Month: February 2022

The schedule isn’t finalized, but plans for Coachella are already in motion and the goal is to host more than a dozen of these in-person events this year, according to BDG CRO Jason Wagenheim. As of now, these events will be monetized exclusively through sponsorships, rather than ticket sales, but BDG execs are brainstorming ways to integrate a consumer revenue stream, whether that’s through tickets or NFTs.

BDG’s events business also consists of bought-if-sold events commissioned by advertisers primarily in the entertainment, liquor, fashion or beauty categories. But Wagenheim said the big opportunity is creating these editorially-driven franchises, like Nylon House, that are scheduled around marquee moments in cultural conversation, like Coachella, SXSW, Art Basel and the film awards season.

This model was tested at the end of last year at Art Basel in Miami, with the debut of Nylon House and an event series tied to BDG’s fashion brand W. That first Nylon House took place in the evening as a party with a DJ, drinks and dancing. Wagenheim said that over a five-day period, the company held seven events and made seven figures of revenue from nine sponsorships. He did not provide specific revenue figures or share the cost to participate for advertisers.

The goal for these franchises is to do for BDG what the Met Gala and the Vanity Fair Oscar Party did for Condé Nast. Publishers have been “throwing really fun events for a chic exclusive crowd [for decades]. There’s no question that that’s a good model,” said Wagenheim.

Therefore, these events, which BDG hopes to garner anywhere from a few hundred to a thousand guests, are invitation-only to achieve the same level of exclusivity of celebrities and influencers. This will also hopefully ensure that content posted on social media from the attendees as well as organic media coverage of the events gets seen by a much larger audience. This might mean less content overall, but it will be produced by those with a significant following.

Leaf said that while invited guests will not be expected to post anything if they accept an invitation, having people present who know how to produce high-quality content there is appealing.

“The Met Gala and [Vanity Fair] Oscars Party have a long history and they’ve developed a cachet to a point where other media organizations cover those events. For a lot of the newer brands, they’re trying to figure out what their version of that is that creates enough prestige and spills over to a point where competing media organizations are willing to cover,” said Eric Fleming, co-founder and executive producer of New York-based experiential agency, Makeout NYC, which has worked with publishers like Time in the past to create similar invite-only events. 

While the exclusive nature of invite-only, celebrity-focused events is, again, not a new strategy for publishers, getting broader audiences to care about these events can be tricky.

“[Sharing] clips of all these people drinking and dancing and having a good time is more of a FOMO thing,” versus creating engaging content with the guests in attendance that tells a story or shares new information, said Fleming.

BDG’s virtual-first events business made low eight-figures of revenue each year for the past two years, Wagenheim said. While he would not disclose hard revenue figures, Wagenheim did say that last year’s events business was slightly behind 2020 due to what Wagenheim attributed to “virtual exhaustion” from both fewer audiences tuning in and sponsors spending less money on those channels.

The events business has a modest revenue growth goal of a 20% increase over 2021, according to Wagenheim. He said the momentum created from the Art Basel kick-off as well as the first half of 2022 will hopefully accelerate the number of experiential franchises that host events in the back half of 2022 and in 2023.

“The whole world is doing a lot more connected TV given we’re all home watching a lot more content now,” said Essig. “We’re seeing that growth and we’re leaning into connected TV a lot more today to help tell our story.”

In Q4 last year, the wellness brand worked with Curiosity creative agency to produce the campaign spots across digital, CTV, OTT and social media. That looked like video spots across platforms such as Discovery Networks like TLC and HGTV to Hulu, or the Weather app, and featured private, relaxing moments, like a bath, featuring Dr Teal’s products.

Traditionally, Dr Teal’s has spent the bulk of its advertising dollars on digital media, especially social channels like Facebook, Instagram, Google and YouTube. “We like those platforms obviously for the reach and the targeting that everyone gets, and the data we can get,” Essig said. But with this most recent campaign, the wellness brand has leaning more heavily into digital video. It’s unclear exactly how those ad dollars are spent as Essig did not respond to a request to provide further details.

“All we are trying to do is introduce this brand and get you to try it. It’s a recruitment strategy for the brand, for all of our brands. It’s about penetration,” he said.

Per Kantar, Dr Teal’s spent just over $10,000 on media from January to September of 2021. That number was significantly down from that same time frame in the year prior, in which Dr Teal’s spent nearly $37,000. (Those numbers do not include social media as Kantar does not track those figures. Also, figures for network radio only include through March 2021.)

Across the industry, advertisers such as Shutterfly, Hydrow rowing company and Vivid Seats are increasingly ramping up their media mixes to include more digital video as more people spend time streaming videos. CTV is expected to continue surging in both usage and ad spend. Last year, eMarketer forecasted that U.S. CTV ad spend would reach more than $19 billion.

However, media buyers warn advertisers to keep in mind that the majority of watch time is still spent with non-ad-supported video streaming services like Netflix, said Liz Phelps, managing director of integrated media at PPK ad agency. That makes it more difficult to reach consumers, Phelps added, especially when considering increased demand and competition in the marketplace.

“When planning, advertisers need to optimize their budgets across the entire media plan as we see media forming a dynamic and non-linear ecosystem,” Phelps said via email. “As media consumption continues to morph, it is important to adapt communications to consumers’ needs along their decision journey.”

