FOLIO: Section Blogs by Consumer

No Time to Waste

Bill Mickey — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 15:27:14 -0400

As we all wait for the white smoke to appear above the Time Warner Center, it appears that many are fixated on gaming the odds of one CEO candidate or another. Mr. Bewkes has already announced (after talks broke down with Meredith) that he wants to “spin out” the magazine assets into a separate company. Recent reports coming from Sixth Avenue indicate that the HR folks are doing all they can to retain their best employees during this period of uncertainty. Not sure how much Laura Lang (outgoing CEO) can and/or will do in the remaining months of her tenure. The departure of chief revenue officer Paul Caine (Time Inc.’s top sales producer) can’t be doing great things for customer relationships either.

For rank in file dealing with the day-to-day questions from advertisers and fellow employees, time passes painfully. Marketers don’t enjoy uncertainty, especially in a quickly changing and highly competitive media landscape. With each passing day the Time Inc. brand risks falling further back down the hill it will need to climb to regain its position of leadership in the publishing industry.

While we sit in this holding pattern waiting on this multi-billion dollar media icon to make its next move; my mind is filled with all sorts of suggestions about strategies and tactics where work can be done now in preparation for the ultimate transformation of the company:

1. Knock Down the Walls: Undoubtedly there is a tremendous number of very bright people working for Time Inc., most of whom will be responsible for creating change under the new regime. I have no doubt that given the chance to express their ideas and thoughts these professionals have the keys to unlocking the value of the organization. My advice is to start polling the leadership team in each area of the business along with their direct reports to solicit ideas on ways that their business unit can be more profitable and grow more quickly. Having led several media organizations in my career, I never thought that any one person or leader had the market cornered on creative thinking and/or innovative ideas. Remove the roadblocks to success. How great would it be for the new CEO on his or her first day to be delivered a warehouse filled with thoughts, tactics and new product ideas from the current team of leaders, all laser focused on how they can strengthen the company’s market position and value?

2. Cure Big Data Analysis Paralysis: Time Inc. is sitting on one of the greatest customer profile data warehouses in the world, let alone the publishing industry. My counsel is to go live inside of this database right now. In the coming weeks, get focused on organizing user and prospect profiles into new marketable audience segments. Publishers have a great understanding of the legacy content intersections that have proven to be successful in drawing an audience that marketers and advertisers are willing to spend big dollars to engage. It’s time to identify new content intersections that are growing in terms of audience concentration and advertiser demand, as well as financial support. Get the audience development and editorial teams to work collaboratively on this project. Assemble the best minds in the search marketplace to help identify key words, phrases, topics, volume metrics and audience velocity/ concentration patterns in the marketplace. Just as the cable television business has been able to build micro segments in categories like cooking, entertainment, travel, etc., by understanding audience need and affinity, the goal of Time Inc. must be to identify a network of incremental content types and venues that will provide current readers, new visitors and marketers with relevant platforms where they can experience a unique and compelling Time Inc. experience.

3. Trash Can Irrelevant Content: In 2013, we really don’t have the luxury of creating irrelevant content. Relevancy is defined by the level of reader involvement and engagement metrics. A failure to monitor this data and adjust our product offering to stay in tune with consumers is deadly regardless of venue (print, online, email, social media ). Today we have the tools that allow us to know much more about our content, so why not leverage these tools? I have always thought that my content colleagues would welcome this insight and accountability.

In the coming weeks, the editorial leadership inside Time Inc. properties needs to do an audit of every content connection being made with readers. The day of reckoning in this regard is coming soon, so why not be ahead of it now? We can remain in denial about this issue or embrace the publishing reality and welcome the new CEO with this level of transparency and understanding.

Without great content, we have no chance of engaging a community of readers with a shared interest. It’s pretty simple. As a content provider, if you can’t engage the community consistently, marketers and advertising dollars don’t show up. The end of that story isn’t pretty.

4. Where have all the Advertisers Gone?: It’s clear that there is a serious revenue problem at the core of this issue. No need to wait on the new leader to start addressing this issue. No doubt the marching orders for the new chief will be to focus on ways to run the business more efficiently and grow revenue in lock step. Time Inc. can increase the overall value of the organization by charting a course to grow revenue in all areas of the business.

I have never believed that we can cost-cut our way to market leadership. Revenue needs to be grown by acquiring new customers, retaining the existing customers and most importantly, figuring out a way to win back lost and/or declining customers. Everyone in sales and marketing disciplines within the company needs to begin creating a new strategy for a fresh assault on the market. Leadership should be asking for sales metrics (number of calls, conversion rates, email touch points, call reports, etc.) to understand how much time is being spent in front of customers and prospects. Start working on pipelines that track advertisers by property that have left in the last 12 months and/or decreased spending in Time Inc.'s brands. The boss is going to want to know where these dollars went and why. Be prepared for that.

A new day of accountability and focus is coming for the revenue producing side of the business. The solution to the value creation problem is in the market, so they need to have the chops and focus to get after it.

