11:15 – 12:15 PM Concurrent Sessions (Breakouts)

Revenue Mining: What it Takes to Grow Your Territory with Margo Bock
This indispensable session will help you succeed at the publishing industry’s greatest challenge: making more money. Media advertising veteran Margo Bock shares techniques that will help you uncover new sources of advertising revenue, and essential tips for creating integrated packages that upsell your existing clients and keep your funnel full of quality opportunities. Find out why integrated marketing creates far greater impact than the sum of its assets. Explore how different platforms and teams can work together to forge a robust connection with the audience, creating value for your advertiser, your audience and your content teams — while keeping your integrity intact.

Margo Bock has created integrated campaigns for every type of client — from Rolaids to Rolex — during her 20-year media advertising industry career. At Transcontinental Media, she served as Sales Director for the Home and Garden Group, including Style at Home, Canadian Gardening, Western Living and Vancouver magazine. As Integrated Sales Director, she worked on all Transcontinental print, digital, direct and POP offerings including Canadian Living, Elle Canada, Hockey News and French language publications. Since leaving Transcontinental in 2012, Margo has worked with Cineplex Media, and currently has her own consulting practice for Canadian content publishers. She also works as a Consultant with Magazines Canada for Advertising Sales Strategy , a Professor in the School of Marketing at Seneca College, and in National Sales for Everything Podcasts.

Channelling Success: A Newsletter Strategy That Grows Audience Engagement and Revenue with Michelle Kelly
In this session, Michelle Kelly of Cottage Life/Blu Ant Media will share how their brand has grown digital audience engagement  by identifying content categories suited for growing into popular standalone newsletters. As the number of newsletters grew, so did audience and revenue. You’ll learn how to match sponsors with content type, how to mine your archive for email signup incentives, and how to plan and create content for your website and newsletter that will get your audience clicking past preview.

Michelle Kelly started her career in publishing in 1998, as the receptionist at Cottage Life. Since then, she has held various positions in the editorial department at the magazine until she was named editor in chief in July 2015 and Vice President, Content, Cottage Life in September 2019. She’s a member of the Professional Advisory Committee for Centennial College in Toronto, and is also the recipient of several Canadian National Magazine Awards and Editors’ Choice Awards from the Canadian Society of Magazine Editors. Outside of work, Michelle sits on the board of Ready, Set, Play, a non-profit group that helps provide Toronto youth access to organized sports.

INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING: THE NON-FICTION FAIRY TALE WITH MICHAEL LISTA
Good investigative reporting is about more than presenting information. It’s about creating compelling fairy tales — ones that stand up to fact checkers and lawyers. In this session, Michael shares his techniques for telling stories about bureaucracies, policies and systems that are grounded in human feeling. Michael walks you through the writing process that produced his most effective stories, from first phone calls and final turns of phrase to reading Shakespeare and Gay Talese.

Michael Lista is an investigative journalist, literary critic and poet. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Slate, Poetry Magazine, The Walrus and Toronto Life, where he is a contributing editor. He has worked as a books columnist for the National Post and as the poetry editor of The Walrus. He is the author of three books, and his first, Bloom, was a Quill & Quire Book of the Year. He was the 2017 Margaret Laurence Fellow at Trent University. He has been nominated for National Magazine Awards in the Investigative Journalism, Profile, and Poetry categories, and has been shortlisted for the Allan Slaight Prize for Journalism and the KM Hunter Award.He lives in Toronto, where he’s working on a new book about the cultural history of men crying.

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