For advertisers leveraging a digital-first strategy, Phelps said they should consider only ad-supported digital video with linear TV while tapping into other touchpoints to drive reach as well as customer engagement.

Hyun Lee-Miller, vice president of media at independent agency Good Apple agreed.

“A full-funnel video strategy delivers that 1-2 punch by first capturing awareness via high impact CTV, then layering in social video platforms that foster the brand engagement and interactivity that ultimately drives consideration and purchase,” Lee-Miller added via email.

For Dr Teal’s, the plan is to continue brand awareness efforts, per Essig. Over the next year, the wellness brand has plans to continue expanding CTV, investing more as they go along, as well as look into TikTok with a test and learn approach, he added. 

“For us, it’s about how we authentically and in a very relevant way reach more and more consumers,” Essig said. “That’s why we’re testing more platforms.”

The shift “signals that there is a more cohesive place to come to find all of what we’re doing to cover gender and identity in one place,” said Thompson, who oversees coverage of those topics at the Post. “We wanted to bring The Lily to the core of our newsroom and collaborate more with reporters on other teams that are covering a lot of the same topics. There is a lot of opportunity to work together and to do big projects.”

The Lily, which the Post originally launched on Medium in 2017 and then moved to its publishing platform Arc in 2018, was known for its stories aimed at young women, its visual identity and its comics as well as its newsletter and social media accounts (it now has around 148,000 Instagram followers and 270,000 Facebook followers).

Though The Lily’s stories were already appearing on The Washington Post’s website, on Jan. 5 the Post announced The Lily would no longer exist as a separate publication. The seven-person team at The Lily is now working at the Post’s Features and National desks, as well as curating a new gender and identity landing page that launched on Jan. 25.

By living outside of an older, legacy institution like the Post, The Lily had more flexibility to experiment with storytelling and to speak directly to young women, said Anna Blue, DE&I marketing strategist at consulting firm Story MKTG. Now, the Post can apply what it’s learned to other beats that intersect with these issues, such as politics. 

“The Lily found ways to think about stories through a millennial lens in particular and it will continue to do that, and find holes and angles in the news coverage that is different and distinct — while also being part of a broader conversation and contributing to coverage there… That was difficult to do in a more siloed space,” Thompson said. “We started to feel that having this coverage – that is so core and an important part of the news cycle — off to the side just didn’t feel like the right place to be.”

The Post has tasked Features executive editor Liz Seymour with building that collaboration and expansion of gender coverage across departments. The twice-weekly “Lily Lines” newsletter and The Lily’s social media accounts will remain as they are, run by Features assignment editor Lena Felton (previously The Lily’s deputy editor). The Lily’s staff reporter Anne Branigin and multiplatform editors Janay Kingsberry and Hannah Good are contributing to the newsletter, as well as other stories and projects in Features, and continue to report to Felton. Reporter Caroline Kitchener has moved to the National Politics team to cover abortion access leading up the midterm elections — an issue she followed closely at The Lily. Neema Roshania Patel, editor of The Lily, is now editor for next generation audiences at the Post.

DE&I experts see pros and cons in the Post’s decision to fold The Lily into the broader news publication. On the one hand, it can provide a bigger stage for its gender and identity coverage. On the other hand, it can diffuse the spotlight that The Lily’s separate home and branding gave to that coverage, and readers could interpret that as a loss of focus — not to mention the friction caused by the lack of free access to those stories, due to the Post’s paywall.

“Publications that do not actively make diversity and inclusion a priority could face a decline in both readership and profits,” said Vicki McGowan, the founder and managing partner of diverse media consultancy DECA. “I interpret this move to mean that [The Lily] is evolving to be more inclusive. Rather than limiting themselves to ‘women’s issues,’ perhaps the aim is to include wider gender issues.”

But there may be a degree of skepticism from The Lily’s audience, especially from those that may not have understood the brand’s connection to the Post who will now find themselves redirected from links on social media to The Post’s website, rather than to The Lily’s, Blue said. “When a young, 25-year-old who reads The Lily clicks through and suddenly finds they’re on the Washington Post… Will they feel represented by the Washington, D.C., white, political publication?” she said.

Thompson wants The Lily’s newsletter and social media audience “to be very clear that they are reading a publication of The Washington Post.” Bringing readers to the Post’s website can show them the breadth of its coverage on gender and identity, she said. “If you’re reading Caroline Kitchner in The Lily, you should be reading Monica Hesse’s [gender] column in the Post,” Thompson said.

It’s also a tactic to drive younger readers to the Post’s website and hopefully convert some of them to become paying subscribers. The Lily was bringing in a younger and more diverse audience than The Washington Post does, Thompson said. To “infuse” the Post — which is working to attract more readers in those demographics and grow its subscription business — “with something that feels young, hip, modern and is already proven is smart from a marketing and outreach sense,” Blue said.

The flipside: the paywall means articles are less accessible to some readers, especially those who are younger or lower-income, McGowan said. The Lily’s social media feeds, however, may be able to “fill some of this void.”

Integrating gender and identity stories into the Post also has the risk of driving away older and more conservative readers, Blue said. Those readers might bristle at articles about abortion and transgender rights.

By bringing The Lily into the larger fold, the Post is “putting a stake in the ground about the future of the Post, who they are, the types of readers they want and the type of content they want to push out,” Blue said.