Time Inc. is a great company with an amazing legacy as a leader in the communications business. There are surely a lot of folks like myself that would truly hate to see such iconic brands decline due to lack of interest, passion and focus. Time Inc. should be saved and restored to its dominant position in the marketplace. It doesn’t need to be “packaged” for sale or merged into another media company.

There is truly no time to waste over on Sixth Avenue.

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Platform Allocation: Key to Consumer Show Promotion

Bill Mickey — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 17:00:23 -0400

Based on my experience planning and buying millions of dollars in advertising for events, and seeing the results first hand, platform allocation—the share of dollars invested across various media platforms like newspaper, radio, TV, outdoor, digital, etc.—is the most important driver of campaign performance.

It defines who sees your messages and the size of the advertising package you deliver to them. If you get this wrong, no follow-on media buy variables (i.e. rates, placement, timing, etc.) will make much of a difference.

If you want the best results—as many attendees as possible—make sure your platform allocation syncs with the current media habits of your target audience.  Don't over-focus on "getting the best deal." Yes, that is important, but it is secondary to platform allocation. Who cares that you got a great rate on an ad purchase if you are not efficiently reaching your target set with the right media mix?

Another error to watch out for is "shiny object syndrome”—chasing the newest, coolest media. It can kill your ROI through misallocation of dollars. You need to stay on top of the latest media, but don't outrun your audience.

At the same time, if you are afraid to move out of your comfort zone and continue to invest in legacy media strategies that are now underperforming digital media, you will also hurt your ROI.

Platform allocation also affects your ability to achieve optimum reach and frequency. If you spend your dollars across too many platforms, your media buy will be spread too thin to achieve the necessary frequency to move the needle. On the other hand, if you concentrate your dollars too tightly, you will overspend on certain targets, while failing to reach other potential pools of attendees.

Finally, platform allocation can help you balance risk and reward in your media buys through diversification, especially beneficial as you spend more and more money in new digital media.

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The End of Wend

Bill Mickey — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 11:23:30 -0500

[Editor's Note: This post is reprinted with permission, originally appearing on World Hum, a site dedicated to travel storytelling.]

Back before there were travel blogs, there were travel magazines. In a nutshell, these were blogs made out of paper that came in the mail each month, glossy pages covered in ads that didn’t pop up, but instead just kind of sat there, hoping impotently that you’d look at them. A few of the most stalwart are still in circulation, of course, piling up in doctor’s offices and the foyers of small-town libraries, and those travel mags that remain can be sorted into two basic categories.

Magazines in the first category feature a woman on the cover who enjoys traveling the world in her bathing suit. These publications are intensely focused on the present moment, forever proclaiming “Where to Eat in Shanghai Now,” “Where to Sleep in Toronto Now,” and “Where to Buy Something to Cover Up That Bathing Suit Now.” It’s no use consulting such magazines about where to eat or sleep later on. They will not be able to tell you.

In the second category are publications concerned not with vacations but with travel as a transcendental bridge between cultures. These mags are different from their cousins in that they privilege “authenticity” above style and are conscious of the serious social and environmental issues facing our planet. Also, they are probably going to fail.

One such magazine was the adventure-travel journal Wend, which quietly expired almost a year ago, but has yet to receive a proper eulogy. Founded in 2006 and independently published in Portland, Oregon, Wend was a not-altogether-intuitive combination of formats both old and new. Like a magazine, it was printed on paper. Really nice paper, in fact, made from locally sourced and sustainably harvested trees, covered in biodegradable soy ink. Like a blog, however, Wend welcomed contributors who weren’t necessarily professional writers or photographers. “Real people” were at the heart of each issue, explained the magazine’s media kit, “writing real stories about real adventures and real environmental issues.”

And at the outset, Wend got off to a real good start. Founder Ian Marshall was a former ad and marketing guru for the short-lived, but much-beloved Blue, another indie adventure-travel mag that ran for 33 issues around the turn of the aughts. Marshall and his skeleton staff at Wend put out a handsome, photo-heavy quarterly with an emphasis on “human-powered adventure.” Early features followed climbing expeditions in China, river-surfers in Namibia, and adventure-racers in Patagonia. A few key motifs resurfaced throughout every issue: the sacredness of various landscapes, the willful abandonment of carbon-fueled transport, the search for enlightenment abroad. Wend covered transformative, long-distance bike rides like People covers Kardashian weddings—freewheeling rides across Bhutan, Australia, Mexico, Iran. Often as not, the central feat of any given story was performed under the banner of “awareness-raising.” Kayakers circled Newfoundland to raise awareness of oil slicks in the Atlantic; hikers traipsed the globe to call attention to HIV in Africa.

Profiles were rare to non-existent, and service-writing (like destination round-ups or “Best Of” lists) had no business in the feature well. The quintessential Wend story was, above all, first-person diaristic—light on reportage and heavy on personal reflection.

