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Selling the Celebration
Advertisers and sponsors underwrite major milestones with one-time deals that pay off long after the party ends
 Hitting up advertisers to support association anniversaries and other events is fairly pedestrian. But what isn’t so commonplace is developing original, exclusive advertising opportunities that last well into the future.
When the Electronic Transactions Association (ETA) began plotting its 20th anniversary festivities, media opportunities were a critical part of the commemoration. Not only would the trade association’s magazine and newsletter feature year-long anniversary coverage; innovative marketing opportunities would be offered as well.
It worked. Advertising in the official conference issue of Transaction Trends (April 2010)—ETA’s flagship magazine—was up 50 percent from the prior year. Plus, bundled plans that included electronic offerings added additional revenue and introduced new advertisers to ETA. Advertising for the next two issues was well above 2009 results as well—evidence that the packages are still paying off.
Pretty Packages
While the typical congratulatory ads were part of ETA’s 20th anniversary package, the Transaction Trends sales team also created an original advertising opportunity dubbed Benchmark Builders. “Any 20th anniversary is a benchmark event,” says Sharon Miro, ad sales manager for Transaction Trends and Fox Associates at the time. “This tag name implies an exclusivity and value that goes beyond the normalcy of the word sponsors.”
To ensure exclusivity, only five advertisers could be Benchmark Builders. Advertisers received an array of assets in exchange for their money, including a presence on the official timeline published in the April issue of Transaction Trends and a special Benchmark Builder button/slug on their display and electronic ads.
Because Benchmark Builders included an electronic component, advertisers that may not have considered online ads are experiencing the benefits of this medium.
“These revenues will continue to pay off later,” says Miro. “The integrated package deals are critical to help move publishers from just print to a print/digital mix.”
Icing on the Cake
In some cases, outside money can cover the entire cost of an anniversary project. The American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) raised $2.3 million from the orthopaedic industry, pharmaceutical companies, individuals, and organizations to fund a major 75th anniversary commemoration.
AAOS’s multimedia project, “75 Years of Orthopaedic History,” tells the story of orthopaedics through live interviews, audio/video, articles and photos, exhibits, and more. It won ASAE’s 2009 Gold Circle Award for Innovative Communications by organizations with operating budgets over $2 million.
Party Planning
If your organization is staring down a major milestone, try these five tips for bringing revenue in the door with new opportunities.
• Involve the sales team early in the process. Bring them to the table to brainstorm approaches, packages, price points, and more.
• Develop an original offer. “We knew that ETA would be doing lots of things associated with the past 20 years, and that there might be some marketers that could not afford regular types of sponsorships. We thought Benchmark Builders could be seen as part of the same theme, but at a price point that was easily sold,” says Miro.
• Ensure there’s enough time to sell. The AAOS project began four years before the actual anniversary. For more typical print and electronic sales around a milestone event, plan on at least six to eight weeks of selling time. And be sure to put it on your editorial calendar.
• Use emotion to sell. The companies you’re hitting up for dough may have played an important role in the organization’s history. If nothing else, the organization’s members likely fueled their business. Play those heartstrings.
• Repeat the idea for other occasions. Use the model for other celebrations—but don’t undermine the exclusive nature of the offers. Take a look at your organization’s history and see what’s worth celebrating. An important milestone may be right around the corner. Use the opportunity to reintroduce supporters to your organization and generate excitement around its accomplishments.
Essential Ingredient—Know What Questions to Ask
Studies of member communications require direct feedback from your audiences
 Auditing your member communications without soliciting member feedback is like writing a review of your own restaurant. The cook always likes his own food. But what about the people digesting what you’re dishing out? Without member insights, do you really know what they want, what they use, and what matters to them?
A communication audit is a big picture look at member communications and the market in which they operate. And it’s more than just reader feedback. It includes a scan/assessment of all member communications; identification of communication challenges, barriers, and opportunities; environmental scan (competitive market review); and analysis of all data and implications, including how communications support association goals. The audit then leads to the creation of a strategic communication plan—an organic document that guides all current and future efforts.
Like it or not, you’re operating in a 24/7 news cycle, feeding information to people struggling with financial and time pressures. Getting heard in this crowded environment is a challenge.
