A rare interview with a leading b2b exec is published in Press Gazette. Gary Hughes, former Emap bean counter and now CEO of CMPi.
As its written in a language called Corporollocks some of you might find it hard to understand. To help you I have re written it with my own translation of what it could mean.
"We are doing more events because publishing is dying on its arse. We call this a multi media platform strategy because it sounds less panicky like that.
Our sales people don't know how to sell digital and I am hoping that a crash course for them all last May will have made them into super digital sales people.
I have worked out that if I pay sales people for performance, that's a necessary but not sufficient condition for success. I haven't worked out what the other conditions for success are.
Editors make better sales people than sales people and you don't have to incentivise them with money. I just wish they'd spend more time selling, instead of wasting their time writing and checking stuff. In case this worries my journalists (who I call colleagues in the hope they will think I am one of them) I will say I don't want to push this too far. But I do.
Magazines are dying and even though I believe that, I realise its too scary to say so. Instead I say in code that magazines are sort of dying but we continue to invest in them - hopefully without spending any money - certainly not on incentivising the pesky editorial folk who make the things.
Private equity owners are only in it for a quick buck. Lucky bastards."
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