If someone asks who is the biggest winner in Internet popularity in recent decades, in addition to Internet platforms based on content industry such as Facebook and Douyin , "The Economist", which started with traditional media, has achieved "making a fortune in silence." While almost all competitors of the same type struggle to survive under the wave of digitalization and most of their business growth has come to a halt, the media company's performance has been maintaining counter-trend growth for most of the time.
Among the many mainstream media in Europe and the United States, the Economist, which has a history of 179 years, can be said to be an alternative to the odds. It is neither an academic journal in the economic field nor a news media in the pure sense; it rarely does scoops and prefers to cover editorials; articles remain anonymous, disdain to explain professional terms, and sometimes even quote large paragraphs of French, , Latin without translation. Various niche ideas made the outside world think that it intentionally distanced itself from the masses.
In fact, the Economist's luxurious and stable shareholder lineup determines its positioning for social elites to some extent: long-term shareholders include the Italian Agnelli family (controlled by Exor N.V.), the British Rothschild family (Rothschild family), and the past shareholders include the famous Pearson plc. The media company's equity structure is very stable, and the complex trust system has discouraged external investors. Zanny Minton Beddoes, the 17th editor-in-chief, commented that his equity trust structure has enabled the Economist to adhere to editorial independence and also ensure the commercialization space.
Under a series of innovative measures that play to strengths and avoid weaknesses, the Economist took the lead in stabilizing its position in the wave of Internet digitalization. According to statistics from news media Press Gazette, the Economist digital paid users reached 964,000 in June 2021, ranking 9th among global news media, and this number climbed to 1.185 million at the end of the same year. In March 2022, the monthly UV of the Economist website reached 16.3 million, an increase of 33% year-on-year, and the social platform has accumulated 58.6 million followers. In 2021, the total revenue of the three businesses of the Economist Group, the media, think tank (EIU), and the public policy research department (Economic Impact) reached 346 million pounds, an increase of 11.6% year-on-year; the total revenue and profit reached 46 million pounds, an increase of 9.5% year-on-year.
Why did a large number of media that tried to take the niche elite route fall, but "The Economist" is getting wider and wider on its distinctive differentiation route? What is the internal logic of its success? At a time when global media is struggling to survive and media with original content output as their core value is facing pressure to commercial transformation, what enlightenment has The Economist brought?
"Alien Transformation"
In 2013, Andrew Rashbass, then CEO of the Economist Group, realized that the company was standing at a critical crossroads of destiny. During the 15 years of Rashbas's service at the Economist, although the Internet wave has invaded the media industry, "The Economist" is relatively content with the satisfaction of sales - there is no downward trend and profits are basically stable. It was ridiculous to see the changes in the world, but a new phenomenon made the helmist who was born into a publisher and had a natural sensitivity to the reader group feel uncomfortable - he saw people's body postures change when they were reading.
For a long time in the past, Rashbath often saw the scene of people leaning on the back of the seat and reading with relish. However, by 2013, this scene had become a person who leaned forward and swiped his smartphone. The emerging mobile terminal provides rich and short messages and a large number of interactive scenarios. People have begun to get used to reading while processing social information and leaving paper newspapers aside. The new information consumption habit has been developed, which has made Rashbas determined to turn to electronic publications.
In this year, Rashbath, who rarely appeared in public in the past and had almost never spoken publicly, repeatedly shouted the slogan of "selling content from electronic channels." With great changes coming, Rashbas decided to push for reforms himself.A series of reforms required to issue electronic publications include the need for different pricing strategies to ensure that digital media has a cost advantage; it is also necessary to be able to acquire advertisers in electronic channels and ensure the continuous operation of the Economist financially.
The good news is that for Rushbas, the Economist still had several cards to play at that time: First, although the Economist was headquartered in the UK, its largest market was actually in the United States, and American readers at that time had the willingness to pay for digital content; second, people still value the value of this newspaper content; third, the Economist's professional in-depth content value still has huge room to be explored.
Rashbass summarizes the mystery of the transformation of "The Economist" into one word, namely "Mass intelligence". He believes that digitalization will urge readers to "want to be smarter" - the public will jump between different media, the former barriers between mass media and elite media will be broken, and the public's demand for paper, electronic publications, websites and APP content will exist at the same time. What remains unchanged is that good content is still worth the readers' hours of savoring - at least at the time, readers are still willing to hold their iPad in hand and like "The Economist".
