‘More likely to convert’: Why digital-only phone carrier Visible is leaning into experiential marketing

Visible, a digital-only phone carrier brand from Verizon, is using experiential marketing to make in-person connections with potential customers. The company has found this increases the likelihood that people will consider switching phone carriers, said Minjae Ormes, its chief marketing officer.

“People who were introduced to Visible as a brand [that way] were twice or three times more likely to convert,” said Ormes. “They would also open and engage with our emails or in conversation with the company for a full 90 days after they had the first experience. Because our consideration cycle is so long, it’s super important.”

Typically, a person considering changing phone carriers can take months to mull that decision over while researching the company. That said, roughly 60 million people switch phone carriers each year, per the company’s research, and Visible is looking to tap into that market. By using experiential marketing efforts, including pop-ups and activations at festivals like SXSW, Visible is increasing the likelihood that a person may switch to Visible, according to Ormes.

While experiential marketing represents a small portion of Visible’s marketing budget — it’s part of the 10% that it allocates for relationship-building activities — the company said that a large driver behind its pop-ups and activations is that it doesn’t own any physical storefronts. The other 90% of the budget is allocated to digital media, mostly toward social and video.

For its most recent experiential effort, Visible created an interactive tour of the mobile experience in real life in Denver called #Phonetopia that included a DM slide (where you landed in foam letters of D and M) and a GIF shop. Earlier this year, the company held other pop-ups in Los Angeles, Austin and Denver.

The point of the experiential marketing push is to “make people feel like there’s a human being behind the brand,” said Orme, even if consumers aren’t able to connect with the brand in person in a physical store. The company is hoping that its focus on building relationships with its consumers through events will help it stand out in the category, which can often be focused on transactions and specific deal promotions in marketing. As previously reported by Digiday, the company has been watching direct-to-consumer brands like Glossier and Casper with the aim of being a lifestyle brand to build out a deeper relationship with its customers.

“We’ve tried to build a tactile, physical experience in which someone can meet our brand that’s tangible, emotional and fun so that ultimately they will give us a chance in considering us in their wireless choices and actually switching,” said Orme. “We’re trying to change the dynamic from being purely transactional, and we believe we can be more than just dollar signs. We’re building relationships and serving as an extension of their [customers’] communities.”

That the company is looking to foster that connection with consumers with in-person experiences makes sense to brand consultant and co-founder of Metaforce Allen Adamson. “You can spend a lot of money online and still be invisible,” said Adamson. “The benefit of mixing a little bit of real experiences in with digital advertising is that they can serve as a catalyst to get people to pay attention to you.”

While the company doesn’t have a permanent physical brick-and-mortar presence that could serve as the in-person experience of the brand rather than pop-ups, Adamson doesn’t see that as necessary as “most people don’t care about the stores,” said Adamson. “If you can get [a network] for less, a lot of people will switch.”

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Swedish publisher Bonnier News closes innovation hub

Swedish media company Bonnier News is closing its 2-year-old innovation hub, Bonnier News Next, and will task existing staffers at each of its publishing brands responsible for designing new, revenue-generating products instead.

On Monday, Nov. 25, chief commercial officer, Alexander Lydecker, sent a Slack message to employees announcing the closure of the hub and that Bonnier News’ individual operations will take full responsibility for their innovation processes. The publisher is negotiating with trade unions about Bonnier News Next’s six employees.

“Next hasn’t missed any specific targets, and the learnings we have made from its projects will now benefit other businesses within Bonnier News. We are growing and will launch more products,” said Lydecker in an emailed statement.

Nordic media giant Bonnier News has dozens of magazine and newspaper brands, including newspapers Expressen and Dagens Nyheter, which has successfully shifted its digital revenue model to rely more on readers than advertisers. But in a complex media market where publishers are competing more fiercely for ad revenue while simultaneously trying to maximize efficiencies and diversify their revenue streams, investing in siloed product development functions isn’t easy to justify financially.

“We’re reorganizing again as we always do in a very competitive Swedish market. Product development is a process that constantly is challenged by both the outside world realities and our own conditions,” Lydecker added.

At launch, the goal of Bonnier News Next was to develop new revenue streams from new and existing products alongside the group’s existing publishing businesses. Next was formed by merging an existing Bonnier-owned title’s innovation department under a new mission to create products for the whole group. Over the last two years, the hub won three grants from Google Digital News Initiative for designing products like interactive news reading using Google Assistant. Bonnier News Next began with closer to 14 full-time employees, as well as contractors working on specific projects, according to people familiar with the matter.

In its history, the hub has had successes. At least two ad products have been integrated into the wider publishing group: Data-driven ad tool, Pinjata and recruitment tool Smarta Jobb. The latter helped grow digital revenue from digital job postings by 38% in 2017, reversing a declining trend in job posting revenues. By comparison, revenue from print job postings decreased by 44% in 2017 and 34% in 2016.

But neither of these were cash cows, according to people familiar with the matter, and other products haven’t integrated as well into the newsrooms.

As a result, earlier this year, the innovation hub pivoted away from creating standalone products to a more consultative approach with the separate news titles in the wider group to understand the problems that needed solving. This coincided with wider structural changes at the publisher, and the gradual decentralization of its headquartered functions so that each part operates independently. Next also stopped reporting directly to Bonnier News CEO and instead reported to Lydecker, according to people familiar with the matter.

