Amrit Baidwan is just three months into her new role as general manager, digital publishing UK at Bauer Media Group, and she is buzzing with enthusiasm.
She explains that she has been brought in to support the “big, bold digital ambitions” of the business, and has spent her first few weeks meeting the teams and getting to know how everything works.
Bauer has invested in a new technology platform, TONI OS, designed to leverage the power of AI to support the journalism of its wide portfolio of brands, ranging from celebrity titles Grazia, Heat and Closer, to entertainment heavyweights Empire and Mojo, taking in a host of specialist titles from the Angling Times to MCN and Today’s Golfer.
A large part of Amrit’s role is to help the teams navigate the potential for innovation in this brave new world. Rather than something to fear, she firmly believes AI will open opportunities for their consumers as well as their commercial clients and help to increase their reach.
She talks about investing in an eco-system of brands and adopting a flexible way of thinking rather than a one size fits all approach. “The breadth of portfolio gives us a lot of flexibility in the digital ambition, because you can do very different things with different brands, and truly experiment,” she says.
Environment for innovation
Experimentation is at the heart of the approach she wants teams to embrace. “I’m using the word experimentation in a considered and thoughtful way because it’s more than just about testing something. What we’re trying to do is create the environment for innovation and it’s about creating a culture for growth and unlocking new ways of thinking,” she says.
In a fast-moving digital landscape where there is constant volatility and change, she believes there is a need to experiment more, push the boundaries, ask hard questions and be prepared to fail sometimes. The way Bauer is approaching this as a business is to set some guardrails for each brand, then within those try lots of different small innovations rather than an over-arching execution.
“With all the recent changes in digital, there is no certainty that what worked yesterday or even last week, will work tomorrow. If we want to make something better, or try something different, what could that look like?” she asks.
As a business, Bauer’s way of thinking is that AI is not a choice, it is here whether we like it or not, so we might as well embrace it and harness the opportunities. “The future of media will be driven by and determined by people who adapt fast to AI, who see it as an opportunity and try and unlock its full potential. That’s the way we’re approaching it as a business as a whole,” says Amrit.
Each team will have an AI champion, someone they already know who is learning about what’s available at an accelerated pace so they can provide clear communication and training about the new technology. Some of Bauer’s German sites have already migrated to the new AI-first platform and the ambition is that the UK portfolio will follow.
Amrit explains: “It’s a mindset shift to begin with, everybody thinking differently and being open-minded about what the opportunity is here with AI. That it’s something we embrace and want to adopt, not that we should be afraid of.”
She believes that while channels and platforms are ever evolving, what remains consistent is strong brands that lead with trust and expertise and connect with consumers, while delivering to clients. Whether it is print magazines, websites, social, or podcasts, what is important is producing quality content that informs, engages, and resonates with audiences. “We shouldn’t expect the landscape to stand still now, the waves will continue. It’s not about where you show up, but how you’re showing up in all those different places.”
She is clear that AI should never replace human judgement when it comes to journalism. Where it can have value is in taking over some of the monotonous workload, empowering teams to have more time to be creative and think about what content and platforms they would like to experiment with. It can also help to make good data-informed decisions, whether that’s about audiences, competitors, or gather other insights.
“The approach that AI is replacing human judgement isn’t the right way to think about it, because there’s always going to be a place where the editor decides elements like the tone, the style. It would be wonderful for many editors to have something that automates the data or the other things they need to do so they can access the information in an easier way,” she says.
How to be found
However, she admits that the publishing industry is facing a challenge around discoverability, and with AI overviews summarising information and sometimes making mistakes. “With the brands that we have, it’s really frustrating because you can see we have the expertise here and we wish we had that audience coming directly to us.”
Amrit’s background is in automotive publishing — she previously spent nearly five years at Carwow and Autovia rising to become global media operations & audience director and before that she was the publishing manager of Dennis Publishing’s nine automotive brands — and it remains a category close to her heart. Her deep understanding of the industry is even more impressive considering that when she joined Dennis, she didn’t even have a driving licence. One of the draws of Bauer UK was its automotive titles including Parkers and Car, as well as the opportunity to expand her remit into new sectors such as fashion and entertainment.
Even though she is excited about the potential of AI, her in-depth appreciation of how consumers engage with automotive titles and seeing how this has been impacted, shows she also recognises the challenges. “If you’re buying a car, the research phase is long, you’re going to go to numerous expert sources. Often, a car is the second biggest purchase you’re ever going to make after your home. Would an AI overview really give a consumer all the information and confidence that they’re looking for? We are seeing different categories being affected in different ways, but that’s where I think some of the hesitancy and the nervousness comes because we can see it impacting many publishers in the digital landscape in a negative way,” she says.
On a more optimistic note, she adds: “I think it’s really important therefore to work with associations and industry bodies as a group of publishers to understand what the trends are, what we can do about it and working collectively together to find a solution.”
In an age when the wisdom of only concentrating on your SEO strategy and the audiences will come is no longer working, she believes the best response is to have real confidence in your brand proposition as a whole and the value exchange you have with consumers across the board rather than focusing just on the website, or just on social. The ideal situation for a brand is “wherever consumers are they’ll be able to look for you and you know that you’ll reach them and provide them with the content they need at that moment”.
Serving up the right ad products
As well as spearheading digital change, in her new role she is responsible for the commercial operations of the business. She is hands on in making sure the ad products they are taking to market are right for both consumers and clients. It helps that she started off as a sales executive at Dennis Publishing at a time when data analysis was becoming increasingly important to clients, and this is something she has carried with her. “We’ve always got to remember that we cater for two customers — our audiences and our advertisers, and we’ve got to get the balance right between the two of them. That’s the part of publishing that I grew up in. You can have amazing ad products, but if they don’t perform because they don’t resonate with audiences then you’re missing a trick. Alternatively, you can have seamless user experiences, but if we’re not able to monetise them then that’s not sustainable either.”
The new platform will allow audiences to navigate around and find what they are looking for with ease, while also unlocking easier workflows for their teams. A large part of her ambition for her first year in the job is to help roll the new platform out across the UK titles. Her second big hope is to lay solid foundations for digital growth. “If I look back and the teams say to me next year, ‘I felt really empowered to try new things and therefore we did all these things and recognise that even if some didn’t work, some of them worked and really delivered and paid off,’ I would be really proud of that,” she says. Her leadership style is collaborative, and she wants to foster an environment where everyone can take creative risks without fear of failure.
Establishing a rhythm
As a senior female executive with three young children, another subject she spends a lot of time talking about in the business is how to support women into leadership positions, and how to support parents in general. “I’m conscious that I want to be as transparent as possible and an authentic leader about how hard it is and that it can be a juggle with three kids,” she says. After flying back from one of her regular trips to Bauer HQ in Hamburg to a house full of sick kids recently, she realised that rather than leaders talking about striving for balance between career and family, which is often unattainable, it is more helpful to think about finding the rhythm. “Some weeks, I feel like I’m thriving and incredibly focused at work, energised, delivering with impact, then other weeks, I’m conscious that I need to be much more patient and emotionally available for my children. The honest thing is that you’re probably very rarely doing both amazingly at the same time. I liked the word ‘rhythm’ rather than ‘balance’ because I felt it wasn’t as structured and wasn’t seeking perfection.”
This article was first published in InPublishing magazine. If you would like to be added to the free mailing list to receive the magazine, please register here.