Whether despite or because of this idiosyncratic formula, Wend quickly acquired a small, passionate audience. The magazine’s revenues doubled annually in its first three years. By 2009, it was available on newsstands and checkout racks at every REI, Whole Foods, and Eastern Mountain Sports across the country, not to mention the usual slate of chain and indie bookstores. In early 2010, its print circulation topped out at a respectable 135,000 readers per issue. To hear Marshall tell it, though, this is where things plateaued.
Circulation and ad dollars faltered over the next two years while the magazine’s costs kept rising. In 2011, Wend became a magazine without an office, its dwindling staff camped out in various Portland coffee shops. That year’s summer issue didn’t hit newsstands until October. Then, last January, Wend put out one last issue, updated its website for another few months, and finally went dark, leaving contributors unpaid and subscribers uninformed as to the mag’s fate. (The website, scrubbed of any mention of the magazine, re-launched in December as a newsy blog to very little fanfare.)

Full disclosure: I wrote for Wend on two occasions and was paid for my work each time. What’s more, I liked the magazine. I liked that the food column had nothing to do with restaurants and didn’t shy from gastronomic taboos like Amazonian tree grubs or stewed dog in China. I liked the clever, Harper’s-esque “Wendex” on the opening pages, which managed to drop some startling eco-stats in a format that was piquant rather than preachy. I even liked the relentlessly contemplative nature of the feature stories. Every issue was like Chicken Soup for the Gnarly Eco-Nomad’s Soul. Sure, the broth was a bit thick with profound personal revelations, but with other publications dishing out only a thin gruel of glorified itineraries, the earnest reverence of Wend’s authors for their surroundings was genuinely comforting.

Still, I can’t help wondering what the demise of Wend says about the conscious-activist-adventurer niche to which the magazine tried to lay claim. Wend had a conflicted relationship with the more mainstream, consumer-oriented aspects of travel and the outdoors. Its average feature story tended to fall on a spectrum somewhere between commendably self-reflective and irritatingly navel-gazing, as the authors both reported on their far-flung exploits and wrung their hands over the same exploits’ impacts on the environment. A world-class heli-skier bombs an Alaskan peak while contemplating the petrol-powered vehicles that enable her lifestyle. Slackliners in Scotland bolt a new route on a locally beloved spire, then brood over whether their actions constitute vandalism.

The conventional goal of a travel or adventure publication is to inspire its readers to get up and go (and thereby spend). As the tagline of yet another defunct glossy, National Geographic Adventure, once urged, “Dream it. Plan it. Do it.” Wend’s message, by contrast, seemed something along the lines of, “Plan it minimally. Do it without fossil fuels. Think very, very hard about what it meant.” Is there a whole magazine’s worth of audience out there for this kind of moral cud-chewing? Do armchair travelers really want to ponder the consequences of their actions, or are they simply wondering Where to Kayak in Ecuador Now?

For that matter, are the possibilities for “human-powered” adventure sufficiently inexhaustible as to keep the soy ink flowing, issue after issue? I’m the first to speak up for the limitless horizons of travel, but from a reader’s perspective, might not all those epic bike rides blend together after a time? Wend’s talented former editor Kyle Cassidy says that while he sometimes turned down a pitch on the basis of its carbon footprint, the magazine never wanted for content.
All the same, the occasional Wend story was edited to downplay the necessity of motorized transport. Mentions of car travel, for example, were cut when possible, and in one of my own pieces, a gas-powered motor launch became a more ambiguous “boat.” That’s a legit editorial call, of course, but it also suggests that every so often, the pursuit of a good yarn required expanding the boundaries of the mission statement. The frontiers of travel and adventure, moreover, can seem decidedly non-human-powered—consider Virgin Galactic’s space tourism, micro-submarines in the Mariana Trench, or Austrian guys jumping out of high-tech capsules in the stratosphere. Might devotion to eco-principle so narrow the scope of acceptable content that it alienates potential readers?

Not in Wend’s case, insists the magazine’s founder. In Marshall’s view, ironically, it was actually the broadness of Wend’s vision that did the magazine in. According to him, much of Wend’s later inability to attract new advertisers stemmed from companies’ decisions to concentrate their limited ad budgets on vertical campaigns. In marketing-speak, a “vertical” ad campaign is the sort that focuses only on a targeted niche of consumers. So Trek advertises in a bike magazine, even though the New Yorker’s readers also ride bikes, and Cuisinart buys a banner on a foodie blog, even though Gawker’s readers also eat food. Wend’s ads were heavy on outdoor clothing, footwear, and beer, but bigger-fish clients like ski brands and kayak manufacturers were harder to land. Snowboarding and whitewater paddling are exploitable vertical niches. Simply wandering the world in a way that minimizes one’s ecological footprint is not.

It’s a conundrum that’s bigger than just Wend. In an era of specialization, travel media appeals, by its nature, to an audience of passionate generalists. The world may not have been ready for an eco-conscious, obstinately self-aware adventure magazine, but Wend won’t be the last ambitious venue for travel writing that struggles to find a foothold in a fractured media landscape. The arc that Wend followed is likely to keep playing itself out—in print, on monitors, and on tablet screens—until some publication or another discovers the magic formula: How to make a sustainable venture out of sustainable adventure.

