How Condé Nast Experiments, Bundles, and Wins — Michael Ribero, Condé Nast

0:00A lot of people want to launch a premium product and I'm like no. I think that's a the status quo. It's like no, but prove to me there's going to be enough value and like there is another cohort here that isn't just like 1 or 2% that we're going to do a lot of work for maybe not a lot of return. Hello, I'm your host David Bernard. My guest today is Michael Ribero, senior VP of global consumer revenue at Condast, where he helps oversee story brands like Vogue,

0:26The New Yorker, GQ, and so many more. This episode was recorded live on stage at Revenue Cat's App Growth annual conference. On the podcast, I talk with Michael about the blessing and curse of having a brand, why post-purchase is a perfect upsell moment, and why partnerships are hard to pull off, but can be well worth

0:49the effort. Thanks for having me. Yeah, [clears throat] I have really been looking forward to this chat. So, you and I got a a chance to chat a few times ahead of this and um listen, you've been on a lot of podcasts. If you want some good listening, just search Michael Rivero YouTube podcast and other things like that. He's uh he's shared a lot of insights over the years and so we're going to pull some new things in, maybe some old things in, but it's going to be a really fun

1:13conversation. Thanks so much for joining me today. So the the first thing I wanted to kick off with is competition and brand and you know we're in this place in the industry where creating apps to compete is so much easier with AI and we're seeing just a proliferation of apps. I mean we were talking Jacob was talking earlier about the insane increase we've seen in the number of apps shipped. You know, you have Instagram creators sharing recipes competing with Bona Petit. You have bloggers and influencers and everything competing for MindSpace

1:51with the New Yorker. And there's like so much competition. And then you were at the Washington Post where like, you know, media has had a decade of challenges with all the new competitors and how to monetize and everything like that. And so I thought it'd be really interesting to start here because I think a lot of the people in this room and listening afterward will be in a place where they're starting to get a little worried like how do I compete like you know what does brand mean in this new age when you know Cali spun up out of nowhere with 17y olds and it's competing with my fitness pal and

2:23lose it and you know some of these storied brands in the app space are now facing competition from like 17-year-old kids. So I wanted to start there of like how do you think about competition and brand and and how to manage that? Yeah. Um I'd probably offer maybe three different things here. So brand I think blessing and a curse. Um blessing in the

2:43sense where you have this storied past. I think the challenge was a lot of brands especially in in media you potentially get stuck in that past or you essentially become your parents app and like nobody wants to be their parents app. maybe your parents, I don't know, liquor or something else, but like when you're your parents app or you're your parents media outlet, I think that

3:02could be a very difficult place to be. So that I think that's the tension that we ultimately work through. But, you know, I think you you do have brand recognition. You have consideration because you've potentially be been exposed to, you know, this brand since a very young kid. I think, you know, whether it's Washington Post or whether it's, you know, MTV and a lot of these different things, someone's exposure is not necessarily like when they're thinking about buying or ever going to be a buyer. it's 10, 15, 20 years before that and you know it's thinking how do you ultimately nurture that tie over time. Um, I know it's kind of backwards

3:34and maybe not appropriate for an app conversation, but I always refer to John Deere if anybody has kids in the um in the audience, but they make essentially like a small little tractor. And you know that kid is never going to probably not going to be a buyer of a tractor for 40 or 50 years, but it's the early positive association that you I think you can um ultimately build on over time. Um, the second is, you know, media I think is very is interesting in the sense everyone is maybe a friend of me platforms and other brands. I think, you know, it's nice with media in a lot of

4:06times it's not a zero- sum game. So, you can be a watcher or a reader of one publication and usually that that's actually a positive indication you're going to read other things, right? So, in a sense, we we fight, you know, for real estate on the home screen or the, you know, the app. But, you know, in a way, you know, like there's always

4:24that second position, third position. The platforms is also an interesting one just because it is this friendmy you know it's fighting for now time like how much time do you want to spend on the office and you know historically for us like Facebook was a great referer you know all of these social platforms were a great referer and now they're like we don't want to refer you any traffic [laughter] and it's a very difficult um uh dynamic to deal with because you know at the same time a lot of our readers and our you know our current readers people who want to ultimately subscribe are on those platforms too and spend a

4:52big chunk of time on on those platforms. We really have to find ways to work together. Easy to say, I think really hard to do. Again, even cond is a really small drop in the bucket for, you know, someone like Meta. They say they care, but I know they don't really care. And so, we have to fight really hard in order to, you know, how do we do

