As the latest stage in a career that has taken her from involvement in the launch of Radio 5 Live via the shaking-up of Magic FM to the reinvigoration of EMI UK, Andria Vidler’s move to Centaur Media seems somewhat out of character.
Yet Vidler insists the business information group, owner of trade magazines including Marketing Week, the Lawyer, Creative Review and the Engineer, is as exciting as any of her previous challenges for one key reason: unrealised potential. “Magic wasn’t sexy when I walked in and EMI was seen as a poison chalice when I started,” she says. “I like taking on sleeping giants or businesses with real potential. Letting them make the most of themselves. You walk into businesses that are less sexy and you leave them looking much sexier.”
Vidler certainly had her work cut out when she joined last November. Struggling Centaur had effectively been leaderless for six months after long-standing chief executive Geoff Wilmot was ousted on the back of a profits warning. She inherited a pre-tax loss of £37.4m in the year to the end of June 2013, as revenues stagnated and by year end debt had spiralled to £27m. “It was quite a challenging time,” she recalls. “I was expecting the business to be fairly demotivated, it had been a tough 12-month period. But I’ve walked into situations like that before, that sort of challenge doesn’t usually worry me.”
Vidler was instrumental at her previous employer EMI Music UK, home to acts including Coldplay and the Beatles, in helping the demoralised, debt-laden business amp up its price to £1.2bn in the sale to its rival Universal Music. Her forthright management style is credited with helping to coax deals from the reclusive Kate Bush and the combative Pink Floyd, as well as launching the hugely successful Scottish singer-songwriter Emeli Sandé.
“Money doesn’t solve all problems,” she responds when questioned about how she pulled off the deals when much larger rivals had failed. During her four-year tenure as chief executive of EMI UK its market share rose from 10.9% to 15%.
Centaur runs an array of exhibitions, awards, events, websites and digital services mostly linked to a core group of print brands such as Design Week, Money Marketing and Homebuilding. Problematically, when Vidler joined there were 50 business units with every product run as a siloed entity – from print to digital to live events – even though they used the same master brand. “I believe in brands and in the power of multi-platform content,” she says. “People didn’t realise they were doing very similar things and working together could be a real competitive advantage. There are now just seven portfolios of products working in a unified way. Content is king and how you distribute it should be secondary.”
Despite a double-digit decline in print ad revenue in the year’s first half, Vidler is quick to point out that she remains committed to Centaur’s magazines. “We will definitely not be going digital-only,” she says. “There is a role for a print product. Not everyone wants to live their life digitally.”
So she doesn’t buy into the view of Marcus Rich, the UK chief executive of Marie Claire publisher IPC Media, who recently called magazines a “burning platform”? “Don’t believe everything Marcus says,” quips Vidler, who worked with Rich at Emap. “Most of our competitors have moved to a pure-play position with less expertise and capability in other formats [beyond print]. This means fewer revenue streams, more reliance on traditional ad revenue. It probably feels like more of a burning platform for him than it does for me.”
Centaur’s leading brands are set to be relaunched in print and online, Vidler says. She is coy as to whether a digital rethink means that a paywall strategy is being considered, but that does seem likely. “We are looking at all revenue streams across the board,” is all she will say. “I’m not saying it is all about [either] free or pay. Things might have been built in a way that is no longer appropriate.”
Her vision means that “single format” businesses, those that cannot be turned into a multi-platform operation, are being jettisoned. In May she sold off legal information unit Perfect Information for £26m to Mergermarket, and some standalone exhibitions and events are expected to go next.
Vidler is tough and has moved fast but says the process of whipping the business into shape has not been as painful as it sounds. “I believe in a straight-talking and honest approach. When I walked in the door I sat down with over 50 people and had one-to-ones. They all wanted change. Actually, one of the things that surprised me the most was the talent and energy of the teams despite that challenging 12-month period.”
She draws a parallel between the challenge at Centaur and the issues she encountered at a demotivated, underperforming Magic FM nearly a decade ago. Through moves such as signing Neil Fox and focusing on Magic’s strengths – not its perceived weaknesses compared to its rivals – she helped the then-unfancied station leapfrog Heart and Capital (also a former employer) to become the biggest commercial player in London. “We made Magic premium by looking at natural strengths and making them a positive benefit,” she says. “That is a lot like what I am doing here.”
Vidler cites her seven years with the BBC as the experience that transformed her. After working as a young advertising account director on the launch of Radio 5 Live, Vidler was hired by the corporation as a marketing executive and went on to work on the launches of BBC News 24 and BBC News Online.
However, it was restructuring the sprawling fiefdoms of BBC Sport, and subsequently moving into sports rights, that gave her the appetite for a move to the commercial world. At the end of the 90s she saw England’s home cricket test matches snatched by Channel 4 after 61 years on the BBC; and then helped bring the FA Cup back to the corporation, saving Match of the Day, which looked all but doomed after ITV took the Premier League highlights. “That was the beginning of becoming a change agent,” she remembers. “After that I decided I wanted to work in a more commercial environment. I really enjoyed working with Greg [Dyke, ex-BBC director general] and wanted to explore that more.”
Vidler has gone on to hold some of the biggest jobs in media, and the rugby-loving mother of two doesn’t buy the argument about pro-female positive discrimination being needed to break through the glass ceiling. “I don’t think women should be given an easier time,” she says. “It is all about merit. I don’t think I’ve had a tougher time or easier time because I’m female. That is a complete irrelevance to me. Ironically, from my perspective being a working mum has enabled me to focus on outcomes really aggressively. Juggling everything you have to really prioritise, it has helped my career development and management style.”
Vidler’s get-on-with-it philosophy means Centaur’s transformation plan is ahead of schedule and the impact on the bottom line is already being seen. Debt has been slashed to £10.2m, dependence on advertising income (now down to below 30% of total revenues) has been reduced, and the business is on the brink of a return to revenue growth. She admits that scale-wise Centaur is one of her smallest challenges – it has a market capitalisation of about £85m – but if she can make the company fit for the digital age she will be as pleased with it as any other success on her CV.
“Sometimes businesses get stalled and flummoxed when they hit the first hurdle,” she says. “The ambition is still the same. If when I finally leave Centaur people are excited by it – the City, the shareholders and everyone else – that would be a great thing, wouldn’t it?”
Curriculum vitae
Age 48
Education Sevenoaks school, Cambridge Polytechnic, University of Bradford
Career 1996 head of marketing, BBC news 1998 head of marketing and business development, BBC Sport 2001 managing director, Capital Radio 2005 managing director, Magic FM & National Radio 2008 chief marketing officer, Bauer Media 2009 chief executive, EMI Music UK & Ireland 2013 chief executive, Centaur Media