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Beyond the Big Three: New Social Networks for Publishers

traphael — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 16:19:33 -0500

Social media is a direct extension of your editorial voice and brand. For many, your publication doesn’t exist outside of the social world—until they find you in it. For instance, I was introduced to the Pulitzer Prize-winning site Pro Publica via Tumblr. Their “Officials Say the Darnest Things” Tumblog is focused and funny. Now I’m hooked.

Think of social as the front porch to your brand: It should have curb appeal and be inviting.

While it’s important to stay active within the Big Three (Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest), there are untapped audiences for content publishers in the social universe. Consider activating one of these “new” social media communities as you build your online strategy.

Some of these may not be for all of you, but the idea here is to think of unique avenues for growing your audience.

Google+
The value in Google+ is its SEO benefits. The Google +1 button (think of it as a Facebook “like” that won’t share directly in your social stream) can lead to a better page rank. When people +1 a Google+ post or +1 a piece of content from your website, it increases the link's potential for a high CTR, which leads to more social shares and amps up your search rank.

The bottom line: Start a Google+ profile for your publication so that it works in tandem with your traditional SEO strategies such as link building, relevant keywords, and URL structure, all of which have a more direct impact on search.

Your To-Do List:

Start and maintain a profile

Add +1 buttons to your Web site

Try a Hangout on Air (live-streamed on your dot com) with editors or contributing experts

Foodily
The beauty of Foodily, a food with friends social network where you can find and share recipes across the Web, is that it’s focused and niche. It’s a forum for food enthusiasts, registered dieticians, chefs, party planners and restaurateurs to have conversations about cuisine.

Food isn’t a main focus of your editorial strategy? Consider starting a profile anyway. For instance, if you’re a ski magazine, your compilations could focus on comfort food, après ski bites and Hot Toddy’s for the cabin. If you’re an automotive publication, think of top meals for tailgating.

As an official Tastemaker, SELF updates its recipe lists regularly and hosts focused discussions with our food editors and contributing experts. And like Pinterest, all recipes link back to the original source, so referral traffic is an ROI.

The bottom line: Join Foodily to have a presence in an emerging social community and introduce your publication to a new audience in an unexpected but on-brand way.

Your To-Do List:

Start a profile, then download the free iPhone-only app

Search for recipes by filter (low-carb, gluten-free)

Engage: Ask a question and update your status with what your editors are cooking

Explore other Tastemakers such as Cat Cora and Wolfgang Puck

Instagram
The photo darling of the social media set, Instagram is a great vehicle for visual storytelling. It allows mastheads to come to life, and the app puts a face on the wizards behind the curtain: your editors. There are contests and hashtag campaigns that publishers can execute, but for those just starting out, keep it simple. That’s what readers want.

The bottom line: Mobile is arguably the number-one social trend of 2013. It’s a vital way to extend your brand. A must-do.

Your To-Do List:

Download at the App Store. No more than two editors should have password access, for security reasons and for content continuity

Have a point of view when snapping photos

Leverage in-book franchises to create a 360-reader experience. SELF initiated the #UpNOut movement centered on a.m. workouts. The story ran in print, there were weekly posts on Self.com and engagement via Instagram and Twitter

Don’t feel the need to dress up every photo, frame, filter and fade it. Less is more. Sure, you can enhance the photo to make it presentable, but be authentic

What new communities are you excited about? Respond below in the comments section or Tweet me @StephaniePaige.

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The FOLIO: 100: A Call for Nominees

Bill Mickey — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 14:13:27 -0500

The nomination period for the FOLIO: 100 is now officially open!

Yes, you read that right—we're expanding the magazine industry's best-known and most prestigious list of innovators, entrepreneurial thinkers and disrupters from 40 to 100. The more the merrier.

Starting now you can help shape the list by nominating a colleague—either at your company or at another one—that has made a meaningful, quantifiable impact on a specific product, group, company or even the market at large.

"Quantifiable impact" is the key phrase—this isn't a popularity contest, anyone from inside the org chart can make this list, just be ready to back up your nomination with some solid supporting info, which you can do here.

Remember, not every FOLIO: 100 list-maker is a top executive—innovation and constructive change often comes from the front lines and the trenches, let's be sure those folks get their due, too—from editors to publishers to sales, audience development, design, production and digital. All across consumer, b-to-b, regional, enthusiast and association publishing—big and small.

And now with the expanded list, we can include an even more diverse range of deserving go-getters.

Click here to fill out our easy nomination form. Nominations are due by March 4.

Here's last year's FOLIO: 40 to get you inspired.

We'll announce the 2013 FOLIO: 100 in April. Submit your nominations now and good luck!

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Moving from 'Magazines' to 'Media'

Bill Mickey — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 16:18:34 -0500

Any company that's grown up targeting the magazine business the past few decades has no doubt had to come to terms with the new media landscape, particularly if its name is directly tied to print media.

