How the World's Largest Magazine Company Approaches Video Content

in print, but now are so much more. John Warder is president of Meredith National Media Group to overseas titles like Travel and Leisure, Eating well now thanks to the acquisition of Time Inc. Yet more brands like People Magazine. Thanks for sitting down with me, John, great to be here. Andrew, thanks for having me. So I'd like to start with Time. Meredith swallowed a pretty big fish there. I would imagine that is disruptive for a company. It's a lot to

take in. So talk about the integration process. I would imagine it's a lot. Uh, The integration processes has been a lot, but it's going very very well and we're really happy, um and and pleased with the opportunities that these two great companies coming together not only afford us as a combined business, but obviously afford the marketplace as

well from an advertising perspective. Uh, we really have a very very complementary set of capabilities, and as we looked at opportunities in the marketplace, we really concluded that the best way we could check all the boxes that we wanted to check and deliver all the capabilities that we wanted to deliver to consumers and two advertisers was bringing these two great companies together. So the integration has gone

very very well. We've one of the first things we did was we aligned our salesforces together and I aligned our go to market and we continue to see the benefits of that work, and we're getting great response from the marketplace um regarding that go to market and how we're really a lining all of our capabilities and teams to superserve our clients. Before we dig into that integration, though, you also sold off some brands like tim Ink and

sorry not Timing Time magazine. What was the decision? What was the filter you guys are applying in terms of what stays or goes well. I think it's a couple of things. First, and foremost, we are going to continue to focus on our core entertainment, family, food, lifestyle, UH and home brands, and that's always been our our focus

and we're going to continue to double down there. I think for some of these assets, as we looked at them, we really felt they weren't UM in part cord our strategy going forward Number one and number two, we felt that there were other companies or owners of these brands that would be able to UM really focus on them UH and lean into them from an investment perspective and from a operational perspective in a way that would be the best for that brand. I mean that core business

I referred to off the top magazines tough times. Just today we saw some big moves at Hearst Corporation that we're reflective of that. What is the general attitude though at Meredith. Do you think there's still a lot of life in print? I know we're sitting at a conference where you talked a lot about video, but I'm just curious what the philosophy is of that core business. Absolutely, and we think there's still a lot of life left

in print. And remember, at the end of the day, we're a portfolio of brands, and we want our brands and our content and our products to be wherever consumers want them to be. Print is one of our our key channels, so to his digital, so to his video, so to his connected devices and appliances and cars, so to his social. And so we reach a hundred and seventy five million consumers every month across our channels, reach

a hundred forty million. In digital we reach two hundred and sixty five million, and social we have forty five million paid subscribers. And we really have a very diversified business UH that really looks to optimize all of our brands. From a three and sixty degree perspectives, scale is great. What I'm curious though, is how do you differentiate yourself in terms of the quality of that audience? What what

demos are you focusing on? So, from a demo perspective, we have obviously a very strong reach against women overall. We reach more than of of all United States women, we reach more than of all millennial women, we reach more than of all latinas, and we have not insignificant reach against male audiences as well. UH. So, as you,

as you say, scale is uh is great. What we really are though, is scale with precision, UH, Scale with precision in terms of the insights and analytics that we bring to bear from a first party data perspective that can not only shape the media plans and media opportunities that are advertising clients and the agencies that represent them run with us, but also inform strategic decisions for our clients, like product portfolio decisions, because we understand our consumers to

a very UH deep level UH and that understanding informs our own decisions in terms of the content we create, the products we develop, the new businesses that we enter, and it's really helped us diversify our revenue. So whereas print advertising is still a fairly significant UH percentage of our ad revenue, digital ad revenues growing um to a very significant instant and our consumer revenue continues to grow as well, particularly in in newer areas like commerce, affiliate marketing,

brand licensing, etcetera. And so we continue to focus on advertising and diversifying to more premium forms of revenue that leverage our brands are insights and our technology platforms, and same thing on the consumer side, more more profitable and premium forms of consumer revenue generation that still are a complement to our traditional historical print advertising and print magazine subscription businesses and or video, which is where you're taking

these brands that for many years, over over a century, Met Meredith goes back, are entrenched in consumer minds at a certain older demographic as print and so I'm curious to me, it's the biggest challenge of all how you translate these to a different medium, to a different audience. Some might suggest it's not even possible. Well, it is possible, and we do it every day. And it's important point.