5:07programming? How do we do paid media? How do we do those various things? So, I think, you know, between those two things, it is really important. We continue to invest in it. You know, the one thing I think we were kind of getting into backstage too is potentially finding ways where you can be different. Um yeah, you know, the one for us I think has really been how do you bring people together in real life? I think community is really important to people especially now and you know in the context of AI and all that jazz but we have this platform I think we've used well and you

5:36know I've seen it across my career where you can bring people together in real life help support that community and then ultimately kind of feedback into well you know how do you connect event to event and it's really like being in the app doing those sorts of things spending time with us so you're ready for that next event. that's been a way we've able to see this as as a positive

5:54cycle. Yeah, I think the differentiation is the key to a lot of this. And um it's funny you brought up like the the friend of me kind of thing. You probably don't even know this, some of the audience will. I run a weather app on the side and I actually know that my target market right now for my weather app is weather nerds who probably have two or

6:15three other weather apps on the space. And so kind of the way you're thinking about it as well, there are going to be certain categories where it's okay like embrace the competition like it's okay, but how do you fight for that mind share? Like how do you be the first one they open instead of the second one they open or the first one instead of the third one that they open? How do you get your widget on the home screen versus like somebody else's widget? And and the

6:40key there is that that the value prop. It's like the differentiation is like how do you think about that? And like when you were at the Washington Post, I mean, how did you think about that in the world of just abundant free media, you know, you were you were there as you were transitioning into having to charge more and payw walling more things. Like how did you think about that transition and so much free competition and

7:03creating that value? Yeah, I think a little or maybe a lot lucky and a little bit good on the lucky front. I mean there are externalities that I think when you find one of those like take full advantage. Um you know for us it was at the post it was the Trump bump and then co and it's like there's nothing I could have done to you know to be a fraction of the success

7:24that we saw because of those two things. I think you know the good part is you know when you do get that influx how do you make the most of it? Um and then you know what how are you taking the right steps in order to set yourself up for success. You know, one thing we thought a lot about is how much access do we give someone? Um, I think that was, you know, really important. I think it could have been easy to say lock it all. um especially in those times and when people would have paid weighing some of these like short-term long-term benefits also like you know the brand going back

7:55to the brand consideration that um we wanted to do right by people still be you know successful from a business perspective but just have that balance of the amount we were harvesting now versus like continuing to sustain and feed for you know potentially success down the road. Yeah. How how did you think about the that separation the free versus paid because I mean this is like if anybody in the audience and listening later it is a really really tough thing to get right like and and I know like watching the post you all experimented with a few different things right like do you give one story do you give five stories like

8:29how hard do you pay wall how many ads do you use um what were some of those internal conversation of like how how do we still be the story brand and and you know a lot of folks they won't have that kind of story brand, but they have to make those similar decisions of like, yeah, we don't want to make the free experience crappy, but we want to incentivize people. So, how did you

8:49think about that? Yeah, I um No good answer. Um [laughter] it's a process. No, definitely a process. I mean, I'd maybe say three different ways to approach it. You know, one, I think always doing sort of a competitive audit. You know, who's giving away what. I think, you know, like we're talking about before, I think people who are in the category are going to be in the category. The person who reads the post is also probably reading the Times, is also reading the journal. and you know deciding you know do you want to be different than your competitors and if so like do you have a very deliberate

9:15reason why and maybe it's certain sections or certain features but I think I think that's one um you know the second is you've got to try stuff and I think that's the easy part I think the hard part is internally convincing people to have this kind of test and learn approach when you have revenue targets if you're talking to a product team and they really want to advocate for one part of this should absolutely be free because we want the most people using it you know I think there's that internal debate and you know ultimately if you can align KPIs I think those conversations become a lot easier. But

9:41often like I would love a show of hands of you know whose company's KPIs are completely aligned so you can all make perfect decisions. It's zero. I know it's zero. So you know those two and then you know lastly I think um just willing to be wrong and maybe willing to walk back. You know I think about us. We put up a registration wall. We have a property called Pitchfork. Um it's for music fanatics. It's focused on music reviews. We put up a regge wall registration wall for certain folks. The next day there was a big announcement on the editorial side and the backlash that we got of you're going to put up this

10:09regge wall to now make us register when it was completely free before and now you're doing all these changes. I mean it was it it was hard and so we just took it all down and we said you know what we're going to pause and we're going to reset once we you know figure out the editorial you know product part of it right and then we'll you know we'll try to remonetize it at that point and I think I would say we're going back through this process again of like is now the time is now not the time and I think we earn goodwill by be willing to