Heck, we're mulling through this now with FOLIO:, which is still "The Magazine for Magazine Management."

The main associations that serve the industry have already rebranded, as did ABC recently.

MagazineRadar, a data service that has helped magazine publishers know more about brands and the people that buy them, got caught in the same dilemma. It's just rebranded itself as MediaRadar. Not a particularly big stretch, but it's definitely symbolic of the changes happening all around us.

As an example, the company has been tracking just over one million brands that are buying online ads and in the process of doing so has uncovered some interesting patterns in how those digital buys overlap, or don't overlap, print.

"The number-one discovery was the size of the online ad market is much larger than we understood," says co-founder Todd Krizelman. "If we just look on the consumer side of MPA titles, out of the people who buy MPA magazines, only a third of those are showing up on [the brand's] website. We're 20 years into the web and only one-third are buying on the same set of websites."

Surprisingly, there appears to be very little overlap, or integrated sales, going on.

In the third quarter of 2012, for example, MediaRadar found that about 9,000 brands advertised in the MPA-member consumer magazines it tracks. There were 12,000 brands that advertised on those titles' websites. But only 3,000 were integrated buys—leaving about 9,000 advertisers that were only buying digital with those brands.

There are some brands that have done particularly well through integrated buys, but that discrepancy is one reason digital-only publishers have done as well as they have, says Krizelman. "One of the reasons they've been successful is not that they've stolen clients, but exploited the knowledge that there's thousands of advertisers that buy only online."

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All Good Print Magazines Go to Digital Heaven…Or Do They?

Bill Mickey — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 17:10:29 -0500

When a publication decides its earthly existence as a print life form is no longer a viable option and instead takes on a digital-only presence, is it really a heaven-sent opportunity or is it actually a gentle nudge by the minions of magazine hell to push it into its final resting place? If your print product isn’t connecting with an audience, is it really going to flourish among a billion more nondescript URLs or a million other apps?

Think about it, please. And take a look at a few lost souls while you’re at it.

Flashback 2006

When Teen People closed its print magazine in 2006, it decided to make digital confetti out of the pages and toss the remnants on the print product’s grave in celebration. With a still healthy circulation of 1.5 million in the second half of 2005, Teen People displaced about 50 employees—with the promise of finding them spots within the company—and, according to Ann Moore and John Huey, set about to “invest in the brand through Teenpeople.com, which shows promise and growth.”
Flash Forward 2013

The only presence that remains of Teenpeople.com today is at the home of the magazine’s parents: PeopleMagazine.com. Apparently, when living on its own didn’t quite pan out, mommy and daddy allowed their child to come home.

Too bad some of the other print magazines that went digital-only didn’t have parents quite so affluent.

Going digital-only screams salvation to some print products that are battling low ad pages and declining circulation, but the question remains: If you’re not selling ads in your ink-on-paper magazine, what in the world makes you think you’re going to make gazillions of dollars on the web?

Even with automated ad sales systems, consumer magazine sites aren’t garnering all that much from their digital counterparts.

Flashback 2009

Gourmet in print became another headstone in the “Ink-on-Paper Cemetery,” when Condè Nast killed it in 2009. Just the previous year, Gourmet had had a circulation of around one million, but its ad pages had dropped. And the magazine wasn’t doing as well as its sister magazine, Bon Appétit, which was also owned by Condè Nast. But it would soon be reborn as an app for iPad called Gourmet Live.

Flash Forward 2013

Gourmet Live is officially done, as far as any new content is concerned. According to a spokesperson for Condè Nast, the app itself will remain intact, but it won’t be updated. However, Gourmet.com will continue to be updated as the main platform of the brand.

Where have we heard that before?

Flashback 2011

American Media, Inc. (AMI), a leading publisher of celebrity magazines, announced the launch of Reality Weekly, the first magazine devoted only to Reality TV shows and its new mega-stars. Included in the hype around this blockbuster idea was the companion website for folks who just couldn’t get enough of the inside info that must surely abound on television shows such as these.

The launch was fan-fared with the fact that the magazine would sell at all the mass merchant locations: Wal-Mart, Kroger, Dollar General, Kmart, A&P and Rite-Aid and would be priced a mere $1.79 (“Less Money, More Fun”). Really.

“I’m proud to introduce a magazine that gives readers the news they want about television’s most popular genre. Print remains one of our most effective mediums, which is why Reality Weekly will be a showcase launch of 2012,” said David J. Pecker, AMI’s Chairman, President and CEO, at the time.

Flash Forward 2013

Before 2012 was over, the magazine folded. The website hasn’t been updated since July 2012. However, that same month AMI folded the magazine, it announced that it was naming Joe Bilman as its first chief digital officer and set the lofty goal (at the time Mr. Bilman was hired) of building its digital revenue to $50 million. Accordingly, AMI resolved to try Reality Weekly as a free tablet app that summer.

They followed that with a big splashy ad that screamed at the consumer: “Reality Weekly…We’re Going Digital.”

But where are they now?

