The Specialist Media Show - Media Pioneer Awards
The Specialist Media Pioneer Awards recognise innovation and entrepreneurial thinking by media owners in these challenging times.
The winners of the 2010 awards are:
- Classic Rock for their Album Club
- Econsultancy for their supplier directory
- MyHobbystore for their ecommerce strategy
- Time Out Live for their new live events
Please contact us if you want to put forward your business for an award in 2011.
The first Media Pioneer for the 2011 awards is Jancis Robinson. Find out more about the secret to her subscription success with wine enthusiasts.
More on each of the 2010 winners:
Classic Rock Magazine has an established base of 18,000 subscribers, and wanted to bring them closer to the magazine.
They launched the Classic Rock Album Club using a service provided by TellJack, which allows members to listen to and review new tracks a short time before their official release. The fee is £3 a month, and a 30 day free trial is offered. Users download an application to their PC, and can then listen to a range of tracks. They can click to buy the album on amazon or post a review.
The service was launched in November, and already has 3,500 members. Record companies are keen to provide content as the members are likely to be influential and help the sales of the tracks featured. Subscribers pay the same rate to join the club but get some bonus tracks in addition.
The Classic Rock Album Club is promoted just through internal media – magazine, website, weekly newsletter and associated events.
Chris Ingham, Publisher, comments, “The club is helping readers get closer to the magazine, and their reviews are often featured in the magazine or the website. We’re pleased with the take-up as we have only marketed using our own media”.
Contacts: www.classicrockmagazine.com
http://portal.telljack.com/
Econsultancy for their new supplier directory with performance measures.
Econsultancy serve the market of professional digital marketers. Their business is based on free online content, with incentives to register, plus a subscription basis for indepth reports plus an events and training business.
They have a directory of suppliers at http://econsultancy.com/directories/suppliers – including independents and digital marketing agencies – where there is a free basic listing and a “full profile” which is paid for.
They now show on every listing the actual traffic in real time that the listing attracts, by pulling data through the Google Analytics API for each URL. This is totally transparent, so shows the advertiser and any visitor how much traffic – ie value- the site is generating for the directory entry. It also shows the best performer. This gives the directory sales team an opportunity to upsell the advertiser to a full profile to improve their scores.
It’s rare for a directory to show the traffic it generates and the extra value in an upgrade.
Contact: adam.candlish@econsultancy.com, http://econsultancy.com/directories/suppliers
MyHobbyStore, originally publishers of modelling, woodworking and crafts magazines, now online retailers and event organisers for hobbyists.
Hobbyist products have often been hard to find and there are many fragmented suppliers. Through publishing magazines, MyHobbystore learnt about what editorial content inspires a purchase and also how to source products. Hobbyist consumers are highly engaged in their activities and contribute to magazines, online communities and live events.
These skills have enabled MyHobbystore to create an ecommerce business, supplying thousands of products from multiple suppliers. The magazines create the interest and direct the readers to the store. There is a strong focus on customer service, with a dedicated in-house team. Online ecommerce revenues are up by 75% year on year, and make up 80% of all online revenues, with a growing international business.
MyHobbystore are also developing online communities and offering subscription-based content, including an online TV channel, competitions and digital editions of the magazines. The communities contribute comments and photo albums to the sites.
Owen Davies, CEO, says “we know that content from our magazines drives ecommerce revenue. We have changed the culture of the business from the top down and developed new skills in retail sourcing and merchandising.”
Contacts: Owen Davies, www.myhobbystore.com
Fiercely independent listings publisher Time Out for creating live arts events for its audience
Time Out experimented in 2009 with ticketed live arts events, built on the editorial teams “critic’s choice”, and was overwhelmed with the response. Their three “For One Night Only” comedy events with selected emerging artists and big named headliners sold out the 500-seater Bloomsbury Theatre in a matter of days. Although they used the magazine to advertise their events, the real ticket-driver was their registered database of readers gathered through their web-site. Recipients of the weekly newsletter who expressed an interest in live events received a targeted mailing. As well as being a profitable business, Time Out Live events prompt more interaction with readers via web-site follow ups, encourage readers to meet up, and reinforce the brand values by showcasing new arts talent. The editorial team select the acts, and Tim Arthur (Director of Time Out Live) coordinates the event organisation.
For next year they plan 25 events across three strands: “Laugh out Loud” comedy and variety showcases, “London Sessions” music gigs and "Nite sessions" club nights and an “Audience with…” series with key arts figures in London such as film directors or actors called “Icons” where readers can participate in the night by submitting questions in advance. Also planned are Friday Night Freak Show, Midnight Movies and Time OUt Book Club.
Tim is keen to keep high standards of quality, so that he can build a loyal following for all the events, cross-fertilising audiences across the artforms. Time Out Live will also be used as a marketing tool to encourage people to become subscribers to the magazine in order to take advantage of certain advance ticket deals or reduced priced tickets which will only be available to the Time Out community. So far the events are profitable without sponsorship, but Tim is looking for an overall commercial sponsor. Clever brand extension that shows the power of a web registered database.
