Specialist Media Show * Exhibition * Workshops * Conference * Intelligence * Networking * 24 May 2012 ThinkTank Birmingham

Tim Brooks chaired two panel debates at the Specialist Media Show conference in May, and was impressed by the ability of smaller publishers to adapt quickly to change despite the economic gloom.  These are the stories that captured his imagination.


It’s become a cliché: ‘the best time to start a business is in a recession’ – though it has to be said, it’s generally uttered only in comfortable hindsight, by the few who have made it.  But there was plenty of evidence at this year’s Specialist Media Show of businesses knuckling down and marrying ingenuity, determination and technology into a new family of profitable services, despite the weather in the streets.

‘Strategic agility’ is the quality of being able nimbly to respond and adapt to changing external circumstances. Time Inc, one of the world’s largest magazine publishers - and not the kind of company most likely to attend SMS – has lost months to its competitors through its legal stand-off with Apple over Newsstand terms – resolved (if you want to call climb-down ‘resolution’) only in May.  

Meanwhile Future, with no delusions about changing the behaviour of the world’s largest company, simply got on with it, and become Newsstand’s biggest publisher, a story told with engaging modesty and pragmatism by its digital editorial director, Mike Goldsmith.

Sam Spurdens of Loop – a company which makes Future look massive - shared with delegates his plunge into digital-only publishing, a life-or-death decision. His apps are garnering 4.5* star ratings, and with global presence through iTunes, he’s built an audience which is more than two-thirds international – with a Chinese-language iPad edition of one of his business aviation titles. A bold, transformative play.

Consumer businesses represented at SMS are displaying the adaptability and versatility their B2B colleagues have acquired over a longer period (the web hit business publishers much earlier than it has consumer). There were the obvious areas for diversification: Tony Harris of Boat International spoke well about launching their awards, in the teeth of client remonstrations that the industry already had too many such events. They’ve come out smiling – simply by making theirs the best in the market. 

A glistening new vein of business is in digital creation for advertising clients. Many mainstream creative agencies are visibly struggling to come to terms with digital media – especially longer, rich-media formats – and there are genuine opportunities for specialist publishers, who are close to their clients’ business, to provide services such as video creation. It’s a virtuous circle: strange would be the client who, having paid a publisher to make a video, did not then pay to run it on that publisher’s site/app, as well as elsewhere.

The sessions I chaired at this year’s SMS were among the most enjoyable I have attended recently, because so many of the audience were there not as employees but as owners, intent on arguing, sharing and learning, in order to improve their own bottom line.

SMS itself is a young business; but it didn’t feel like recession in the venue, and with speakers and delegates of the calibre of this year’s, it seems like it too will be able to look back on this recession with comfortable nostalgia.

Tim Brooks has personal experience of start-up media businesses, having launched Media Week, plus he has run large consumer and B2B portfolios for Emap and IPC.  He acquired strong digital credentials while MD of the Guardian, and is due to join BMJ Group as CEO this autumn.  Tim chaired panel sessions at the Specialist Media Conference in May 2012.


If you missed the Conference, you can get all the speaker presentations plus a full report on the panel sessions with our Conference Pack - Read more here.