How Forbes transformed itself into a digital brand

Jon Watkins of Fipp writes about how Forbes magazine transformed itself from a print brand into a digital brand.

Watkins writes, “Forbes CEO Mike Federle says his organisation’s approach was similar. ‘Forbes has been really well documented as one of the first successful digital transformations,’ he says. ‘Over the past ten years, the declines in our traditional business of print have been around $100m, but we’ve been able to completely fill that gap and then some with our digital businesses, as well as some other businesses we’ve created.

“‘During that time we’ve built that digital business to scale and created new non-advertising revenue models, through licenses and partnerships and so on – so we’ve also done well in being ahead of the curve on that diversification. That’s what’s taken us to where we are today, which is a very strong position.

“‘However, the foundation on which everything is built is our 100-year-old legacy of great and professional journalism – that’s at the core of all of our content creation and it will remain the driver of our success going forward,’ he adds. ‘It allows us to take that trust and expertise that we have built over the years and use it to jump into all sorts of other businesses that, using our brand name and the trust associated with it, have given us new opportunities beyond the core media business.'”

Read more here.