Archive for the ‘AGP Feature’ Category
Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One
11 Mar 2010
by Rebecca Rolfes
Meeting with several association executives last week in DC, I heard a familiar refrain: “We’d love to do this but we don’t have any money right now.” One actually said, “Stop me if you’ve heard this before.” The recession has hit associations and, even though they could see it coming from miles and miles away, it’s still no fun when the train actually runs over you.
The good news is they had time to get ready for it insofar as they were able. The bad news is, well, the bad news.
Even as meeting attendance has started to rebound and advertising is coming back in some association magazines, 2010 budgets were set with the lowest possible expectations. Just like with the national budget, the hard choices already made were only the beginning of the hard realities still to be confronted.
Here’s something you may not have heard. The recession isn’t your problem. Recessions end and like being run over by a train, whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. You survive the big one, you’ll be in better shape than you were before.
The big problem is what’s coming behind the recession. According to Booz & Company, there are six industries in serious need of complete overhaul with none of the tools to pull it off. Demographic, technological, environmental changes will have a much more profound and lasting effect than this little old recession.
Of the six that Booz mentions—chemicals, retail banking, consumer packaged goods, technology, engineered products and services, oil and gas—each has a raft of associations representing it. To this list, let’s just add manufacturing since we all know that that is, as one of my editorial board members says, “at the tipping point. If we lose more manufacturing capacity in the United States, we will never get it back.”
All of this will make associations feel like those inflatable punching clowns my kids used to play with. You punch it, it falls over and pops right back up—until you’ve punched it so hard and so many times, it slows and slows and finally just lays there.
- Recession punch. Become leaner and meaner and set your budget as low as possible to survive. Bounce back 6 to 9 months after the recovery.
- Environmental punch. Members are catching it from all sides on sustainable practices and social responsibility. Launch new programs and services, credentials and standards, all much too slowly and slightly after the fact but still. Ease back up.
- Technology punch. Adopt social media and online community. Try to be cool because that will attract younger members. Struggle back up.
- Demographic punch. Find out that younger members aren’t quite that easy to sell. They don’t just want to be able to talk, they want something to talk about that matters. Try developing content that is relevant, unique, consistently high quality and updated frequently. Slow to get up if at all.
In short, none of this is going to kill you but cumulatively, it will bruise, batter and bloody you until you might wish it had.
Or, something else you might not have heard, you could choose not to become a punching bag and instead actually be proactive instead of reactive. None of this is unforeseen but, unlike the recession, there are things you could actually be doing instead of just waiting for the inevitable to strike.
I Love Interns
4 Mar 2010
by Rebecca Rolfes
My company hires 60% of our interns. We’re a small company so we don’t have a lot of open slots nor a lot of interns but that still seems a really good indicator of the caliber of people coming out of school. More and more companies, 36% according to one study, look for great interns with the full intention of hiring a good percentage of them. Even at companies where hiring has dropped dramatically, interns move to the front of the line. Goldman Sachs hired 600 fewer entry level employees last year but 90% of them were former interns. At the same time, I know a young, bright, smart recent grad who has applied for 75 jobs, had 2 interviews and is selling popcorn on Navy Pier to make ends meet. (If you’d like to see her resume, let me know.) It’s killer out there.
I lived in Europe for 13 years and the unemployment rate was always in double digits, especially high among the young. Generations (plural) ended up living at home, sitting around, collecting benefits of some sort, feeling like failures and hating their lives. The societal cost of that is huge. Closer to home, the cost to companies, the loss, is equally huge.
We could not do what we do without interns. They have that eager spark of youth. They have skills that even those who graduated a few years ago don’t. They are hungry, not just because they want a job but because they’re curious and energetic and anxious for experiences. They not only do a lot of work, they keep the company young and I’m not just talking about age diversity. They’re the pipeline of new talent that keeps us ahead of changes in content marketing and publishing.
Two of them have been in my office already this morning and it’s not yet 9 o’clock. One has been doing man on the street interviews with a Flip cam. It’s probably easier to get someone on the train to talk to you when you’re young and cute but she is fearless in approaching people, asking questions, finding out what she wants to know—and then she can edit the video. The other was telling me about a crowd sourcing project called The Cosmonaut and talking about the future of creative communities. I mean seriously: the future of creative communities before breakfast!
