NewsBeat

12 NewsBeat October 2018 Events are extremely difficult. You should do them anyway. Question: What problem were you trying to solve, and why was solving the problem strategically important for your organization? Answer: The fundamental problem in our business is, simply put, declining print advertising revenues. The way that we have tried to address that challenge over the last several years is by thoughtfully adding new initiatives each year to "replace" the print advertising losses. Events have been a significant part of that strategy. Q: How is this approach related to Table Stakes (e.g. one of the 7 Table Stakes and/or an outgrowth of the Knight-Lenfest initiative, etc.)? A: At its core, Table Stakes is about audience-centricity. In Cohort 1 we eventually began to grapple with the ways online and offline audience-focused efforts can intersect and reinforce each other. More specifically, events align with Table Stake #1 (serving targeted audiences with targeted content), Table Stake #4 (using audience funnel discipline to deepen engagement with occasional users), and Table Stake #5 (diversifying revenue from the audiences we build.) Events also support newsroom objectives when they create social media moments or generate content that can live online. As a marketer, I'm trying to drive people toward making a decision for Star Tribune — and then sticking with us. Memorable in-person experiences and face-to-face interaction will always lead to deeper connections, which we hope influences consumer behavior. Q: How did you go about solving the problem? A: Events certainly aren't "solving" our revenue challenges by themselves. But they help, and have become a material and dependable contributor to our bottom line. Like many news organizations, Star Tribune has long been involved in local events, but mainly as a sponsor lending our brand to others' efforts. We began experimenting with "owned-and-operated" events in 2015. Our goal initially was to test the market, and to test ourselves in terms of our operational capabilities and promotional effectiveness. We've built on our initial success by adding one or two ambitious events and a few more modest events each year. We've also retired a few events along the way when they've failed to deliver the margins we'd like. I sometimes bad-mouth events but it's tongue-in- cheek. What I'm really trying to do is keep people focused on the best opportunities. Events can be high-risk, low-margin, and resource-intensive. We can't afford to lose money speculating on things that might work. We have to be very selective and very disciplined in our evaluation process. We look at new event ideas all the time. Some bubble up internally, some are brought to us by partners or potential partners. In evaluating them we follow a process that minimizes risk and, we hope, steers us toward the mostly likely winners. 1 First, we look for a gap in the market. Minneapolis-St. Paul is a heavily ticketed market, with five pro sports teams, several minor league teams, a Big Ten university, two orchestras, a thriving music scene, and more live-theater seats than any market outside of New York City. We're also a destination for major concerts and traveling events — think X Games, Cirque du Soleil, NCAA championships. So there's a lot of competition here for consumers' time and money. On one hand, that's good for the Star Tribune; all those organizations and events have to advertise to promote themselves. But it's challenging enough to get consumers out of the house, now you have to get them to choose you over everything else. It has to be a very compelling offering. 2 Second, we look for brand alignment. Would a proposed event reflect well on us, or could it detract from or damage our brand? This test screens out ideas that might work well for someone else, but aren't a fit for us. 3 Third, is the proposed event related to a coverage area? Do we regularly write about it? Do we have expertise or access that gives us an advantage? Would it make sense for our journalists to be involved? Tie-ins to our coverage create more opportunities to stand out, to create something unique. 4 Fourth, what is the attendance potential? Will it draw an audience that's meaningful for a sponsor? What is the potential for ticket revenue? We try to "size" the event, to understand if its natural audience is 200 people or 2,000 people. Then we ask, "Do we think we can cost-effectively attract that number of attendees?" You have to be dispassionate in assessing this. Sometimes the answer is no and we fold, even though we like the concept. 5 The fifth and most important step is analyzing the revenue potential. We are very good at this, and we look at three distinct sources of revenue: ticket sales, sponsorship revenue, and associated ad revenue. Many of our events are tied to special sections or coverage, and to "buy in" to the event as a sponsor one has to commit to a package that includes advertising. (We only attribute this revenue to the event if we can honestly say if we were not doing the event we would not get the dollars.) 6 The sixth and final step is to evaluate the execution risk. This is where we pause and ask: Can we pull it off? Have we considered all the costs carefully, accurately assessed the staffing needs, engaged the right partners, accounted for weather, and so on? If we're confident we can execute, we move forward. Using these criteria we probably discard 10 ideas for every one we green-light. From a standing start in 2015 we've created a line of business that generates revenue in the low seven figures with healthy margins and solid growth. By STEVE YAEGER — Minneapolis Star-Tribune Here's an idea to steal and adapt: the minneapolis star tribune looks for gaps in a very crowded events market, then ventures in — cautiously.

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