RSSB2B Executives Moving to Consumer/Niche
This week saw the announcement of David Blansfield’s, SVP at Penton’s design engineering group (Machine Design), appointment as president of magazines at F+W Publishing, the large consumer/niche publisher of I.D., Print, HOW, and many others. Blansfield replaces Colin Ungaro, another B2B veteran, most recently of Reed’s new products division. Also, earlier this year, Eric Shanfelt got up off the bench and joined Clay Hall’s Aspire Media, another enthusiast company.
Both Blansfield and Shanfelt come into their new jobs brimming with confidence. And why not?
When I first started at min’s b2b just over 18 months ago, I spent my first few days on the job in Phoenix at the American Business Media Spring Meeting. There, there was some concern about B2B media companies doing all they could to monetize their content. There was further concern that B2B media companies were way behind other media companies in doing. This worry has paid off, as now B2B media companies are way ahead of their consumer and niche counterparts in monetizing Web opportunities, as well as face-to-face and custom publishing opportunities.
So, in practice, you might assume that a B2B media executive with years of experience squeezing every penny out of every crumb of content would do quite well on the consumer/niche side. I’d make that assumption. It didn’t work out with Ungaro, it seems. Hopefully, Shanfelt and Blansfield will have more luck. Time will tell and we’ll be watching.
More on this in this week’s issue of min’s b2b.
Loading ...
In many ways, B2B experience is more relevant to consumer enthusiast media than large consumer media experience since both B2B and consumer media companies market to well-defined, niche audiences, with similar endemic interests. As far as e-Media goes, I’m 100% certain that Eric and T.J. Harty (former B2B media execs) will transform our e-Media business. They are dealing with challenges here that they successfully dealt with 4 and 5 years ago in their B2B roles.
If I can post a question, Clay: Why do you think that we’re now seeing some high-profile talent crossover now and not as much before? Is the time just right? Is it that B2B and niche media are at different stages of the cycle and match up in a way that makes sense?
There are more opportunities for B2B executives and managers to make a switch to consumer enthusiast media companies than before and enthusiast media companies are an exciting place to be right now. Because business audiences are predisposed to consuming media at their desks, B2B media companies were forced (or enticed to) embrace e-media strategies several years ago. When companies are responding to threats or are turning threats into opportunities, they increase their investment in people who can lead them to success. When B2B companies began investing heavily in online businesses, many
e-Media execs and managers gravitated to B2B companies.
Now that rich digital media is becoming more and more portable, consumer media companies are ramping up their investments in e-Media and are looking for talented people who’ve faced these challenges and opportunities before and succeeded. And because B2B and consumer enthusiast media both serve niche, vertical audiences, the strategies are somewhat similar.
For the same reasons, I suspect we’ll see more and more consumer enthusiast media companies looking to B2B execs and managers to build their event businesses.