You can’t buy that sort of energy. And you can’t survive without it.
When Members Pay Attention
10 Feb 2010
by Rebecca Rolfes
I’m a little late on my Super Bowl commentary. (The Saints won, in case you hadn’t heard.) I’m also late on the other morning-after topic of the commercials—lots of guys wearing their underpants and some bizarre screaming chickens. But there is a more evergreen association idea in there, really there is.
My viewing companion, the world’s biggest commercial avoider, asked why anyone would spend $2.8 million for a 30 second slot. I said that advertising is, of course, more complicated than this but when you get up into those sorts of numbers, it becomes very simple.
- Is your target audience watching?
- Are they paying attention?
One of the big selling points of a Super Bowl commercial is that advertisers are guaranteed that viewers will be paying attention and not in the bathroom or getting snacks or checking their email. It may be the one broadcast where we actually watch the commercials. So if you are targeting mostly men, skewing younger—beer, soft drinks, fast food, video games, cell phones and an irreverent take on personal investing—this is your moment. Expensive but worth it.
This year, however, Pepsi gave up on the Super Bowl after 23 years. Instead, Pepsi has budgeted $20 million for Project Refresh, a social media campaign that will give grants in six areas in line with its CSR goals. They feel that everyone knows who they are. They don’t need brand awareness; they need engagement.
Admittedly, engagement is a vague terms that gets vaguer as it is over used. But ask yourself three questions.
- What does your association brand need? Awareness? Engagement? Clarification? Stability? Positioning?
- Where is your target audience?
- What are they really paying attention to?
Chances are you don’t have $20 million to spend, but if you did, how would you spend it most wisely to build your brand? Should you do the whole panoply of promotional marketing: advertising, PR, direct mail, social media? Or should you throw everything at the one big game when you know they’ll be there?
Passion Sells
29 Jan 2010
by Rebecca Rolfes
“They have to advertise with us. We’re the association magazine.” An association executive actually said that to me once. That was before the recession but it was shocking even at the time. As I said in my book , “they” don’t have to do anything. They can take their ad dollars and their membership dues and their event registration fees and go anywhere they want.
Then this week, I sat in on a Vocus Webinar about trends in media where Rebecca Bredholt, Vocus managing editor for magazine content said that more associations are going to launch print magazines because the ability to deliver a highly targeted qualified audience is still a compelling message for advertisers.
Then, also this week, I saw the ad projections for the spring issue of one of our association magazines and heard that rep firms that traditionally relied on member goodwill to sell ads were having to beat the bushes a lot harder in an effort to find non-member advertisers.
According to everyone, niche magazines are where it’s at these days. Readers of niche and special-interest magazines are described as “cults.” About 12,000 readers of Paste actually donated $275,000 to keep the magazine they love afloat. Some of them actually had benefit concerts for the independent music magazine.
So here’s my question: if your association magazine has always been niche, if your readers can’t get what you publish anywhere else, if your cult is devoted to the subject matter, why are you struggling financially? It’s not necessarily easy—nothing is these days—but if you’re giving them what they want and can prove it, why don’t advertisers buy?
Possible reasons:
- Laziness. Lazy editorial and lazy ad reps. If your editorial is not cult-worthy, get out of the business. If you’re killing trees to tell readers who got elected to your board and to run pictures of your conference gala, get out of the business. If you’re publishing the same thing that your competing trade magazine publishes only not as good and not as timely, get out of the business. If your ad reps still rely on member goodwill, fire them. That scenario just hits your members for more money. They won’t get leads from it—they’re all in the same business so why would they buy from each other? If non-member advertisers don’t see your cult as worth reaching, your already dismal ad revenues will only get smaller.
- Not Going Where the Love Is. One of my old bosses used to use that expression. Play to the crowd that loves you. Specialize the hell out of it. Niche the niche into targeted audiences that they can’t reach any other way. If you’re trying to attract readers that are only marginally interested in what you offer, you’re spreading yourself too thin and won’t get anywhere anyway.
