Month: August 2021

“The lack of coverage in women’s basketball has always existed,” said WSLAM director Camille Buxeda. “The formation of this magazine now is a representation of reaching a new point of varied content about women’s basketball.”

WSLAM’s upcoming 82-page special issue will be sent to SLAM’s print subscribers for free and available for purchase on SLAM’s ecommerce site, slamgoods.com, for $8.99. The magazine is timed to publish before the women’s basketball playoffs (and will be available in most WNBA arenas for free) and the week the regular WNBA season ends. Buxeda sees this issue as the potential kick-off for a WSLAM annual magazine, though she did not give exact figures on how many ads will be in the print publication or how many subscribers it has.

WSLAM’s deal with the WNBA includes digital and social extensions of the publication as well. Stories will run online, and video and graphic assets featuring Betnijah Laney, Diamond DeShields and Arike Ogunbowale, the three WNBA players on the cover of the WSLAM magazine, will be distributed on social. The same production, design and sales resources for SLAM’s magazine issues are behind WSLAM’s issue. 

The deal with the WNBA is WSLAM’s biggest direct deal so far, according to Camille Buxeda, WSLAM director, who declined to share how much money the WNBA had put down. It’s also WSLAM’s first campaign with the WNBA. “We’re in talks to do a couple more,” Buxeda said (before joining SLAM in 2019, she worked at the WNBA in social and digital content). While the magazine would have been “possible” even without the WNBA’s support, the league’s backing gives the product “a stamp of authenticity,” said Adam Figman, chief content officer of SLAM.

Advertisers’ interest in women’s sports

Women’s sports content has not historically attracted the same level of advertisers’ interest or investment as men’s sports. That might be changing — slowly. Sports marketing agency rEvolution has seen an uptick from brands and sponsors “who have expressed interest in getting more involved in women’s sports and are looking for opportunities to be more equitable in their sponsorship strategies,” said Larry Mann, evp of media and business development at rEvolution.

Kristi Wagner, director of Content+ at media agency Mindshare, said she is seeing a shift in interest from brands in women’s sports. “I would not say it’s as if a switch has flipped and the space is getting flooded with investment, but the interest is noticeably growing,” she said. Her team is in discussion with multiple brands about the landscape of female sports and the opportunities that exist within it.

Big brands are backing women’s basketball. Google announced in May that it would sponsor the WNBA games to bring them to national TV. Beer brand Michelob Ultra announced on Aug. 26 that it was committing $100 million to women’s sports over the next five years, and dedicating 50% of its lifestyle media inventory to content that features and promotes female athletes and women’s sports by 2025. The company also said it will represent male and female athletes equally in all advertising creative moving forward.

The hope is that this initiative “will inspire other brands and leaders in the industry to follow us,” said Ricardo Marques, vp of marketing at Michelob Ultra US & global.

WSLAM’s rise

WSLAM started out as a social channel on Twitter and Instagram, then later grew to TikTok, Facebook and YouTube. The vertical hit 100,000 followers on Instagram in its first year and the four-person team has now accumulated an audience of nearly 300,000, according to Buxeda.

In WSLAM’s early days, its social accounts were used to distribute branded content that was also being shared across other SLAM channels, rather than sharing original branded content specifically for WSLAM. Since last summer, it has worked with brands like Nike, Adidas and Footlocker, such as a longform video series sponsored by Under Armour called “All Eyes On Us.”

Branded content is WSLAM’s biggest source of revenue. It makes up about 70% of its business, with the rest coming from merchandise and events (though so far WSLAM has been a part of bigger SLAM events). In the future, Buxeda hopes to host WSLAM-specific events.

The WNBA deal with WSLAM “could be the start of a virtuous cycle in the content and advertising ecosystem of women’s sports,” Wagner said. Advertisers see a marketing opportunity around big cultural milestones like the WNBA’s 25th anniversary, and the “engaged and loyal” female sports fans around these moments, she said. Publishers in turn see advertisers leaning in, so they invest in producing more women’s sports content and “are more inclined to produce more meaningful marketing opportunities,” Wagner said. 

“It becomes a cyclical dynamic that could fuel substantial growth in women’s sports,” she said.