Bonnier’s many brands already have their own tech teams, road maps and partnerships, too. For instance, news title Expressen was one of the first Facebook Watch partners. This is showing results, according to Lydecker. In September, Bonnier News launched an initiative selling digital subscriptions across titles, which by last month had generated 1,000 digital subscribers. Now, just below half of its advertising revenue is digital and yearly growth is more or less flat, with a moderate decline, said Lydecker.

The publisher’s decision to reorganize product development and innovation is partly designed to move the function closer to Bonnier’s audiences.

“This is challenging for legacy organizations that have a tendency to favor traditional project-based innovation managed by top managers more relying on accumulated knowledge instead of real-time user data,” said Kjersti Thornéus, director of product management at Nordic publisher Schibsted, a Bonnier News competitor.

“Accumulated knowledge loses value when behavior changes. And when behavior is changing, it’s worth spending time on really understanding the problem before you start solving it,” Thornéus added.

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Publishers use original shows to boost their subscription efforts

This article is part of the Digiday Video Briefing, which features must-reads, confessionals and key market stats. To receive the Digiday Video Briefing, please subscribe.

If original programming can help streaming services like Netflix and Hulu acquire and retain subscribers, why not publishers’ broader subscription businesses too? That’s the goal for a trio of publishers — Architectural Digest, Barstool Sports and The New York Times — that are using shows they produce as a sweetener to both draw new subscribers and keep the ones they already have.

Placing an original show behind a paywall can provide publishers with a compelling subscriber acquisition/retention tool. If a series captures the attention of subscribers, they may be less likely to churn so that they can access new episodes released the following month. However, it can be challenging for publishers to justify producing a program for a limited audience, especially given ongoing interest from Netflix and other streaming platforms in licensing that type of content.

Furthermore, relying on subscription revenue to cover a show’s costs can be a risky strategy. Even if a short-form show only costs tens of thousands of dollars to produce, that money could be wasted if subscribers don’t tune in to any episodes because they subscribed for other reasons or features, such as ad-free articles or monthly trend reports. As a result, publishers are pressed to weigh how big of a bet they mean to make with these paywalled programs — unless they can find opportunities to hedge their bets by making a show more widely available without upsetting subscribers who paid specifically for that content.

Architectural Digest’s paywalled series “Behind the Design” debuted in May a month after the publication introduced its subscription program AD Pro. The show was meant to provide subscribers with more content in exchange for the $240 they pay a year, as well as to provide itself with more content to court subscribers; Architectural Digest posts episode teasers to its social accounts.

While Architectural Digest hired outside production firm Noë and Associates to produce the high-quality short-form show, it has no qualms about the series’ seemingly low viewership ceiling. Architectural Digest projected AD Pro would attract 15,000 subscribers in its first year, but has no plans to make the show available beyond the paywall. Architectural Digest declined to say how many people have watched the show or subscribe to AD Pro, but can “definitely attribute subscriber growth” to the series, said Keith Pollock, executive digital director at Architectural Digest (Pollock declined to provide stats).

Barstool Sports appears to have bigger ambitions with its TV-length documentary series “Barstool Documentary” about the making of Barstool Sports. The series premiered in January to coincide with the launch of the Barstool Gold subscription program. The series is not the only perk exclusive to Barstool Gold subscribers, but considering the show’s TV-esque production quality and more than 20-minute episode lengths, the series appears to be one of the program’s more expensive selling points. Barstool Gold has attracted more than 30,000 subscribers to date, according to Barstool Sports CEO Erika Nardini. A Barstool Sports spokesperson did not provide viewership figures by press time.

Barstool Sports has been torn about producing something that only a limited number of people can watch, however. In March, the publication made the series’ second episode available to anyone, which founder Dave Portnoy acknowledged at the time could upset paying subscribers. While that has been the only episode made available to non-subscribers, Barstool Sports remains “conflicted about the documentary because part of me thinks the doc is what everybody needs to see,” said Nardini.

The Times did not set out to produce a show exclusively for the publication’s subscribers, which may be why it has been able to thread the needle by making one available to subscribers and non-subscribers alike. After premiering “The Weekly” on FX and Hulu in June, on Nov. 18 the publisher began to make episodes available to Times’ subscribers a day after they air. The Times made the move after hearing from its subscribers that they wanted to watch the show but don’t subscribe to pay-TV services or Hulu, according to a Times spokesperson, who declined to share viewership figures for Times subscribers.

What the Times has done seems tough to pull off. It’s unclear why FX and Hulu would be willing to let a show they’ve agreed to distribute be made available beyond their properties. A Times spokesperson said the publisher did not renegotiate its deals with the TV network or streaming service in order to provide “The Weekly” episodes to Times subscribers.

Even though the Times’ model seems difficult to replicate, an inverse option could work for publishers angling to do more with the programs they put behind their paywalls. The subscriber-only release would serve as a series’ initial distribution window. Then publishers could package the shows into more traditional programs and shop them around to TV networks looking to attract their audiences or streaming services looking to build up their libraries. They may not fetch as much money as an unaired series, but since these shows were made to build the publishers’ subscription businesses, any licensing revenue would be bonus money. And the expanded distribution could bring in more subscribers.

“If Netflix or Hulu wanted to bring the doc to life, I wouldn’t say we wouldn’t do it. But we’re not basing our strategy on someone else putting us on their air,” Nardini said.

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