BtoB Media Business - December 2010 - (Page 7)

Upfront ABM faces challenges Executive Forum speakers address social media, monetization and innovation Rohanna Mertens LOOKING AHEAD Kasputys to ABM: ‘Get corporations to spend’ BY SEAN CALLAHAN A American Business Media’s Executive Forum, which took place last month in Chicago, was Clark Pettit’s first marquee event as the association’s president-CEO. He was named to the job July 8. It was clear from the event that both ABM and its membership are searching for solutions to the challenges facing them. For Pettit the main challenge is maintaining membership. ABM’s dues from members and associate members totaled $2.41 million in fiscal 2010, ended June 30, a drop of 39% from fiscal year 2009, according to the association’s annual report. ABM reacted to the decline by cutting its budget, slashing more than $1 million from its marketing efforts. Pettit has spent the first months of his tenure traveling the country, listening to ABM members and trying to prioritize their concerns. He used the Executive Forum to continue generating feedback. In this case, he took an electronic poll of the audience of about 110 attendees on 14 different questions. The results were displayed immediately onstage and showed that more than 85% of attendees were very or extremely interested in having ABM identify ways to help them monetize various platforms. A number of the speakers at the Executive Forum offered advice on how to approach launching new digital products and how to embrace change. Rich Gordon, professor and director of digital innovation at Northwestern University’s Medill School, identified social media and mobile as key changes that b-to-b media must address, saying they may be as disruptive as the rise of search. He said CNN.com currently generates 18% of its page views from social media and just 9% from Google searches. Gordon said this change is occurring quickly and that social media and social networking accounted for 15% of the average user’s time on the Internet last year. He said that figure is up to 23% this year. To keep pace, media companies must be forward-looking and open to new ideas. “Your staff needs to keep trying new plat- ABM President-CEO Clark Pettit addresses the Executive Forum last month. forms, technologies and tools to understand their value to users,” Gordon said. “You can’t just look at the mainstream. You have to look at what the extreme users and early adopters are doing.” With this approach, he said a business can anticipate how the bulk of users will use digital products in the future. Perhaps the most sobering presentation of the forum was by Doug Webster, senior director of worldwide service provider marketing at Cisco Systems. He described how the company introduced a new router by using social media and by producing its own events. Cisco largely bypassed traditional trade shows and trade publication advertising, with the exception of running online ads on vertical sites and renting e-mail lists from trade publishers. Webster also lauded experimentation. “Test, test, test,” he said, noting the example of a video game Cisco developed to aid the router’s launch that didn’t take off with users until the company instituted a $10,000 contest around the game. Another speaker, Gord Hotchkiss, president-CEO of Enquiro, a unit of Mediative, said the Internet and other digital platforms offer the perfect scenario for experimenting with potential money-making initiatives. Noting Google’s 20% rule encouraging employees to spend one-fifth of their time experimenting with new ideas, Hotchkiss advised media company executives to try new digital ideas but quickly abandon those that fail. “Success is 99% failure,” he said, quoting Sochiro Honda, founder of Honda Motor Co. t last month’s ABM Executive Forum, economist Joseph E. Kasputys said that the U.S. economy will grow at about a 2.25% rate next year and a 3% rate in 2012. He also told association members that they have the potential to help the economy grow faster. U.S. businesses, Kasputys said, are sitting on mountains of cash that they are too cautious to spend. “Corporate cash is at near record levels,” he said. Business media companies, because they bring buyers and sellers together, might be able to help corporations begin spending at least some of their cash again, Kasputys said. “Your mission at American Business Media is to get them to spend that money,” he said. In addition to corporations sitting on their cash, consumers are not spending much. The consumer savings rate is approaching 7%, an unusually high figure Economist Joseph compared E. Kasputys encourwith recent ages ABM members decades, to get corporations Kasputys said, to spend their cash. calling it an “epidemic of U.S. thrift.” Also, he said high unemployment persists, with 30% of those out of work having been jobless for six months or more. Kasputys said that typically a recovery after a recession starts very strong, with annual growth in the 5%-to-7% range. But the Great Recession was not a typical recession. “It was a balance sheet recession, not a cyclical recession,” Kasputys said. Recoveries from such financial collapses tend to have longer, slower recovery cycles. “Usually it takes about four years for jobs to recover fully to where they were and about six years for housing prices to recover,” Kasputys said. He also said the U.S. is risking inflation with its recent “quantitative easing,” in which the Federal Reserve committed to buying $600 billion in Treasury bills. —S.C. mediabusinessonline.com | December 2010 | Media Business | 7 Rohanna Mertens http://www.CNN.com http://www.mediabusinessonline.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of BtoB Media Business - December 2010

Btob Media Business - December 2010
Contents
Changing of the Guard at Forbes Media
Is Custom Content the Future of Media?
Looking for a Vendor? Check Out Our Annual Guide
Frustrated Sales Guys Launch Media Company
Sales & Marketing
M&A
Development
Events
Production
People
Benchmarks

BtoB Media Business - December 2010