So what do you need to ask members to ensure you get meaningful information? The member feedback component of a communication audit is more than just a gauge of satisfaction. Consider the following essential areas of study:
1. Current level of engagement: Learning what your audience currently reads, how much or how often the read it, and how they interact with and use your communications provides critical information that can help you refine offerings.
“When we created the questionnaire for our readership study in early 2009, we asked readers how they felt about a case study department we had launched in March 2008,” says Lisa Junker, editor in chief of ASAE’s Associations Now magazine. “Since the case-study series was my baby, I was sad to see that less than half of our readership indicated a strong liking for the format. Those who liked it really liked it, but they were far from a majority of our readers. “We decided to keep it but cut the frequency. Readers who like the case studies still see them every other month, and we use the space we gained in the feature well for more traditional article formats.”
Additionally, as organizations become more invested in the digital/electronic realm, assessing those tools is essential for generating support, both inside and outside the organization, for continued investments.
2. Information needs and workplace challenges: Ask about the types of information they want, whether you’re including enough or too much of it, and in what format they want to receive it. More importantly, what are their biggest workplace challenges? This intelligence allows you to develop strategies to directly address their professional needs.
“To ensure that our publications are relevant, credible, and useful to members, we felt it was important to both assess what their workplace challenges are and get a sense of how these challenges stack up,” says Lynn King, director of member publications for the American College of Radiology—American Roentgen Ray Society. “What’s the point of publishing content if members don’t care about it or feel little need to read or view it?”
3. Format preferences: To effectively refine your communications mix, you need to know what types of formats are best for certain types of information. One trade association learned that readers were overwhelmed by the number of communications they were receiving. That feedback led to a recommendation that the organization consolidate two existing e-newsletters into one that would be more attuned to the practical workplace content they craved.
You may find that members vary widely in their format preferences, so perhaps more customized content is needed, plus more print/digital platforms. How do they want to receive breaking news, features, trends information, and news from the association? Rather than an either-or question, our research generally finds that they want it all—print, digital, and more.
4. Engagement in social media/digital/mobile: Find out what tools and technologies your members/readers are currently using. Do they have smartphones? How do they use them—for apps or just e-mail? What Web sites do they visit? What apps do they use for work? If they are regularly using Facebook, Twitter, and other electronic tools, find out how they use them and then apply that information to your offerings. And, if they’re using mobile apps you’re already offering, consider how you can maximize that traffic.
5. Reaction to possible changes/new formats/new pubs: Communication audits are sometimes driven by an organization’s interest in developing new communications and eliminating old ones. Reader feedback questionnaires can be used to test offerings and, thus, allow you to predict initial adoption. The data may even allow you to conduct advance ad sales for particularly hot new products.
6. Demographics: The audience you think you’re reaching may be inaccurate. Find out their ages, titles, and professional settings. Then, crosstabulate this data to determine how effective communications are among specific groups. Once you get the data, then what? Understanding the data and putting it to work is key to success. Ensure research is statistically valid and that you understand all the implications of the data by working with an established research firm that can provide the appropriate depth and perspective, referencing against and applying the research to the other information gathered in the communication audit. Then, get to work making changes, refining offerings, and developing a member-focused, organization-wide communication plan to guide all efforts.
Print/Digital Publishing Sweet Spot
Veteran publisher reveals the secrets to effective print/electronic content integration
 At the most recent gathering of the Coalition of Education Association Publications (CEAP) in Washington, D.C., Wendy Mann was like a veteran general, rousing the troops as they stared down their next battle. Her words of encouragement: “Nothing that you do right now needs to die; it just needs to change.”
Mann, director of communications for the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association (NCTA) in Arlington, Virginia, was the lead presenter on the topic of integrating print and electronic content. NCTA has effectively moved some of its content to electronic-only format, while also maintaining a high level of print service to its members in rural areas.
Here’s what Mann said:
Print isn’t dead. This is especially true for NCTA members, Mann notes. Many NCTA members are men in their 50s and 60s who work in rural areas, and they’ve told the organization that they value the flagship magazine, Rural Telecom, in print. But the print magazine also has a rich online presence (www.ruraltelecom.org) that features new online-only content that is strategically posted between the print magazine’s bimonthly frequency. The content drives traffic to the Web site, keeps information timely, and also serves the more electronic interests of younger members.
