Publitek News recently caught up with Patrick Mannion, newly appointed Director of Content for Hearst’s Electronic Products. I spoke with him about the reasons behind his move from UBM to Hearst and his plans for the Electronic Products brand. On his move, he said, “I realised that the industry is all about products – specs, procurement, distributors – and nobody does products better than Electronic Products. They also offered me the opportunity is to develop the online offering, starting with a re-launch of the IC Master web site. But Patrick does not see Hearst taking EE Times’ path of dramatically shrinking print circulation. Electronic Products still has a print circulation of over 123,000 each month (ABC audit, June 2010). Hearst already has some strong online offerings including IC Master and 21IC in China, so it’s no stranger to the medium. Once you get through the invasive ‘boom box’ advertisement that hits you as you log on at electronicproducts.com, you find a clean, easy-to-navigate site where it doesn’t take a dozen clicks to get to your destination. Feature articles, videos, blogs, parts search and reference design information is all easily accessed. A good parametric search tool for popular groups of components could make it even more powerful, but that’s a weakness of many sites, including those of the major electronic component distributors.
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About the Author: Bob Jones
Bob founded Publitek in 1998. He has over 25 years’ experience in running technology PR and marketing communications agencies, following earlier careers in broadcast engineering and electronic component marketing. Bob read Electronic and Electrical Engineering at the University of Bangor, Wales, and has an MA in Marketing. He was elected a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing in 1996. He is a member of the IEEE and the IET and in 2015 was named as one of "The 100 most influential tech agency PR executives globally" by the Hot Topics community of technology leaders.