- Being All Things to All Readers. It’s tempting to plan a magazine that has something for everyone in an effort to attract readers and advertisers. Something for the C-suite as well as something for entry-level, something for manufacturers as well as something for academics; some thought leadership and some product reviews, some opinion and some how-to. Wrong. In the immortal words of the late Ann Richards, “There’s nothing in the middle of the road, but roadkill.” If you’re all things to all readers, you’re nothing special to anyone.
- Inagility. You publish what you’ve got or what’s on your editorial calendar instead of adjusting to what readers are really interested in. I saw an association magazine recently that led with an article about the shop floor. I talked to another that was considering a cover story about employee discipline. Readers just aren’t interested in that right now. They want to know how to keep their customers, how to maximize revenues. You could write about those two topics in every issue from now till the turnaround actually feels real and readers wouldn’t get tired of it. If your editorial is so evergreen that it is the journalistic equivalent of preservative-rich junk food—eat it now, eat it 10 years from now—you will not last much longer.
- Being Too Old-School. I’m a print journalist. I ascribe to John Updike’s words: To create content that results in “dark marks on paper which become handsomely reproducible many times over…seems to me…a magical act, and a delightful technical process.” But dark marks on paper don’t attract revenues by themselves. Lead generation, audience management, e-commerce, content marketing can supplement traditional space advertising sales in ways that old print technology never could.
This is not a fun time to be in the publishing business but, look at it this way, you’ve got what everyone else in the business wants—a passionate audience. Passion sells, always has, always will.
It’s 2010. Do You Know Where Your Exhibitors Are?
28 Jan 2010
by Rebecca Rolfes
Having just come back from a speech to the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributor’s Executive Council meeting, I’ve got meeting attendance on the brain. It’s down, in case you hadn’t heard. It’s way down in some industries, and not just because of the recession. Conventions, trade shows, conferences are becoming a commodity for a lot of industries. For the wholesalers, buying groups were already stealing their thunder and now are adding networking in ways that really undercut their value propositions as premier networking venues.
The business model was already pretty wonky. Matt Rowan, executive director of the Health Industry Distributors Association is trying to change the 80-20 model where 80% of revenues are eaten up by shipping, logistics, booth companies, AV providers, etc. and only 20% ends up in the association’s pockets. He’s coming up with packages for his biggest exhibitors which save them 20% and allow the association to keep 50% of the revenues. “We’ve gotten into the booth-building business,” Rowan said. That was only one example from his “power package” idea that will give exhibitors what they want: “not more relationships but deeper relationships.”
“We were slaves to the number of attendees, the number of booths, the square footage,” Rowan said. “Now the metric is how many meetings exhibitors hosted. There’s meeting space in each booth along ‘Main Street’ plus private meeting spaces around the periphery of the hall. Exhibitors want to know who they’re meeting with even before they come to town.”
The makeup of HIDA’s attendees fit the dance card approach very well. Buyers can select sellers they’d like to talk to and vice versa so that everyone’s dance card fills up and HIDA has a basis for pricing.
John Garfinkel, executive director of the International Sanitary Supply Association, has managed to maintain attendance at or near the same levels as prior to the recession by opening the doors to service providers and end users through alliances with other associations.
These are only two ideas. I’m part of a major study that will look for more.
Fast Future Research’s Convention 2020 just kicked off and will look at the future of live events, venues and meeting destinations. The study’s site allows anyone to contribute their thoughts via a Trend Wiki. The study will run through October so that meeting planners can make better decisions this year for future meetings. After we gather everyone’s input, participants will be able to vote on which trends they see as most likely. I hope you’ll join up.
Are You the Establishment?
21 Jan 2010
by Rebecca Rolfes
We all hear so much about associations’ difficulty in attracting younger members. They don’t want to hang with the old folks. They have different demands on their time. They’re not at the point in their careers when association membership typically occurs. They’re inventing their own version of community online. The economic downturn means that companies will not subsidize membership for junior staff, and promotions and raises are slower in coming.
All true, or at least partially true. All remediable.
