What have you achieved in your first 100 days as Director of Sales Bauer Aus?
We re-organised our sales structure to improve service levels across our agency and direct businesses. We’ve enhanced our customer solutions division with the launch of Story 54 – insight-led brand entertainment by women, for women. We’re working hard to deliver a seamless experience for clients across our digital, print and experiential teams. We’re driving our research agenda in 2018 to offer best in market insights into our diverse female audiences and the issues that are important to them. Furthermore, we have established a company-wide brand purpose – to drive a better future for women. The first instalment of that piece was our Female Futures trend forecast which we presented in collaboration with The Future Laboratory. We’ve made some significant advances in a short amount of time. Our clients will be seeing a very different proposition for our magazine brands over the coming months.
Bauer is being reinvigorated by a new Australia-wide strategy – can you tell us how that strategy affects your side of the business as Director of Sales?
With audiences consuming our content across multi-channels we have so much more reach and more importantly engagement …we can make the content we make work a lot harder to reach women through our digital brands, influencers and across our social communities.
Your Female Futures study brought to light several issues affecting Australian women. How does this information inform, or build upon, the relationships you have with brands and advertisers?
The issue around Female equality is not a new one but we have reached a tipping point (contact me to see the research and you will find out why). For Bauer, its an 'Inside Out' strategy, it starts from within. On the back of Female Futures, Bauer’s commitment is to create 10 million words over the next 12 months with a view to moving the needle in this space. The research also helps lay the foundation for our Publishing strategy in 2018, “Women to Love” is a great example of how we have responded to the insights and trends we have identified. Many brands that we have spoken want to be involved and we have created bespoke initiatives for them to also be part of the journey in 2018.
Brands and advertisers are moving away from traditional display campaigns, hence your creation of Story54. As Director of Sales, how many of the conversations you have are skewed towards content creation?
A great piece of creative or content that makes you stop and feel differently about a brand is a powerful thing. Specifically, more and more brands are coming to us wanting us to help engage women with their story. Women creating powerful story telling for women, published in a trusted environment for women - makes sense doesn’t it?
What do the content initiatives offer brands and advertisers that other types of campaigns can’t? Can you give us one or two examples where these types of initiatives have worked particularly well?
What we know is our audiences have much stronger engagement with content that :
a) Is created by our editorial teams
b) Comes from a powerful insight
c) Is channel agnostic
Our advertising partners enjoy seeing the power and effectiveness of our work. As an example Fiat saw a 20% increase in brand favourability and a three-fold increase in sales from a recent award winning content marketing campaign produced by the Story54 team.
Do you think women’s expectations of media have changed? Does this impact on your role specifically?
We’re seeing a recalibration of what’s appropriate. Women are responding to brands that are abandoning tired design cues. They are asking for the real story, they want to be given options, authenticity, and be spoken to in a language that feels truthful. We will be helping brands navigate female futures in 2018 to improve the effectiveness of their communications, and ultimately enabling them to play their part in driving a future that’s better and more equal for women.
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