News publishers are in the middle of a profound digital transformation. The newsroom became the business and an audience-centric strategy is the essential key to success. But how to implement a performance-driven change approach focusing on audiences? Join our program “AudienceS First. A training program by Table Stakes Europe” and start or accelerate your necessary transformation!
Head coach Doug Smith and coach Stéphane Mayoux will introduce you to audience-centric work in mini-publishing teams combined with the highly successful Table Stakes methodology. Table Stakes is a poker metaphor. It refers to the amount of money a player must bring to have a seat at the table. We will show you the essential skills required for news media to thrive in the 21st century.
The success of Table Stakes Europe
The methodology has proved to be reliable, inspiring and scalable. 105 teams from 20 countries have participated in WAN-IFRA’s recent Table Stakes Europe program between 2019 and 2024. They started to address specific audiences and established a performance-driven challenge strategy. The list of successes is outstanding. Some teams increased their digital subscriptions by 30 percent or more. Others extended their digital reach significantly or found the key to completely new audience groups. All teams remarkably improved their ability to swiftly adapt their strategies to the market’s needs. Alumni of the program are titles like Süddeutsche Zeitung, Reach plc, Les Echos, Henneo Group, Ringier Hungary, Russmedia, DuMont Group, FUNKE Medien Group, Irish Times and many more.
The new program
WAN-IFRA now offers “AudienceS First. A training program by Table Stakes Europe” as an individual program for groups up to 10 participants. The program includes 12 virtual sessions and discussions with a focus on excellent use cases from the program.
Ticket Prices
WAN-IFRA members
1 or 2 tickets: 990 Euros per ticket
3 or 4 tickets: 890 Euros per ticket
5 or more tickets: 790 Euros per ticket
10 tickets: 690 Euros per ticket
Non-Members
1 or 2 tickets: 1390 Euros per ticket
3 or 4 tickets: 1290 Euros per ticket
5 or more tickets: 1190 Euros per ticket
10 tickets: 1090 Euros per ticket
Whom you should send? Anyone from your newsroom, ad sales, tech, marketing, project management and/or top management who wants to understand requirements for success in today’s news media and an audience centric strategy.
The Coaches
Doug Smith is the Table Stakes Architect and a WAN-IFRA Associate Consultant. He is also the co-CEO of Strategic Doing Networks. Doug is acknowledged as one of the world’s leading management thinkers and advisers and has contributed to performance results, innovation, strategy and change in scores of organisations across more than 60 industries in all three sectors: private, government and non-profit. Doug is the architect of the principles and design for Challenge-Centric, Performance-Driven Transformation Programmes (TM), guiding leaders to use a focus on performance results to drive innovation, capacity-building, and growth in organisations and communities undergoing profound disruption.
Stéphane Mayoux is an Executive Coach and a psychotherapist. He was a coach in WAN-IFRA’s Table Stakes Europe program from 2019 to 2024. Stéphane’s professional DNA is rooted in 25 years of BBC international journalism. He went into broadcast media after a pan-European MBA that took him from France to the UK and Germany. For the past eight years, he has been working with media executives and organisations in the UK, Europe and the USA to support Change management, in particular digital transition. He has co-designed and co-facilitated workshops focusing on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion within and outside the media industry. Stéphane is a fully accredited psychotherapist and sees individual clients in his private practice in London. He holds a Master’s in Business Management from one of France’s leading business schools, ESCP. He also holds an MSc in Psychotherapy from the Metanoia Institute/Middlesex University in the UK.
Schedule
The virtual program starts in May 2025, lasts 9 weeks and will be held in English. The 12 moduls include:
1 Overview of AudienceS-First Journalism and why it’s essential today
2 The keys to moving from general content for the general public to targeted content and experiences for targeted audienceS
3 Adopting an audienceS perspective by recognizing that you – and your friends, family and colleagues – are your audienceS.
4 Getting the best out of the four proven methods of putting audienceS first: editorial questioning routines, user needs, p personas and minipublisher teams
5 Interactive review of sessions 1 through 4 built around case studies
6 The economics of audienceS-first journalism
7 Why the newsroom is the business today, and how cross-silo coordination is needed for that business to succeed
8 Using the funnel to drive journalistic and financial success
9 Interactive review of sessions 6 through 8 built around case studies
10 How to learn audienceS-first journalism by doing audienceS-first journalism instead of analyzing and planning and waiting
11 How to navigate readiness, reluctance and resistance in your news organizations
12 Summary of the program, including discussion of your next steps
Contact
If you are interested in the program – reach out to Martin Fröhlich, Director Digital Revenue Network at WAN-IFRA: martin.froehlich@wan-ifra.org