An Interview with Tad Smith, CEO, Reed Business Information
Hal Espo, President of Contextual Connections, LLC was on deck to interview Tad Smith, CEO of Reed Business Information. Tad sees RBI as a fun place to work, great properties, number one brands, whether it’s deep and interesting information or glossy stuff like Oscars. Tad sees great growth in online but print is in gentle decline, “we’ll see how it goes.” Number one priority for RBI is to protect and manage print decline, get out of it what they can, then accelerating online revenue, make acquisitions that bear fruit and finally migrating the portfolio to more profitable sectors and businesses. Hal asks about the new “e” division, back to the future, perhaps, but what’s the plan? Tad: the first e-division Tad ran in 2001, disbanded quickly, sees it as a good experiment for the foreseeable future, but they are still experimenting with form.
Thanks to John Blossom, Shore Communications Inc, and SIIA Member, for contributing this summary of the Tad Smith interview. Visit John’s blog for full SIIA Information Industry Summit coverage.
There will be some centralization of content, as in templates, but with user-generated content centralization may pay. Anything that does not require market knowledge is centralized. Little things can make a big difference when you group them together. Hal: How do you get the right eDNA in non-online units? Tad: Writing for the Web is very different, trying to train the non-onliners takes more training, sounds as if they are trying to establish the online culture strongly and slowly retrain the non-onliners who can “get it”. Returns on e-side are the greatest, non-e doesn’t have the return. Hiring aggressively, both e-talent and people who can run businesses, people who can lead others, branded editorial people. Knock on this, this leads to happy shareholders. “This is definitely a marathon,” Tad notes.
Content for Web versus print: “A radical departure,” disruptive. Web content needs to be finely honed for the Web experienced, shorter, written better, better hooks, video, making a richer experience than either print or television. User-generated content? “Someone has to define what’s out of bounds,” Tad notes, which can be a clear role for editors. Editors can also act as a “cocktail party host,” making sure that the right topics are out there, etc. “We welcome almost all users” for generating content. Hal: what have you instituted? Variety.com pushy question, editorial puts it out, they pick the responses, but they are expecting to go beyond this to something far more open.
Vertical search: notion is to improve the experience of people in business. Have advantages that Google doesn’t in search? He likes his own stuff better. Databases? Love the predictability of subscription revenues. How different in management? Need people with operational focus, quantitative focus, magazines need people who “effervesce” and editors with tremendous opinions, “not sure that you want a data business run by someone who’s a little off the beaten path.” Ad inventory: new infrastructure allows them to expose all inventory through one lens, one rate card for all of portfolio or portions, new ad serving platform coming up.
How does this all help? Had so much e-revenue in month of December, had a real impact on the bottom line, January is the same, two months does not a trend make. Risks (Google)? Right now, hundreds of companies in tech communities are going after Google, they’ll look old in time. But not going after them (???). Love the e-space, lead generation, MarketCast 30-40 percent growth rate, does better and better, encouraged. Private equity? Good if you can get it. What gets up you up in the morning? Goes to the gym at 5, 7-year old son is online gamer. Webkinz is MySpace for 7 year-olds, looked at broadcast TV for the first time in a hotel room, asked “where are all my choices?”
Surfs throughout the day, looking at interesting sites, at least an hour a day. At home it’s Amazon for books, search and find tool. Reads the Post, Times and Journal. Post entertains, delights and stimulates. McKinsey background, what does it teach? Better presentation techniques, better analytical tools, look for three things, not fewer, not more. What do you look for in hiring senior management? Results orientation, insight, ability to articulate, unimpeached integrity. Teaches a class for strategy for media markets, 70 students. Good recruiting tool. What do you take back from teaching? Active questioning, active listening. Leadership? Look at how Burke handled the Tylenol problem for Johnson & Johnson.
Back from Davos, what do you take back? Part of young leader group, special programs, focused on customer things. Great opportunity to meet with customers and see some mind-expanding things. Before that Digital Life Design, fantastic, in Munich. Lee Greenhouse: when it’s all over, what’s the new revenue mix? Not disclosing. Committed to print. LexisNexis impresses, they’ve taken an historically data-driven business and embedded it in workflows, out of thin air have developed a great risk management business, look at bench strength, high quality talent, understated [COMMENT: Too much so, their light is under a bushel compared to Factiva].
My closing thoughts. Tad is a fellow who knows where he’s going and how he wants to get there, interesting to see the generation change and have a CEO asserting confidently that surfing is an important part of his daily routine. I agree with the “gentle decline for print” mantra to some degree, but I believe that the potential for custom print to become a higher-margin business through mass customization is far underutilized.
Tad Smith is Chief Executive Officer of Reed Business Information (Reed), the New York City-based division of Reed Elsevier Group plc. Reed is a leading business information company in North America. Among its nearly 100 publications and websites are leading franchises including Variety, Publishers Weekly, Interior Design, Furniture Today, Broadcasting & Cable, Wireless Week, Restaurants & Institutions, and EDN. Reed is also a leading provider of data and market research information through Reed Construction Data, RS Means, First Source, Instat, and Marketcast. Tad is also Professor (Adjunct) at the Stern School of Business at New York University, where he teaches the highly rated corporate finance and strategy course on entertainment, media, and technology companies.
This article was created by the editors and producers at ScribeMedia.Org.
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