Publishing Group of America to ‘Sell Beyond the Page’

Newspaper magazine publisher the Publishing Group of America has restructured its sales team in an effort to expand its brand reach across media platforms like television, digital and events.

“We’re developing branded programs beyond the magazines that offer a value proposition and turnkey opportunities for our partners, all with the mass reach we currently have,” recently-appointed senior vice president and chef revenue officer Carol Campbell Boggs told FOLIO:.

Franklin, Tennessee-based PGA publishes American Profile (10 million circulation), Relish (15 million circ.) and Spry (9 million circ.). All are distributed through newspapers nationwide.

Boggs said PGA will now work with its advertising sponsors to develop multiplatform products and services—including satellite television media tours, Web sites, etc.—and package them with a print buy. “There are no hidden fees associated with this,” Boggs said. “Of course we want to cement schedules and incremental paging, but these packages will be based on minimum CPM and paging. We’re not saying that print is going to die but it needs to be a piece of the pie now, not the entire pie.”

Boggs joined PGA in August after serving as founding publisher of Hallmark magazine.

To support the shift in strategy, PGA announced several staffing changes. Among them: former More magazine associate publisher of marketing and Prevention executive marketing director Barbara LaPlaca was named to the newly-created position of senior vice president and marketing director; Kathy Goodman was named Midwest sales director; and former Hallmark magazine account manager Erica Queen was named health manager.

In addition, several sales executives were reassigned to focus on “geographies and categories” across PGA’s product portfolio, the company said.

As a result of the restructuring, PGA eliminated the publisher position at Spry. Now, upper management—including Boggs—will be responsible for publishing efforts at all three magazines. Neither American Profile or Relish have specific publishers, Boggs said.

Through the first nine months, ad pages declined 22.4 percent at American Profile and 23.1 percent at Relish, according to PIB figures. Spry, which launched in September 2008, saw a 532.6 percent increase, with 88.12 ad pages during the period this year.

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