The management of "The Economist" has not taken too many detours, so it has formulated a more reasonable transformation path, and its reforms are at the forefront of most peers. Compared to his peers being "swallowed" by the Internet, Rashbas cleverly implanted and applied the genes of "The Economist" in the Internet world, using the unique culture of the enterprise to promote reforms, and integrate them into the Internet in a way that suits the Internet. Based on this idea, Rashbass' first trick aims at the long-standing feature of the magazine - dialogue and interaction with readers.
For a long time, the Economist has set up a column called "Letters" which not only maintains communication with readers through letters, but also provides a channel for submission. More than 100 years of long-term operation have made the content of this column both knowledgeable and diverse, humorous and even controversial.
"The Economist" encourages readers to explain their positions on controversial events from multiple angles. When readers realize that their letters have the opportunity to be published, they have a stronger desire to create. At the same time, the editor of The Economist likes playful and witty comments very much, and readers enjoy it. This gameplay has also been used on the Economist website. Editors are happy to use pun , teasing sentences, and creative pictures or titles to attract attention. Although it sometimes causes mixed reviews, in the noisy Internet environment, the content of "Economist" stands out.
Rashbas summarized the concept as: "The coolest thing today is to stay smart."
In the early days, the purpose of readers' letter column was to influence and attract readers, to provide novel opinions, and to encourage readers to become critical thinkers. An unexpected surprise is that readers of letters accumulated from paper magazines in the past have become the basic foundation for the online transformation of "The Economist". This huge and sticky reader group helped The Economist avoid over-reliance on third-party platform channels and algorithm push, and ensured its own best interests.
The Economist, which has a unique style, achieved success when he switched to the Internet. After decisive changes, the printing end of the Economist still maintained its consistent advantage, while the growth of the digital end began to make rapid progress. In March 2012, the traditional printing end of the Economist reached 1.5 million worldwide, and the number of paid subscribers on the digital end also reached 123,000. In November 2011, the PV of the Economist website reached 38 million, an increase of 27% year-on-year; in March 2012, the monthly UV of the Economist website reached 7.8 million, an increase of 40% year-on-year. In 2015, the total number of subscribers on the digital side of the Economist reached 460,000, an increase of 3.5% year-on-year. At the same time, the Economist still has 1.14 million traditional printing subscribers.
"The Economist"'s digital transformation is undoubtedly successful. In the two-way communication mode with readers and users, it not only enriches the content of the journal, but also further strengthens the binding relationship between consumers and publications.Reed Phillips III, an investor who focuses on TMT, commented on this alternative transformation: "Twenty years ago, people said that the cover of "The Economist" was not newsstand-kick, and they are still not 20 years later, but it doesn't seem to matter."
has insufficient traffic, and it also needs to be converted
The Economist's reform and transformation path has not been smooth all the time, for example, he was once in trouble in the expansion of social media. In the era of social media, the operation team of "The Economist" was also trapped in the quagmire of one-sided pursuit of traffic and ignoring quality. Fortunately, its product team woke up in time and clarified that the conversion of "from traffic on social media to subscriptions on the main site" should be a goal worth pursuing by the group, and re-placed the quality of content at the core of social media operations.
Between 2014 and 2015, the social media team of the magazine was first in its infancy. The group's senior management was fully willing to invest a lot of money and time to make it try, but they set extremely strict indicators for the team and claimed that if they could not meet the expected standards, they would cancel social media expansion, or retreat to the website or seek other methods. At that time, according to a survey by the Pew Research Center, an authoritative polling agency in the United States, 60% of Americans had not even heard of "The Economist". Under this current situation, solving public awareness issues has become the primary task of the new team.
So, the team began to publish content frequently to "show presence" in front of the public. Using various ways that can be imagined to get along with netizens, it seems that traffic theory has become a kind of political correctness. However, this strategy is counterproductive. Due to the frequent release of content and the quality of content declined, the high-end elite brand that the Economist has always insisted on has been diluted to popularization, and readers have also begun to question the cost-effectiveness of the media.
realized that the road ahead was dangerous, Denise Law, the product manager of the Economist, decisively adjusted his strategy, abandoned the initial idea of "flooding" and instead focused on publishing small but exquisite social content. In addition, the social media team has also performed a secondary optimization of the website content of "The Economist", refining the in-depth content into pictures to attract readers, streamline the content and make it into cards to attract netizens to click on articles, and even argue rumors and backlink the main site. These ingenious thoughts made the content of "The Economist" stand out like a clear stream in the torrent of Internet information, attracting a wider audience for the media.
Luo summarized the experience of "The Economist" in social media expansion and pointed out incisively: "If it cannot be converted into substantial returns, it will be meaningless no matter how many readers you reach." Immediately, "The Economist" launched a more directive reform. This round of reform will target "how to obtain paid subscription users as quickly as possible" - the key is to allow fans to participate in the content construction of the media, and develop content forms with higher user participation based on this standard and update operation plans.
