Announcing Mumbrella Pro
Mumbrella has today launched Mumbrella Pro, an insights-led subscription offering which will be a sister product to Mumbrella’s regular output.
Mumbrella Pro offers subscribers access to a constantly growing library of video, audio and presentations from its portfolio of industry events including Mumbrella360, along with Australia’s most comprehensive database of brand-agency relationships.
Safe to assume speakers at Mumbrella events will now be paid given you clearly plan to commercialise their content on your new subscription platform?
If you don’t see a tangible upside for your business after speaking at events like this, you’re not doing it right. Going after the conference organisers for a commission on the distribution revenue would be a rounding error compared to what you should be making off the back of the talk
Thanks for the comment. At Mumbrella events, whether it is Mumbrella360 or any other event, we specifically ask the speakers whether they are comfortable with us posting the content from their presentation online.
If they say no, we respect that entirely and will not do it. There is no pressure involved, as I am sure any of our speakers will tell you. It’s a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer.
Speakers are not forced to speak at Mumbrella events and are not forced to share the content from the events either. But of those that do speak and share, the feedback is more often than not that they and their businesses get a lot out of sharing it in terms of feedback, relationships and potential business opportunities.
Damian – Mumbrella
There’s a bit of a difference though between posting it up online for all to see, and monetising it behind a paywall for all eternity (or at least the foreseeable future).
The presenters might give their permission, but it still doesn’t sit right with me personally.
Did you speak?
So what you’re saying is that your events are essentially opportunities for speakers to promote their business. Like [Edited under Mumbrella’s community guidelines]’s pumping of his banking ability, or lack thereof, the other day?
And you want people to pay for that pleasure?
“you’ll get paid in exposure”
Whilst Mumbrella gets paid in…
– Conference ticket sales
– Event sponsorship sales
– Monetising page views on stories from the event
– Mumbrella Pro subs
When our kitchen staff choose to work on terms we lay out we’re accused of wage theft!
I’d wondered where Dr Mumbo had gone – now I know!
Has Mumbrella just jumped the shark?
I understand being invited to speak at a paid event is an opportunity to promote myself and business but to then put what I say behind a paywall and profit further from it leaves me rather uncomfortable.
Watch what happens next, I bet speakers will have to sign away their rights to any content produced at events.
Getting paid to speak at an event …….somebody hasn’t get the memo on how these events work these days.
Brands pay to speak via sponsorship, take last weeks mumbo finance chinwag as an example. All the sponsors had speaking spots.
Indeed, some charmingly naive comments on this thread!
Let’s all agree to stop taking at mumbrella events until we are paid. Although, judging by the quality of the last event I got take to by my clients it seems like that everyone with anything interesting to say already had that policy in place.
Hi TAOA,
Thanks for the feedback. Are you honestly sure your clients took you? And does that plural mean different clients took you more than once? Generally the dynamic would involve you taking your client, rather than clients taking you. Still, it’s your story so let’s go with it. I hope you sent them a thank you note.
However, as you’d be aware if you attend our events (which you obviously do, don’t you?), we constantly seek feedback through the day via the ratings system on our event app. As you’d no doubt know, what with you absolutely having been at our events, those scores are transparent to the attendees. And they’re almost always quite strong. We invest quite a lot of journalistic resource in trying to get the right speakers.
Given that you use the phrase “we” in connection with Mumbrella speakers, feel free to drop me a line, by the way, and I’ll tell you how you rated when you spoke, which I’m sure you did.
And if a session doesn’t work, our curators examine the reasons why, and if that means not inviting somebody back, then so be it. And no, sponsors don’t get to speak in our curated sessions. It would make our sales team’s job a lot easier if they could.
But on the wider issue. Let’s be clear. I suspect that most people who read Mumbrella work for businesses which seek to make profits. That’s how they continue to offer the service they do to the industry. If you do have an issue with capitalism, you may be in the wrong industry.
I see that in the past you’ve taken the opportunity to read our free content and comment on it. In Mumbrella’s case no single revenue stream pays for our journalism. We carry ads on the website and on our news emails; We organise conferences where people may buy tickets to attend or to sponsor; We organise the Mumbrella Awards (among others) that people pay to enter.
