that matter with new oxygen, new growth can be expected.

Newspapers haven’t missed anything from their core role. They still have to entertain, inform, and inspire. The times change, consumers’ habits change, the ways of delivering information change as well. But those are just new platforms. New media are still often considered as newspapers – people asked what they are reding while browsing through web or an app, they often answer “a newspaper”.

Newsmedia companies cannot win the market as newspapers though. They can’t change the market perception, can’t attract enough major advertisers, can’t ethuse shareholders and are unable to attract young readers. INMA has known this for a while, what is proven for instance by the change in the name of the organisation few years back – the word newspaper was changed into newsmedia. 5 letters of great importance.

Newsmedia companies have to acquire new skills nowadays. The ones necessary to learn are:

• next generation data analysis
• deep understanding of consumer behaviour
• integration and cross selling
• fast product development

Looking back in the past, market experts see what drove value historically. In 1980s it was steady profits long term (the publishers succeeded). In 1990s it was all about growing profit margins (again they succeeded). In new millenium it was top line revenue growth, and this is where publishers failed big time.

Earl J. Wilkinson said that in the years of 2011-2012 newsmedia companies should focus on:

• growth storyline of any kind
• digital revenue growth
• demonstrate multi-media foundation
• And the culture change is the foundation for multimedia revenue growth story.

INMA is a non profit organisation that is sharing ideas and inspiring change. The 5 big things for this organisation are:

• practicalitities of culture change
• making money from mobile
• how to sell multimedia subscriptions
• innovative ad sollutions
• clubs and communities: engagement and paywalls

Publishers should follow good market practices, even if they come from different market sector. A good example is Google and its macro and micro culture elements.

Newsmedia companies should make some efforts to implement those. And it will be important even more, especially if (according to Eric Schmidt) we may expect massive

changes in media technology in next 18 months. So the elements of Google culture worth thinking about are as follows.

Google way in a macro level:

• speed over perfection
• low-cost innovation
• placing many small bets

Google micro culture:

• hire people smarter than you, get out of the way
• hire generalists to deal with what’s next
• when hiring, about culture-fit and can-do
• don’t reward good planning, they reward results
• attending meetings is not getting things done
• passion: feedback, don’t take personally
• eat your own dogfood

So the culture change for the industry is the only path to going forward. In the newsmedia industry it can be done through:
1. listening to the market
2. focusing relentlessly on differtiators
3. prioritising expenditures to USPs (unique selling propositions), and cutting the rest

Publishers must stay true to their unique selling propositions. They may include:

• family
• finance
• responsibility
• faith based
• education
• care for the poor
• values in media

As Earl J. Wilkinson said, there are too many print people touching digital, and not enough digital people touching print.

Regarding paywalls it is too early to say what kind of impact they will be having within next few years. What is known, that they already are changing the media landscape:

• changed the debate right vs wrong
• what fits business model, culture
• metered model equals wide adoption
• thousands paying vs millions viewing
• leverage eyeballs to transactional model

At the end of his speech, Earl J. Wilkinson quoted Seth Godin: “It’s not how much content you can push to the market, it’s how much reader attention you can earn and depend on”

Conclusions of the presentation:

Marketing newspapers are no longer destination purchase. Newspapers should be selling:

• not content but convenience and delight
• not the news we help improve people’s live
• transport hearts, minds to world of discovery

There are also few things that should stay within marketing focus:

• what makes brand unique
• who you are as a brand
• what makes you different
• how to stay newly relevant

Summary:
1. culture change is the foundation elemnt to ne newsmedia model
2. culture is crucial to new revenue models
3. must change perception to newsmedia
4. news publishers ar embryonic stage
5. clear examples and models to follow
6. new value must be sought

Is data your new oil?

Dirk Milbou, the managing partner of Yento! (Belgium) spoke during the short brainsnack session of the INMA European Conference in Cascais about the necessity of exploiting the data by the publishers.

Dirk Milbou’s presentation was probably most interactive of all. Conference delegates were given a quick quiz. Here are the seven yes or no questions that publishers were asked:

1. Do you know at least 50% of your consumers by name ?
This question is about identifying users regardless from:
- subscribing to the print product,
- registering online,
- the platform on which content is being consumed (tablet, mobile device or social media),
- buying the line extensions in the shop.

