Be bold, not least to the board
Matthew Batstone, The Economist Group’s marketing and strategy director, wouldn’t put it quite this way. But this was one of the takeaways from his presentation to the Red Stripe team about the group’s strategy, particularly online. Unfortunately, we cannot blog about it in detail - it’s confidential and has only just been approved. But Matthew certainly won’t kill us for writing that, in his view, the Internet is not a threat for The Economist Group, but an opportunity. While other publications are suffering from ads and readers moving online (one major US business weekly, which shall remain unnamed, has apparently lost half of its revenues in the past 5 years, pushing it deeply into red territory), the Economist’s ad revenues are up and the group has never been more profitable. Although the group’s sites (Economist.com, CFO.com, etc.) could certainly have been stronger, Matthew explains, we are in a good place - and are able to be more experimental about what we do on the Internet. Hence Project Red Stripe, among other things. “Be bold and don’t worry about the (executive) board”, were his parting words. We’ll put this in our mission statement…
