Jane Huxley and Andrew Cook.
One of the biggest takeaways from Are Media's annual Ignite event is that the shift to become an omnichannel media company with a focus on content commerce capability is now complete.
Are Media CEO Jane Huxley said one of the biggest areas of work around the change in positioning - one that's been three years in the making - was in educating team members around why a change was needed and what that meant.
“We created something called the Digital Academy, which was a four week curriculum that we delivered internally to everybody that had been writing for our legacy print publications, to give them the opportunity to learn how to take that same content and passion and connection and write that for a website or a social post or an email, and that really helped to get them onto the journey of ‘it's the same brand, it's just a different format’, so it's not something that needs to be concerning,” she said.
“There's always a lot of fear at the start of a change, so I think that one of our challenges was to make sure that we brought the people with us. It was really about keeping the engagement up while we were transforming the depths of the company.”
With the last of those "massive projects" of transformation completed back in August, Huxley said the internal mindset has now shifted to a sense of ‘what can we do now?’.
“Now we can leverage what we've done to innovate and to really reach our audiences in new ways,” she told AdNews.
“We're also going to do this presentation for our staff, because we think that this would be something that they would all enjoy, to see a really tangible view of the fruits of our labors in many ways, and I think that's the Ignite that I'm the most excited about doing.”
Are Media's director of sales, Andrew Cook, said that the next step from his team’s perspective is about continuing to convince and remind the market of the strength, depth and breadth of Are Media’s offering.
“We’re not just a traditional magazine business; we’re so much more than that, and we’re fulfilling those other opportunities around the full funnel connection that we have from branding all the way through to the affiliate opportunities that we're now talking to,” he said.
“We know digital is ever growing in the mindset of agencies and clients alike and we're strong in that content space, so it's about how we can continue to shape knowledge of Australian women to help our clients in that area as well.”
Despite likely looming storm clouds from a data perspective – whether through Privacy Act reforms or moves by Google around cookie deprecation – Huxley said that the company is strong from a first-party data perspective and thus well insulated where other businesses may not be.
“In our legacy [magazines] business, we’ve been strongest in the retail world - people buying a copy of magazine at a supermarket or a news agent - except we don't know who they are. We went on a big journey of trying to understand and introduce ourselves personally to those customers that buy through a newsagent or a supermarket,” she said.
“Competitions are a really strong mechanism for those customers who are more than happy to participate with us in the opportunity to win - win an apartment or win a new car or a year's worth of groceries – so that's been a really good way for us to get to know who these otherwise anonymous customers would be.”
Huxley said part of Are Media’s shift has also resulted in the company having “a real strength” in the resetting of its internal content management system, allowing for greater discoverability in what customers are doing when they come to the company’s stable of websites - where they come from, what they click on, where they dwell and where they go next, using a single identifier to be able to tie all of that information together.
“We also have an Amazon back end, a Segment customer data platform layer in the middle, and then our own data engineers and analysts sitting at that front layer, responding to use cases for the business,” she told AdNews.
“I think we are early in our journey there, but that will be a real focus for us as we go through the next year, tying very closely in with what we call our privacy steerco - what we do with data to collect it, to do so securely, and then to leverage that are all pillars of that strategy that we have around first party data.”
As the cost-of-living crisis continues, Are Media’s push into shopping and eCommerce may seem like a risky venture, but there are positive signs on the horizon, including the Melbourne Institute's Index of Consumer Sentiment rising 6.2% to 89.8 in October.
Australians are also budgeting $80 more for Christmas gifts this year and $100 more for food and drink during the festive season, with 60% feeling emotionally positive as inflationary pressure eases, according to research by data and insights company Pureprofile.
Huxley said that when Are Media landed on its strategic direction, it was because the strongest converting categories for eCommerce happened to be the categories that the company were the strongest in.
“Homewares, beauty and fashion all convert at a higher rate than most other retail products online, so strategically it was an obvious way forward for us,” she said.
Looking ahead to 2025, Cook said that he anticipates the first six months of next year may continue to be a bit uncertain from an advertising perspective, with momentum starting to build up in the middle of the year.
“We've obviously got an election next year too, which always throws a little bit of uncertainty into the mix, but I think clients are starting to see a little bit of consistency,” he said.
“Clients are also planning for their Christmas period, which we hope will be a good one and will buoy them for a slow and steady 2025, and then hopefully growth from probably May and June onwards.”
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