Beware cost-cutting. Don’t just start slashing expenses for short-term relief, Mann warns. Ensure you know which communications pieces your customers value most, and in what format. NCTA, for example, pulled association-specific news and the president’s message out of the print magazine and turned them into less-frequent electronic publications.
Heed the king and queen. If content is king, then ease of use is queen. Achieving an effective print/electronic mix is not as simple as just throwing content up on a Web site or blast e-mail. Online readers are quicker to click away than print readers are to put down a magazine. You don’t have to start from scratch in most cases, but you do need to make print content appropriate for online use. Rural Telecom online is a good example, though much of the content is password-protected for members.
Chunk it out. Building on the “appropriate for online” tip, Mann recommends “microchunking” your content as a major print/electronic integration strategy. This could also work as a marketing tool. For example, rather than publishing an entire book online (in whatever format), strategically select a book chapter or several chapters that address a specific issue that’s important to your customers. Not only are you providing a focused information solution for them, you’re repurposing material that could eventually be repackaged and sold at a lower price point.
Educate customers. NCTA had an 18-month communications plan to ease its members away from certain print publications that moved to electronic formats. At the end of that time period, only one of the organization’s 560 locally owned and controlled telecom cooperatives contacted NCTA with concerns.
For more about CEAP, contact Jay Goldman at the American Association of School Administrators (
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).
Q&A: Gary Rubin's Next Big Thing
Up close with the Angerosa Research Foundation’s 2010 Publishing Trendsetter
 Spend just 15 minutes with Gary Rubin and you know he’s passionate about publishing. The Angerosa Research Foundation Publishing Trendsetter is modest about the 2010 honor. In fact, Rubin, chief publishing, e-media, and business development officer for the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), gives much of the credit for SHRM’s reputation as a publishing innovator to an organization-wide culture of empowerment and creativity, and an extraordinary team. But it’s clear that Rubin’s thirst for discovery has fueled the endeavors he’s championed and put him in the Trendsetter seat this year.
Smart Publishing recently spoke with Rubin about his approach to the work he loves and what lights his creative fire.
Smart Publishing: You’ve been able to boldly launch initiatives in areas that other organizations may approach timidly—Web 2.0, for example. How are you able to make that happen?
Rubin: It’s a combination of things: an environment at SHRM set from the top and hiring the right people that have the ability to do the work. I’m a lucky guy to work in an organization that supports creativity and then doing things that are out of the norm, and to have an amazing team of top-notch pros who get things done. I have an embarrassment of riches, really. I feel very, very lucky.
Smart Pub: Clearly, new media platforms have changed how associations communicate. What is the next big thing?
Rubin: I think the next big thing is magazines. Yes, really. Magazines. The death of magazines has been hugely overblown. I am more excited about magazines than ever before, but the old way of delivering them on dead trees and with letter carriers in mailboxes is rapidly coming to a close. The new area of digital development of magazines is very exciting. It plays right into magazine publishing’s hands and what we’re good at, which is putting together great stories in a logical manner and with beautiful art direction and images that enhance the experience.
The iPad and Kindle are just bridge technologies and are only relevant to the extent that they point the direction. The real battlefield is a way of thinking about content—about not thinking in terms of mediums but as stories.
They’ll still look like magazines, because they still will be magazines—just better. You’ll still turn pages. But the art isn’t limited to photos and illustrations. It can be full motion video and interactive—things not currently in magazines’ toolbox because print holds them back.
Smart Pub: So you aren’t talking about the current tablet technology, but something new that hasn’t been developed yet. When we see it, you think we’ll embrace it, despite what generation we come from?
Rubin: Right. The technology that preceded the iPad was clunky, and the iPad by itself isn’t what we’re talking about either—although I believe that the iPad is a clear game changer. What I am talking about is how irrelevant paper will be in the near future.
One thing that I am very excited about with this new technology, and the technology that will follow, is that intimate relationship between the reader and content is maintained. Unlike reading content on a computer, with these new tablets, you consume content by holding it in your hands so the personal bond between the reader and the magazine is preserved.
Smart Pub: Your organization has a huge membership base and circulation, which means you’re perhaps better able to capitalize on new media and launch new initiatives. But what about smaller organizations? What advice would you offer?