The magazines mentioned here are not the only ones. What about Elle Girl, Cosmo Girl? Digital brands such as PC Mag and Sporting News, while still breathing that oh-so thin digital air, are mere shadows of their former print selves.

When you lose contact with the people who matter, your customers, and treat them as numbers instead of members of this community of experiences you have created for them, you’re going to lose them, whether the neighborhood is print or digital.

And what about Newsweek?

As the New York Times put it so eloquently: From the start, it was an unwieldy melding of two newsrooms: a legacy print magazine, Newsweek, combined with an irreverent digital news site, The Daily Beast.

Now the 79-year-old, once highly-respected news magazine must co-exist next to an entity called “The Daily Beast,” its new significant other.

The sacred vow that some publications make with their new life partner, digital, is usually a last-ditch effort to save a customer and product bond that was broken many times earlier. When you have a brand so highly known in print and you suddenly jerk that trusted and cherished product out from under your customers’ feet, why do you bemoan your fate when, one day, you have to take that digital shingle down for good?

Right now, Newsweek is looking for digital heaven, as others are. Let’s just hope the abyss that lies before them doesn’t lead to purgatory instead.

The Moral of the Story?

At the end of the day if we don’t we create a community where we make our customers feel like members instead of just numbers after a dollar sign, we won’t have anything to publish in print or digital—no long-lasting relationship, anyway, merely a one-night stand.

The minute you lose your connectivity with your customers (readers, users, viewers, listeners, whatever you call them), you’re in trouble. And if you fail to connect with them time and time again, even going to that digital heaven online can’t save you. Cut your losses, let your magazine die in peace and don’t torture it anymore.

Stop being in the game of numbers and change to a game of members instead.

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Reflecting on John Suhler’s Impact

Bill Mickey — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 16:40:55 -0500

Min wrote about John Suhler’s retirement last week. Other than that, and some mentions in the financial-industry media, his retirement didn’t make much news. To me, that’s an oversight, because John Suhler is certainly one of a dozen or so major figures in the magazine industry in the last 40 years.

That group includes people like Bill Ziff, who founded two major magazine companies; both had brands that live on today. It includes people like Peter Diamandis, who in the eighties bought CBS Magazines for $650 million and flipped it to Hachette less than a year later for a $100 million in profit. It includes iconic editors like Helen Gurley Brown and Tina Brown. And IDG’s Pat McGovern.

For a bunch of reasons, John Suhler belongs in that group. Suhler and his partner, John Veronis, created the category of boutique media investment firm in 1981, with the launch of VS&A, a brokerage firm specializing in the magazine industry. It was VS&A that managed the $3.2 billion sale of the TV Guide to News Corp. in 1988. More recently, TV Guide sold for $1.

And it was VS&A (later renamed VSS when a third partner, Jeffrey Stevenson, was added) that led the way for a host of other firms, including JEGI, DeSilva+Phillips, Berkery, Noyes, and others that operate in the media-industry space.

More than that, Suhler and his partners anticipated the private-equity boom in the magazine industry. VS&A began private-equity investment funds in the mid-eighties. By the mid-nineties, with the acquisition of Ziff Davis by Forstmann Little, the private-equity boom was on—a boom that with its spectacular successes and equally remarkable flameouts has transformed the industry.

But Suhler’s major impact might have come before even those milestones. Early in his career, he was a circulator, and because his father was also a magazine circulator, Suhler says, “The dinner table was a circulation bootcamp. I wasn’t bathed in football,” he says. “I was bathed in the language and the people and the activities of large-circulation magazines.”

Suhler took that education and transformed an industry. He pioneered an analytic approach to circulation, developing mathematical models to figure out costs and volumes necessary to maintain ratebases, solicit new subs, estimate renewals, factor in cancellations, payups and all of the many moving parts associated with paid circulation. Suhler’s work on circulation modeling predated the famous Lighthouse Model. He had a hand in developing the game-changing Kobak Model. And in his mid-twenties, as publisher of Psychology Today, Suhler used those analytic skills— And marketing planning and creative subscription offers like, “try a subscription for no cost, but if you like the magazine, we will bill you at our best introductory offer”—to push that magazine to an unlikely circulation of 900,000.

By 2004, VSS got out of the brokerage business and became a pure investment firm. And here’s another numeric measurement of Suhler’s success. In 32 years, VSS created four private-equity funds, two mezzanine funds, with about $3 billion in committed capital and invested in a total of about 70 operating companies with a combined enterprise value of $14 billion.

Not a bad career.

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MediaNext Wrap-Up

Bill Mickey — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 14:03:28 -0500

FOLIO:'s MediaNext event concluded today in New York. With about 1,000 in attendance the show examined all the ways publishers are evolving into true multiplatform media companies. With keynotes from LinkedIn's Dan Roth, Business Insider's Henry Blodget, Vox Media's James Bankoff and Meredith's Tom Harty, as well as four tracks dedicated to the various strategic channels publishers are leveraging, event content sat right at the intersection of where "traditional" meets digital.

