Kris Heineman describes working in media as a game of inches, just like football.
“Everyday we’re putting out content, we’re putting out content, and every once in a while we’ll find a technology to unlock massive reach, either to a new audience or to our current audience,” said Heineman, Chief Digital Officer at AC Business Media. “If I can find one of those openings to find the massive 10 or 30 yard gain, like the game of football, that transforms our business into the next level.”
Heineman grew up wanting to be a professional snowboarder, and found his way into media, producing and directing TV shows. His passions collided at AMI Active Lifestyle Group, where he served as the Senior Audience Development Director. Today, Heineman is driving storytelling and engagement at AC Business Media, a leading B2B media company.
In this episode of #Storyteller, Kris talks about what makes B2B storytelling unique and shares the secret sauce to their simulcast strategy. Plus, how his most recent storytelling idea was inspired by TMZ!
On working in B2B media:
The cool thing about being in the B2B space, is it’s more about the quality of the engagements rather than the quantity…in the B2C world everything is so fast-paced. You have to be on the front-end of technology and using technologies like Tagboard and things like that to engage with the audience. In the B2C world you’re talking in the millions of reach, on any of these brands. And then in B2B if you can take those best practices of how you reach the quantity, and then couple it with the CDP and really just nail down the depth of your users…You’re reaching a finite audience.
On media being a game of inches:
One of the shows I’m hooked on is ‘Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee’. And so Jerry Seinfeld gets in the car with President Obama and he’s like, ‘hey, Barack, what kind of a sport is being a president like? Is it like chess? Is it like this? And Barack’s like no, it’s like a game of football.’ Jerry’s like, ‘what are you talking about?! How could being a president be like football?’ He’s like, ‘you know, being a president every day is a grind. It’s a game of inches, you move forward, you move a little bit, and a little bit, and every once in a while you see an opening to get 10 yards ahead.’ So in the media, that’s the way I like to think of it in terms of technologies is like everyday we’re putting out content, we’re putting out content, and every once in a while we’ll find a technology to unlock massive reach, either to a new audience or to our current audience. So if I can find one of those openings to find the massive 10 or 30 yard gain, like the game of football, that transforms our business into the next level. So especially in B2B, traditional B2B media is very safe and people like to follow what the other media companies do. In the B2C world, you’re testing new technologies and you’re looking for those new opportunities and so that’s really what I’m looking for in the B2B world is what kind of a platform can we connect to our audience, and connect to our current really engaging content, that really gets us to that next level.
On launching a simulcast strategy:
We started asking ourselves the question of, ‘do we double down on one specific social channel to try to get the most engagements on it, or do we try to do a simulcast strategy where we’re live streaming across all the channels at the same time to try to get different audiences?’ So we tested it both ways and what we found was more was more…when we did it on each brand, not only did it have a different slice of conversation, but just the overall reach and engagement were in total, better.
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