10:33say hey you know we're going to walk back on what we ultimately did. Yeah that's a that's a tough you said it's the easy part of like figuring it out but but that's a hard part. I mean especially like you know a big pitchfork a brand with very loyal readers and very loyal community Washington Post again story brand I mean this is what I think a lot of us struggle with like you know my weather app is a hard payw wall and I want to move it back to ad supported premium tier but then what do you put behind the payw wall what do you do and

11:04I think there's always a hesitation of and and so I love that you shared a mistake you should make mistakes like if you're not making mistakes you're not trying hard to like get that balance right. And it's a great example of like you should try and if you make a mistake, you can recover and you can walk it back and then take the next step. So yeah, if you're operating a free app, if you're if you've got a payw wall hard paywall app, try figure it out like and you need to absolutely and I would say you know with all the testing a lot of times you know

11:35the person who I'd say is maybe you know closest to the vision to the mission I I would say is usually right. I think we go back like so we recently launched Vogue with an app. It was essentially we relaunched the app you know before and we were paywalling stuff which we hadn't paywalled before. I think we had all of these discussions what's the right way to do it. Can we overlay AI to make these decisions with us and ultimately it was like you know I think it it helps that it's Anna Winter and she's going to have a very strong opinion too. But uh you know like her gut was right. It was

12:02like here's the most important stuff and this is the stuff we should make people pay for. So I think when you have a partner like that, you know, whoever might be in your organization, it's really helpful cuz usually that's right. That's and a win tour [laughter] being your partner and figuring out your payw wall. That's pretty cool. Well, the next thing I wanted to talk about was, you know, as a story brand, but as a print publication that's like trying to enter the modern age. I I've been impressed with all the different kinds of monetization experimentation that y'all have been doing to figure out this new

12:33age. And so, you know, I have a whole list of of things that you've been playing with, bundling, unbundling, re-bundling, post-purchase, upsell. So, let's walk through those one by one. Yeah. And talk about and this is something I think again this is um you know, Tinder and and Dualingo and Cond and some of these bigger brands have started to figure these things out that the rest of us will be figuring out over the next few years. And so I want to hear from you like how are you increasing LTV with those p purchase upgrades? How are you bundling? Let's start with those and yeah no absolutely I wish you know I

13:09wish I could take credit for a lot of this and it was a novel idea or not. You know the one thing I would say is um I always go back I think it was Picasa who said the quote but good artists copy great artists steal. I mean to me that is I think I've based a lot of my career on on that. I I mean on the bundling I think you know part of it is what assets do you have and how do you ultimately put them together? You know you look at something like the New York Times the newspaper was deconstructed over years and years and years with the internet

13:36with you know various things and they're essentially putting it all back together making it really easy to buy. I think it you know helps that you know they were getting outside pressure to say like make a bet on this. So I think that that was a catalyst for a lot of our conversations internally at Konda NAS. we benefit from. We have this very wide portfolio from GQ to Vogue. You know, I go back to this double-edged sword is a lot of times these things seem to fit together, but sometimes they don't. Um, you know, the question is, is someone who is interested in architectural digest also going to be the person who

14:07is reading Wired? I think yes at points, but you know, probably a lot of the time no. Those are some of the considerations we went into. What I will say, and I, you know, I've now seen this work over multiple instances, when you get to that point of purchase, giving people more for less money is always an equation that's going to work. I um so like coming from TV at one point in my life, most people watch, and this was probably five or six years ago, most people watch something like six to eight channels. We would try all sorts of messaging, all sorts of packaging to say, hey, you

14:37know, just get six to eight channels. Every single test that we ran, it lost when you said get over 100 channels. I mean it was just it was unbelievable to see. But I think you know reinforces this the idea of like when you have that moment of truth really making sure you put your best foot forward even if it is like it doesn't make sense or it doesn't agree with any of the the research and really the importance of testing. So

14:58that's kind of where where we came from. I think the one good thing too uh which we're seeing now just on bundling is all of a sudden you have different ways in to a consumer. usually say with a single subscription or if you don't pull it apart it's hey it's one monolith there's a benefit here and we're just going to keep hammering that one benefit context may not make sense there's something might you know be external you know at least for us and you know I'm sure a lot of people who are doing the bundling is you know here's another reason why we can show you the value of the

15:24subscription there's a new event coming on there's a new tent poll that we could talk about so that's been really um interesting for us on the bundling front yeah you know a lot of folks either thinking well I don't have yeah GQ vote and things to bundle. But when you're at the Washington Post, you bundled with Headspace. Tell me about that deal cuz I This is another thing where I think we're going to see the subscription industry going [snorts] is these kind of bundles like you know, okay, you know, you're a huge outdoor fan uh with All Trails and they have some weather features in there, but can

