John Fahey on “brand controls” & the Cengage deal

From the in-house blog of John Fahey, CEO & Chairman of the National Geographic Society:

NG School Publishing

By John Fahey
Published: July 5, 2011

This blog entry is a little longer than usual. I hope you have the patience to give it a read and feel free to ask me any questions.

Two weeks ago we celebrated exploration and introduced a new class of Emerging Explorers. It was quite an exciting week at the Geographic. I plan to talk more about how we can build on the inspiration we felt during the Explorers Symposium in my next blog post.

That week was also important for NGS in another way. Many of you have read about our agreement to partner the National Geographic School Publishing business with a company called Cengage Learning. I want to provide a bit more context as to why we entered this arrangement.

National Geographic has been providing teachers with classroom materials for quite some time. About a decade ago we decided to consolidate our “education sales” and create a unit whose sole purpose was to help teachers accomplish what they need to do in the classroom. Beyond bringing together all of our disparate education activities, this was the first time we created classroom materials that were not derivative of our consumer media content.  

We immediately had great success in the content literacy category (providing reading skills using science, social studies and geography as the content.) Several years later, we decided to expand our presence in the classroom through the acquisition of Hampton Brown, the leading publisher in the “English as a Second Language” category. We thought it was important that all children have the best possible learning opportunity regardless of one’s primary language at home. We also wanted a larger school publishing base so NGS could have a bigger impact.

Subsequent to our acquisition of Hampton Brown we developed new products imbued with a National Geographic approach to school textbooks. As an example, we recently launched an elementary level Science program highlighting the work of field scientists (many of our own) to convey the required science curriculum. We were taking on the big textbook publishers – and more often than not we were winning!

Recently we decided that we didn’t have all we would need to succeed over the long run – most notably a worldwide sales capability, the efficiencies that come with scale and the deep pockets required to invest in new programs and to manage the transition as classroom education moves from print to digital approaches.

Using our channel joint venture as an example, we set out to partner NGS’s school activities to build strength through scale. Thus we entered a new partnership with a company we’re already very familiar with – Cengage Learning. Cengage has been an excellent partner of ours in the English Language Teaching program we’ve developed together over the last few years. 

Although we are the minority owner of the new school venture, we have a series of strong brand controls built into our agreement and Cengage intends to continue the successful approach we’ve been employing to develop new product.  {emphasis added}

I think you’ll be seeing a much larger and more impactful NGS presence in classrooms for many years to come.

I wish to thank our NGSP colleagues and remind all of you that although the ownership structure has changed, they will continue to work closely with us and will need our support just as in the past.

I’m open now for any questions!

_____

Dear John,

Thanks for this background on the Cengage deal. We confess we’re puzzled every time you sell off part of our Society, but your blog post does illuminate how you think — and where you’re taking NGS.

Before we ask our question, we respectfully offer a correction. You write that “about a decade ago” was “the first time we created classroom materials that were not derivative of our consumer media content.” Actually, that’s not true. National Geographic’s former Educational Media Division — which was directed by the late, great George Peterson — produced all sorts of original, award-winning curriculum materials for grades K-12 long before you arrived at NGS from Time/Life in the mid-1990s.

Educational Media’s product line included filmstrips (remember those?) …  interactive video (i.e., GTV, a co-production with Apple & Lucasfilm Ltd.) … CD-ROMs … and innovative online science units (NG’s Kids Network) — long before anyone had heard of the internet. A separate NG Educational Films division also produced a library of films that were keyed to school curricula. And the National Geographic School Bulletin was published from 1919 until 1975, long before anyone used terms like “consumer media content.”

In other words: Our Society has a long, uninterrupted history of producing original, quality educational materials for K-12 students. Or we did until you brokered this deal with Cengage Learning, one small part of Apax Partners (a private equity fund).

Re: Cengage — here’s our question:

Why do you believe “strong brand controls”
that are “built into our [Cengage] agreement”
will protect our Society?

And why use “our channel joint venture as an example”? News Corp’s ownership of the National Geographic Channel is a case study in how we’ve lost control of our brand, despite whatever controls you included in the original contract. It also conjures up some embarrassing images. For example, why didn’t “brand controls” kick into action on this show?   

In which a man gets intimate with a sex doll.

Or what “brand controls” regulate our NG Channel “partners” in India? They’re using our good name to recruit soldiers for India’s army & navy:

If you don’t have the authority to stop this from happening in India, then how will you stop the NG Channel in, say, Russia — or perhaps one day in China — when Channel executives there want to produce similar recruiting shows? When did the militarization of other countries become part of the mission of the National Geographic Society?

Or how about this show? It’s an hour-long advertisement for beer. We’re tempted to say: You can’t buy publicity like this. But evidently you can.

 (This is just one of many installments in NG’s Ultimate Factories TV series.)

So, the question again is:

Why do you believe “strong brand controls”
that are “built into our [Cengage] agreement”
will protect our Society?

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Tagged as: Apax Partners, Apple, blog, brand, brand controls, Cengage Learning, Dear John, Educational Media Division, filmstrips, GTV, Heineken, India, interactive video, John Fahey, Lucasfilm, mission, NG Channel, NG Kids Network, NG School Bulletin, NG School Publishing, Strange Love, Taboo, Ultimate Factories, video