“You have to implement flexibility and understanding,” said Amanda Cosindas, director of marketing and communications at creative agency The Many. Last summer, Cosindas moved across the country from California to Massachusetts so that she could more easily manage her job as well as her son’s education with in-person learning. Cosindas noted that parents’ perspectives will vary based on previous experience and that having done in-person learning last year that it “can go well.” 

Valerie Moizel, founder and CEO/COO of Woo, an LA-based creative agency, has two daughters returning to in-person learning this year. Going back comes with some anxiety that schools could “call any minute to say they changed their minds” to switch to a “virtual learning environment,” said Moizel. “It’s hard for parents. You have to retrain your brain to shuffle it all. You also have to figure out how to adjust and give employees’ the ability to adjust as they need to.” 

Agency execs say they are working to communicate to parents that they will give employees the accommodations needed should they have to make shifts to their schedules to deal with school changes. 

“This year for back-to-school we’re being as flexible and accommodating as much as we can which means that the team picks up the slack when our team members have to be present for parent-teacher conferences, first days of school, orientation, COVID updates and more,” said Pilaar Terry, managing partner of MC Brand Communications. “Our support for working parents is unwavering and that comes through not just in our policies but day-to-day as well.”

Barb Rozman-Stokes, chief talent officer of Campbell Ewald, echoed that sentiment: “Quite simply, we trust our people to do the right thing for our clients, each other and themselves in whatever form that takes rather than working in a rigid, one-size fits all structure. This is one of the best ways for us to expand the diversity and equity we want to achieve as we look to create new and different ways to engage our talent and consumers.”

3 Questions with Superhuman head of marketing Johnny Jiang

As Covid cases go back up, what impact will that have on your team’s plans to return to the office?

As the COVID landscape evolves, we are remaining transparent with our employees about how safety is our number one concern. We softly reopened our San Francisco office (Superhuman is a an email app) earlier this summer and have made it completely optional to return. There are two key things we’ve put in place to ensure our office is as safe as possible. [First, our vaccine policy:] We’re requiring individuals be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 to visit and work out of our office. The primary deciding factor here is safety; the data available to us made it clear that requiring vaccines would allow us to create the safest possible experience. [Second is our] mask guidance: We’re following local guidance and asking individuals to wear masks in our highest traffic areas. 

With offices reopening, what’s the plan to create equal work opportunities and culture for both remote and in-office staffers?

With our team continuing to grow across North America, Superhuman is focused on maintaining a level playing field and inclusive culture for all employees regardless of location. As a fully remote employee based in Seattle, I understand how important it is to implement policies that ensure remote employees feel connected and have the same opportunities as those that choose to work from the office. For example, our new hire on-boarding experience was completely redesigned with live trainings and micro-learnings to quickly familiarize new employees with our company culture and empower them to immediately make an impact. During my weekly marketing team meetings, I also like to include intentional moments of connection where we reserve time to ask non-work related questions that allow remote and in-person team members to get to know one another.

There were a lot of lessons learned for remote work during the pandemic. Any lessons your team learned that you’ll keep post-pandemic?

We have to be proactive about building and maintaining the connections that we take for granted when working in the same office. We’ve also found that many people are overwhelmed with the increase in digital communication since the start of the pandemic. As a result, we’ve been very intentional about utilizing the strengths of different forms of communication, and knowing when to switch between each option. For example, we use email when we expect more thoughtful asynchronous responses from our recipients, Slack for quick synchronous discussions, and jump on calls to quickly resolve Slack discussions when they start to get out of hand. — Kimeko McCoy

By the numbers

Even in light of steadily increasing costs and data privacy issues, social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram are seemingly still key to digital marketing. To follow online shoppers, many of whom now push digital shopping carts thanks to pandemic lockdown, platforms like Pinterest and most recently TikTok have rolled out shoppable, e-commerce features. As more advertisers look to reach shoppers across social media, marketing software company Dash Hudson has released its Global Digital Insights Report Q2 2021. Here are the key data points: 

• 81% of consumers discover new products on Instagram and use it to make purchase decisions.
• People look at video content 5 times longer than static images on both Facebook and Instagram.
• Over half of Gen Z consumers won’t click on an ad. If they do, they prefer Instagram. And 73% of Gen Z want to be contacted about new products via these platforms. — Kimeko McCoy

Quote of the week

“It feels like we’re kind of being nudged to almost think about a post-upfront upfront. Getting things locked in as far in advance as possible.”

