Why Forbes sees a platform approach building its brand, not diluting it
For a 97-year-old magazine publisher, Forbes is no shrinking violet, reports Digiday. It has gone all-in on a platform strategy that’s thrown open its site to 1,200 contributors to post directly their own articles, as well as advertisers under its four-year-old native-ad programme.
To its critics, these moves spell the death knell of a storied brand. Columnist Michael Wolff recently called Forbes “an obvious fraud,” adding, “It is not a magazine or editorial operation at all. It is just, in effect, a user comment site that allows commenters the pretense of saying they have written for Forbes.” But to Forbes president and CEO Mike Perlis (pictured) this is simply the evolution of a nearly 100-year-old startup.
“We think the opposite is true,” Perlis said at the Digiday Publishing Summit in Vail, Colo. “The ability for people to be content creators is so incredibly powerful.”