Rubin: SHRM is a big organization. But it has the same challenges as other organizations, just on a larger scale. Bigger dollar amounts may be at stake, but everyone has to manage doing the work and innovating with finite resources. Driving creativity and doing new things is exciting. If you don’t think something’s possible, you’re probably right. But a good idea is just the beginning. You have to articulate a really good reason for doing x, y, or z, and you need to build a real tangible business case for what you are proposing.
But that said, there are so many things worth doing that don’t require a lot of capital. You have to believe it’s possible.
Smart Pub: How do you find inspiration?
Rubin: I think doing business is a lot of fun and very interesting. The concept of work-life balance, for me, is irrelevant; it’s work-life blending. If you like what you do and actively engage in the world around you, conversations will happen that create ideas. That’s exciting.
Spring Into Mobile
Smartphone enthusiasts ripe for customized content delivery
So you’ve finally gotten a handle on digital and social media, RSS feeds, blogging, and podcasts, and now you have to master mobile, too?
Crawl out from under your desk. You can do this.
Mobile publishing applications aren’t scary; in fact, numerous providers can get your content up with little fanfare. But before you jump in, look at mobile for what it really is—one more way to reach your audience, delivering the content they want in the format they prefer. If you maintain that mindset, going mobile is seemingly no different than any other multimedia offering.
Maxim, Esquire, Lucky, GQ, Car & Driver, Bon Appétit, and countless other magazines are now available via mobile apps. In the association publishing realm, ABA Journal (American Bar Association) has both iPhone and iPad apps. ABA’s iPad application has received 40,000 downloads since it launched in 2008.
“Lawyers increasingly are getting their information on the go,” says ABA Journal Editor and Publisher Edward Adams. “Many of them use iPhones and tens of thousands have purchased the iPad. It only makes sense to provide information in the formats they’re consuming.”
Here’s how you can get started.
Push Out Hot Content
First things first—do your readers even want mobile content from you? How many of your customers have smartphones? What devices do they use—iPhone, Android, Blackberry, Palm? Before you launch a new offering, do the legwork to gather this info, even if you need to use an unscientific survey process.
As you gather intelligence, conduct an initial ROI analysis and consider your end goals. Your first one should be reader engagement. Others may include advertising and sponsorship revenues, increased visibility for your organization, providing a new delivery mechanism, and being seen as cutting edge.
Also be sure you and your colleagues are speaking the same language when discussing mobile applications. After all, mobile content can range from text messages and SMS subscriptions to mobile browser-friendly Web sites and smartphone-specific apps. Based on your customers’ interests and capabilities, combined with your organization’s business plan and communications strategy, dive in strategically. Check out what your main competitors are up to as well.
Web site platforms that are easy to browse on a mobile device are often more about delivery and less about content creation; you’re providing a user-friendly way to access already-published online content, such as e-newsletter or magazine readers. As mobile marketing company Knotice highlighted in a recent whitepaper, Apple’s iPhone has been “a bit of a game changer because its browser technology is great at rendering everyday Web sites in a way that makes functional interaction possible.”
Start talking code with your IT team and begin strategizing about what key content should get priority.
Get Your App On
And then there are apps. These custom, downloadable applications probably deliver the richest mobile user experience available right now. Remember that apps are smartphone-specific—and the leaders in the app universe to date are the iPhone, Droid, and Blackberry. Forbes magazine and The Wall Street Journal, for example, simultaneously developed apps for these three devices. FOLIO: reported on this recently and noted that mobile applications developer Handmark had worked with Forbes on its Blackberry app. Other popular app developers include Appiction and ArtLogic. And SocialFish recently reported on Appmakr.com, a low-cost, do-it-yourself solution.
In general, most app developers charge start-up and development fees, and some charge an additional monthly maintenance fee. Many digital magazine providers also offer mobile apps as an additional service—a neat way to extend the reach of a digital publication.
If your organization decides to pursue a custom app, be strategic about the content you support, incorporating what your audience has told you they want.
Once you create something your audience has asked for, you’ve also built a product that’s attractive to advertisers and sponsors. Reach out to your ad sales team and get their feedback about sales potential. Query current advertisers about their interest and investigate what new revenue streams your mobile strategy could tap.
Don’t forget your social media resources; use them to raise visibility about your mobile capabilities. It’s likely that your customers who are tweeting and posting to Facebook are also those with smartphones. Include social media habits in your intelligence-gathering stage so you can move strategically when you’re ready to launch.
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