Forbes Australia CEO on what the brand offers advertisers since its launch
Forbes Australia has officially launched Down Under today, offering Australian leaders, entrepreneurs and success seekers a new experience-led membership built to unearth stories of change and success.
The multi-faceted immersive experience includes a bi-monthly magazine, website and curated online newsletters. Forbes Australia members can also see the story unfold with the first print edition and the news website which is launching on Monday 26th of September.
Forbes Australia CEO, Michael Lane, told Mumbrella: “We’re not leaning into this as an advertiser model. This is what came as a bit of a surprise to Forbes in our business plan. We’ve actually flipped it on its head and looked at this as a membership and community model.
“What I really like about that is that the content has to be super amazing to be able to keep the longevity of our readers and clients,” he said. “What that has done is amplified our advertisers. We’re not launching with a programmatic platform. We’re not launching with a typical media model front end, we’re doing a rich media mechanism where our partners will start out in our magazine, and then they’ll be able to come and be a part of our digital play as well as our live event platform.”
Lane added: “I have no plans to do programmatic advertising, and that’s been quite refreshing for some of our media partners, and the bands that have aligned with us.”
Forbes Australia has 27 staff which it’s acquired in the last five months, with Lane explaining he’d like to scale up the business to 45-50 staff members.
“I have taken a little bit longer to launch than I would have liked, but waiting for the right team and the right people with the right experience was essential to make sure that we launched successfully,” said Lane. “I have hired people from all media corners to come in, but with a vision that’s putting clients at the forefront. Building community. Building membership. I have not wanted to acquire anything, I just want to provide amazing content.”
According to Lane, almost 12 months of Forbes’ print advertising has been sold in advance to its partners.
“There are definitely opportunities for advertising on our digital platforms and partnerships and sponsorship with our events,” he said. “We’ve got a very strong event platform. Our subscribers can access our quality content for A$25 a month, for complete access to everything we do. We think we are coming in as a very cost-effective price point for what we believe will be a phenomenal product.”
Writing in the first issue of Forbes Australia, Forbes Media chairman and editor-in-chief Steve Forbes commented: “Australia embraces many of the same ideals as that of Forbes. It’s a place of doers, built by entrepreneurs who have created from scratch the country’s leading industries in sectors such as commodities, wine, agriculture and fishery. Now a new generation is adding high tech to that mix.”
“This ‘can do’ country provides a model of stability, economic progress and democratic government in the Asia-Pacific and has a growing role in regional security. We are truly excited to watch Forbes Australia chronicle the country’s rising business, financial and economic profile,” Forbes added.
Forbes Australia will build a local iteration of the global media brand, led by Lane, who has built multiple successful businesses across live events, real estate and wealth management.
“Forbes is an inspiring and engaging media brand for more than 150 million people every month. With Forbes Australia, we are combining Forbes’ global perspective with a uniquely local twist. By putting local business leaders and local entrepreneurs at the centre, we want to celebrate success, cultivate community and spark meaningful change,” Lane added.
Leading Forbes Australia’s editorial strategy is editor-in-chief, Sarah O’Carroll. With extensive experience in the media industry, O’Carroll was most recently editor-in-chief of Yahoo Finance, which she re-launched in the Australian market in 2018 and grew its audience to a peak of more than two million monthly users.
“Australians have never been more ambitious. They’re yearning for new approaches to our nation’s challenges and opportunities. They want stories of success, determination, and ideas built to equip our leaders for the best and brightest future,” O’Carroll said.
Content will primarily be built on unique, locally written stories of entrepreneurs and success, mixed with the best news and features from Forbes’ global offerings.
$25 per month to subscribe is exorbitant, companies will pay that but individuals will not. Will be interesting to see how they go. But it’s great to once again have a business magazine in Australia.
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Lucy’s right. As a digital editor, I know the age of paying for editorial content is dead. Big companies and the affluent might fork out, but majority will find the content on another free title, platform (Youtube) or simply won’t bother reading irrespective of quality. Perfect example is Wikipedia who claim to get donations from fewer than 2% of their global users to stay operational. Editorial is a luxury and luxuries are expendable. Be interesting to see if they backtrack on the paywall.
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