You're raising really the contents to be created for the channel in which you're reaching the consumer and for the consumer UH segment that you're reaching, and so we've really focused on creating all of our content and particular video

content for the right channel. And one of the things we announced that our recent UH new front was leaning into things like Instagram, TV and live video content really anchored around not only the People brand from an entertainment perspective, but also our other brands from a food, home and lifestyle for serspective. And we really want to be again

where the consumer is and are owned and operated. Audience accesses Instagram thirty times a day, and so we feel that there's an opportunity with our Instagram specific Instagram TV video assets, which are configured and created for that platform specifically, is a great way to superserve that audience and appeal to newer audiences that may not be as familiar with our brands and super served. You are, I mean ten series coming to I G t V, and I get

what you're saying. There's a natural evolution of your heavy Instagram user based checking out I G t V. Nevertheless, you're not starting with one. You're You're You're doing ten and you know, I've spoken to publishers and the like who have suggested that there's a lot of hype around i G TV, but also it's so early that they're

not sure what to make of it. Well, when we decide to explore UM different district aribution platforms and channels, we do it with the purpose and we do it with the notion that we want to deliver content to consumers where they want to consume it. We want to learn together UM, with those consumers and with our partners what's working UM and ultimately use that as a foundation to create to continue to create even better content UM

that ultimately grows with with the channel. We were one of the first UM uh you know, publishers to lean into and companies to lean to Facebook Live. It worked really well for us. We continue to focus on ot T. We continue to focus UM on connected devices UM you know for all recipes. As an example, we were one of the first Alexas skills. We have people content on

Echo show. So we really like to experiment UM with a purpose with these newer UM and more emerging UH distribution channels, which we found to really be effective in terms of engaging the audiences we traditionally engage and would also like to engage that we may not be UM. It's front and center with today. When you made the announcement about the I G t V shows at the New Fronts West, you also talked about the expansion of

People People TV as an ot T brand. I was also struck just as much as I was struck by you know, the ten series move expanding to four live hour seems to me unusually ambitious for O T T. Where talk about early days, it's the earliest of early We're exciting. We're seeing incredible engagement with the People brand from a video perspective across channels. At the recent Royal wedding a couple of months ago, we had seventy million views of our coverage of that wedding over a seventy

two hour period. So we think there's a massive opportunity with our entertainment brands in particular to really engage and activate and monetize over time uh that uh, that audience through the channel. So when you think about UM, you know,

People TV, we think it's an incredible opportunity. We're gonna build on that foundation with People now with Chatter from a daytime time and from a you know, a prime time perspective, and then also other programming like Jess Kegel Interview UM and Couch Surfing and Entertainment Weekly cast Reunions, which we think, together with a hundred and twenty five events that we also live stream UM each year, will really give us an opportunity to take a leadership position

and be the de facto entertainment network for live streaming and beyond. People is a pretty huge brand that came

over with the Timing acquisition. I get why if you're going to go into the O T T space, best to to lead with that are you thinking about it in terms of your other brands, which are no slouches either, absolutely, and so one of the things you'll see, and we talked a little bit about this at the recent New Front, is that we are going to UM and we already have leaned into some of our other brands from an

OTT and live streaming perspective. Think of food, think of home, think of lifestyle programming beyond entertainment, and those are some of the things that you know we can tinue to explore UM four brands like better Homes and Gardens for real, simple all recipes, UM, et cetera. You also mentioned Alexa, which, my god, we're in twenty eighteen, aren't we when we're talking to publishers about what are you doing on voice products? But do you see big opportunities there? Yeah, we're very

excited about it. We think it's a it's an emerging channel for us. A significant percentage of searches today are carried out through voice enabled devices, and we'll continue to be UH done so that way. And we ultimately look at our brands as UM providing very compelling and useful content to help people look to achieve what they're trying to achieve on a daily basis, or things that are

more aspirational. And voice enabled devices and connected appliances and and cars are something that we continue to focus on and believe will be a key part of our UM engagement strategy going forward. Key part. You know, looking five ten years down the road, do you see voices something that could be as significant as video or print? Um, it wouldn't surprised me. It's it's hard to uh, you know, assess that it's still as you said, early days, but

it's something that that we're excited about. And UM we're um um bullish on opportunities. In terms of the brands that you have prior to the Timing acquisition, I'm curious, is there any one of them that you think really exemplifies what Meredith is able to do outside print? That's a great question. I would say, not only outside print, but within print as well. I'll give you a couple of examples. First, UM, I would look to a brand like All Recipes UM and brands like Better Homes and Gardens.

