In this edition of The Current podcast, we hear from Josh Brandau, the CMO at the Los Angeles Times. Brandau, who comes from the agency world, recently took on the title, and he’s tasked with growing the celebrated publication’s digital subscribers from 400,000 to 1 million in a world where newsprint is declining. With publications caught between subscriptions and digital ads, Brandau offers his insights into how the LA Times is navigating the choppy waters of change with a fresh marketing strategy that sees California as the center of gravity.
Damian Fowler (00:00):
I'm Damian Fowler.
George Slefo (00:01):
And I'm George Slefo.
Damian Fowler (00:03):
And this is The Current.
George Slefo (00:10):
The Current is your deep dive into the future of TV, media, and data privacy, all explained in plain English. And today we'll hear from Josh Brandau. Josh is the CMO at the Los Angeles Times. He recently took on the title, and he's tasked with growing the celebrated publication's paying subscribers from 400,000 to 1 million in a world where newsprint is declining.
Damian Fowler (00:30):
Years before joining the trade desk. I was a reporter at the BBC, covering everything from nine 11 to the Michael Jackson trial. Back in the early oughts, I saw the shift to digital happen from flip phones to iPhones, to the rise of social media. Now here in 2021, the LA Times is in the midst of another digital transformation. With publications call between subscriptions and digital ads, the LA Times is like a giant ship navigating the choppy waters of change.
Josh Brandau (01:04):
It's been three years, I believe, a little over three years since we were purchased along with the San Diego Union Tribune and made private. So within that three year period, we've been doing a lot of work decoupling ourselves from the Tribune entity. So as a campaign, we landed on the state of what's next, after many rounds of back and forth. And it is one of those things where it immediately gained traction internally in meetings. So we knew we had something there and then it was articulated from a larger perspective in terms of what we want to stand for, or pillars that we want to go after. Homelessness, racial justice, representation, climate change, just ways in which California was being affected pretty dramatically. So that started gaining a lot of traction as a campaign. And it allowed us also to very specifically choose a lot of arresting visuals for us to showcase.
Josh Brandau (01:56):
And then I think that also is a good articulation of the ability for us to build out the consumer marketing and creative services teams overall. Before that there was no branding associated with the Los Angeles Times for quite a number of years. It was all just a part of the larger Tribune Tronc organization. And this provided us with an opportunity to tell the larger world of who we are and what we stand for and what we're trying to pursue in terms of doing our civic duty. So really, it's a story of more than a campaign. It's a story of how we're restructuring ourselves as a business for the future.
George Slefo (02:32):
Totally, and I'm really eager to unpack some of the stuff that you just mentioned, but I also want to touch on this. Your deputy managing editor, she said that quote, "We're not trying to do news of the day in the same way as news outlets that come from a national perspective. We're trying to read that so the gravity is coming out of Southern California and expanding from that." Why are you guys necessarily going in that direction? Because when I'm hearing about the LA Times, I'm hearing global, I'm hearing national and I'm also hearing California. I'm hearing a lot of different things.
Josh Brandau (03:11):
My initial reaction is to always agree with whatever a deputy managing editor says, but I think what they were referencing there is the West Coast perspective. So as the largest publisher west of the Mississippi, it's our obligation to provide context, perspective from where we're at. So if we follow our larger mission to inform, engage, and empower, we need to do that through a West Coast lens. Here in LA, we just came out with a story about two hours ago that said that Uber and Lyft drivers are functionally going on strike for the next 24 hours to protest working conditions. Their employers, Uber and Lyft, obviously were founded in California.
Josh Brandau (03:53):
We could look at it from Tesla's point of view. We also came out with a story today talking about the cost of lithium mining and deep sea extraction that helps power the batteries for a lot of the electric cars. You can even argue that the ban on sales of new combustion engines here in California by I think 2035 affects the overall global marketplace. So there's just almost everywhere we turn, an opportunity for us to tell a story from the state of what's next, both from a literal and a figurative point of view.
George Slefo (04:26):
You know, tho those stories sound so money. I want to read them, but you guys are also trying to get subscribers. So how do you tell the story that like hey, we got all this great content, and then convert them to subscribers?
