Broadcasting live, three times a week, JMP On Air served up educational content on statistics, data analytics and , of course, JMP.Broadcasting live, three times a week, JMP On Air served up educational content on statistics, data analytics and , of course, JMP.
Unless you’re living in Antarctica (literally, Antarctica) you know that “business as usual” has been anything but usual the last few of months. The coronavirus pandemic has thrown the global economy into a tailspin and forced most of our customers to work in new and different ways. For JMP, the virus cancelled customer visits and in-person events and sent employees home to turn their spare rooms into home offices. Despite the disruption, JMP remained committed to serving its users, as well as finding ways to drive new business forward.
“Given the circumstances, we needed to develop new strategies for supporting our users from afar,” said Senior Vice President of JMP Marketing and Sales Jon Weisz. “JMP On Air proved to be the perfect way for us to deliver educational content in support of our existing users and an effective way to fill our sales funnel and create new ones.”
Introducing JMP On Air
Julian Parris, Learning Content and Strategy Manager, was the primary architect of JMP On Air, pitching the idea for a regularly occurring, live event that streamed educational content in statistics, data analytics and JMP at the March Management Meeting. Encouraged to “engage any resource needed,” Parris assembled a team and got to work; with several hours of content planned each week for the indefinite future, executing such a complex production wasn’t going to be easy.
“What started as an idea in late March, became a proposal a couple of days later, and within a week we were broadcasting our first episode,” Weisz shared. “It was impressive to see how quickly the show came together and a testament to the incredible talent, teamwork, and dedication of that team and so many others across the division.”
Of course, there was also the little detail of generating an “audience to broadcast to” that needed to be addressed… and in a hurry. With just a week to publish and promote web pages and then gather subscribers, the team operated on the Ray Kinsella Principle that “if you build it, they will come.” And come they did. When the first episode hit the airwaves on Friday, April 3, more than 600 individuals tuned in to watch it live.
Eight weeks and 22 episodes later…
Over the next eight weeks, the JMP On Air team would broadcast 22 episodes, building momentum and developing a loyal audience along the way. On most weeks, the show aired for two consecutive hours every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. The majority of the segments ran live, with original content and speakers presenting in real time; portions of each show was sometimes supplemented with pre-recorded or on-demand content.
At the conclusion of what the team dubbed “Season One,” JMP On Air had attracted a total of 2,823 subscribers and created more than 45 hours of valuable content in 160 individual segments. Though broadcast in English, JMP On Air attracted viewers from all over the world, including more than 1,700 subscribers from the Americas, 300 from Europe, 100 from APXJ, and more than 350 subscribers from “Strategic Global Accounts.”
Wiser today than yesterday
An instant hit, JMP On Air was largely successful because of its high-quality educational content, the wide variety of fascinating experts who presented, and the engaging format of the show. Regular segments, like Tip of the Day, Have You Tried, Ask the Data Doctor, and JMP In Action, provided users with concrete ways to use JMP more effectively. But the show also exposed approximately 1,000 non-users to JMP software and created nearly 600 new leads for JMP sales teams.
“We were particularly proud of how broad of an appeal the show had,” said Parris, who also served as the JMP On Air host. “JMP On Air was intentionally designed to have segments of interest for anyone who is enthusiastic about data. The fact that nearly a third of our subscribers reported that they were non-users, confirmed an appetite for this type of show that went well beyond our existing user base.”
Themed episodes like Earth Day supplemented regular JMP On Air programming.Themed episodes like Earth Day supplemented regular JMP On Air programming.Along the way, JMP On Air produced several themed-based episodes for Earth Day, May the Fourth (Space), May Madness (Sports) and JMP In Science, as well as topic-based episodes in data visualization and predictive modeling. Top presenters, like Jonah Berger, David Spiegelhalter, Anderson Mayfield and John Sall further built the program’s popularity.
On May 29, the date of the final episode, JMP On Air had been viewed live for a total of 337,434 minutes (5,624 hours). On demand numbers might be even more impressive, with the JMP On Air Community pages being viewed an additional 33,263 times. Another 2,522 views and 27,031 minutes (450+ hours) of watch time have come from the JMP Software Channel on YouTube.
Feedback from our viewers
But the numbers only tell part of the story of JMP On Air’s success. The series received high marks from viewers as well. JMP Community member Wende Wilson, for example, never missed an episode, even if she couldn’t always watch them live. A Quality Data Analysis Supervisor at Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories, Wende was direct with her praise: “As a brand new JMP user, I love JMP On Air. Unfortunately, I have a meeting that splits the time, so I watch the videos on demand.”
JMP user Larry Diener, Sr. Manager of Global Variability Reduction and Process Improvement at Seqirus was equally complimentary. “JMP on Air is a wonderful series. Thanks for making it so accessible.”
Another user, simply identified as WineAroma on the JMP Community, marveled at the timeliness of a JMP On Air segment that solved, in nearly real-time, a problem she had just posted to the community. “I just learned how to do #1 in Episode 19 May 18, 2020 JMP on Air, so I'm posting [the] solution to my own problem,” she exclaimed, before thanking presenter Ross Metusalem for information he provided during the show.
What’s next for JMP On Air?
The end of May seemed like a natural conclusion for JMP On Air, at least for the time being. “With many of our customers gradually returning to their offices and labs, it seems like the right time to pause, assess what we’ve accomplished and weigh our options for how best to use our resources going forward,” Weisz shared in a note to the division before the last episode. The Marketing Team has already begun discussing ways to package and distribute the content created in Season One and how to further move along the new leads the show secured during its time on air.
Though the future for JMP On Air isn’t completely certain, the brand is likely to live on in some way. Immediately after the conclusion of the final episode, the JMP On Air team sent out a comprehensive survey to all subscribers. “Feedback from the survey will help the team better understand what we did right, what we might be able to improve upon and ultimately help us decide what we do next,” Parris said. “In the meantime, we’ll celebrate, and thank the countless individuals who helped make Season One such a great success.”
If you’re interested in watching (or rewatching) episodes of JMP On Air, every individual segment and full shows are available on-demand in the JMP Community and on YouTube
The extended JMP On Air team bids farewell to Season One...The extended JMP On Air team bids farewell to Season One...