So Better Homes and Gardens. As an example, is UH generates When Meredith is a company really generates UH, it's the second largest UH company in terms of UH brand licensed product retail sales after Disney and Better Homes and Gardens is really the key to that. So when you think about that for a second, it showcases the power of that brand um to engage consumers and be monetized outside of a print experience and outside of an advertising experience.

When you look at All Recipes, that was a digital brand that was really desktop first when we we bought it, we ultimately leaned into mobile madd a mobile first brand, and we've taken that brand to connected devices, and we've also taken it to print and it's been a really successful print title for us and really helped us to

create an even greater sixty degree brand for consumers. And then one other example in print we would we would highlight as well is the Magnolia Journal, and that's a brand where our partnership parameters are really within the print medium alone, and that has been an incredible success for

us as a company. We've leaned into it from a consumer revenue perspective and to a lesser degree from an advertising perspective, and it's become one of the most profitable brands in the hundred and sixteen year history of our company within its first year of operation, and we're very,

very excited about that. So to your point, we think for all of our brands, there are opportunities, whether it's print advertising, digital advertising, newer premium forms of advertising, commerce, affiliate marketing, brand licensing, lead generation, other forms of consumer revenue like paid products and memberships that each one of these core brands has the permission to play in and to ultimately participate in as a brand in the marketplace.

And we're seeing a lot of success from all corners of the media ecosystem with a lot of these, uh, these brands that we have, whether they pre existed the transaction with time or they joined the company as part of our transaction. I get, you know, the the diversification strategy here. I'm still curious that whether Meredith takes a particular point of view with regard to the long term viability of print. In other words, do you guys feel no, ten years from now we still expect to be in

this business. We do, And I think remember we have to look at print and that medium is one of the channels in which we operate, and there is an advertising component to that and a consumer revenue component to that. And so we believe that you know, print is is not going to disappear. We believe in it. We believe it's one of the channels that we need to continue to to operate in and that our consumers really enjoy

that channel. Um. And what's going to be interesting is now gen zers enter the life stages that we serve. They're getting their first place to live, they're moving out on their own, they're finishing school, they're getting their first job, they're thinking about getting married, They get married, they have a kid. Though, all of those stages people are entering in. And what we're seeing is that there's still a role for all of our media in those life stages. UM.

And so that's exciting to us. What you're saying almost brings to mind. I believe it was the new owner of the Los Angeles Times, likening print of record Vinyl that still has a place the table. Would you? I think to me, Vinyl is a little more niche than I would expect, you know, print to be. Um. We're seeing and I mean, some of our most engaged audiences are leading and trailing millennials, UM with that medium. UM. So I to me, I look at Vinyl and I

love it. Don't get me wrong. My my brother is a big Vinyl collector, but to me, that seems like a lot more niche than I would expect print uh to be ten years from now. And of course, Meredith, as we've talked about in this conversation, very active on the acquisition front. Uh. Time In gets sold off, some others were probably gonna go out the door as well. I'm curious that once you get on the other side

of that, is Meredith still in an acquisitive mode. Do you still see consolidation is something that's going to affect your industry. Yeah, we expect that, uh, you know, consolidation will continue to occur, and we like being in the position of being a consolidate tour and ultimate lee. As opportunities present themselves, were always considering opportunities at all times.

I would expect us to continue to explore opportunities to add to our portfolio, whether from a product perspective, from a brand perspective, from a category perspective, from a new revenue stream um perspective. Anything that's going to continue to diversify and strengthen our relationships with consumers and advertisers, I think will be something that we would uh we consider so long as it's something that we feel we can

sustainably grow profitably. On that note, are there gaps you're looking to fill places where build or buy you want to get there and you're not there, Well, I think every company has gaps, and we feel we've filled a lot of the gaps that we had UM with our combination with time UM. We ultimately want to scale videos of place. We really like to continue to scale and

we have an incredible amount of engagement there. Uh. We think there's a lot more upside in terms of the monthly video views UH and UH monetize herble video of views that we can generate across all the channels in which we operate, and that I think is an example of an area that we're going to look to continue to build out together. We're stronger than either one of us was before, but we think there's an even bigger opportunity for us to scale our video assets UM going forward.