Young professionals sections, career development opportunities, active social networking, entry-level and even job hunter membership rates can go a long way to overcoming the recruitment obstacles of simple demographics. All tactics employed by smart associations, many of which still have trouble attracting the next generation.
So what’s really holding them back?
I was reading something that mentioned “the establishment.” It’s very difficult these days to know what that means, who that is. Bill Clinton called Obama “the establishment candidate” (when Hilary was running against him) and just to prove how nebulous the term is, the New Republic called Mitt Romney the same thing and Jon Stewart said the same of Mrs. Clinton. Vanity Fair ranks the New Establishment of 100 technology power brokers every year while the New York Times says that the establishment is vanishing. But for the sake of argument, let’s say “the establishment” is whoever is currently in charge.
Is that you? Think about it. Aren’t associations in charge of making sure that the status quo stays the status quo? You have to protect and serve the members you have. They are the establishment in your industry or your profession. They don’t really want anything to change. They know it will but, as much as possible, their own interests focus on staying right where they are doing exactly what they’re doing. And then something like the recession comes along that forces change and makes everyone extremely uncomfortable.
Granted it’s not a comfortable situation but maybe part of the problem is that we are so unused to change and how to deal with it. We spend far too much time and energy protecting the current state of affairs. If we expended half that in leading members toward the inevitable changes, we would serve them better in knowing how to deal with unforeseen changes. And, I’ll argue, that in the process, we’d attract younger members. If associations were positioned less as “the establishment,” against which youth always rebels, and more as the agents and partners of change, they would be the dynamic, progressive forces that young people long to be part of.
We’ve all heard Mahatma Ghandi’s dictum, “Be the change.” I’ve already blogged about it once. Young people understand on some level that they are the force of change. If you’re not comfortable with that, they won’t be comfortable with you.
Trend to Mobile
18 Jan 2010
by Rebecca Rolfes
According to a new study of media platforms, marketers are using one of three techniques to pay for their use of social media.
- They’re diverting money from the traditional media budget.
- They’re shifting funds from other marketing communications budgets.
- They’re creating an incremental budget.
The study by the Association of National Advertisers, B2B Magazine and the marketing services firm mktg shows that social media and viral video have seen the largest jumps in usage over last year. There are some interesting differences between B2B and B2C marketers that apply to B2B and B2C associations as well.
- B2B marketers have not embraced mobile to the extent that B2C has.
- B2B marketers prefer LinkedIn to Facebook.
- Webinars are found to be effective by a very high percentage of B2B marketers.
Mobile and viral video are set to take off among B2B marketers, the study says. Associations would do well to jump on that trend. Those with lots of members who do not use computers during the day are finding it difficult to communicate with members in a world where print is dying and push vehicles like email may never be read. These days everyone has a cell phone, however, and mobile could be the next huge wave in member communications platforms.
The Open Source Association
8 Jan 2010
by Rebecca Rolfes
Associations Now asked me to contribute an essay, Visions for the Future of Associations, for its January cover story about what associations will be in 2030. Crystal ball gazing is fun and, by 2030, I will be in my 80s so no one will be able to point out whether I was right or wrong.
I think the future of associations is open-source. Members will create the experience they want. As Erick Peterson, senior vice president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies and head of the Seven Revolutions Initiative, says “Information should be not only available to all, but also modifiable by all.”
This means that associations will be:
- Able to delegate more of the management of innovation to outside sources
- Characterized by interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary collaborations
- Less vertical
- Organized into multiple administrative models to meet the needs of a diverse array of challenges and opportunities
- More flexible and better able to rapidly redeploy resources when and how members need them
An open-source association would expand its current volunteer infrastructure to the full industry or professional ecosystem—vendors, customers, suppliers, labor force, etc. With better, Web-based tools and a secure environment in which to work, they will form a third party platform with no stake in the outcome.
This will necessitate a huge cultural shift that I think is already under way. To use open source, you have to be open. The products and services developed by the open-source community need to be vetted by the larger membership so that everyone can reap the benefits. But you can’t control the process. You have to be open to the possibilities.
An open-source association brings a lot of smart people together and gives them a problem worth solving. The association expands in ways we’ve not seen before.
Read the full article: Visions for the Future of Associations
