You are here: Home > Business > Technology, Media and Telecom

Doing things the Right way in the world

颜培: 0 Comment(s)Print E-mail China Daily, June 13, 2013

Adjust font size:

Digital media devices presented at an international exhibition in Shanghai. Statistics provided by Emarketer show that 2012 marked the first year that advertisers put more money into online channels than into print media. [China Daily]

When Newsweek, one of the most popular magazines in the world, ceased publishing a print edition at the end of last year to embrace an all-digital era, everyone in the media industry heard the alarm bells ringing that it was high time for a change.

Newsweek is just one of many paper-based newspapers and magazines facing a challenge. Time Inc announced in January it was cutting 6 percent of its global staff of 8,000. The New York Times made 30 journalists redundant at the end of last year. Thomson Reuters laid off 3,000 of its 50,000 employees at the beginning of this year.

Traditional print media has to confront the reality that less revenue is coming in with more readers preferring online access to information.

Digital age

Bearing that in mind, the British media company Top Right Group changed its strategy to split its business-to-consumer arm from its business-to-business outlet as early as 2008. The company was previously known as Emap and was once listed on the FTSE 100 Index, based partly on its strength in B2B print publications.

Lara Boro, chief executive officer of Top Right Group International, joined the company in the same year and she was there to witness the experience.

The reason behind the strategy was down to change in the reading habits of customers. "In the consumer world, with the digital age, it was all about the number of customers that you reach - the 'footprint'. It's about how quickly you can get to grow that number, whether it's page views or print circulation," she said.

Boro's expertise in the digital business comes from her career experience. She had been responsible for digital media at the Financial Times between 1999 and 2003 and then in e-commerce, working on MasterCard's electronic payment applications. She moved to Dubai in 2009 to be the chief operating officer of Emap Middle East, focusing on developing the business' digital assets and high-value information products.

Boro understands that in the B2B world, the measure of success is the return on investment based on the value of its offering to customers. Consequently, the then Emap decided to sell its B2B arm to Apax Partners, a private equity company.

The first thing they did in 2012 was to change the company's name from Emap, already known for its print publications in the United Kingdom, to the current Top Right Group. Now the group has four subsidiaries - Emap, i2i Event Group, Lions Festivals and 4C Group.

Emap, the former publishing business that now serves customers via print, online, mobile, App, tablet and at live events. now accounts for around 20 percent of the group's turnover. The remaining 80 percent is split between global trading exhibition organizing company i2i, including Lions Festivals which organizes International Festivals of Creativity, and 4C, an international data and information services provider.

Face-to-face events are what Top Right believes will never die out no matter how digital the world becomes. "Business is not made by just providing information to people. It's done by enabling people to meet the right people to make that connection and get the deal done," said Boro. But in the information age, "clearly, digital is the easiest way for us to grow".

A survey conducted by Alliance for Audited Media among 210 print publishers in North America showed that about 90 percent of the interviewed organizations had gone digital by the end of last year. Statistics provided by Emarketer show that 2012 marked the first year that advertisers put more money into online channels than into print media.

The question that Boro is frequently asked is whether the services are expensive or not. She regards it as a misguided question.

"When people are making multi-million-dollar trading decisions, whether a subscription costs $10,000 or $20,000 is irrelevant. The question is trust, quality information, forecasting ability and analytics. That's really what a platform is best at," she said.

The importance of service that Boro stressed is something that Li Xueqian, director of China Children's Press and Publications Group, reinforced at the 10th Forum on International Cultural Industries held in January. Li said that in the information age publishers should "complete the transformation from providing products to providing services".

Chinese market

When asked about her impression of Chinese businessmen, "lucky" was the word that Boro concluded. She described it as a rational reaction because "you cannot find anywhere else with the same rapid growth rate and market scale as China possesses", she said.

To capture the emerging market, Top Right established its sales headquarters for "Greater China" in Shanghai in late March. However, this move was not made overnight. Boro said there was never just one piece of evidence to take the company to China several years ago. It was not the biggest customer and they were already global.

"When you get people from the middle- and end-market, when our customers range from the coastal cities to second-tier cities, when our global customers are calling us to really understand the China market, that's when we thought it was the moment," she said

WGSN, an online trend forecasting company under the group's 4C business, has been working in the Chinese market for about seven years. The global authority on style and design realized that "it is now in China" because of its booming number of subscribers. In July 2001 it launched a Chinese language website. It is enhancing China-based customers' experience with high-quality translations of the latest WGSN trend analysis, design intelligence and industry news. Translating more than 20 reports and 30 news stories every day, WGSN has unlocked must-have intelligence for many who find it easier to work in their native language. It also increased the sales and content teams in China to support this new service and to enhance coverage and analysis of the market. WGSN currently has offices in style capitals worldwide, including London, New York, Paris, Tokyo and Sao Paulo, in Brazil.

"WGSN will incubate more multi-talented individuals to serve in the vanguard of the internationalized development of China's emerging fashion industry with this cooperation opportunity," said Yuki Zheng, vice-dean of the College of Fashion Art & Engineering at Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology.

Top Right Group reported revenues of 249.4 million pounds ($390 million) in 2011. 2012 revenues have not yet been announced. Approximately one-third of its revenues are from international operations - outside the UK.

Boro, 45, said Top Right has different competitors for each operating company in each specific field, not only in China but also globally. But she is neither afraid of competition - because their next biggest competitors are half their size in terms of the customers and revenues, according to the company's research.

"We are not afraid of competition. It's something that makes us better. We like it," she said.