Josh Brandau (04:38):
That's the more than million dollar question for all of us. So I can unpack that in a lot of ways. We saw a ton of organic growth last year from a digital subscriber perspective, just like most of the larger publishers, I think all publishers. And one of the big things that we've been engaged in internally this year is a greater focus on retention, because you have to show a different side of value to a lot of these people that are coming to you through, I don't know, not ideally, but through COVID fear or just needing to engage for the first time with their local publisher or platforms that are engaging with them from a civic perspective.
Josh Brandau (05:18):
And we need to broaden that relationship to get to the interests that they have outside of these, hopefully, transitory kind of things in which they would want to have more of a transactionary relationship to provide them meaning, whether that's entertainment, lifestyle, sports, gaming, who knows what that's going to be, but we need to show them functionally that we are far more than just a reporting news source for what drove them to us in the first place. I think that is a microcosm of what we need to be doing across the board.
Josh Brandau (05:57):
So it's our job to provide the largest possible audience with ways to engage with us that are the most meaningful. And if they want to engage with us from an audio perspective, only we should be providing them with that product. If they just want to talk to us in chat, we should be providing them with that product. If they only want to go to events physically, when that happens here in LA, we should absolutely be providing them with that product. So I think it's a multiverse, if you will, or a multitude of different ways in which we need to keep encouraging potential subscribers and current subscribers to reach out to us in different ways than we've thought about in the past.
Damian Fowler (06:42):
The East Coast, the New York Times, the Washington Post carry a lot of prestige and a lot of weight. They influence the conversation. Are you trying in some ways to counterbalance that, like a West Coast perspective in terms of the branding and in terms of where you're positioning the paper? And on that point, are you trying to take some of those readers across the country or globally even, with you?
Josh Brandau (07:05):
I think what we're finding is that everyone's got a lane in which they're very talented. I think we're very good at what we're doing from a political standpoint in DC, but we're not going to break every story. We just don't have the manpower there that the Washington Post has. We're not at the scale of the New York Times, where they cover a lot of stuff from a global perspective. So I think if we want to protect some sort of way in which we're adding value, that the competitive sense, if you want to even call them that, it would be geographically based in this sense that we're close to Silicon Valley, to Asia, and China. We're looking at what's happening in South American, parts of Canada. So absolutely that's something that we consider when we're creating stories, and we think that's a differentiation, but it's really more of the 10 poles of what we think are truly impacting California first, which that's the value we're trying to add to those who don't live here.
George Slefo (08:02):
I'm going to slightly shift gears here and talk about something you touched on earlier, which is audio and meeting the consumers with audio and for the listeners who don't know, one of the ways the New York Times was able to grow its subscriber base to what it is today, which is I think they're getting a billion or more than a billion, in revenue from subscribers now, was through the daily podcast. And basically the idea there is is that the daily podcast, it's free, people listen to it, and it's basically a funnel to get them to subscribe. You guys told Nieman Lab that like hey, we know we're late to the game. You guys are launching a podcast called The Times. Could you tell us about it, and how critical podcasts have become when it comes to driving subscriber growth.
Josh Brandau (08:50):
I'm just thinking about a billion dollars right now, but yeah, our job is to meet you in a way that best suits your preferences and that we're definitely seeing and have seen over the last two years, but really the uptake last year in engagement from an audio perspective. And I look at that in a few ways. The first would be why wouldn't we augment a lot of the coverage that we're doing with more audio content. We have a lot of it, we should package it in ways in which are meaningful to current potential subscribers. It's also, I think, very attractive when we look at the daily aspect of the Times, which is always easy for me to say, because they're both so ridiculously named in some respects, but that's a hard thing to stand up.
Josh Brandau (09:40):
So you need to find stories that are compelling. You need to have a perspective, and I think we've done a very good job of having a West Coast perspective on a lot of these stories that you wouldn't hear what the diversity of voices that aren't necessarily coming from other daily podcasts. And then that allows me also to look at larger narrative podcasts that we do, the investigative stuff. We certainly have had some success there in the past with the Dirty Johns and the Frank Carsons of the world. And then of course, branded content podcasts.
