A consistent thread throughout my career has been my commitment to helping iconic, important media brands survive and grow. I don’t think that work has ever been more important. If, five years from now, everyone is getting their news from TikTok, we’re all in trouble.
Media disruption continues to be dramatic. Like many Twitter users across the world, I have been watching Elon Musk‘s takeover with deep interest. The saga has involved famous board members, billionaire founders, executive departures, and employees sharing the drama from their perspective in real time on their own platform.
As advertisers and their agencies began pausing their ad-spend on Twitter in order to suss things out as the Musk era unfolds, it brought back fond memories of my time leading advertising sales at The Washington Post (as chief revenue officer) as the Jeff Bezos era began. As you might imagine, when the Washington Post leadership team learned that Bezos had acquired the Post, the sentiment was a mix of sheer excitement and nervous chatter—a lot of, “what does this mean?”
“Jeff doesn’t like advertising” was one much-repeated line, though I quickly pointed out that Amazon was in fact building a burgeoning ads business. In anticipation of the upheaval, we started a book club (if memory serves we kicked it off with “The Innovator’s Dilemma”). We discussed frugality and innovation and putting engineering principles into our workflows. We weaned off of Powerpoint.
But there was a specific element of the Jeff Bezos era that I was unprepared for: local retail advertisers who wanted to pause or pull ad spend due to the Amazon Effect on their business. This caught us by surprise at first, but after hearing the feedback multiple times we knew we needed to respond.
We discussed and debated, and ultimately our response to advertisers was: wouldn’t you like to work with us to experience what his impact might be like? We developed marketing partnerships by incorporating technology into the ideation process. We tinkered with how products were built, created small features that compelled a user to engage, developed innovation layers to more typical sponsorship opportunities with businesses that helped them stand out and reach customers in new ways.
My reasons for joining Newsweek as its first Global Chief Commercial Officer are many (and coincidentally Newsweek was owned by The Washington Post‘s Graham family for close to 50 years). But our mission to bring diverse voices onto our platform, to engage with viewpoints across the political and cultural spectrum, is the most important to me.
Two third-party media watchdogs, AllSides and NewsGuard, rate Newsweek as centrist—significant endorsements for a polarized industry. Our reach is now over 50 million users every month and has grown tenfold over the past four years. Our common-ground approach seems to be resonating with readers across the globe and brands that seek to connect with them. It is an important mission we are on, and thank you greatly for spending time with us.
Kevin Gentzel
Global Chief Commercial Officer