When offices open up again, what will make employees comfortable to go back in? In an engaging and revenue-focused CES Deconstructed session last Thursday titled CEO Power Panel: How Leading Companies Are Planning to Not Just Survive But Thrive, Arizent CEO Gemma Postlethwaite offered one answer that resonated with her colleagues.

Editor’s Note: Hear Tony Uphoff and other leading B2B media executives including Industry Dive’s Sean Griffey, Arizent’s Gemma Postlethwaite and Government Executive Media’s Tim Hartman in a live stream on Thursday, April 30 at 1pm ET called “CEO Power Panel: How Industry Leaders Are Planning for Their Companies to Not Just Survive but Thrive.” The event is free for all Connectiv members and more information is available here.   

Jason Abbate: I want to activate publisher audiences—data, events, direct buys. I’m looking for ideas—every time I call a publisher, I hear about their rate card—that’s not what I want. I will never read your rate card. It all comes down to reaching and activating your audience. When I talk about publisher assets, you have access to audience, and editorial credibility. That’s what I want to buy. I don’t want to buy video, I don’t want your content studio. When I see a white paper, that’s like content marketing from 2009. I want you to do a custom event that we can’t do.  When I see things like content studios, that’s taking money out of my pocket. 

On Wednesday, June 19, Connectiv teams up with ANA Business Marketing to bring leading B2B advertisers, agencies and media and information companies together in New York City for What Goes 'Round: Re-imagining the Media Marketer Relationship in a Digitally Transformed World.

"I looked at the company and realized that strategy at the end of the day is simply resource allocation. That's my job. So I need to resource the appropriate level towards technology differently than we have been."  —Thomas president and CEO Tony Uphoff   Another successful Business Information & Media Summit (BIMS) concluded yesterday with an incredible keynote from Uphoff—Thomas has completely transitioned from being a legacy print/directory company to a data platform company—and more insightful and solution-oriented sessions.   I'll be writing about more BIMS sessions in the coming weeks but meanwhile here are some highlights from the conference to give you a taste.   Make your content valuable and affordable. "If [one of your customers] doesn't want to buy your content because he says it's too expensive for him, then maybe you need to do some soul searching in your content," Grey Montgomery, preside ...

This is not just another transformation story. Thomas (formerly Thomas Publishing) has made a radical leap from directory publisher to becoming a "data platform company that runs like a software business focused on user experience."