Contacts: Tim Arthur, Time Out Live Director, timarthur@timeout.com
Below are the full stories of all the 2010 nominations:
Athletics Weekly sets the pace on iphone
Athletics Weekly, a weekly magazine for elite runners and athletes, which launched in 1945, is still setting the pace. AW believe they have become the first magazine in the world to start selling subscriptons for full digital editions via the iPhone App store. Subscribers pay £1.19 per week to unlimited acess to the current and past issues.
Grantham publisher broadcasts to 1 million cricket enthusiasts worldwide
Cricket World, originally a specialist magazine publisher, has established itself as a multi-media business. Their website, www.cricketworld.com, has grown from launch in 1996 to attract over 1.1 million unique users worldwide, with 200,000 in the UK. Three years ago the site started delivering live TV webcasting, audio commentaries, breaking news and interviews to cricket fans all over the world.
Brits launch French ex-pat newspaper
Launching a national, monthly English language newspaper for ex-pats in France might sound like madness right now but it seems to have worked. Ex-Emap Director, Nicki Wade and her small but talented team have launched and established TheFrenchPaper, a mulit section "broadloid" with national daily production standards, out of their idyllic French countryside home. www.thefrenchpaper.com
MyHobbystore supplies hobby and craft enthusiasts worldwide
MyHobbystore originally publishers of modelling, woodworking and craft magazines, have expanded to become online retailers and event organisers. Hobbyist consumers are highly engaged in their activities and contribute to magazines, online communities and live events but the products they need have often been hard to find. MyHobbystore now has an ecommerce business, supplying thousands of products from multiple suppliers. Online ecommerce revenues are up by 75% year on year, and make up 80% of all online revenues, with a growing international business.
Racing Post signs up 15% of web users to online subscriptions
Racing Post's website attracts 750,000 users a month. In July they put 10% of their content behind a pay-wall; the rest remaining free to drive traffic. They now have over 10,000 active subscribers.
The Spectator is taking an innovative and experimental approach to digital editions, online paid content, e-books and mobile apps. Ben Greenish, MD, is charging for his quality content on all these formats, and has seen overall circulation of the Spectator grow. He believes people who sign jup for an app, digital edition or Kindle version are good prospects for future subscriptions to the magazine.
Time Out Live shows the power of brand, editorial and online database. Using their editorial team's knowhow, Time Out set up a series of comedy events, and through principally e-marketing to their registered web users, filled a 500-seat theatre. There are plans to expand the series significantly in 2010 and find a commercial sponsor.
Rock Sound, an independent music magazine, is using Facebook and Twitter to drive traffic to its website; they are now rivalling Google as traffic sources. Rock Sound has over 20,000 twitter followers, including Obama! Patrick Napier, Publisher, uses the brand's social media reach as a key part of advertiser pitches.
Local Living, a publisher of free distribution, ad-funded regional lifestyle magazines, has developed a series of paid-for specials in walking, cycling and food using specialist editorial expertise and selling at retail, off the page and through the magazine's website. Advertising and sponsorship covered production costs. Parenting and activity guides are planned, plus franchising to other independents.
Classic Rock Magazine has launched the Classic Rock Album Club, which allows members to listen to and review new tracks before they are release, for £3 a month. It already has 3,500 members, and their reviews are being published on the site.
Absolute Radio have seen over 510,000 downloads of their free mobile apps, across iphone, Android, Symbian and Blackberry. As well as core listening functionality, they added a clock radio alarm. They have just released their first paid app, the Live Amp. By experimenting early, they have learnt about how customers use their apps, and how to optimise for each app store.
Made for Mums is the Magicalia network of parenting sites. When they bought Practical Parenting from IPC they acquired a vast content archive of advice and reviews, which has transformed the fortunes of their sites. An example of the hidden value of established print titles.
Econsultancy have a long-established supplier directory on their site providing advice for a community of over 85,000 digital marketers. They have recently taken the audacious step of adding public stats so visitors and advertisers alike can see which listings are attracting the highest number of clicks, hopefully encouraging a competitive spirit among advertisers leading to premium listing upgrades.
Runners World is a veteran of the web plus mag publishing scene. Seven years ago it hit on the killer app of an online events booking system where subscribers got priority entry on popular races. RW offer user feedback on events and tailored emails in return for registrations; then market subscriptions to registered users. Subscribers get personalised training plans as well as premium online content. A simple strategy, and after 14 years of ABC growth, clearly a successful one.
Magicalia Commerce Services is a great example of extending a competence developed in a media business into a new market. Bike magic had built a commerce platform for retailer clients to sell products direct from the site. They now offer this as an e-commerce solution for specialist retailers, powering all their online sales through multiple channels. With 60 clients and £18m turnover, this is a significant new business. Applying the commerce solution and the SEO expertise honed on publishing sites, MCS doubled the online turnover for Rutland Cycling in 12 months.
Read the full story of all these winners on the Specialist Media Network group on Linked-In and look out for further Media Pioneer awards winners in the run up to the 2011 Specialist Media Show, where the final will take place.
