HBR's Adi Ignatius on pricier subs

Join an interactive discussion I’m having today at 1pmET with A Media Operator’s Jacob Donnelly. We’ll unpack successful models, including modern B2B, prosumer, front operations and creator businesses. We’ll also discuss how we are building our own businesses in somewhat different ways. Registrants will get a link to a replay if they can't make it – and will also get a discount to our respective membership/subscription programs. The session is today at 1pmET. Sign up.

A couple other things to know:

• We are doing a new research report on the state of publisher monetization. We want to find out more about how publishers are taking a total monetization approach. Take a brief survey.
• See the replay of last week’s Online Forum with Forbes chief innovation officer Nina Gould walking through how Forbes implemented a unified audience data strategy. See the replay.

In today's issue:

• A conversation with Harvard Business Review editor-at-large Adi Ignatius on its $700 per year HBR Executive subscription program
• Lessons learned by Forbes from unifying its audience data
• Anonymous Brand Marketer on PR’s identity crisis

Moving up the subscriptions pricing curve

Subscriptions are often positioned as the antidote to the scale era. Yet many publishers have taken a very similar approach in prioritizing volume over value. That meant taking a unit economics approach to content, a reliance on intro offers and short durations and, of course, adding “friction” to mitigate the inevitable churn.

That standard approach is starting to lose its luster. Gannet executives recently told investors that it is shifting its subscriptions approach to deprioritize monthly subscriptions in favor of annual subscriptions, and increasing subscription prices in high-engagement markets. “That means some pain in the short term, but this is an intentional, necessary shift,” Gannett CEO Mike Reed said on the earnings call. 

This is part of an overall shift to ARPU. That will require more focus on the top end of the pricing curve to find the segments willing to pay far more – and crafting products to meet that demand. The dream media business is something like Bloomberg Media, which has a robust journalism operation that is part of a flywheel driven by a $25,000 per seat Terminal annual license. For most publishers, moving up the pricing curve will be more modest. Think The Information Pro at $999 a year.

Harvard Business Review is on this journey. It’s an ideal candidate for moving up the pricing curve. HBR is read by ambitious business executives looking for an edge in their career development. It has a large paying subscriber base of 345,000 and deep institutional credibility. Historically, its top-tier product was priced at $180 per year. The new HBR Executive tier pushes that to $700, with added features like a weekly newsletter from editor-at-large Adi Ignatius, leadership playbooks, video masterclasses, and small-format live Q&As with heavy hitters like former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers.

“We’ve already got that audience,” Adi told me on The Rebooting Show. “The question is what do we offer them that’s actually worth more?”

The program is meant for C-level executives. The reality of high-status brands like HBR is the majority of the audience falls into the aspirant bucket. HBR made the decision to skip invitation-only executive councils to focus on career-focused content more in line with what HBR does best.

“Our content has to be practical, differentiated, and help someone actually do their job better,” Adi said.

Listen to the full conversation with Adi for more behind the strategy for HBR Executive, how it chose a price, the upsides and downsides of being embedded within a prestige organization like Harvard, and why even a brand like HBR is worried about LLMs.

How Forbes unified its audience data

At our recent online forum, Forbes chief innovation officer Nina Gould detailed how the publisher is moving from a fragmented, team-by-team approach to a centralized data strategy.

“A 360-degree view means is being able to act on the full picture of a human, not three fragmented profiles in three different systems,” Nina said.

Some takeaways from the discussion:

• Centralization is a prerequisite for personalization. Forbes had 13-plus disconnected systems. BlueConic became the connective tissue that enabled targeted campaigns, lifecycle journeys, and cross-platform activation.
• Adoption is as much a people challenge as a tech one. Forbes built a dedicated consumer data platform team that embedded with internal groups and made the case that this was a force multiplier—not a system swap.
• Sequencing matters. Starting with email made the project feel less daunting and allowed quick wins. From there, Forbes expanded into on-site activation, push notifications, and paid media targeting.
• Tangible outcomes build momentum. With member-exclusive events, Forbes drove 3,100 registrations and a 54% attendance rate. Personalization lifted paywall conversions 25 times above average.
• Strategic patience pays off. Getting buy-in for tech overhauls isn’t easy, and implementation takes time. The work over a year to get going, but the compounding impact is now visible across the business.

Thanks to BlueConic for partnering on this discussion.

PR needs to modernize

By Anonymous Brand Marketer

We have a PR team here we have to run everything through. They rarely have new ideas and what they usually do is present a list to us of “top 10 target publications” that I honestly believe comes from them more or less googling around for a few minutes based on whatever the topic is.

What’s worse, they hire a PR agency to actually do much of the execution. And we have that firm on retainer so we are often forced into using them to get through the budgeted money and hours.

I should add some of the people in our internal PR shop are really awesome folks, they’ll help me figure stuff out and they’ll respond to things thoughtfully. But this is a situation where the old apparatus and the practices and procedures around it have become so encompassing. 

For example, they recently pitched us doing Access Hollywood for something. Everyone kind of giggled at that pitch, with a higher up here even openly joking he would never watch that. Then it just moved right on through the process and we green lit it because oh well that’s what PR thinks. It just is on a list somewhere and so into the pitch it goes and it’s recognizable so it makes it to the final deal. Talk to anyone individually and they’re like, why are we doing this? But as a group, green lights all the way to $250k and an irrelevant two-minute segment that connects authentically with no one.

Thanks for reading. Send me a note with feedback by hitting reply.

For partnership information, see how we work with partners like BlueConic and get in touch: bmorrissey@therebooting.com.