Al DiGuido, president of Optimus Publishing, kicked off the Magazine Media Core Skills track with a lesson he learned at his first job as a 13-year-old store clerk in Brooklyn. DiGuido’s store—surrounded by larger, cheaper competitors—would put a Tootsie Roll in the bag of each customer. Donning an apron and doling out candy, DiGuido reminded publishers to offer a unique selling proposition. “Legacy media has not been aggressive enough in modifying value proposition,” he argued.

Samir Husni, the director of the Magazine Innovation Center at the University of Mississippi, presented an optimistic view of the industry, despite its tendency toward the negative—“Nobody talks as much as we do about our own demise,” he says. Husni ran through the more than 800 magazine launches of the past year, stopping to highlight several of the more amusing. His point was larger though. Though many were alarmed print been passed by other forms of media, that doesn’t mean it will go away. Print ad revenues bypassed radio in 1935; television bypassed radio in 1955—after playing third-fiddle for more than a half-century, radio is still relevant.

In sales and marketing, Stephen Acunto, account manager with Hearst Men’s Group, and Jackie Ghedine, associate publisher with Ad Age, echoed the comments of Beth Tomkiw, EVP and chief creative officer at what is now TMG/McMurry. Content marketing, they agree, will emerge as a go-to marketing solution in 2013.

During the Data, Sales & Audience Monetization track, a heavy emphasis was placed on building a highly engaged community of readers, followers, fans and customers to reach business objectives that support generating revenue and capturing valuable insights.

From paid online content models, to generating revenue from Twitter engagement, the track aimed to deliver specific takeaways to help professionals leverage their key asset: their audience.

One particularly interesting session was lead by Steve Ennen, president and chief intelligence officer for SocialStrategy1. He contented that magazines are the stagecoaches from yesteryear—an outdated vehicle for spreading information. Ennen argued that publishers must rethink and restructure their businesses at every level. Distribution is no longer about the mailman, he said, but about network effects, sharing, and the fluid channels of social media.

“Social media is so powerful it topples governments,” said Ennen. “Why would you think it couldn't help your media company?”

The opportunity, he said, is a proliferation of revenue channels and readers, empowering publishers in ways they still cannot imagine.

In the session "Integrated Sales in a Three-Screen Era" in the Media Mashup track, Elena Sukacheva, The Economist's vice president of strategy and client solutions, noted that her team primarily drives the creative process of building an integrated package. "Agencies give us big ideas, they don't care what it is. They just want us to make it big and unique," she said.

Accordingly, the team leverages all of The Economist's brand platforms. A recent campaign for BMW, for example, included print, digital, video and live events—as well as a partnership with Bon Appétit.

Later in that session, Cygnus Business Media's senior vice president of business development Blair Johnson described the company's new Engagement Report, which leverages detailed analytics to measure the exposure and consumption of each of a client's messaging elements. The company then carefully trains the sales team to present the report to the client in an effort to help them better steer the campaign to the client's actual goals. "At the very least, the Engagement report is getting our sales people in the door," said Johnson.

One session in the Content and Brand Marketing track featured Betsy Frank and Barry Martin, who are “research and insights officers” with Time Inc. Their jobs are to figure out how Time Inc. editors can relate better to readers. Explaining one recent research project in which they used biometrics, they took a group of Digital Natives (people under 30 who presumably were born into a digital world) and another group of Digital Immigrants (people over 30 who had to get used to it), gave them glasses with video cameras built in and recorded every type of media they used during their non-working hours.

As a consequence of their research, Frank and Martin’s best advice to Time Inc.’s editors about how to engage their Native readers? “Make it quick, make it easy and make it emotional.”

It may not be the advice their Immigrant editors want to hear, but it’s what they’re going to have to do if they want to keep their publications alive.

Two publishing executives noted that their events programs generate substantial revenue, serve their readers in a way that print and digital publishing can’t, and extend and reinforce their brands.

In the conference session titled “Conferences, Meet-ups, Mixers and Summits,” The Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Steve Clemons and Computerworld Vice President and Publisher John Amato agreed that the wide variety of events they hold are all profitable.

“In fact, it generates more revenue than anything else we do,” Clemons said, “including the magazine.”

For specific keynote session coverage, visit:

• MediaNext Show: Thriving in the Age of Transformation
• MediaNext: LinkedIn Executive Editor Dan Roth Shares
• MediaNext: From Upstart to Powerhouse
• MediaNext: Scaling Quality Journalism

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Hearst Digital Subscriptions Now Generating Profits

Bill Mickey — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 10:42:46 -0500

In what's become an annual tradition from Hearst Magazines president David Carey, a post-holiday letter to employees highlights some of the company's successes in the last year and points to new initiatives for 2013.

While there were definitely highlights for the company, Carey noted the days of consistent performance across brands are over. This is a nod to a recognition that while the external media landscape continues to fracture, so goes the internal performance of brands—strategies that used to work consistently across the platform are now maddeningly hard to predict from one brand to another.

