Publishing | Case Study

Challenges

A leading sports magazine was facing intense price pressure from a host of media houses in the same niche, as well as more generic media avenues. The Company was facing a major challenge in demonstrating the ROI of the Advertising dollars through the standard metrics owing to which their clients had started shifting to other media channels and were requesting for massive price cuts in its AD rates.

Diagnostic Study

Using our discovery techniques, we identified the various sources of unstructured information such as research reports, readership audits, consumer reviews to explore the value criteria for solving the customer needs. As we discovered the problems and issues in the situation through our diagnostic study, we realized that the challenge facing the publishing company was in converting the unstructured information about the intangible value criteria such as brand, tenure and relationship into quantifiable benefits to the end customer, through which the actual ROI of the advertising dollars can be demonstrated. The Diagnostic Study revealed that the company can create new service offerings and greater value for their clients when they can effectively leverage Unstructured Information instead of purely focusing on the standard metrics like impressions, frequency that tend to commoditize the value offering.

Discovery Analytics

The information discovered from the unstructured sources and multiple stakeholders across advertising, editorial, sales and the ad agencies was netted out into the identified value criteria buckets and quantified through our analytics framework. By leveraging the unstructured information present with the stakeholders combined with other secondary sources of data such as dealer reviews, consumer surveys, trade shows, editorials and other research articles, the following insights were discovered about the intangible benefits:

● The experience and the market knowledge of the company and its ability to identify key industry
   trends could serve as unique insights to their clients.
● As a highly recognized brand in their domain, the publisher adds additional credibility to the product
   advertisements.
● The quality of content generates a highly diversified readership market ranging from early adopters
   to die hard sporting enthusiasts.
● Longstanding, trust worthy Relationship with the sports ecosystem that comprises of dealers,
   subscribers, analysts and others in trade, that can create significant opportunities through events
   and activities and further provide ongoing market insights to the advertisers.
● Significant price advantages that can be delivered to the client through volume discounts and other
   synergetic deals by leveraging the breadth of services on offer from the company.

Solution

● By consolidating the unstructured Information from reports, e-mails, product information, media
   news, press releases, etc. along with the standard structured metrics the company was able to get a
   360-degree view of the client’s needs. Utilizing the 360-degree view, special media projects were
   created to solve for the client’s specific needs and link this with the cost estimates to take
   advantage of the economies of scale.
● By designing tools & techniques with appropriate access rights, the publisher was able to analyze the
   client’s needs from the multiple groups within the sports magazine ecosystem and leverage the
   breadth of services offered to cross sell and up sell to their major clients.
● By developing an online environment for information sharing, collaboration and analysis between the
   publisher’s team, OEMs, consumers & dealers we enabled the company to discover the value
   proposition of intangible benefits from the unstructured information.

Results

Through the ability to have an entire 360 degree view of the business problem, the company was able to retain the client by demonstrating its understanding of the client needs and by providing tangible ROI benefits that can cause a direct lift in sales. The company developed an integrated solution offering, which leveraged the firm’s unstructured information assets using our discovery analytics techniques to quantify its key value proposition, which enabled them to avoid a $350,000 price cut demanded by the client.