How a Column on Happiness Inspired The Atlantic's 2021 Event Strategy

Starting a regular column at the beginning of a pandemic about how to find happiness is a pretty sure bet. What The Atlantic didn’t expect was how it would pave the way for its approach to virtual events in 2021. The Atlantic’s How to Build a Life column by author Arthur Brooks, launched in April 2020, is going from biweekly to weekly on Jan. 21 after audiences craved more ways to build resilience and happiness. (The Atlantic declined to share specific reader metrics.) In May, the magazine will host an event based on Brooks’ column about the pursuit of happiness with a lens on resilience and recovery, covering topics like mental health, spirituality and love. It's the first of 20 planned virtual events in the first half of the year themed to "journalism that helps audiences navigate how pillars of society have been changed by pandemic or policy," according to the publisher. “Brands are gravitating to those types of conversations: the world and society today, the future of work, healthcare,” said chief revenue officer and publisher Hayley Romer, adding that there’s a stronger appetite now for brands to work with The Atlantic on topics previously thought of as controversial, like workplace inequality or racial injustice. “Being part of the relevant conversation, that is what’s important to them.” The lower barrier to entry in creating virtual events has also made it easier for the publisher to take popular editorial topics and spin them into digital gatherings, and brands are keen to get involved. Scale no hotel ballroom can match Publishers are figuring out how to finance events businesses in 2021 after pivoting to virtual when the pandemic hit last March, decimating, in some cases, up to a third of publisher revenues. While the economics of in-person events are different—there are no swanky ballrooms to reserve—the revenue is often lower, but the potential audience pool greater. Experimentation into how to effectively monetize virtual events is rife. How Nascar Got Quarantined Fans to Tune Into Virtual Races All options are on the table for The Atlantic, including brand sponsorships, ticketed events and subscriber-only events. In 2019, The Atlantic hosted about 140 in-person events; the revenue generated accounted for roughly 20% of the publisher’s total. In 2021, it expects events to make up roughly 15% of its total advertising revenue. The Atlantic wouldn’t share exact numbers, but virtual events, despite their higher margins, are not enough to mitigate the significant drop in revenue when in-person events disappeared. On the plus side, The Atlantic has grown virtual attendance by 50% year-over-year. People familiar with the publisher said its flagship Atlantic Live Festival had 3,000 in-person attendees in 2019. It also transitioned a number of brands sponsoring in-person events to the virtual versions, like software as a service company Salesforce. To spearhead its digital efforts, The Atlantic hired Candace Montgomery as general manager and svp of events. In May, the publisher laid off 68 employees (17% of staff) across its events, sales and editorial teams. Now, it has a team of 10 running event management, audience, marketing and editorial, and works with another 20 people across sales, marketing, product and edit. “We don’t intend to put everything we did live into virtual events,” Montgomery said. “They are uniquely different. We will focus on how to make them unique and meaningful in 2021 and beyond.” In December, the publisher hosted Assembling an Administration, which focused on President-elect Joe Biden's transition to the White House. The event was underwritten by management consultancy BCG, which is also working with the publisher to create a custom podcast focused on similar issues. It’s also creating a resource for government leaders during a time of transition, where BCG is adding its own expertise to the conversation. "Events have been part of [publishers'] experimentation [to diversify], as they are a natural extension of publishers' brand and content," said senior media analyst Alice Pickthall at Enders Analysis. Subscribers attend events Like other publishers, subscriptions have been a boon for The Atlantic in a difficult year, growing to 400,000 in 2020 after launching a paywall in September 2019. Popular pieces like its scoop on President Donald Trump repeatedly denigrating American soldiers who died in combat and in-depth coronavirus reporting have boosted its audience and brand. In terms of readership, The Atlantic notched 36 million monthly unique users last November, up from 25.8 million in 2019, according to Comscore. Now, it's working out how events factor into its subscription model. Just under 50% of its virtual Atlantic Festival registrants were subscribers. Of those, about a quarter had subscribed leading up to or during the festival, the publisher said. For virtual events, a lot of questions remain. According to Adweek research, nine out of 10 respondents anticipate in-person events to return no sooner than in six months' time. The Atlantic Festival in September is currently billed as a virtual event. Others are more optimistic—as Adweek first reported Tuesday, Cannes Lions is planning to host its annual gathering in-person in June. The biggest obstacle is the ability to plan a healthy gathering, with 55% of event professionals citing safety concerns as the most important obstacle to planning in-person events, according to EventMD. For The Atlantic, it's still working out what hybrid virtual and digital events will look like. "Virtual events play a critical role in expressing our journalism moving forward," said Romer, adding that the events team is closely working with the broader marketing, sales, growth and product teams, “to leverage all of The Atlantic's resources to prioritize events to make sure they are profitable to the organization.”