Founder and chairman of International Data Group (IDG), Patrick J McGovern, is a visionary and a doer. A graduate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, McGovern, in 1964, sensed the emergence of a new and dynamic industry and founded International Data Corporation (IDC), now an IDG research subsidiary, to provide readers with timely reliable statistics on information technology market. Having found the world?s leading technology media, events and research company with annual revenues of $3.2 billion, McGovern is a successful entrepreneur and pioneer of the technology media industry. In an interview with FE?s Ayushman Baruah, he shared his insight on the industry and what it takes for a venture to succeed. Excerpts:
How do you see India as a market for technology media? What challenges lie ahead?
India is a great market. People are very interested in learning about latest technologies. The biggest challenge is the number of people having broadband internet access is still small. Hence, the publications are doing better. However, in the next four to five years with more number of people having access to internet, the online media would play a major role. Especially for the daily and weekly publications, the readers would prefer online medium for its immediacy. Monthly publications that write application and technology reviews will continue to be popular in their print versions that can offer more attractive fonts and graphics. Also, people can read them at leisure.
Given the advantages of the online media, what is the future of print media?
In the US, newspapers have seen a big drop in revenues because the classified ads that generated profits have gone to the websites. The display ads, too, have gone to special interest sites that offer more focus on details to a specific product category, etc. The advertising revenues in the daily newspapers have dropped to 25-30% this year. At the same time, magazines are doing well because they are not time dependent and are primarily aspirational. Readers have an emotional bonding to books on fashion, travel, cooking, etc, which cannot be well produced on the internet. So, the high-gloss print magazines that give people a sense of leisure and emotional satisfaction would continue to do well. However, time-based ones would be required to shift online.
With all businesses doing their best and applying Kotler?s marketing, why ventures fail?
There are two main reasons why a venture would fail. First, in order to produce a desired product, one could not come up with an easily reproducible design or sees a dearth of intellectual property. However, greater and more important issue is to discover customer need. Some ventures fail to cater to what the consumer actually wants. A successful product always answers the consumer?s typical question ?Why should I buy your product??
How are you faring in online, print and events businesses?
For the US business, the revenue figures are: 50% online, 37% print and 13% events. In India, the online market is still low. So it will be about 10% online, 50% print and 40% events. Interestingly, online business is picking up fast in India the market is expected to supercede the print market by 2012.
What has been your greatest learning experience with regards to business decisions that you have made?
In 1981, we decided to make a weekly television programme on the role of computers in the society. So we went to various companies asking them if they would buy advertising time in our programme for which we received an overwhelming response. We quickly made 39 weeks of programme and began to broadcast. What we didn?t realise is the fact that our audience perceived television more as an entertainment medium. In contrast to their expectations, we were broadcasting something that is more educational. Not surprisingly, we managed to gather only a fragment of the viewers. The learning experience here was the importance of identifying the need of the audience before launching a product.
While it is still debated if good journalism is bad business, how do you balance good content and good marketing?
To get people?s time and attention, we have to be trustworthy and accurate. We firmly believe in honesty with the audience. Sometimes the advertiser may not like the truth. But we have to make them understand that they advertise with us because we have the readership and readers come to us because they know they can trust our information. So in the long run it benefits all. Someone else may be writing flattering stories about an advertiser but they probably get no readers, so the advertising is wasted. Since we have started, we are known to be a company that tell ?bad? news stories about problems with computer systems and applications. The industry was mad at us for pointing out the problems, but I hope we proved our point and eventually people started trusting our content and consequently the advertisements. People will only give their time to read the truth and at the end of the day, time is what you are selling to the advertiser.