— Bill Durrant, president of media agency Exverus Media, told senior media editor Tim Peterson when asked about the current TV scatter market.

What we’ve covered

• Wondering about advertising with esports events? Here’s a primer on the ones to watch.
• The return of corporate travel has slowed with the resurgence of Covid-19.
• Here’s how media orgs are dealing with another wave of employee burnout.

The compensation gap is closing, albeit slowly and unevenly. In the effort to create balanced workplaces, LinkedIn occupies the position of potential catalyst. The Microsoft-owned business-centric social network not only provides a platform with tools through which hiring practices can be made more meritocratic but also offers an example of an equitable organization. It even has an executive charged with overseeing equity strategy.

“I don’t know that any companies have started to unify all their efforts around … a single role and actually set up a team that’s meant to focus on this,” said LinkedIn’s head of equity strategy Imani Dunbar in the latest episode of the Digiday Podcast.

LinkedIn’s focus on equity spans inside and outside its own walls. Internally, LinkedIn has achieved a notable level of compensatory fairness among its employees. Employees of color in the U.S. earn $1 for every $1 earned by white employees, and female employees earn $0.998 for every $1 earned by male employees. But the work is far from finished.

“We’ve been on our equity journey for a while. It’s also our forever work. It’s not something that’s like a six-month or couple-year project,” Dunbar said.

Here are a few highlights from the conversation, which have been edited for length and clarity.

What we talk about when we talk about equity

When we think about equity, what we’re effectively thinking about is the acknowledgment that systemic barriers exist that prevent folks from reaching and maximizing their full potential. And so when we talk about being committed to equity, what we’re effectively trying to drive is ensuring that all members from any demographic can reach their maximum potential.

The inequitable baseline

From a global perspective, it’s generally like 70 to 80 cents on the dollar for women against men. And then when you start to get into some of the racial or ethnic demographics, it just drops from there, as low as, I think, 46 cents on the dollar for Latina women versus white men. So the numbers in terms of where we have to go — not just in the U.S. but likely abroad — there’s plenty of opportunity there.

Combating bias

Some of these biases are unconscious entirely. Whether they’re unconscious or not, the reality is, if you have something that could potentially be a detractor from focusing on what’s ultimately important — which is the skills, the experience, the potential of the candidate — what are some tools that we can put in place to help mitigate some of that?

Making explicit commitments

Oftentimes you haven’t seen companies come out and make overt commitments and put a timeline on it [like LinkedIn’s goal to double the number of Black and Latinx leaders, managers and senior members of its U.S. team over the next five years]. The thing I’m most excited about is we’ve made the commitment. We’re going to hold ourselves accountable. And in five years, hopefully, we’re in a much better place than we are today.

A longtime Call of Duty pro and Subliners player since 2019, Paparatto knew that he wanted to stay active in the scene despite his impending retirement. Andbox, the Subliners’ parent company, agreed with Paparatto’s assessment, scrapping his player contract and offering him a revised version — this time as a full-time content creator.

One month later, Paparatto released the first episode of “The Flank,” his podcast-turned-talk-show dedicated to all things competitive CoD. “We always thought about making the show,” Paparatto said, “because there was never really anything like it.” Since then, viewership of “The Flank” has steadily increased on YouTube, growing from less than 5,000 views per episode in the early days to nearly 75,000 in less than 24 hours for the latest edition on the back of Paparatto’s charisma, genuine passion for CoD and deep connections to the competitive scene.

According to Farzam Kamel, a co-founder and president of Andbox, the success of “The Flank” is partially a result of his company’s decision to support its members’ prominence as influencers and content creators, both during and after their competitive careers. “This is an evolution of our business and a separate part of our product offering. You’re not going to get the breadth of creators that you really want, that you can really scale if you’re just focusing on the players on your teams,” Kamel said. “So I think that us expanding and having creator relationships is just a way to scale that part of the business — it’s complementary, in our minds.”

