Publisher Background

'Parenting' is a leading Taiwanese family education, parenting and child development-focused publication, under the broader CommonWealth magazine group.For almost 20 years, it has built a loyal readership among educators and parents through high-quality print publications. In addition to its magazine, Parenting has developed a diversified portfolio that includes books, events, and digital platforms. In response to evolving audience behaviour and market trends, the company published its final print magazine in December 2024 and has fully transitioned to a digital model in 2025. This shift was accompanied by the launch of 'Parenting Premium', a digital subscriptions product offering exclusive digital content and services to subscribed readers. The transformation marks a strategic shift for Parenting, from a print-based legacy media business to a data-driven, subscription-focused digital content provider.

Challenges

Although Parenting is a well-established and trusted brand in Taiwan, it has been actively exploring digital transformation, particularly in membership engagement and growth. However, it still lacked a clear strategy for building a sustainable subscription model. While there was internal alignment on the need for transformation, the organization had yet to identify concrete action plans.

Expectations and Goals

The team joined the Executive North Star programme hoping to learn from the experiences of the Financial Times and other innovative media organisations. They wanted to strengthen their practical skills in building digital membership models and driving sustainable growth. They were excited about the opportunity to go deeper - gaining practical tools and proven approaches to help move the business toward a more data-informed and resilient digital model.

Another key motivation came from observing the media industry more broadly. The team had long been following innovation across the sector and saw this as a chance to build on their existing digital foundation, keep improving, and stay competitive in a fast-changing environment.

Findings and Outcomes

The Executive North Star programme helped Parenting gain greater clarity on how to align its business goals with internal team capabilities. Through tools like the 12-month action plan and capability assessment exercises, the team began identifying and addressing gaps in their current workflow. They set specific growth goals for two core subscription products—one already mature but facing challenges around up-selling and conversion, and the other a newly launched product that is still in the early stages of testing what value propositions resonate with members.

At first, the team relied mostly on internal experience and assumptions, with limited data support. But through the programme, they began to establish more consistent habits around data tracking and performance review, and adopted a more structured approach to product strategy.

During the three-day intensive workshop, engagement was high from the participating Parenting team. The case studies and tools shared during the sessions sparked meaningful internal discussions.

From a senior leadership perspective, the founder of Parenting found that the programme not only helped clarify direction, but also reinforced that the company wasn’t off-track, as other media companies were also navigating similar challenges. Tools like the capability assessment were especially helpful at the executive level, making it easier to translate three-to-five-year visions into actionable resource planning in collaboration with functional teams.

Organisational Transformation

After participating in the programme, the Parenting team were inspired to launch an internal ‘AI Seed Group’. This cross-functional team of members from editorial, marketing, customer service, and admin departments was formed to explore the practical use of generative AI in daily workflows. The group held reading circles and brainstorming sessions to experiment with how AI tools could be integrated into different functions. This initiative also helped foster more cross-functional collaboration and encouraged the adoption of an open mindset toward digital innovation across the organisation.

Current Plan and NS Development Phases

Parenting is currently experimenting with new approaches while adjusting its North Star goals. A key challenge for Parenting is how to stand out with parenting and education-related content, which is widely accessible and less time-sensitive compared to general news content. The team is exploring ways to make its subscriptions offering more relevant, valuable, and unique to users.

While internal discussions still focus heavily on revenue, there is a growing awareness of the importance of long-term member engagement and value. Looking ahead, the team plans to revisit its North Star framework and key performance metrics, with the aim of aligning more closely with real user needs and behaviors and laying a stronger foundation for sustainable reader revenue growth.

AI Seed Group: Building Awareness Through Peer Learning
After the programme, the team started an internal effort to explore how AI tools might help in day-to-day work. A small group was formed with members from the editorial, marketing, customer service, and admin teams. They joined reading groups and brainstorming sessions to discuss how generative AI technologies could be applied in their respective areas.

Situation: A motivation to act

With the rise of generative AI, the team saw both the urgency and opportunity to stay current, improve internal workflows, and uncover new possibilities. They decided to take action by learning and exploring together.

Experiment design: What the change was
The AI seed group focused on small-scale, peer-led learning. Team members met regularly to explore how AI could support different parts of their work - from content creation to marketing automation and basic admin tasks.

Experiment results: What the impact was:

In Q1, the company saw its revenue mix shift: print, which used to account for about 70% of total revenue, experienced a decline, while digital revenue increased. This change underlined for the company the need to keep focusing on growth and opportunities in the digital space. Internally, the effort sparked curiosity and got more people thinking about how AI might be useful.

Key learnings and next steps

The main takeaway is that small, hands-on exploration can be an effective way to build awareness and openness toward digital transformation. Going forward, the team aims to continue to create a space for learning and exploration, hoping to move on to experimenting when there are strong hypotheses ready for testing.

Background: Evolving Engagement Tracking

Although the team has explored advanced engagement metrics such as Quality Read and RFV , these methods have not yet been fully implemented due to limitations in tools requiring manual processes and gaps in internal workflows.

Current Challenge: Fragmented Data and Limited User Insight

Parenting has relied heavily on manual processes, such as extracting data from Google Analytics into shared spreadsheets, for day-to-day performance tracking. Without a centralised analytics platform or customer data system, it's been challenging to monitor individual user behaviour, including time spent on page and depth of engagement. As a result, efforts have remained largely focused on product, service, and event-level performance rather than on understanding reader engagement.

Experiment in Progress: Laying the Groundwork for Deeper Insights

Although no new engagement metrics have been launched, the team has begun internal discussions and evaluations of potential systems that would allow them to better track and understand user behaviour, with the aim of moving beyond surface metrics like pageviews or sessions. The current system is more focused on events and products, rather than reader engagement but there is growing awareness of the need to understand reader behaviour in more depth.

Next Steps: Building for the Future

In the coming year, the team plans to introduce a more robust system to track engagement, ideally with the ability to view metrics by user. The goal is to make engagement a more central part of product and content decisions moving forward.