NEWS: PPA Business Media Summit & Awards

It seems I’m filling up my headlines with photos of awards ceremonies this month! And with good reason as I have attended many wonderful events in November, one of which was the PPA Business Media Summit, where it was my honour to host the Digital and Social Media Strategy streams in the afternoon. Covering a diverse range of topics all key to successfully navigating the new digital landscape, we heard from Gaby Appleton of Elsevier about the way they manage and use the huge amount of data created in the medical research publishing business. It was fascinating to me how the research tools and links to external content have allowed this publisher to make the lion’s share of its income through subscriptions rather than relying on the traditional advertising model.

Paul Mikhailoff from Forbes spoke next about its ‘branded content’ strategy, which partners with brands to create features that work in harmony with its editorial, posted clearly under the ‘BrandVoice’ banner.
Peter Wienand of Farrer & Co did a good job of not scaring us too much about the fight for IP in the digital world of publishing, with some solid advice for business publishers struggling to maintain control of their content.
After coffee (and some pretty nifty though slightly boozy iced cups) we heard from David Swan, clinical editor at Pulse about its dedicated app for GPs and rounded off the afternoon with a really insightful session about employee advocacy programs and engaging though social media by Doug Marshall at Wilmington plc.

Once the business end of the day was complete I was invited to be a  guest at the awards ceremony, which was brilliantly hosted by Mark Watson, who managed to keep the atmosphere light and fast paced as we ripped through 17 PPA Business accolades, the winners listed below.

My great thanks to the organisers and all the speakers in my session (and of course the attentive audience!) for making it such an interesting and enjoyable day right up to the very last.