Damian Fowler (10:10):
You guys want to grow your subscribers from 400K to a million and obviously, you guys are using the podcast to drive subscriptions as well as downloads to the actual show to build that engagement. But like when you're looking at the podcast, what are the KPIs in terms of measuring success? Like just beyond the subscriptions, what else are you guys looking at in that arena? One
Josh Brandau (10:33):
Thing that really makes me excited is that if you think about audio and you think about our actual core product, which is pretty much a continuously updated content machine that's printed, that's the word, what you have is potential to convert a lot of that to audible. So you're unlocking a vast trove of content that's already being created in a new way. So that's ways in which you can engage with prospective users, current subscribers, other avenues for advertisers to interact with us and interact with our subscribers, and potentially the creation of bundles for new subscription channels for us and new partnerships with the Spotifys of the world. So there's a ton of ways in which I think we should be unlocking audible for the future, which allows us to generate subscribers in a new way and also monetization strategies from an advertiser perspective. And again, to get back to it, to listen to our current subscribers and make sure that our product roadmap reflects what they want.
Damian Fowler (11:37):
I love content machine. And, and I see what you're saying, like to amplify the existing content that you guys have. So a variety of different ways, very cool. Speaking of ads, we are interested in ads over here at the trade desk. So does this memo, that circulated last year that I read about that to the staff of the LA Times that said, our revenue has nearly been eliminated. A lot of newspapers faced that moment last year when ad revenue dried up. First off, I guess, I want to ask you what's happened since then to add revenue. How has it bounced back?
Josh Brandau (12:16):
Absolutely that was a moment that was pretty dark. It was just April, I believe, of last year that we announced that we wanted to be very transparent internally to showcase what we were seeing, but also to reinforce the other side of the business, what we're seeing from a subscriber growth perspective at the same time. So there's a resiliency to having more than one main bucket of money that you're trying to pull from from a revenue perspective. But I'd say through the leadership of my boss and he leads all strategy and revenue for the overall California Times, we've seen a ton of really good measures that have been taken over the last year that new products, new ad maps, new sales objectives, that have seen us aggressively bounce back from that. So it's mostly if not all, very good news this year.
George Slefo (13:07):
What are you telling Madison Avenue to attract those ad dollars? What's the pitch that you guys are telling them to invest in the LA Times?
Josh Brandau (13:16):
Sure. Do we care about impressions or do we care about true engagement? What are the KPIs we're really looking for? I think everyone has had this conversation for a very long period of time. And when I can provide you with a first party validated pool of people, that is exactly who you're looking for. And the right sub-segmentation of that, that we're a trusted brand, I think that that's an extraordinarily compelling case to an advertiser, because what you're getting from not just a surface level KPI, but a meaningful outcome, whatever that would look like for you, is pretty robust. And it can be proven in a very clean manner. I think there's a lot less doors that you have to go through to get from what you've spent to what you get.
Damian Fowler (14:01):
What's your take on the duopoly and their impact on publishers such as the LA Times? Is there a fair balance of power here between tech platforms who publish your content and you as a publisher? Is that fair?
Josh Brandau (14:15):
Of course it's not in my favor, so no, it's not fair. I think just like everyone would say, it depends on what aspect of my business do you want me to be talking about. So I think that the utilization of our content without providing us with a proper revenue structure that allows for us to continue to make that content from a story perspective and do our civic duty as we believe it to be, that's not fair. We need to have ways in which we can be paid for that. Now there's also the other side of that, which I believe also is true.
Josh Brandau (14:53):
A lot of people want to consume their news and also whatever their interests are from a larger perspective on platforms that are outside of what I can control in my ecosystem. And I can benefit from that as well. And I think I can benefit from that in a lot of new ways that we haven't considered before. The way in which we're thinking about it is it's far more nuanced than just like hey, you're stealing our content and you're not paying us, and we're going to go out of business kind of headline, as it should be more of hey, how do we find ways in which we both stay in business and make a pretty reasonable amount of revenue from this.
Damian Fowler (15:30):
I just want to pull back a little bit and look at where we are in the last year. We talked about that dark moment last April. And obviously the pandemic is still ongoing and we keep seeing upticks again in cases. And that impacts everything, business trends, but in terms of your approach, how did the pandemic shift your marketing strategy and make you consider what the future should be for the LA Times?
Josh Brandau (16:02):
In many ways we've touched on this a little bit, but I think the idea that we need to have a better handle on our subscribers, and also just how we're serving them from an engagement standpoint, was something that we doubled down on because we want to have a better understanding of how to provide them with a lot of the stuff that we are creating that they're missing because of the nature of what we do on a daily basis. We're constantly, constantly refreshing new content. Unless you're a news fanatic, you're missing a ton of stuff.
