This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
MC: Fast Company survived the first major tech industry bust in the early 2000s while many of its peers folded. How is Fast Company poised to withstand the current media and tech industry downturn?
Brendan Vaughan: It’s not totally clear that it is a decline. We’re in a moment of very strange, conflicting macroeconomic indicators. Everybody keeps talking about this recession and it’s like, ‘what time is the recession supposed to show up?’ It kind of hasn’t yet. Just in the last week, I’ve seen prominent voices saying a recession won’t come and we’ve got very strong job numbers, but also still-high inflation. You’ve got all these cross-currents and the business world is a little bit frozen by it.
As far as how we’re poised to survive it, it really comes down to the strength of our brand. That may be a little bit of a pat answer but it’s the truth. We’re not a huge brand, but we’re a strong brand. And that strength comes from our clear definition in the marketplace. While that clear definition might have the effect of keeping a brand at a certain level in terms of its overall footprint in the marketplace, the big advantage is that we are extremely relevant and reliable to both our readers and our advertisers.
MC: Given the current economic environment, has Fast Company shifted its revenue priorities? Are any streams being emphasized or de-emphasized?
BV: I love all my children equally. Our strength is the diversity of our revenue streams. Recognition programs, licensing and digital direct advertising continue to be big drivers for us. Our live events business is quite strong. We’re growing our subscription business. We do a lot of different things and some years, one thing is better than the other. But the story of Fast Company, at least in the last five to 10 years, is the breadth of our revenue streams.
MC: Did the September 2022 cyberattack that left Fast Company offline for eight days force you to reassess the publication’s use of social media platforms? Has Fast Company increased its focus on the zero-click content it published during this time?
BV: It sort of accelerated things that we wanted to experiment with anyway. The site was down, and we wanted to keep publishing. And so we published a lot of places — LinkedIn, Medium, TikTok. In fact, we nearly turned LinkedIn into our CMS during that time. Our content overlaps quite a bit with the LinkedIn audiences’ interests, particularly in our Work Life vertical — all of the conversations around remote and hybrid and layoffs. All of the content drivers there are also really big drivers for us, so it made a lot of sense to emphasize that platform.
We want to be where our audiences are and we want our brand to be present on all of those platforms, but there is still a gap to be filled between the leap from your own website to all of these platforms and sponsorship. Monetizing the leap from one place to the next is still in process. We learned about publishing — about putting the content out — because of the incident. But we still have a ways to go when it comes to turning it into a business model.
MC: What are your high-level thoughts on the use of AI in digital publishing? Are these applications good, bad or neutral?
BV: I am optimistic about it. I think these are incredibly cool technologies, but obviously there are hazards with them as well and the cause for concern is valid. From a journalistic standpoint, they’re still just wrong a lot of the time. That needs to get fixed. But I think it will continue to improve. In its publicly available form, this technology is very new. I think it will get better. There will probably be bad PR moments for the companies that make these things and bad actual moments where the technology is used for ill or accidental manifestations of the technology that will not be great. Overall though, it’s exciting.
At the same time, and maybe I’m naive, but I think there will always be a place for human journalists to produce content that is recognizably human and that human readers will want over robot-generated content. Of course, there are definitely categories of journalism that you can see being much more dominated by AI technology, like stock performance and things that are ‘entirely just the facts and numbers please.’ A carefully produced AI can probably do that.
MC: Recent Morning Consult research shows that Gen Zers are significantly less aware of major news brands than all U.S. adults are. Are young audiences mission critical to B2B publications, and if so, what are the most important things publishers can or should be doing to attract and retain them today?
BV: It’s a challenge for sure. Every new generation grows up less aware of the brands that defined the generations before them, and this is only exacerbated by the speed of technology changes. It is definitely a question that we have, I’m not going to pretend that it’s not. We know we need to reach younger readers.
A very reliable beat for all digital media is generational conflict — millennials vs. Gen Z and all of that stuff. Like many publishers, we’ve done our share of that. We can be tough in our coverage when we need to be, but we’re also an optimistic and hopeful publication that believes in the power of innovation to push things forward. We have a young staff that speaks very naturally to younger generations. We publish a lot on TikTok and on podcasts. We certainly don’t rely entirely on written text in print or digital to reach those audiences.
With a lot of these things, there’s a bit of a meet you in the middle kind of dynamic. As Gen Z ages, they’ll be exposed to more brands that they didn’t necessarily care about growing up. They’ll get a little older, we’ll get a little younger, and hopefully we can kind of find each other in the middle.
More on the week ahead…
Brands begin rolling out Women’s History Month content.
The recognition month has become an increasingly important part of brands’ marketing calendars in recent years, as consumer interest in inclusivity continues to rise. We’ll be watching Mars Inc.’s M&Ms to see if the brand leverages the occasion to write another chapter in its spokescandies saga, given that the latest round of conservative backlash to the characters was sparked by the release of a women-centric ad campaign at the start of this year.
The B2B Marketing Exchange runs Monday through Wednesday in Scottsdale, Arizona.
Enterprise-facing marketers will gather for three days of education on brand positioning, sales enablement strategies and visual storytelling, among a host of other topics. In total, the event offers more than 80 sessions and 20 case studies across five knowledge tracks. Featured speakers hail from companies like IBM Corp., Mastercard Inc. and Forrester Research Inc.
LiveRamp’s RampUp Conference is Tuesday and Wednesday in San Francisco.
The theme of this two-day event targeted toward marketing and advertising technology professionals is “Connected By Data.” Dozens of live and on-demand sessions will focus on how to efficiently collect data and unlock insights across every relevant media channel, from linear and digital TV to social media and audio. Several major brands like Heineken USA, Avocados from Mexico and Dollar General Corp. will deliver case study presentations.
ANA’s Next Gen Measurement event, hosted by ByteDance Ltd.’s TikTok, is Thursday.
At the TikTok offices in New York City, leaders from brands like the NFL, PepsiCo Inc. and Abercrombie & Fitch Co. will deliver remarks on how to measure engagement with consumers in rapidly evolving social spaces, including the metaverse, live shopping and online gaming. This event is in-person and only available to ANA members.
Insider Intelligence is hosting a Retail Media Summit on Friday.
During this three-and-a-half-hour webinar, Insider Intelligence’s research analysts will discuss the latest trends happening across the emerging channel. In addition to multiple panel-style conversations, the virtual summit will also feature a Q&A session and a live recording of Insider Intelligence’s “Behind the Numbers: Reimagining Retail” podcast.