After this battle, the Economist's social media operations team delivered a satisfactory answer: compared with the previous year, the number of social media fans increased by 55%, and the UV increased by 40% year-on-year. Even after Facebook and Twitter adjusted the algorithm, its monthly active fans continued to grow by 90% against the trend. Under social media traffic, the digital readers of The Economist rose by 31% year-on-year, and paid user data rose steadily. It can be said that "The Economist" has taken the lead in mastering the golden key to the transition from traditional media to Internet media compared to its peers.
data picture, source Visual China
Immediately afterwards, "The Economist", which successfully transformed the digital transformation and accumulated a huge user base with the help of social media expansion and accumulated a huge user base, has grabbed the ticket to the next competition.
The Economist's advertising business revenue has declined year by year since it reached its peak in 2009, and has been less than half of its peak in 2014. Customers' budgets are moving from advertising to non-advertising channels, and sales content has replaced the past advertising-based business idea and has become the mainstream.
The Economist’s management team realized that social media has not only changed the way people discover and read news, but also changed the traditional path for advertisers to convey information to their audience. Therefore, based on the existing app of the same name as "The Economist", "The Economist" made a very valuable attempt - launching another app: Economist Espresso ("Economist Espresso"). This product breaks the tradition of "The Economist" updated weekly, and pushes 5 selected articles every weekday morning to help users grasp the latest global political, economic, social and cultural trends through APP or email push, rather than paid subscribers can only read one of them.
In April 2015, "The Economist" took advantage of the victory and released its first Chinese-English bilingual APP "The Economist Global Business Review". This content application is fully created by a multinational team, with 30 articles selected every month, covering in-depth analysis of global trends in the fields of business, finance and technology. It was launched and downloaded more than 500,000 times in just one year.
In fact, both the Economist Espresso APP and the Economist Business APP are the leads that the Economist product team promotes readers to "slightly taste" the readers. The purpose is to divert readers to the website or the APP of the same name and encourage readers to become paid users of the Economist. "Economist" has upgraded its subscription system to make it easier for users to subscribe to "Economist" printing and digital ends (including web versions and APP versions), or package subscriptions, satisfying the habit of more and more users who like to browse information across multiple platforms.
content product matrix based on the above new business ideas has been successively constructed. In addition to the above-mentioned social media and mobile products, "The Economist" also launched a film business specializing in video content. The Economist Intelligence, which was established as early as 1946, is perfectly combined with commercial content. Coupled with the revenue generated by TVC Group, a digital media marketing company acquired in 2012, a business model that is different from traditional media is about to emerge. Chris Stibbs, then CEO of the Economist Group, concluded: "In a world and industry where changes are getting faster and faster, we must learn to be loyal to tradition, and respond quickly and innovate quickly."
Second Growth Curve
If the above-mentioned success in digital transformation and social media expansion reflects the flexibility and adaptability of the Economist as a century-old traditional media and the extraordinary content value, then the core value and even the key commercial monetization capabilities of the Economist, which is mainly composed of a group of economists, experts and scholars, not just journalists and editors, is actually in its think tank business.
Although the digital transformation after twists and turns has found a unique business model for "The Economist", the hidden worries are real. Today, when traffic platforms control channels, the traditional content media has been broken down and has lost complete control over users. No matter how many fans follow the Economist account on social media, they can only be considered Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube users in essence. Because of this, almost every visionary media is actively and urgently looking for the foundation of their own survival. In this regard, Stebus's killer weapon is to focus on the Economist Intelligence business and promote mergers and acquisitions based on this bank.
Economician Intelligence Unit was established in 1946 and has a history of 76 years. In its long-term development, its business has covered a variety of businesses such as economic and economic measurement research, national and urban research, confirmation of market opportunities, industrial analysis, risk analysis, customized modeling, scenario analysis, etc.
The industry generally attributes the core competitiveness of "The Economist" to both professional and sharp political analysis content, which usually accounts for half of the space of newspapers. In fact, behind the huge political analysis article is the strong support of the Economist Intelligence Tank.The Economist Intelligence Tank plays the role of a neutral think tank between enterprises and governments. Its in-depth and professional analysis reports have won the favor of a large number of government agencies and corporate customers, and have also created a new content production model for the output of the Economist article.
