There are now just 8 days to go until SIPA's Annual Congress in London. For those of you who have yet to register please make sure you do so today. Nearly 150 people have confirmed their attendance so far and I am still competing with Julian to beat his record from last year.
A full brochure and booking form can be found here.
I had to write my Chairman's introduction for the conference this morning. I thought I would also share it here to see what you think. Comments welcome and I look forward to seeing you all next Wednesday (9th July) at the Tower Hotel in London.
__________________________________________________________________________________________
“If
you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even
less”
Gen. Eric Shinseki, US
Army.
Welcome to the SIPA UK Annual Congress 2008. I’m
delighted to see the range and scope of companies on our delegate list and
speaker roster for today & would like to welcome you
all.
When we started working on the
structure for this event at the tail end of last year your committee hit upon
the novel idea of asking SIPA members what were the biggest issues that they
faced in their business and then trying to put a programme together which
answered some of those concerns. Of the nearly 100 detailed responses we
received, some high level themes emerged – the state of the economy; the general
shift from print to online & the impact of Web 2.0 technologies on our
members’ businesses. It was clear that there was a full mix of emotions behind
these responses. For some it was outright fear. “Where do I even begin to deal with all this new
stuff?” For others there was an overt sense of excitement about all
of the new business and revenue models that were opening
up.
From my early days as a direct
marketer I was taught to appeal to the key emotions of fear and greed in my
promotional pieces, so here goes – a packed one day conference for both the
fearful and the greedy out there in the audience. You probably know which side
of the fence you sit on!
We start with embracing the fear. I
know that there are several traditional publishers in the audience who are
seeing their worlds transformed. The revenue mix is shifting from print to
online but the concern is that concepts from the newspaper world like the
“Rushbridger Cross” (where growing online ad revenues one day overtake declining
print ones) will never happen. What do we do? Put on more events? Launch new
forms of subscription products? Move away from news into the development of
workflow tools? In our programme today you will hear lots of case studies from
other publishers in exactly the same boat as you talking about how they deal
with these issues. What’s working and what isn’t.
On the other side of the coin SIPA
is the association which embraces a lot of the newer, less traditional
publishers. These are probably companies which won’t have thought of themselves
as part of the old media community & you won’t see them at mainstream
publishing events. Often they are web based businesses with no print heritage
and work under entirely different business models. Our brave new world of online
publishing is great for these organizations – technology costs are falling
rapidly, barriers to entry are coming down and, in Google, there is a ready made
marketing machine out there to help you reach the ‘long tail’ of customers
across the globe. I’m really looking forward to hearing from some of them
today.
In summing up I think my main
message for you lucky SIPA delegates is that our world is changing at a
faster rate than ever before. Welcome and embrace that change. Experiment with
new business ideas and whether you’re in the fear or greed camp, it is clear that
it is vital to get out there to share war stories; pick up tips and build your
network of contacts. That’s what SIPA the association, and today’s conference is
all about. Enjoy the day.
Rory Brown, Incisive Media & SIPA UK Chairman.
In the run up to the SIPA UK Congress check out this interview that one of our keynote speakers, Tim Weller, Group CEO of Incisive Media gave to e-consultancy. In the interview Tim outlines some of the concepts he plans to address at our event on July 9th.
See you there. Places are going fast.
Rory Brown.
(BTW - e-consultancy is a great site that you should check out. They should become members of SIPA - *hint* to Ashley Friedlein & Charlie Salter - I know one of you will pick this up ;)
In some contrast of topic compared to yesterday's Facebook post, I wanted to share some thoughts on FT.com. Have you seen its new subscription model? It takes elements from free and paid-for models (see image below), and I assume uses some kind of IP technology to offer a tiered, clunk-free subs process. For an irregular reader such as me, it's very nice indeed.
The FT's new subscription model
With print newspapers in decline and the large media companies taking very large axes to jobs and publications, will the FT crack the code with this new model?
Writing in InCirculation this month, Martin Ashford, UK circulation director at the FT, says they're pleased so far:
"Unique users are rising strongly, a quarter of a million users have registered and subs numbers are steady."
From a user's perspective, I wouldn't mind paying for quality info that I need and rely on. If I was in a position to need way more than 30 articles per month from the FT (I say way more because if it was just one or two articles over I'd probably just try using a separate computer to skirt the IP issues), then I'd pay for it quite happily, and this seems to be what the FT is banking on:
"We have a fundamental conviction that others may like to reflect on: if you invest in strong, unique content, which has a real value to your target readers, then you should not be frightened to assign a value to it."
And, finally, Ashford challenges conventional wisdom: "Contrary to the once-popular view, your content doesn't have to be free."
The FT is no small fish in media, so this is a bold statement indeed. On the strength of the product, however, Martin and the FT may have a point. What do you think?
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