Morning Brew's B2B strategy

New Yorkers, help me settle a geographical debate about Puck’s office. It is south of the World Trade Center, west of Broadway. Is this “South Tribeca” or FiDi? 

This week:

• I had new Morning Brew CEO Robert Dippell on The Rebooting Show to discuss Morning Brew's bet on B2B and other growth initiatives
• New research from The Rebooting and Omeda show that publishers continue to struggle with siloed data
• On PvA: AI will widen the gap between the good and bad students

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How Morning Brew moved into B2B

I found over the years that the consumer media executives I spoke to operated in a vastly different industry than the one I did. We never discussed ComScore, platform strategies and even rarely CPMs. Instead, the focus was on winning at email, events and lead generation. 

I find the worlds of B2B and B2C have moved closer together than ever before. Consumer publishers are focused on intentional audiences and audience segmentation, close ties, business models not overly dependent on ads and niche audiences. But there are still nuances to B2B that have historically made it difficult for consumer publishers to expand into B2B media.

Morning Brew is an exception. It has spawned 7 B2B media offshoots from its general business newsletter, in industries like marketing, tech and healthcare. There’s an eighth coming soon. It has done so with a good starting point: the mothership newsletter has 4.2 million subscribers. Those can then be filtered into B2B verticals. A subscriber to the Morning Brew newsletter suddenly becomes far more valuable if they are identified as a marketing executive and filtered into Marketing Brew.  

On this week’s episode of The Rebooting Show, I spoke to Robert Dippell, who was recently elevated to the top slot after Morning Brew co-founder Austin Rief concluded his decade-long run at the Axel Springer-owned company he founded with Alex Lieberman while still students at The University of Michigan. Robert has an interesting background for the job, since his career has a lot of B2B media experience at companies like Bisnow and Omeda, the audience data platform (and TRB partner) that has a strong base in B2B.

That leads to a B2B reality check: 

• The volume playbooks are useless. If you’re selling access to decision-makers in a specific industry, you don’t need millions of people; you need the right people. In fact, a go-to method of building B2B media properties is to zero in on job titles.
• Sellers can’t be transactional. Much of consumer publishing has involved chasing RFPs. B2B is a relationship-driven process that requires ongoing conversations, not just responding to RFPs.
• You need receipts.  B2B advertisers don’t just want ad impressions; they want engagement and leads. A big number doesn’t matter if it’s not the right people.
• The audience needs to take actions. Passive audiences aren’t nearly as valuable compared to audiences that take actions like downloading reports and guides (or research), and attending an event. B2B marketers are extensions of sales teams; you have to metabolize their sales pipelines.
• Editorial needs to be action oriented. Writing for a audience is different from writing for a specific professional niche. The editorial has to be actionable, not just interesting. It has to help people do their jobs better.

“Consumer publishers assume that if you have a really good consumer sales team, they can just magically understand how to penetrate B2B verticals and sell into them,” Robert told me. “And that your team can build ad products and have enough first-party data to make those products effective. It doesn’t work like that.”

B2B might not have the sizzle of a consumer brand with millions of followers, but these businesses have a lot of the characteristics that are common in sustainable media companies in the current environment. At Morning Brew, the B2B business is not yet the majority of the business but it could be someday, Robert said. “That would be exciting, because I think the rest of the business would still be stable as well.”

Other topics we addressed:

• Morning Brew’s expansion beyond newsletters. Morning Brew may have started as a newsletter company, but it’s evolved into a multi-platform media brand with podcasts, video, events, and new content verticals. “It’s very much an ‘and’ not an ‘or’—the newsletter business is still huge, but we’ve expanded into other areas to deepen engagement.”
• The “faces and franchises” creator strategy. As Morning Brew moves into video and social, they’re balancing the power of individual personalities with long-term brand value. “We’re giving creators their own shows, but making sure they exist within franchises that can stand on their own.”
• Why Morning Brew hasn’t focused on subscriptions. Despite being a business publication, Morning Brew hasn’t leaned into paid subscriptions the way others have. “We have a highly engaged audience, and we could go that route, but we want to make sure we’re actually providing new value if we do.”

Listen to The Rebooting Show

What’s working in audience development 

The shift to be audience-first sounds easy in theory, but is often messy in reality. The Rebooting’s latest research report, done in collaboration with Omeda, surveyed 100 publishing executives to examine the new audience development playbook.

Siloes and talent shortcomings were identified as the top hurdles to executing audience data strategies. Over half cited the issue of data silos and having the right staff. 

“We have a vast set of ways our audience can engage with us, and sometimes our data gets so granular that it turns to dust,” one survey respondent said. “A lot of times, no clear strategy comes from it.”

On People vs Algorithms, we discuss the nature of interface design in an AI-driven world, the challenges of media adaptation to AI, and the evolving skill sets required for executives and creators alike. Some highlights:

• The new UX of AI: AI-driven interfaces are changing how we interact with technology, moving beyond the screen to a blend of audio, prompts, and infinite canvases. Designers will need to rethink interaction models from the ground up.
• AI as a work partner: AI is already cutting research and content creation time greatly for those who know how to wield it. The good students get better, the bad students get lazier.
• The oral exam economy: The shift away from scripted media means that executives, politicians, and leaders must master live debate and real-time conversation. The ability to engage dynamically is overtaking the era of carefully managed talking points.
• Apple’s AI stumbles: Is Apple’s polished, closed ecosystem a liability in an era where AI thrives on experimentation and iteration? Their cautious approach might be falling behind the raw, exploratory nature of AI-driven companies.
• The future of AI and advertising: If AI assistants become the primary way we search, how will commerce and advertising adapt? Will paid recommendations undermine trust, or will new forms of affiliate-driven discovery emerge?

Watch on YouTube or listen on podcast platforms. 

Check out PvA Weekend for more on vibe coding, vibe writing and how franchise value in media is shrinking as more of media businesses move in the direction of arbitrage.

Send me feedback by hitting reply. Or email me at bmorrissey@therebooting.com.

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