Rory Brown, co-founder and CEO of AgriBriefing, doesn’t see his company as a traditional publisher. “Increasingly”, he says, “we see ourselves as part of that industry rather than being a media company reporting on the space.”
AgriBriefing describes itself as “the leading provider of premium independent price reporting, market data, consulting, analytics and intelligence for the global agri-commodity and food sectors.”
Many of its services are embedded into their clients’ workflows, providing information that has a direct bearing on the bottom line.
“Take the protein market for example that we cover extensively in the US, primarily through our Urner Barry division,” says Rory; “When McDonald’s buys their hamburger meat or KFC buys their chicken wings, that’s a very significant part of their spend and if they don’t know what the underlying price is or haven’t got a heads up that there might be a cheaper or better quality source somewhere else or that exchange rates are moving so it makes it more efficient to buy from Australia rather than Brazil, then that company is not working efficiently…”
“When they agree a contract to buy some products, they will do that on the basis of our benchmarks and our prices and these get written into contracts. When you do that, it is very hard to then disentangle yourself from those suppliers… In these cases, we really are part of the way the industry operates; we are not just a third party information service providing news and commentary. We are actually part of the infrastructure of the way the industry trades, purchases and sells and that’s a very very powerful place to be.”
AgriBriefing was formed in 2012 with the acquisition of Farmers Guardian from UBM. Since then, the company has grown rapidly by acquiring specialist companies in the pricing sector, such as Urner Barry in the US and Stratégie Grains in France. Over time, it became clear to Rory that the main opportunity for the business lay in the commodity-pricing space, so, last August, they took the difficult decision to sell Farmers Guardian and associated assets. This was, said Rory at the time, a “bittersweet moment” because the brand was the “original pillar around which we have built our company”.
But, the future for the company looks bright.
“We employ 150 people – mainly in the UK, US and France and will have somewhere between US$30-US$35m of annual renewable revenues by the end of this year. We are on our third iteration of private equity ownership and believe there is a massive opportunity to build the equivalent of Argus, S&P / IHS, Bloomberg of our sector.”
In some ways, where AgriBriefing is now as a business is Rory Brown returning to his publishing roots. His first publishing role was as head of direct marketing at Metal Bulletin, a price reporting agency. One big difference was that back then, price reporting was seen as unglamorous, but now, with most B2B outfits looking for ways to become the must-have data source in their sector and be embedded in their customers’ workflows, it’s where the big money is.
Rory has worked in senior positions in B2B publishing since the early 90s and has learnt lots along the way about what works and what doesn’t work in the world of publishing.
In his recent podcast interview with InPublishing, he talked about what it takes to be a successful publisher. Here are ten of his tips, paraphrased by me:
- Be user-first, platform-second: work out what your audience needs and then how best to deliver it; not vice versa.
- Study what happens immediately before and after a user uses your service. This will enable you to fine tune and possibly extend your offering.
- Be trustworthy. Trust is king, especially in the commodity pricing market AgriBriefing now operates in.
- Stay close to your customers.
- Understand their pain points: success in B2B is usually about helping your audience do their jobs better.
- Create a culture of continual improvement: you should be getting better and better at everything you do.
- Be ruthless about what not to do. Good strategy is as much about what you don’t do, as what you do do.
- Try and get ahead of your customers: being able to offer them things they don't yet know they need is a powerful place to be.
- Be a must-have: a good way of working out whether you are or not is by posing the question: Would our customers miss us if our service was down for an hour?
- Be a magpie: go off and collect good ideas; learn from the success of others, network with new up and coming businesses, be open and listen … and then apply what you’ve learnt to your own business.
I think it’s safe to say that most top performing B2B publishers will be practicing most, if not all, of these tips.
We are actually part of the infrastructure of the way the industry trades, purchases and sells and that’s a very very powerful place to be.
You can hear Rory Brown being interviewed by James Evelegh on a recent episode of The InPublishing Podcast, which was sponsored by Air Business, a leading supplier of distribution and subscription management services.
This article was first published in InPublishing magazine. If you would like to be added to the free mailing list, please register here.