This evolution is indicative of a broader shift in esports, with organizations across the industry realizing former competitors’ value as content creators. Even organizations that identify as competition-first, such as T1, believe that keeping former players on the roster can be beneficial to both the team’s content-creation apparatus and its future competitive success. “Having them around the building for the next generation is actually good,” said T1 CEO Joe Marsh. “Because you can bring them in to talk to the players about their experiences. Like, what does it feel like to be onstage at Worlds? What does it feel like to hoist a championship trophy?”

Not every esports organization has come around to this idea. Many teams still seem to treat their competitive players as a disposable resource, no longer of use if unable to win championships. Halfway through the Call of Duty League’s championship weekend on August 20, the Seattle Surge had already announced its decision to release its entire roster, with similar announcements from the Paris Legion and London Royal Ravens following shortly after. “If you go to these events, you have to perform — or you can potentially lose your spot, potentially lose your contract,” Paparatto said.

Jordan Sherman, the president and chief commercial officer of Immortals Gaming Club, bemoaned the wholesale cutting of players, both as a dampener on fans’ enthusiasm and as a bad business move. “We want people to come in who have long-term potential, and can succeed within our ecosystem,” Sherman said. “For our fans, that type of consistency in the players and the message is going to be really important, so you know what you’re getting from Immortals, and so it’s not just a continuously revolving door of our players — there [are] realities and consistencies we have to deal with.”

Though esports organizations are codifying the player-to-content-creator life cycle in their contracts and business plans, this doesn’t mean that every competitive player will be able to retire into a successful podcast. “I have a lot of friends in the space who went the content route and stopped because it just wasn’t for them,” Paparatto said.

Still, transitioning to streaming or content creation has always been an enticing change for pro players facing burnout and the endless stresses of competition. Esports organizations are starting to be enticed as well — and they are leaning into this life cycle, to the benefit of their fans, their players and the teams themselves.

While some of Recurrent’s media brands have some non-advertising dimension to their businesses, Robinson’s site has no advertising at all, generating nearly all of its revenue from subscriptions, which start at $12 per month.  

To date, consumer revenue has played a small role in Recurrent’s business overall, accounting for about 10% of overall revenue last year, according to a spokesperson. It has 600,000 subscribers across its portfolio, most of them concentrated at the brands Recurrent acquired from Bonnier late last year. 

“Subscription, in time, I think will be one of our largest revenue streams, even if we’re just beginning,” Recurrent Ventures CEO Lance Johnson said. “[Robinson] is something we can build around.” 

Robinson’s site is the fourth site Recurrent has acquired in 2021 — it bought Domino, Mel Magazine and Futurism earlier this year — and the 17th acquisition it’s made since the end of 2018, when it bought The Drive from Meredith. Johnson said Recurrent is on pace to make another two or three deals before the end of 2021, though he did not provide further details. 

Neither Robinson nor Johnson would disclose how many subscribers Robinson’s site has. Robinson said that her site has been “consistently, highly profitable” for years and that its membership base has grown “healthily” every year it’s been offered, normally between 5 and 10%. The site launched a paywall in 2001.  

It has also attracted a diverse base of customers. In addition to monthly and yearly consumer offerings, Robinson’s site also offers a professional tier, which gives customers limited commercial reuse of the site’s reviews and resources; those begin around $250 per year. 

Robinson said she suspects that “around 20%” of her subscriber base is professional, though only around half of them are paying the professional price. 

Robinson said she has subscribers in 82 different countries, yet less than 30% of her site’s audience and membership is based in the U.S.. In the near term, Johnson said the plan is to grow its American subscriber base. It has set a near-term goal of making U.S. subscribers half of its total subscribers, while growing Robinson’s digital audience as a whole. 

Some of that will be done with technical improvements, such as improving the site’s SEO. But Johnson said Saveur, which Recurrent also owns, will also play a key role, both through simple article syndication as well as more ambitious projects, such as getting Robinson’s site to make wine pairing recommendations for the thousands of recipes Saveur has on its site. 

“There’s a lot of synergies there,” Johnson said. 

Some basic digital marketing will play a role as well. Since she first launched her site in 2000, Robinson said she has never spent any money on paid marketing. Instead, her customer acquisition efforts have been confined to in-person events, as well as word of mouth. 

“I don’t have a marketing bone in my body,” Robinson said. 

In new research, the Alexander Group has identified five key areas in which media revenue and sales leaders typically excel, and each example highlights what their teams are doing to thrive in today’s evolving media landscape.