In another way, the Meredith Time combination reminds me a bit of what A T and T and Time Warner are going through in terms of just the sensibility of the brands. I think Meredith, for instance, is known for a wholesome feels like the wrong word, but not a bad word to use. Then when the timing stuff comes in, you start to get maybe a little more outside what I would consider the traditional brand definition. And just in the same way that Time Warner changes the complexion of

a T and T with content like HBO. Do you see the brand complexion of Meredith changing as a result of this or are you guys the same brand you were before? No? I think we we do continue to evolve from a branding category perspective. I think by combining our two companies, we are thought of more as an entertainment and beauty focused company than we ever were before.

UM as an example, I think from a entertainment, lifestyle, food, home, and family perspective, I think we're without pier and that's very exciting for us UM but absolutely one of the reasons we were excited about coming together as a company as we felt it would expand our opportunities to cover a broader range of categories for consumers that we serve and advertiser that we serve. And I think we're seeing that UM play itself out and it's really been a

very very complementary UM transaction. I can't really think of an area where UM both companies were equally strong in a core component of our business. So, for example, when you look at content driven commerce at Meredith, historically we focused at the very bottom of the funnel UM through commerce, affiliate marketing, et cetera, affiliate links within content. On the time inkside, the focus was more on content to drive commerce.

And now we've put those two together, and so throughout that funnel from a content perspective all the way down through the transaction. We think we're a much stronger company than ever before. And we're generating hundreds of millions of dollars a year in retail sales for our partners, and we only expect that to grow. So I think it's an example of an area where we had complementary strength, and it's one of many we're together. We're much stronger

now than either one of us was before. You mentioned the affiliate links, and that is obviously something that a lot of publishing companies are looking at right now. I'm curious, you know how aggressive you're looking to be there. I hear a lot about the shoppable format. Is that a place where you're playing as well and explain what that is. Sure absolutely so from we we're looking to make all of our media shoppable UM, from video to print to

digital UM. We are leaning in to that regard because we think it provides a value to consumers and we are inspiring our content leads UM are inspiring consumers to transact and ultimately we're providing value to consumers in that regard. We want to make sure the right products and UM content are in front of them UM and ultimately we facilitate that transaction. We want to make sure we're capturing our fair share of the inspiration that we UH we

create and the transactions that we facilitate. And in terms of what you're doing just in general with affiliate commerce, that are their particular instances with particular brands where it's like you got to see what we're doing here. Sure.

So one of the great again complimentary things that we've done is we have a very successful set of store fronts that we've set up within a lot of our brands, and we're actually extending those to the newer brands that have enter our portfolio, like people like Entertainment, Weekly in Style, etcetera. We are going to create um a larger commerce play and affiliate marketing play among those brands, in addition to looking to extend our brands from a brand licensing perspective

into online and physical retail. I gotta say, as I as I listened to this, in general, I think of what must be operationally unbelievably complicated when you consider now forty brands all seem to be highly diversified doing things on lots of different platforms. I mean even I obviously work for a publishing company as well, and I see the dance of like balancing or juggling I should say, video and print and social and all that. How are

you guys adapting to this reality? Well, it is complicated as you As you mentioned, at the end of the day, we have an incredibly talented leadership team and employee base, and that's one of the things that excites me the most because at the end of the day, that's our uh real secret, Sauce, I think is the is the incredibly small aren't talented employees that we have and their ability to multitask and focus on a number of different opportunities at once, whether they be brand lead, whether they

be product lead, whether they be consumer revenue driven, whether they be UM advertising lead, and that's ultimately what we're seeing.

We've got a lot of new ideas and great ideas of bringing these two companies together where we've been able to take existing products to a different level, existing monetization opportunities to a different level, and leverage the collective capabilities that each of the companies that's come together had In certain many places, time in brands were stronger the Meredith brands, and in many places the Meredith brands and business was stronger.

And together we're just finding a lot of opportunity from a revenue growth perspective and from a margin improvement perspective that excites us. But it really comes down to focus UM.

It comes down to recognizing what businesses are really core, what brands are core UM, what businesses and products truly have the ability to be sustainable growth engines that are profitable for the company UM and and focusing on those and leveraging the best in class talent that we have to really unlock the fullest UM sense of those opportunities

for us. How would you describe because you know Meredith is a company because it's in Des Moines, Iowa, and I'm a New York l a kind of guy I don't have much exposure to and I'm just curious, you know, how do you define what the Meredith culture is from a corporate perspective? Does the Time Ink acquisition change that? If you could describe that well, I think at Meredith

we've always been a company were very collaborative company. We've been a company that's very results oriented, very team oriented UM where we really look to capitalize on opportunities as a team UM and we look to engage with each other to try to resolve any challenges that we have.

