Attracting Top Talent

What skills does it take to run a “next generation” audience development team?

By Chandra Johnson-Greene
Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Weitzner In an age when publishers are moving toward eliminating silos in their audience development departments, and working to reach their readers across all platforms—print, online and events—it’s becoming increasingly important to have the right executive-level AD talent on hand to make sure everything’s running smoothly.

But what skills does it take to run a “next generation” audience development team, and where can this talent be found? From a b-to-b perspective, it’s all about having a multi-dimensional background, according to Steven Weitzner, chairman/CEO, Ziff Davis Enterprise.

“Most of the [executives] we have here had their roots in circulation,” he tells AD. “And in b-to-b, that’s very important because they already know, for example, what a qualified audience is. We also have individuals that come from all different types of marketing backgrounds. I found that wherever their experience lies in the b-to-b world—digital, e-marketing or traditional print—it’s important that they have vertical domain experience. It makes things so much easier because we can focus on innovating rather than covering ground that we covered before.”

Weitzner says Ziff Davis Enterprise for the past year has been breaking down silos in its audience development department to reflect the unification of its customer database, therefore, it was important to find people that had multi-faceted backgrounds to run it.

“We had one database, but different approaches,” he says. “We had one person who thought the digital side was the most important, another who thought print was most important, and another who thought online was most important. So the challenge we had ahead of us was trying to bring everyone together because the way to get value out of your audience is to merge the records. When you merge, you begin to understand the total value of the audience member. You can then measure that value. That’s what audience marketing is all about.”

The company’s restructuring resulted in the creation of the first chief audience officer position in the industry. Weitzner hired Jeff Smith—who has a 15-year background in b-to-b and consumer audience development as well as experience in online channel development—to oversee every aspect of the company’s audience database.

Weitzner adds that when it comes to leadership roles in audience development, having experience in both circulation and publishing is also a big plus. “It’s important to have someone who understands that it’s not just abut the data,” Weitzner says. “It’s really about understanding how to attract and keep an audience.”