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Seven Months After Leaving Penton, Shanfelt Finds New Home At Aspire
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Bryan Wassel & Jeremy Greenfield

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CEO Clay Hall announced today the creation of a new position for Aspire Media, a publisher of enthusiast magazines, and Interweave Press, a unit of Aspire specializing in publications about crafts. The position is executive vice president of eMedia, and will be filled by former senior vice president of eMedia for Penton, Eric Shanfelt.

The position, effective November 1, will charge Shanfelt with expanding Aspire’s brands online, particularly to help grow integrated businesses for Interweave Press and its two online communities, KnittingDaily.com and BeadingDaily.com.

Shanfelt will continue to publish his blog at eMediaStrategist.com, but will cease operations of the consulting business he founded, eMedia Strategist, after leaving Penton last March. At Aspire, he will be rejoining T.J. Harty, vice president of technology, a former colleague from Penton.

Shanfelt left Penton in March 2007 after the company merged with Prism. There was some discussion over whether Prescott Shibles or Shanfelt would head the new Penton's eMedia efforts; Shibles is currently doing the job.

A Brief Interview with Eric

minonline: Why did you decide to end your freelance career and take a permanent position?

Eric: In the six months since I left Penton, I have thoroughly enjoyed consuting with many great media companies--both B2B and consumer--and hopefully I've been instrumental in helping build their online media businesses. However, I have missed the operating side and being part of a great team. Aspire was one of the companies that I consulted with and while working with them I was very impressed by the vision of CEO Clay Hall, the quality of the investment team, the quality of the brands, and the talent and passion of everyone that I met there. Clay has also assembled an amazing, all-star management team that I am proud to be associated with. This is a company moving in the right direction with a lot of opportunities before it.

minonline: What was the structure in terms of eMedia development/sales/etc before you got there? What are you going to change it to?

Eric: Aspire is relatively new to online media, but is rapidly growing there...and their audiences are very passionate about it! Aspire has already assembled the core of a great eMedia team and is getting all of the right people in the organization involved. Like any other media company, utlimately it will require the engagement of the entire organization and they're already well on their way. I'm also thrilled to be reuniting with TJ Harty, the VP of Technology at Aspire, who was my partner in crime at Penton and the driving force behind implementing most of the eMedia initiatives we developed there. One thing I can say for sure is that Aspire's online media will continue to grow rapidly and we'll adjust as needed to tackle the opportunities.

minonline: How are you going to apply the principles of B2B media to enthusiast media?

Eric: Obviously there are differences between enthusiast media and B2B: a good portion of the revenues come from readers, and there is a different advertising value proposition because of the difference in buying power represented by B2B and consumer readers. There is also more of a focus on ecommerce--sales of our own products--than in B2B media. In enthusiast media, the media company is just as much an advertiser as your advertisers are. That being said, the fundamentals of online media remain the same. You must develop a great content product online (even more so when people are paying for it) leveraging editorial, community, advertiser content, etc., you must enable that content with great technology, you must develop a targeted and passionate audience, you must package and price your deliverables to readers and advertisers properly, you must effectively sell through direct maketing techniques with the readers and through relationship selling with advertisers, and you must effectively fulfill on your promises and support your products. By the way, I will continue writing my blog at eMediaStrategist.com and will be releasing the "Media Executive's Guide to Rapidly Growing Online Traffic and Revenue" in November.

Double BTW: Shanfelt tells us that he will continue to be a regular contributor to min's b2b.

If you have any breaking news please contact Amy Novak at anovak@accessintel.com

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