Leading media organizations are capturing the voice of the advertiser and agency 

Understanding the perspective of advertisers and agencies has always been important, but the significance of showing value and understanding the needs and perceptions of interconnected brand, agency, publisher and platform stakeholders in the cookieless future has made it even more critical. 

In the way of solutions, processes such as voice of the advertiser and agency (VO2A) are designed to capture an objective view of how partners and customers perceive and value a company and then integrate those insights into selling, product and engagement strategies. In recent research, the Alexander Group team has highlighted how embedding a structured VO2A method into the marketing and sales workflow is essential, yet only 35% of media companies have a defined process that translates findings into actionable strategies. 

Conversely, leading media organizations not only engage multiple internal stakeholders in the VO2A process, but they also have a formal and regular process to both capture and embed advertiser and agency insights, requiring a commitment to VO2A across the entire organization. VO2A is helping these companies stay abreast of changing advertiser and business needs and continuously recalibrate the go-to-market strategy to increase competitiveness and achieve better results. 

Data-driven opportunity planning is helping media to capitalize on market shifts

The Alexander Group’s research also found that most media companies are not set up to capitalize on significant and rapid market shifts, resulting in uncertainty and inaction. 

Most media companies rely heavily on historic spend data (95%) and current account plans (70%) as inputs into their opportunity planning, thus focusing primarily on where past growth came from. 

What was surprising was that less than half of participants use campaign performance metrics, macroeconomic projections or segment (vertical) data to identify new growth drivers. These metrics can help companies uncover and prioritize the products and offerings that are the most successful.

Effective opportunity analysis requires firms to look at both the past and the future, pairing historical account spend with research to see where the new growth will come from. Instead of prioritizing individual product wins, the shift to a buyer-centric organization means a greater focus on increased advertiser lifetime value (ALTV). 

The role of account managers and overlays is evolving to match new revenue cycles

Advertisers are increasingly demanding dedicated account managers to track, optimize and report on the ROI of their campaigns. Account managers are evolving from pure support to roles that ensure retention and assist with cross-sell opportunities. 

Overlay specialists, who primarily focus on identifying and landing accounts, have existed since the introduction of new products such as OTT, podcasts and newsletters. These roles are not new, but they do add to the cost of a sale and must be deployed efficiently.

Account management and overlay roles fit well into the new revenue cycle that is less linear and heavily relies on an ongoing relationship with clients and specialized functions. Account managers can help reduce churn and maximize ALTV by focusing on the ongoing post-sales relationship with the buyers. 

Media leaders consider factors such as account potential, offerings and sales complexity to determine the right role(s) to deploy. They equip them with sales playbooks and the proper incentive programs, and then successful teams rely on these resources working together in a coordinated fashion, linked together with shared data and workflows.

As media returns to growth, new individual and team goals are emerging

In 2020, nearly 70% of media companies adjusted plans to stabilize earnings for their sellers during the pandemic. For example, they removed thresholds, adjusted quotas and made it easier to hit accelerators. As media companies return to growth, they have begun to reassess their sales compensation plans to support a pay-for-performance culture. 

The lone wolf who lands the account is a thing of the past. As roles and offerings expand, collaboration becomes more important and also expands the players eligible for variable compensation. The Alexander Group’s research shows that companies are increasingly using a combination of individual and team goals for roles such as account executives and account managers. However, companies must select the right approach for the desired behavior. Getting these steps right takes some practice.

Revenue operations has become the ‘data science’ of sales

The Alexander Group’s research shows that some leaders are increasingly seeing revenue operations as the “data-science side” of sales, helping to uncover opportunities for greater productivity at a desirable ROI. As a result, media leaders are evolving their revenue operations teams: Revenue operations leaders are tasked with revenue analysis, sales enablement and revenue strategy. What’s the benefit? A single source of truth when it comes to the numbers as well as a data-driven, effective revenue strategy. 

Leading organizations are thriving in today’s landscape by capturing VO2A, capitalizing on market shifts, deploying the right specialist for the right job, aligning compensation with strategy and leveraging revenue operations. These steps are key for any team wishing to succeed in the competitive sales environment and give advertisers what they need to succeed as well.