woodwing

Speaking with customers and prospects I have seen that many of them understand the concept of brand oriented publishing, but still have a hard time to move away from publication thinking.

In the past decade most successful print titles have launched websites, mostly using the same name as their print sisters. So isn't that brand oriented publishing?

It could be, but often you see that 2 different worlds are created, each having their own teams writing the content, with each having their own editor in chief. If that's the case I don't consider that brand oriented publishing, this is more like re-using the brand name on a different publication. I know that writing for the web is different from writing for print and the same counts for mobile or Twitter. I also know that technical skills for print, web and mobile are different.

But that's not a reason to have separated teams: writing content is also a different skill than layouting pages but they still can work together for a single publication.

Publishers: It's all about your brand

Publishers own some very very strong brands, so that is a core value you should monetize. Associated with the brand is a community of people who either feel attached to that brand or who share an interest.

That audience is cross media... They use whatever channel fits, depending on who they are, where they are, how much time they have and what they need. If all these channels are served on the creation side with separate teams with their own chiefs making their own decisions, do you think that will create the best coherent brands?

Obviously not all readers will be using all media, when new media arrive the traditional readers won't be using the new channels. But as time passes it's clear that some channels will stay and today many traditional readers are also interacting with your brand on the web. The iPhone has accelerated the mobile revolution and perhaps one day Twitter becomes mainstream.

Changing won't be easy, we're all so human and don't like to change. Even if everybody agrees to change, their is still all the politics involved. Imagine you have a few editors in chiefs each with their deputies and you now only need one editor in chief...

Engage with your audience by providing a blended media experience

Exporting content from your printed publication as XML for your website is very often called cross media publishing. Is that the best way to serve your audience? Let's raise the bar!  Engage with your community using the various media that you (with your readers) select. Reading the same content today on the web and tomorrow in the printed publication won't strengthen the relation with your readers. 

It all starts with the content: what does your audience want/need? Next make sure to provide this to the readers in the right way: a web-article should be different from a print article, but also remember that a print article today should be different than we did it a decade ago! Not only publishers have to spread their attention over multiple media, the same counts for the reader as well, so our print stories need to become more efficient.

Non-print channels allow interaction, so that's also something to take into account. And play around with new channels such as Mobile and Twitter. All of this should be embedded within your brand's content team, they know the audience. For specific technologies they will use specialists very much the same way that page layout is a different discipline.

Enterprise 6 and Brand Oriented Publishing

In order to assist publishers moving to brand oriented publishing we have made some huge changes in the structure of Enterprise 6.

Brand is now a core concept in our system which is part of the Content part of Enterprise 6. The other separated part is the Publishing side where we have publication channels that each can have their own publication engine.

Before Enterprise 6 each publication channel would be either its own publication at the 'root' of the system or the channel would be second-class citizen beneath another publication (typicall print). Now the root of the system can be your brand, where per brand you have the publication channels each being first class citizens in the system.

This new model feels very good and we're very proud when customers are telling us that Enterprise 6 helps them to reshape their publishing future.

Good luck with your brands and future vison!