UBM: Core Media Brands for Core Audiences

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UBM covers a variety of sectors, including technology, ingredients in food and pharmaceutical products, beauty and health, jewelry, shipping, and cruises. Its print publications, online properties, trade shows, and exhibitions are targeted at business professionals, not consumers. "The guiding principle in the last three years has been, 'Can you develop a holistic community touching each audience and serve that community with multiple media?'" says Levin. "We think one media serving a community is a joke; you have got to use different media to really surround and wrap a community in it."

How Integration Works

Take the case of gaming. UBM puts on an annual conference in San Francisco that attracts some 18,000 professional game developers. It also publishes an award-winning Web magazine targeted at game developers called Gamasutra, and it runs a social networking site called MyGDC (short for "my game developer conference"). At this year's event, some 4,964 attendees signed up for the new social network, turning conversations that used to last just a few days a year at the show into a yearlong dialogue between game developers. So how does UBM leverage that? It hopes to use the networking site to drive participation at its yearly event, to pinpoint the hot topics for the yearly conference, and identify new movers and shakers who might make interesting speakers. Over time, the site can be used to develop recruiting databases and make money from online classified ads.

While CMP has launched virtual career fairs and seminars, one of the key lessons it has learned while integrating various media forms is that live events are increasingly important. Just as kids who download music for free over the Internet will still pay big bucks to attend a rock concert, the same is true of business professionals who still see a value in pressing the flesh in person and exchanging paper business cards. That is why events are a growing part of the business and a key component of its branding strategy.

Finding the Focus

Levin has not only transformed CMP but all of UBM, which was originally incorporated in Britain in 1918 as United Newspapers Limited and still publishes titles that were launched in the 19th century, including Building magazine, a title created in 1843, as well as The Engineer and Chemist & Druggist.

The company's dreams of becoming a big player in television were dashed when British regulators nixed its plans to make various acquisitions, leaving it holding an expensive minority stake in Britain's Channel 5. Levin sold off the TV stakes and other noncore businesses and made a series of smart online purchases at low valuations, say analysts. Now, UBM's existing businesses are being organized into four areas with deep synergies. One addresses the chief information officers of Fortune 2000 companies; another the electronics industry; a third focuses on micro-communities, such as gaming, help desks, and calling centers; and the fourth area focuses on strategies for selling to small and medium-sized businesses. "We think we have a formula that is working," says Levin. "We are seeing a rich payback from integrating media and focusing on really catering to communities."

Schenker is a BusinessWeek correspondent in Paris.