And yes, we invite people to subscribe to The Source, which has now been widened to Mumbrella Pro and expanded to carry content from our events. Our hope and belief is that the business benefit of subscribing will far outweigh the cost of doing so.
On the question of who gets paid at our events, there is often a value exchange. Those who we invite to speak (although often, they pitch Damian and his team rather than the other way round, by the way) do so because they see value in the opportunity to raise awareness of potential customers in their expertise. Showing that you know what you’re talking about in a public forum generates business. That’s why they do it.
Most of those speaking are doing it as part of their day job, and being paid by their employer to represent them, including in public.
But there have also been times when we’ve formed the view that a speaker (usually from overseas) who is independent will sell enough additional tickets to make it viable for us to pay her or him a fee and their travel costs.
But you know who gets paid every time? The people in the room doing the filming. The video editors. The people on the registration desk. The AV experts on the sound and video desks. The venue staff. The set builders. The curation team. The event management team. The team of researchers who update the Mumbrella pro database. Our marketing team. The web development team who built Mumbrella Pro.
Catchup content sitting behind a subscriber wall is also nothing new, by the way. The Cannes Lions and Advertising Week are among the other organisers who already do this.
I’ll be writing more about the story behind The Source and Mumbrella Pro in Best of the Week on Saturday. You’ll be able to read it by subscribing to that free email, or indeed to Mumbrella Pro.
In the meantime, if you’ve got the appetite for it, I wrote a piece six years ago on why I make no apologies for Mumbrella having a business model. You can read it here – https://staging.mumbrella.com.au/why-i-make-no-apologies-for-having-a-business-model-167138
I stand by every word.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
TAOA trying to start an anti mumbrella movement on mumbrella… good luck with that!
I wonder if this is Mumbrella’s corporate parent trying to monetize everything?
Having said that. If you didn’t make 360 (a great event) or many of the niche events, some certainly hold value and quality debate; Then this could have legs. $79 per month!!!??? My YouTube premium is $11.99. Most speakers on the scene post their own content and get their messages / point of view across via their blog / YouTube channel / other events / Linkedin.
$79 per month!!!!!! Hmmmm????? Not for me.
Thanks Mumbrella, The Source has always been an invaluable tool for connecting with the right people at the right time. Now it’s cheaper than before, AND includes richer content. Sad to see the negative comments, you’ve got my support!
The Source was unusable (& still is with Mumbrella Pro) – being sales, there is no relevant information there.
The scope of information (brands & associated media agency) is incredibly thin apart from a few categories like FMCG & Retail.
Even a lot of the agency client lists are out of date.
Some agencies don’t even have clients listed (Ikon for eg)
I’ve trialled The Source many times over the past few years and was always disappointed.
I don’t get who it is for, apart from a very generic directory listing with nothing more. Prospector (which is also very bad) is a much better solution.
Thanks for trialling The Source previously and it sounds like you’ve trialled Mumbrella Pro, so thanks for that as well.
You’re right – The Source was not updated as it should have been previously. If you read Tim’s Best of the Week tomorrow, it will give you some pretty interesting insight into The Source as a business and the thought process behind Mumbrella Pro.
It will respond to some of the points you have made.
With Mumbrella Pro, we are putting a lot of effort into taking what was The Source, making it more user-friendly and getting it right up-to-date.
Blanks will be filled and inaccuracies corrected. We’ve also put in a button for you to directly report any inaccuracies.
Thanks,
Damian – Mumbrella
I’ll bet you $79 a month that none of the above have spoken at an event!
Whenever I hear people demanding that you pay for speakers to speak at your event, I always want to ask them – how much should they be paid? What would be a fair price for say a 20 min pres and attending an event that runs for 2 hours?
If you get senior people speaking, then if you ACTUALLY paid them their hourly rate, so say (for example) the have an hourly rate of $250. So you need to pay them $500 for their time on the night, and, what, maybe a decent 20 min pres would likely take them a day?
So, is $2k a ‘fair’ speaking price???
So, say you’ve got 4 speakers and a venue (that costs $1k to hire btw) that holds 90 people (of which you’ll lose at least 15 to comps)
Without anything else (marketing, drinks, taxis, AV, security etc etc) you need to charge $125 a ticket for a 2 hour event?
Yeah, nah, not going to work.
People speak for things that are of value to them – eg profile, rep, connections, kudos and new biz!
Too funny.