Josh Brandau (16:32):
So making sure that we're creating customer journeys, recirculation models, all that stuff that show them the value of that. And then also it was very top of mind from a COVID response perspective. How do we provide you with things that we've learned that you are interested in as well as what's happening from the near, if not complete state of emergency?
Josh Brandau (16:54):
So that is absolutely something we focused on. And frankly, it was a lot easier to do that when we didn't have a lot of physical events that we had to market. So that was nice to reallocate some of those people. But really, it's just having also a better understanding of those groups so that we can see the value of our consumer data go up in the future from a CPM perspective in the marketplace with advertisers.
George Slefo (17:18):
I just have one more question on my end. With COVID, a lot of advertisers were blocking any keywords related to COVID, even if it was just like here's 13 movies to watch during your pandemic lockdown, blocked and publishers were seeing extraordinary traffic and that was being blocked. And you mentioned the wildfires. Are you guys seeing something similar to that or are advertisers staying away from that sort of coverage as it's quote unquote brand unsafe?
Josh Brandau (17:50):
Yeah, I think that's always a struggle when you're doing breaking news stories or hard news stories. Soft news stories are certainly a lot easier. And we have a product that I created that allows you to just buy that if that's your MO as a brand or an agency on behalf of a brand. It has been difficult from a keyword perspective, a lot of the ways in which we can do brand safety validation, that that's contentious across a lot of different buying agencies, but also a lot of different brands use a lot of different valuation principles in terms of how they want to define this as risky or not risky. There's always the larger conversation, depending on the brand you are obviously, that a person is a person regardless.
Josh Brandau (18:34):
So they're going to read about the wildfires that are affecting their backyard, but they're also going to read about the Dodgers winning the World Series. So if you're a platform that provides all of that to someone, you want to ensure that you're keeping them engaged as much as possible because that benefits you as an advertiser, it benefits us as a publisher. But yeah, from a monetization strategy perspective, it was difficult. And we learned a lot of things in terms of keyword targeting and brand safety issues.
George Slefo (19:05):
Yeah. I bet it could be frustrating because I've heard them describe numerous times as blunt instruments, the keyword blockers, but I hear they're-
Josh Brandau (19:15):
They're developing, they have been developing quote unquote. Yeah, machine learning is getting better, but there's still a lot of ways in which you're getting false positives.
George Slefo (19:25):
Agreed. Agreed.
Damian Fowler (19:27):
Just off the back of that, what's the kind of emotional relationship, as it were, the reader has with the LA Times as a brand.
Josh Brandau (19:37):
I think it really is dependent upon what we're doing for you. So when I look at a lot of surveys, when I listen to a lot of our readers, there's a lot of different ways in which they value us. A lot of it is just I've been a print subscriber to you for 35 years. My father and mother were print subscribers, and this is my connection to the larger world and to my personal community. Some of them far more recently it's like hey, this is more coverage of what's happening from a metro lifestyle perspective. And a lot of the ways in which we're going through larger struggles here within Los Angeles proper, that you have articulated that I haven't seen other places. So we try to cater to as many of those as possible. There's just so many things that we're trying to work on too.
Josh Brandau (20:24):
If you just want to listen to us while you're working out, I think we need to have a solution for that. If you just like the music aspects of what we do, why aren't we generating something that provides you with just that? So I think there's also a lot of work that we can be doing and are doing in terms of actual value proposition. So we want to ensure that we're accessible to all socioeconomic kind of people within the market and then larger than the market. So if you're a student not making all that much money, we want to still be able to provide you with our news that matters to you.
Damian Fowler (21:00):
That's it for The Current. Stay tuned because next week we'll have Minjae Ormes, the former CMO of Verizon owned Visible.
Minjae Ormes (21:08):
The most important thing for us as a brand was that we not make judgements about choices that people are making on our messaging or the brand side.
George Slefo (21:18):
The Current is produced by James T. Green and Kiarra Powell. Gretta Cohn is our executive producer. Rick Kwan is our mix engineer. Our theme is by Loving Caliber. The trade desk team includes Cassie Crosby, Ivan Sikic, and Kat Vesce. The Current is a production of Transmitter Media. And remember, it's a story of more than a campaign. It's a story of how we're restructuring ourselves as a business for the future.
Damian Fowler (21:47):
I'm Damian.
George Slefo (21:48):
And I'm George, and we'll see you next time.
Damian Fowler (21:50):
On The Current.