BtoB Media Business - ABM Top Management Meeting Special 11/07/07 - (Page 1)

Hughes delivers forecast for ’08 Page 3 Breakout sessions focus on top and bottom lines Page 4 ABM Top Management Meeting Special Edition November 7, 2007 Publishers must move beyond one platform BY MATTHEW SCHWARTZ How do business media companies keep their print publications thriving in an increasingly digital age? It’s a question that’s top of mind for most senior media executives these days, as the Web attracts larger audiences and publishers struggle with postal rate hikes and rising paper costs. A panel of publishing executives sought to provide answers in a session titled “Keeping Magazines Hot” Tuesday at American Business Media’s Top Management Meeting. “How do you grow both top line and bottom line with all of these costs associated with new products?” asked Dick Ryan, president-CEO of ZweigWhite Information Services, who moderated the discussion. Scott Donaton, publisher of Advertising Age and Creativity, which, like Media Business, are published by Crain Communications Inc., said that what’s changed in recent years is that “when we now launch new products we know what the business plan is, and know what the expected return will be and will make a cold-eyed decision if it’s not there.” Donaton, who said he is budgeting for single-digit growth in print for 2008, added that in order for print publications to stay vital, managers have to make sure their sales executives don’t Participants in the ‘Keeping Magazines Hot’ session (from left): Dick Ryan, Scott Donaton, Peter Goldstone and Mike Reilly. stray too far in one direction or another. “As digital sales are the fastest growing part of our business, sales reps are saying it’s all about digital and not print,” he said. “But that’s almost as big a mistake as saying it’s all about print. You can’t define yourself by any one platform.” Peter Goldstone, president of Hanley Wood Business Media, Publishers page 6 THE BIG QUESTION What specific actions are you taking to offset declines in print revenue? “We’re putting more emphasis on digital and face-to-face, like everyone else. On the Web side, we have a division that builds Web sites for clients other than ourselves. We have also redesigned all our sites. For face-to-face, we try to find partners rather than building our own from scratch.” —J. Roger Friedman, chairmanCEO, Lebhar-Friedman “The real question is trying to figure out the right level of investment in print. All of the elements of the brand need to be tied together but we need to rethink the traditional model. Print is still important. You can’t forget it. But having said that, I don’t think you’ll be seeing us buying print-only properties.” —Neal Vitale, president-CEO, 1105 Media “For us, print isn’t shrinking. It will be up 3% to 5% this year. We’re also doing a lot with the Internet. Our Web business has increased over 50% this year. We’ve redesigned our sites and retrained our people. Also, we just launched a new lead generation program for print and online advertisers. We acquired two magazines with B-to-b publishers wrestle with Web 2.0 ramifications BY MARIE GRIFFIN Continued on page 6 There is probably no single topic of greater interest to attendees of ABM’s Top Management Meeting than increasing revenue in the fast-growing digital side of their businesses. During the breakfast session titled “Increase Your Sales Digitally,” panelists focused particularly on opportunities and threats posed by social media, or Web 2.0. The dialogue inevitably included Google, the 10,000pound gorilla of the Internet today, and two of its new offerings. ABM’s newly installed chief technology officer, Joshua Kuvin, asked panelists what they thought of Google’s mobile phone platform announced Monday. Rather than a device or operating system, the long-awaited Google phone is an open-platform cell phone application that will be developed by a consortium of companies. James Warner, co-publisher of Shore Publishing, which has 16 local newspapers in Connecticut, said the Web 2.0, page 4

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BtoB Media Business - ABM Top Management Meeting Special 11/07/07

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