In the most praised technology quarterly and special reports of the Economist, several industry experts and scientists are often invited to write together. These expert articles will be processed by the editor to lower the reading threshold for readers. In terms of content, the analytical commentary article is based on the research results of the expert team over the years. Compared with the news content that the Economist reporter team pursues concise and timeliness, it greatly improves the depth and breadth of the content.
The experts of the Economist Intelligence Tank are not comparable to those of ordinary journalists and editors. It can be said that compared with media such as "The New York Times", "The Economist" has excellent political and economic research capabilities laid the confidence to be proud of the industry. Therefore, when someone wants to know the news happening in a strange region, "The Economist" often becomes people's first choice.
In 2012, The Economist Group acquired two market information companies focusing on healthcare: Clearstate from Singapore and Bazian from the UK, all of which were placed under the Economist Intelligence Tank BU. In addition, the Economist Group also acquired the management consulting company Canback in July 2015, which was also placed in the Economist Intelligence Tank BU, becoming the core department of the Economist Intelligence Tank for analyzing and predicting consumers.
With the support of specific track branches, the Economist Intelligence Unit began to provide customized solutions for enterprises. Clearstate undertakes research in medical insurance, life sciences and related fields, especially focusing on emerging markets such as the Asia-Pacific region. Bazian uses past clinical data to help customers make better decisions and purchase medical insurance. The Economist Intelligence Unit has integrated the two businesses and launched the healthcare business section.
In order to quickly open up the market, the Economist Intelligence Unit first contacts customers through value-added services such as business information services and offline activities, and then converts paid products. In 2013, the healthcare business, which was still in its infancy, developed rapidly, with Clearstate moving from Asia to the world, with annual revenue growing by 60%. The health care sector was operating well in 2014, with the largest growth engines being market intelligence and strategic advisory, with revenue growth of 50%, mainly from Asia. Under the positive market signal, the Economist Intelligence Unit invested heavily in its businesses in Singapore, China and Japan.
In 2014, the Economist Intelligence Tank brought £47 million in revenue to the Economist Group, accounting for 14% of the Group's revenue. In 2021, the Economist Intelligence Unit's business was spread across 200 countries around the world, bringing the group's revenue of £45.5 million, accounting for 13.1% of the group's revenue. Among them, 92% of old customers chose to renew their contracts, while the business related to the Economist Intelligence Tank (medtech) increased by 29% year-on-year.
, which took the rapid development train of the Internet wave and caught up with the transformation of the digital media business model, not only did not remain self-consistent, but became increasingly enterprising on the road to commercial monetization. In September 2021, Economist Group launched the new brand Economist Impact, combining the media resources of the Economist Group with the advantages of the Economist Intelligence Unit’s 75-year evidence-based research to provide the world’s most influential executive groups and decision makers with the insights they need. Economist Impact covers media businesses such as content marketing, advertising sponsorship, and large summits, as well as consulting businesses such as consumer research, market entry strategies, and public policy research.
Economist Impact offline activities, source The Economisttml3
To a certain extent, media business, consulting and offline activities have achieved secondary stratification of users in the process of development - that is, higher net worth enterprise-level customers are recommended to departments with higher profit margins, and "Economist"'s influence on the Internet is more like a traffic diversion tool, promoting its unique cultural and value interpretation through new technologies such as the Internet.Its offline business combines multinational enterprises, government departments and international organizations to provide in-depth services in multiple fields around the world to serve as an extension of the media's value chain.
So far, Economist Impact, a new business that has been launched for one year, has gained many long-term partners, including Microsoft, BP, Google, Huawei , Xinhua News Agency , AIIB, etc. Through these partners, Economist Impact's revenue in 2021 was £106.5 million, a 30% year-on-year increase from last year's business.
By continuously expanding its business territory and exploring the integration of diversified businesses, the Economist Group has made rapid progress. In 2021, the Economist Group's revenue was 346 million pounds, an increase of 11.6% year-on-year; revenue and profit were 46 million pounds, an increase of 9.5% year-on-year. Among them, the Economist business still accounts for the majority, with revenue of 194.3 million pounds, accounting for 56.1% of the group's revenue; Economist Impact's revenue was 106.5 million pounds, accounting for 30.7% of the group's revenue; the Economist Intelligence Tank's revenue was 4.55 million pounds, accounting for 13.1% of the group's revenue.
Perhaps more global peers attribute the success of The Economist to the stable support of the consortium behind it, the professionalism and reputation he has accumulated over the past century in the field of global political and economic research and analysis. However, the keen sense of touch, positive adaptability attitude, and response strategies that "The Economist" showed in the face of the wave of Internet digitalization are still worthy of reference and deep thinking from content industry operators and practitioners to a certain extent.
