The dawn of Business Media UK?
25 Jul 2007
Addressing delegates on day one of Magazines and Business Media 2007, Tim Weller, chief 
executive of Incisive Media called for the creation of ‘Business Media UK’, a new public face for business media to reflect its success and in order to gain deserved recognition from Government, the City and the whole of the industry. Here is an abridged version of his speech.
Welcome to the 18th PPA national Conference - and to this the business media day – a day when we look across media in print, in person and on line, in fact what one of our sessions today has aptly described as “The Power of Three.”
The theme for this year’s PPA conference is “Breaking New Ground”. Actually I would say that business media broke this new ground of being platform agnostic in the way we deliver our content some time ago. This has been to the benefit of our customers, our bottom lines and of course our shareholders.
Business media is an exciting place to be and from where I sit we are no longer the poor relation, B2B is the envy of most other areas of British media. We are being looked at with admiration in particular by the city. So what is going on?
There is no getting away from it; many of us went through some pretty tough times a few years ago. We had to clear out a whole raft of underperforming print titles, dust down the better performers and repurpose them as brands from which we could develop multiple platform businesses – or to exploit “the power of three”, to use that phrase again. Others of us reached out and acquired businesses that were close to us….but not us…not us then, anyway.
In a perverse way I believe the last downturn has been good for business media. It has forced us to do things better and meet our individual markets needs –through new products, expanded services or altered business models.
This evolution has made the sector much more interesting, much more broadly based, much more confident, much more “future proof” and more over MUCH more profitable.
Sadly we do not have up to date figures for our industry and this is something PPA is resolved to address. But the last time we ran the numbers in 2005 we were an £18bn industry….HUGE! I hesitate to guess how big that will be three years later: I am pretty sure it would be over £25bn?
I would like to say through this conference that I believe it is time for “business media UK” to put on a new face, time to have a new confidence, time to stand up and be recognised properly….by the City and our investors, by the Government in the UK and in Brussels and most of all by us, the companies that drive this vital and important sector of the UK economy.
We should stop seeing ourselves in such isolation and recognise ourselves for what we are: a world class industry that reaches out across the globe with uncounted and not fully appreciated influence.
It is time we in the UK recognise that we are would leaders in business media with companies such as Reed, Informa, United Business Media, Euromoney, Haymarket and dare I say Incisive media having global operations that dominate their markets both here in Europe, the USA and in Asia.
And it is time that we embraced a raft of new members in this space: companies who provide business information through publishing research, through conferences and events, through rich data and online products and services and, yes, through magazines. Companies that connect buyers with sellers and provide valued content.
It is time for us to embrace the whole of this £20bn - business media and information space and to ensure that this great industry is properly represented and fully recognised for what it is – and Business Media UK is the trade organisation to do it.
Details from tina.hart@ppa.co.uk at PPA on 020 7400 7524.