15:55they bundle all trails with the Weather Channel to create this like synergistic bundle between the two? And I'm just throwing ideas out there, but like those kind of things. And you did that at the Washington Post. What did that look like bundling with Headspace? Yeah, I would go um you know two different like so bundle internally. I I do think there's a path bundling internally. You have more assets than I think you think you have. We recently relaunched the wired subscription and you know one thing that we were doing but maybe not necessarily charging for was AMAs with editors. And now all of a sudden we said hey this is now part of

16:27the subscription. We're only going to make it subscription only. And so I think there are things that either you're doing that you can now put into a subscription and call it a bundle or you know probably low lift but maybe high impact to kind of continue to build that that existing offering you had. On the partnership front I'll just warn like buyer beware partnerships are really

16:45hard. Yeah. [laughter] Uh really hard and you know we did multiple at um at the Washington Post which I think is super exciting. You know I think the theme we we really tried to coales around one of two things. One is like the occasion like coffee and newspaper go together really well. And so like we we hammered that a

17:03whole in a in a bunch of different ways. You can have access in you know certain cafes or you know get a Washington Post branded coffee bean with uh your subscription. So that made sense and then you know the other was really um what person are you going after? That's kind of more in line what you were talking about. The context also helped in the sense like a lot of the research we got was people were just overwhelmed by the news and so you know the insight for us was yes we do some counter programming shoulder programming that is you know either happy news or you know

17:33food or whatever it might be but like realistically the post is going to be known for very serious topics Washington very serious stuff like so how do we bring in this moment of maybe peace and calm that was the thinking there um you know I I would say trying to hammer out a deal and really I think going in eyes wide open is like are you going to be the the big fish or the little fish? And not to say like either position is bad or maybe big spoon or little spoon. Um but being okay with that going in I think you know when you have two

18:02companies that are kind of equal size or at least in the same ballpark all of a sudden it's like I want it on my stack and I want control of the the building relationship and all those things. You know we've run into issues I've run into issues before. So you know really being deliberate about that. But if you can make it work, I think very cool. Uh very cool for the press and then you know definitely business results behind it

18:21too. So what are what are you all working on with post-purchase upsells? I know you all made a lot of headway with those. Yeah, I think this is if there's one thing I always try to do like one do this thing. Um I call it post post-purchase upsell, but once you sell your subscription either sell something else, have someone else sell the real estate to someone else so they can sell something or ask someone to act, you know, do some sort of action. that point of purchase is probably the most engaged your customer is ever going to be. You know, we've taken advantage of that in

18:50typically upselling another title or you know upselling a premium type of product. So you know for example if you subscribe to architectural digest most of the times we don't know in what realm are you are you just a consumer who's aspirational or is this your business so we will offer kind of the business membership after purchase and you know we get pretty decent conversion rates in that 5-ish% and all of a sudden you know I have zero incremental customer acquisition costs and you know now I'm driving something like a hundred to $200

19:22in lifetime value from just one pop-up. Yeah. Um, it's like give people an opportunity to spend more just Yes. And you know, you think about and you know, any sort of purchase, but like you know, car or McDonald's or whatever it might be when the credit card's out like you're ready to go, you know, and so how do I just maybe put one more thing in front of you? And again, I don't need great conversion rates. I just need little and I'm making a little

19:42bit more money. Yeah. I was talking to I don't know if he's in the room, but uh Toby from Bright Mind, this is a guy to talk to if uh you're here in the audience or at the conference. Um I was talking to him earlier. He runs Bright Mind. It's a mental health app, like kind of a a meditation app. And I've known him for gosh, like five years. We had an office hours call together, and we were just talking like 15 minutes ago about how, you know, his app has done all right. Is such a crowded space. It's so hard. And so he recently introduced online

20:12intensives, one-on-one coaching, monthly 4-hour meditation events, week-long meditation retreats, and by taking the thousands of subscribers, but then the tens of thousands of engaged, you know, email list and everything else like that. He increased revenue 50% by just thinking out of the box like, okay, you're a subscription app, but like what else can you sell? Like coffee beans and the [laughter] and the the Washington Post. So like I know a lot of this sounds like oh he's at you know condass and he was at Washington Post like you can't do this. Toby's doing it like you know he's thinking outside that box and like increasing LTB and increasing

20:49revenue by trying new stuff and like engaging that audience. So props to you and go find him. But that's exactly the kind of stuff we're talking about and it doesn't have to be at a global scale. It can be in a smaller scale. Absolutely. Absolutely. I love it. That's really great stuff. I think uh lessons for everyone to learn. But I I I do think you know knowing especially if you just started an app I think those are probably going to be your most loyal loyal buyers and you know knowing that the demand curve is not flat. It is probably very steep especially for those um those first buyers

