Shhh – The Word On Wall Street Is Out About Us

By Rob Wright, Chief Editor, Life Science Leader
Follow Me On Twitter @RfwrightLSL

By Rob Wright

When I recently returned from one of my many business trips, I did the first thing I normally do — I checked my voicemail messages and began following up. One voicemail about a radio show really got my attention. Curious, I called and had an interesting conversation with Dale Jackson, a 30+ years Wall Street veteran.

Jackson has worked for four of America’s largest broadcasting networks: CBS, ABC/Disney, PBS, and CNN. He currently has a weekly radio program, Money On The Mark, and something else called the Corporate Profile Minute. Regarding the latter, Jackson gave me a quick course in how public companies spend investor relation (IR) dollars. He explained that the Corporate Profile Minute is an IR tool suited for smaller companies to educate potential investors about their business, though larger companies have used it as well. So why was Jackson, who’s program is featured on the award-winning Larry Kudlow Show, the third most syndicated radio show in the U.S., appearing on nearly 500 stations, calling the chief editor of Life Science Leader magazine? According to Jackson, the word on Wall Street is that we have the audience — an audience he would like to reach.

Must Be Doing Something Right
When I asked Jackson about how he had heard about Life Science Leader he informed me that he had been asking a number of executives in the pharmaceutical and biotech industries which publication they read. What publication truly had a management level audience? The consistent response he received was Life Science Leader. Okay, so I am not surprised by this response. I mean we are BPA audited annually, a service we pay for to demonstrate that we actually have the amount of readers we say we have, in the industry we say we do, with management level titles we say they hold. Why is this important? Because advertisers have a target audience they would like to reach. If you are unfamiliar with BPA Worldwide, think of it this way, it is like the FDA of the magazine industry. What is surprising to me is that I am being called from someone on Wall Street, with a radio program that reaches 98% of the U.S. population, who is interested in reaching our audience of 25,000 subscribers (to the U.S. print edition), and about 50,000 who read Life Science Leader digitally. (You can verify those numbers here - http://www.lifescienceleader.com/advertising/our-audience.)  The bottom line is this — when someone like Dale Jackson tells you he wants to do business, obviously you must be doing something right.

It’s The Editorial
I once had the privilege to see General Norman Schwarzkopf give a speech in Pittsburgh, PA. It was shortly after he had retired. He shared some stories from his U.S. Army experience, including the challenges faced in serving as the commander of the Coalition Forces in the Gulf War of 1991. One of his guiding principles — he referred to it as a rule —  is “Do what is right. Have strength of character, a prerequisite to having the courage to do the right thing.” For us at Life Science Leader, doing the right thing means producing editorial that our readers value. That means best business practice editorial with actionable information. I recently had a reader tell me how much he enjoys the magazine. When asked why, he stated “I always learn something.” Now, I bet we could sell a lot more ads, at least initially, if we produced advertorial editorial. Unfortunately, this would be a short-term gain destined to result in the long-term loss of our readers — the primary reason the company thought us worthy of advertising with in the first place, and why Dale Jackson decided to pick up the phone. Sometimes you have to have the moral courage to do the right thing. Since producing editorial our readers’ value is what got Wall Street talking about us in the first place, you can count on us to take this same approach going forward. In the meantime, if you want to learn more about Dale Jackson and his IR tool, check out http://corporateprofileminute.com/.