Who: Marjorie Scardino, Pearson’s CEO, led The Financial Times’ profitable year and tech-savvy strategy.
What: Scardino built a growth strategy around digital innovations, spearheaded by ft.com, The Financial Times’ online journal. The Financial Times’ strategy included expanding segments of the print version that were enormously popular, and adding interactive tools and comprehensive archives of information that was in high-demand by readers.
The Financial Times also launched a user-friendly, highly engaging iPad app which won an award for design from Apple. The Financial Times used its online presence to increase brand awareness of the company’s print products, as well as to drive clicks to advertisers.
How: The Financial Times digital subscribers rose by 70 percent in 2010. The Financial Times has a combined print and online average daily readership of 1.9 million people worldwide and the newspaper has a daily circulation of 390,121. Pearson helped drive the Financial Time’s rise by advancing a global strategy which co-branded educational and information resources in other countries with the Financial Times moniker as well as promoting a tiered system of online-article access, one free, one paid. Even The New York Times referenced the Financial Times as an inspiration for eventual online structuring.
Why: “It has always been an issue that we couldn’t have millions of printing plants around the world,” Scardino told The Guardian. “The presence of all these tablets has been very important to the FT. Not only has it given a good medium, congenial to our readers, but it will proliferate, it is a global opportunity for us.”
Learn more about the Financial Time’s 2011 outlook here.
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