21:18but the willingness to pay curve like we're not taking advantage of that. Uh, absolutely. And I think, you know, we've tried to do that and uh on a lot of occasions, but you know, maybe doing bespoke stuff that doesn't scale, but you think is going to be worth it. I, you know, I'm highly supportive. Yeah. So, what do you mean by unbundling? I'm I'm still a little

21:36confused [laughter] that. Um, essentially, you know, I think a lot of like the push back that we've got is, you know, from a media perspective is this concept of um subscription fatigue. And I think paired with the fact that you know news and kind of I'm overwhelmed with content. And so the thinking was can you essentially create a micro product or a mini product maybe the diet coke to the coke and so when I was at the post we did something called a starter pack and as opposed to getting an unlimited subscription it was essentially three read four stories every single month and then you know you

22:08can decide you know you're going to if you consume more you're going to hit then another pay wall or kind of like an upgrade wall and then go forward from that. So that's the thinking and that was like like two bucks a month, right? Yeah. It's like way undercut your main but how did that turn

22:20out from an LTV perspective? Um J still out. [laughter] Well so I think you know there's two things you know one the one thing I have appreciated about publishing extremely difficult to be in but you get a lot of visitors and you get a lot of data and I think like we ultimately decided that this couldn't be a product that we were going to advertise to everyone. It was really in the cases where we saw low propensity. We would determine propensity really based on referral

22:45source or you know something like that. But if we could determine you were going to be really low propensity. This would be an offering and it would kind of be but but really hidden kind of beside uh behind the scenes but just trying to I would say lower the hurdle to get you into our payment ecosystem and then we

23:00could go from there. No, that's so smart. And I mean there's so many ways to do that in an app. I mean, I was talking to to Will from WrestleM uh recently and we were talking about like they they have some really clever things they're thinking about with being able to engage those people who and you know it's pretty common in the industry now of like you know people

23:17are closing out the payw wall. like, hey, they're there, so give them an offer. Like, bring them in. But if there's even, you know, even more smart, even smarter, more sophisticated ways to do that with data to figure out if they're low propensity, like give them that, but don't give that to everybody. That's

23:34great. The last thing I wanted to talk about was taring and how you think about tiering. And again, I think like there's just so much headroom as a super app industry. We're still not fully exploring the Tinders and Dualingos are getting there, but exploring the entire uh demand curve of the people who just love your brand, who are just willing to spend way more than than your current offerings are. So, how have you thought about breaking up those tiers and being able to offer those like really hardcore fans who are willing to spend a lot more, let them spend? How do

24:06you think about that? Yeah. Um, I think really interesting question. Um, I don't think anyone's done it super well. I would say my thinking on this has changed. Uh before it was like let's just launch new products you know um and new tiers you know to that to capitalize on this very dynamic. Some people are willing to pay more than others. The adoption rates I've seen have been low single percentage and it's like well is it even worth it? Um so you know I think I'm more now I talk to the you know our editors a lot and a lot of people want to launch a premium product and I'm like

24:37no I think that's a the status quo. I was like, "No, but prove to me there's going to be enough value and like there is another cohort here that isn't just like 1 or 2% that we're going to do a lot of work for maybe not a lot of return when we can be doing other things like you know IRL or merch or whatever it might be to sort of capitalize on that same dynamic. So I think if you have enough great it does feel you know the examples out there whether it's ad free or family okay I'm still not completely sold on if that makes sense

25:04like in the media world but we're thinking about it. The one thing I would call out is we we've gone more of the away from the app but into kind of the membership community world and you know Vogue I think presents a really good case study in trying to monetize different parts of the demand curve or the willingness to pay curve. We have extremely high price products, very elite select people. Everything IRL, everything white glove to all the way down to like, you know, premium in an app, you know, making sure that your your brand, your company, your product, whatever it is, has like a large enough

25:38umbrella. And if not, like really being the default and no, don't do it. Focus on driving as much subscription as value into your subscription. Get the retention rates right. the, you know, the right pricing that you think uh makes the most sense before you kind of want to distract yourself because it is distracting. For a lot of companies, there is still so much low hanging fruit. Don't jump to the premium tier before you've captured a lot of the lowhanging fruit. But you can think more strategically of like here's what we're wanting to build over the next 5 years and here's how we're going to build toward offering that much

26:09value that we can charge more. So, it's a fascinating place to play. Yeah. Yeah. All right. All right. Well, it's been so much fun chatting with you. I wish we could talk for another hour, but thank you so much. Thank you.

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