And one of the things that's been interesting to me is I've found, you know, a lot of people asked us as are two companies came together, Meredith and time Are you expecting a real significance UM in cultural differences? And based on my early interaction with folks, I really didn't, and that's played out. We really have a very very

aligned UM culture. I think everybody is excited to be part of a larger company UM that offers an amazing array of of brands, content and products to consumers and advertisers and really can see UM the success that we feel that we have not only today, but ahead of us going forward, and we found it to be you know, very very seamless, I think, much more seamless, and probably the marketplace expected it to be um out of the gate. And uh, that's one of the things that really excites

me a lot. There's our cultural alignment. And I guess I made it an almost joking reference, but I am, honest to God curious about the iowa of it all. As you guys get bigger, isn't it sort of inevitable, Well, you know, headquarters have to move to New York or

something like that. I think we've found sort of having our our our headquarters in Des Moines from a corporate or sspective, and really having our core advertising um UM and content creation efforts not only in uh New York, but also in Des Moines and now in Birmingham with UM some of the brands we've added in the facility that we have there. We found a great balance, and I think culturally our our employees are fairly UM, really aligned, I would say in in l A in Seattle as well,

we haven't seen it. And so I think we have that UM, that collaborative ethos, we have that team oriented culture in all the offices that we're in UM and so if that makes us a little more des moine across all of our UM uh you know cities in which we operate, we think that's a great thing. One last question. You know, we've talked a lot about the

different ways Meredith is innovating, and we touched on data. Yes, uh, could you talk about sort of the role of data science and Meredith might guess is it probably didn't even exist at Meredith two or three years ago. Well, one of the first things I joined the company six and a half years ago and UM, my first operating role that they moved me into was overseeing UM part of our good chunk of our digital business and ultimately entire

digital business. And one of the first things that we did UM with that was we centralized all of our

data science and business analytics teams. We had teams sitting within consumer marketing, we had teams sitting within UM Advertising, we had teams sitting within research, we had teams sitting within the brands, and we centralized all of those teams because we wanted to do was we wanted to harness all of those insights and analytics on behalf of our entire business from both an advertising and consumer revenue perspective, and be able to bring the full weight of those

insights and analytics and that proprietary first party data to bear for our advertising clients, agencies that represented them, and the partners that we work with at the most strategic level. So that's something we did probably doably close to four or five years ago, and we really think it's it's helped us and it's one of the things that's going

to continue to differentiate Meredith. We hear all the time from our clients that one of the things that excites the about working with us is not only that our first party data and insights can help inform their media plans, which are of course important, but they're also helping inform

their product portfolios and their product decisions. So when you can do that as a company UM, you become a very strategic partner to marketers, UM and the agencies that represent the particularly marketers, because you're ultimately helping them UM many minimize the risks that could be potentially associated with a decision they may or may not make, or to sort of narrow the range of potential outcomes UM and optimize for areas that they have the chance to be

more successful, and we've helped numerous companies launched new products. We've helped numerous companies not launched new products by alerting them to the fact that we've taken at this and we think this trend has peaked. UM. A great example is UM overnight oates. We saw that trend six months, probably before anyone else did. We were able to partner with one of our key clients to identify that new

use case. You know, oatmeal is a power food UM, and we're constantly seeing those opportunities in our up portfolio across all categories and that's something I think that again, taking that centralized view and harnessing all of our data and insights together on behalf of advertisers is really powerful. And by the way, we leverage those same insights and platforms and capabilities for our own business because we are

a consumer first company. We have our own brands and our own experiences that are incredibly important to us that we've built incredible equity and over a hundred and sixteen years, and those are critically important, and so the same insights and capabilities that we leverage ourselves or we try to leverage for our partners and clients. Well, I got a feeling this is an area that's really just beginning to evolve,

not just at your company, but at many others. Thank you for sharing with us about the Meredith world today. I appreciate coming in, John Andrew, thanks so much. It's real pleasure to be here. This has been another episode of Strictly Business. Tune in next week for another helping of scintillating conversation with media movers and shakers, and please make sure you subscribe to the podcast to hear future episodes. Also, leave a review in Apple Podcast let us know how we're doing a mo