2. Do you have consistent and user friendly techniques to gather and maintain individual consumer data?
Getting to know the consumers involves concepts and techniques to gather and update that consumer data. Saying yes means that publishers capture individual consumer data through different distribution channels in a consistent and consumer friendly way.

3. Do you centralize all this info in 1 single customer view and is it actionable in real time?
Most publishing companies today have consumer data spread throughout their organisation and don’t have it centralized in a center database system. Granted, most companies are managing more offline data, but the marriage of both offline and digital data is key to give publishers that single view on each of their consumers.

4. Do you have a smart dashboard with insights derived from your consumer data at your fingertips?
That dashboard would of course give publishers not only rich information, but also on how engaged the consumers are on each of the channels. It would also tell publishers what an individual consumer is worth.

5. Do you help your advertisers enough to connect and engage with your consumers ?

6. Do you have the right resources to turn your raw data ‘oil’ into powerfull ‘gasoline’?
These resources should use the latest techniques to gather and maintain consumer data, they should have the right competences in 1-to-1 marketing, they should know the privacy regulations by hard and know how to be become pro-active to eliminate all possible roadblocks on the highway to exploit the consumer data.

7. Do publishers need to federate their consumer data to compete with Facebook, Google, Retailers,…?
Yento! is convinced that data federation amongst publishers is needed to:
- create critical mass to build a raffinery
- to give you economy of scale to build that and maintain the data raffinery
- to deliver the same type of fuel for all participating publishers

Since above were YES or NO questions, the delegates were urged to count the NO answers. In case of 5 or more NO’s, the publishers were suggested to contact Yento! as soon as possible. If number of NO’s was between 3 and 5, exploring Yento! in depth was advised by Dirk Milbou.

Testimonials to the INMA European Conference 2011

European INMA Conference in Cascais, Portugal not only did manage to gather more than 270 media executives from all over the world, but has also been rated very high in the afterall evaluation of the anttendees. Below are just some of many testimonials to the INMA European Conference 2011. #inmaec was the twitter channel were the discussion about the conference was held in real time.

Gert Ysebaert, Publishers, Corelio, Belgium
@gertysebaert
Truly INMA is a blessing for our industry. They did a great job at the newspaper conference in Cascais. #inmaec
22/10/11 18:34

Niklas Jonason, CEO, CityGate, Sweden
@niklasjonason
Today in Cascais INMA is living its brand payoff “Sharing ideas. Inspiring change” #inmaec
20/10/11 18:02

Marek Miller, European Newsmedia Industry blogger, Poland
@Marek_Miller
INMA European Congress was one of the best I’ve been to so far. Uberinteresting, really. Check www.forum4editors.com for summaries #inmaec
23/10/11 15:46

Stef Rietbergen, Publisher of De Gelderlander, Wegener, Netherlands
@riethills
@gertysebaert You’re absolutely right Gert. Great European Congres Cascais #INMAEC Next year Amsterdam.
22/10/11 19:16

Griet Ducatteeuw, Sales and Marketing Director, Corelio, Belgium
@grietducatteeuw
Completely boosted after an abfab #inmaec Thanks colleagues… <3
21/10/11 16:40

Pit Gottschalk, Head of CEO office, Axel Springer, Germany
@pitgottschalk
Switch to #inmaec Dort ist’s relevanter. @ChristophKeese: #Medientage (…) So richtig ist das Publikum noch nicht beim Kongressmotto (…)
21/10/11 13:49

Print is Dead, Long Live Print!

This Autumn is rich in terms of interesting conferences for newsmedia companies. Those who haven’t done so already, we encourage to look closely at the programme of the upcoming conference in Oxford organised by INNOVATION Media Consulting.

The conference taking place on November 13th and 14th in Oxford is going to focus on finding an answer to the two most important questions for newsmedia publishers nowadays: How to Re-invent Newspapers and Magazines in the Digital Age? Where’s the Money & How Do We Get There?

