Silver Apples 2021

Each year the DMCNY presents its highly distinguished Silver Apple Awards to select professionals who have spent at least 25 years in marketing and who not only have excelled in their careers, but also have generously contributed their talents and time to the marketing industry. Silver Apples also honors one organization that’s been in business at least 25 years whose use of data-driven marketing and impact on the industry has been and continues to be exceptional.

We’ll be introducing you to the 2021 honorees over the next few weeks, in advance of DMCNY’s annual Silver Apples gala on November 4, 2021, at Edison Ballroom in New York. 

Meet the 2021 corporate honoree…

Trusted Media Brands

Trusted Media Brands is a publishing and media giant that comprises such well-known favorites as Family Handyman, Readers Digest, and Taste of Home, as well as newly acquired Jukin Media UGC-centric brands such as The Pet Collective, People are Awesome, and This is Happening. It is also a self-described direct marketing company that connects with its audience not only by providing compelling content in the moment, but also by using data extensively to learn what its customers and consumers want and need next to deliver that, as well.

The company creates content and builds community among its audiences to help bring their passions to life. It weaves stories across media to give them robust and engaging experiences. And it uses data about customers’ actions and interests to help advertisers reach the right consumers with relevant messages. Trusted Media brands also provides a platform for its audiences to share their own accomplishments, ideas, projects, and stories.

The company supports the marketing and publishing industries, as well; for example, CEO Bonnie Kintzer serves as chairperson of the board at the MPA, which advocating for publishers in a variety of ways, including how they can market to and engage consumers. And CMO Michelle Korchinski-Ogden participates in the IBM-hosted CMO Exchange, a cross-industry problem-solving think tank for chief marketers.

The company has a rich and storied history and, through its data-driven approach to innovation, has tremendous opportunity in the future. Here, Korchinski-Ogden shares some insights about Trusted Media Brands’ marketing strategy and successes.

What makes Trusted Media Brands stand out as a data-driven marketing powerhouse?
It’s several things. The first is testing. You can never stop testing; consumer behavior changes so rapidly. When you continue to test, collect information, learn, and relearn over and over again your marketing results improve.

Second, we model extensively. We’ve been collecting data on consumers for a long time from our sites, magazines, book programs, new products, and newsletters. All that data gets pulled together to understand responsiveness and where there might be an opportunity to engage consumers with a new product or via a new platform. Those models allow us to optimize results across channels.

Third, we continually expand our data set. Whenever we contact customers directly and we have an opportunity to gather information, we do—and we pull all of that into that single database. One example is when consumers submit a recipe to Taste of Home, that additional data point indicates a particular level of engagement. We can then use that information in conjunction with other datasets to understand behavior, engagement, and where there’s an opportunity to market more effectively.

The last piece is simply we deliver what we promise. You can only be effective in your marketing if you are trustworthy to the consumer. That trust enhances our ability to collect data and use it to then be able to re-market to our consumers.

Tell us about TMB’s overarching approach to marketing.

You have to put the consumer at the center of everything. If you don’t—if you don’t anchor on the consumer and understand who they are, their interests, their pain points, and what the common denominators are across the datasets—you can’t provide them with the products they want or need or engage them with content.

What’s a favorite story about how TMB has used data to improve marketing or gain a better understanding of customers?

I’ll share one about our data and insights team. The team is top-notch. They’ve developed response and pricing models that help us broaden our reach and improve profitability in meaningful ways across digital and traditional channels. That use of data helps us more deeply understand our consumers, so we know exactly what offers to put in front of them for maximum return.

What’s a favorite reader story?

Last winter we got a letter from a gentleman who regularly reads Family Handyman. He saw that we had done a camper renovation story in the magazine, where we took a vintage camper and renovated it from end to end, which is a little bit outside of the type of story Family Handyman historically had done. We also created DIY University classes around specific elements of a renovation like that, in addition to video and site content.

The gentleman went out and bought a vintage camper himself, and then renovated it from end to end. He took the classes, he reread the story, consumed online content, and watched the videos. He was fully immersed in the content.

It was nice to see that we have license to expand the horizons of what we do within our content, so our consumers can take their hobbies to the next level. It’s also a wonderful story of connecting the dots across platforms—the site, magazine, videos, DIY university—all to complete a project he saw in the magazine.

What’s a favorite advertiser story?

We have a number of pharma clients. Often, when they first come to us, they’ve been advertising within condition-based content on very health-oriented sites and not necessarily in lifestyle content. By using our dataset, we’re able to identify consumers who have a particular set of conditions or meet a target profile and serve them the appropriate ad.

For one such pharma company, this was the first time partnering with Trusted Media brands and they were very much in “test” mode. As the program ran, we continued to optimize the segment and ad effectiveness to increase the engagement of our audience with their message.  We ended up being their most efficient partner for reaching unique individuals with this specific condition because it was a new, highly targeted audience for them.

We’ve been quite successful in using tools to isolate consumer segments within our database and then target them specifically when they come to the site.

What’s one thing that’s surprising about TMB?

The brands are very strong, and consumers love them. They trust our editorial teams and that trust opens the door to any number of new opportunities and ways to engage consumers. What’s surprising is the extraordinary opportunity we have to fill a need or address a pain point—in ways well beyond what we’re doing today.

Our brands create an intersection of utility and delight that few can achieve. We deliver functionality, but we also deliver aha moments within the brands that are highly engaging, giving us an opportunity to go beyond our current mediums.

We’re looking at expanding our e-commerce, paid newsletters opportunities, and new products and services. We want to evolve and expand how we engage our consumers, which is so exciting. I’m looking forward to what comes next.

About the Author

Ginger Conlon, editorial advisor at DMCNY’s MKTGinsight, catalyzes change in marketing organizations. Ginger is editor-in-chief of MediaVillage and president of DMCNY. She is a frequent speaker on marketing and customer experience, and serves in advisory or leadership roles for several industry organizations. Ginger was honored with a Silver Apple lifetime achievement award for her contributions to the marketing industry.​

Find her at @customeralchemy and on LinkedIn