Below please find the programme of the event and make sure you check THIS SITE for details

PROGRAMME

November 13th (Sunday)
7.15 pm Wadham College
Traditional Oxford Welcome
College Dinner & Discussion

November 14th (Monday)
St Anne’s College
WELCOME: Provocative speech form David Levy

08.30 am Coffee

MORNING HOW TO REINVENT OUR TITLES

First Session Juan Antonio Giner & Spiros Polikandriotis
DIGITAL FIRST DOES NOT MEAN DIGITAL ONLY. (Juan Antonio Giner)
DESIGN IS CONTENT! How to reinvent newspapers and magazines for the digital age through content-driven redesign. Ten dos and don’ts. (Spiros Polikandriotis)

Second Session Chiqui Esteban & Deborah Withey
THE NEW DIGITAL NARRATIVES. The new storytelling techniques and genres that print newsrooms should master to engage with new audiences.
Q&A (Deborah Withey)

Third Session Javier M. Zarracina, Pedro Monteiro & Deborah Withey
THE RISE OF THE APPS. How to desing for the eyes and the fingers.
Q&A (Deborah Withey)

13.00-14.00 Lunch

AFTERNOON WHERE’S THE MONEY?

Fourth Session Carlo Campos
THE NEW REVENUE MODELS FOR NEWSPAPERS IN PRINT AND BEYOND PRINT.

Fifth Session Nic Newman
HOW TO MONETIZE SOCIAL MEDIA AND ENGAGEMENT.

Sixth Session John Wilpers
HOW MAGAZINE PUBLISHERS ARE PROFITING IN A DIGITAL AGE.
INNOVATIONS IN MAGAZINES.

Tea Time HOW DO WE GET THERE?

Seventh Session Nat Low
THE PRINCIPLES AND MODELS OF INTEGRATION.

Final Session Juan Señor
THE NEW WORKFLOWS AND NEWSROOMS OF THE DIGITAL AGE.
Closing and takeaways.

Social buying for publishers

Marc Leimann, Group Consumer Sales Director, Mecom spoke during the INMA European Conference in Cascais about the need of publishers to challenge the market leader Groupon.

What is social buying and who needs Groupon? Social buying is a MUST for publishers and publishers need to use their assets to diversify from Groupon. Marc Leimann works for Mecom, whose assets include more than 300 newspaper titles with 16M reach and about 200 websites with 47M reach.

The story of social buying market is not that long. Groupon appeared on American market in Nov. 2008. A year later Living Social was born. In 2010 City Deal was founded in Europe, which in May 2010 was acquired by Groupon. In January 2011 Google made a bid for Groupon which was turned away.

Interests of Google in this sector show, how important this market may be. Groupon today has almost 10K employees and sold 32,5 million coupons in second quarter of 2011 only.

So why should publishers be interested in social buying? Because they have the perfect setup to succeed in daily deal businesses.

Mecom took this path what led to the birth of Sweet Deal service. Some quick facts:
went live in August 2010 in Denmark
is present in 5 countries
has 60 full time employees
is the national market leader in Denmark
exists in local markets in the cities where Mecom has its newspapers published

Sweet Deals proved to be a strong competition to Groupon. It made 10 times more deals, 40 times more turnover than Groupon in Kopenhagen.

Sweet Deals is covering 80 local markets now, with more than 800 thousand deals sold, 15 million dollars earned since launch.

Some people predict the end of social buing phenomena. But instead of taking wrong presumptions, it is more important to lead this business right. Marc Leimann gave 10 recommendations for how to do it correctly:
1. Engage full promotion power
2. Be different, don’t think old fashioned, think modern
3. Build a new team. no overloaded reps but a dedicated team
4. Daily Deal Sites are no web shops. Don’t sell products only, services sell better
5. Focus on new and local merchants. Don’t think print, think hyperlocal
6. Start with marketing deals. Avoid luxury deals, start with mass deals. It helps build subscribers database
7. Go niche. Don’t launch and lean back. Grow the business.
8. Exploit your group potential. Not only local deals – also (inter)national deals. It helps drive business and act highly synergetic.
9. Don’t underestimate technology.
10. Develop a sustainable business. Create merchant loyalty