"While in the past our businesses tended to move in unison—collectively, up or off—I believe that the variability and volatility of performance is here to stay, which puts a greater emphasis on the impressive can-do spirit and creativity of our teams," says Carey in the letter.

Nevertheless, Carey is continuing his push for entrepreneurial thinking within the company, noting international, digital and commerce-oriented growth initiatives. By the end of the year, for example, Cosmopolitan's partnership with jcpenney was producing $1 million in weekly sales.

Also notable is Carey's claim that Hearst Magazines now has the highest number of paid monthly digital subscriptions across tablet devices in the industry—at nearly 800,000. The subscriptions are generating profits and 80 percent of the subscribers are new to the file.

Here's the letter in full:

Dear Colleagues,

Happy 2013! Welcome back after what I hope was a wonderful holiday break for each of you. If you were minding business at the office last week, I trust you also found it a peaceful place to be.

As we begin a new year, I want to take stock of our company’s accomplishments in the last year and look forward to what’s on tap for the coming one.

We have been thrilled by consumer response to the new print products we introduced, led most notably in the U.S. by HGTV Magazine and, globally, by 10 new Hearst international editions, including Esquire in Singapore and Colombia and Harper’s BAZAAR in Poland. We’re also enthused by the pace at which our content is ricocheting around an increasingly mobile world. At the end of 2011, we had 39 million monthly page views on mobile devices; by the end of 2012 that number had grown to 186 million.

But no question, 2012 will not be remembered as mellow in either media or meteorology.

Many of our businesses soared and produced record results. Others faced challenges, and the teams behind these brands have put in place fresh thinking for 2013. While in the past our businesses tended to move in unison—collectively, up or off—I believe that the variability and volatility of performance is here to stay, which puts a greater emphasis on the impressive can-do spirit and creativity of our teams.

Whether you were doing business in sunshine or in storm, so many of you pushed ahead—continuing the enormously imaginative work of expanding our company’s reach and influence. I want to thank all the teams that make Hearst Magazines great.

The barometer of our 2012 performance marked important developments. Our core print brands were honored with a raft of prestigious awards: three National Magazine Awards, total domination of Advertising Age’s A-List, including Magazine of the Year Marie Claire and Publisher of the Year Nancy Berger Cardone, numerous Folio: Eddie and Ozzie Awards, and an Adweek Hot List nod for HGTV Magazine.

More of our greatest brand hits last year:

• ELLE had very strong growth in its first full year of Hearst ownership, gaining market share and becoming our second-largest business in the U.S.

• HGTV Magazine, created in partnership with Scripps Networks, ended its first year with nearly 700,000 paid subscribers, producing average monthly newsstand sales of more than 250,000 and strong reception from advertisers. This year, the title will move to 10 issues annually.

• Harper’s BAZAAR had a perfectly executed redesign that has been a hit with readers and advertisers, and Good Housekeeping introduced a new look and feel in its January issue, a front-to-back revamp driven by extensive consumer research and testing. Now under way: a dramatic restyling of Road & Track and a new direction for Redbook.

• Marie Claire’s powerhouse publishing team delivered the most revenue ever in the magazine’s 18-year U.S. history.

• Already the No. 1 epicurean magazine on the newsstand, Food Network Magazine had a sales jump of 18 percent last year and earned the top spot for ad pages in its category. Projected FNM circulation for 2013: 1.55 million.

In keeping with our UNBOUND positioning, we made impressive gains in digital media. By the end of the year, we counted nearly 800,000 monthly digital subscriptions in the U.S. across iPads, NOOKs, Kindle Fires and Android devices—the highest in the industry. Those subscriptions are now generating profits after 24 months of investment. And how exciting to see how this business is developing organically: More than 80 percent of our digital subscribers are new to our files, and their engagement levels meet or exceed the high levels we see from our print products.

We achieved important digital milestones all across the company:

• The number of unique monthly visitors to our websites grew by more than 30 percent. Our brands have driven an explosion in social engagement with their audiences; Hearst has 7.7 million Facebook fans, 4.7 million Twitter followers and 5.5 million Pinterest followers, including the No. 1 brand on Pinterest, Harper’s BAZAAR.

• Cosmopolitan doubled the size of its digital edit team in December, with the goal of reaching 20 million monthly unique visitors. The magazine also used a multi-pronged social media strategy engineered by iCrossing to welcome new editor in chief Joanna Coles: 18 million tweets announcing Joanna’s move were sent in just a few hours. (The brand is also active on the TV front: Watch for Cosmo as a star of a new Mark Burnett series debuting in February.)

• Jumpstart, a key asset from our Lagadère acquisition, had the most profitable year in its history. Jumpstart grew to become the No. 3 website for auto shoppers, with more than 9.5 million monthly unique visitors.

• Innovation flows in all directions in our halls: Hearst’s popular foodie destination Delish.com introduced a print special that was sold with the November editions of six titles at Wal-Mart, producing a 22 percent lift in single-copy sales.

We welcomed new faces last year and, in some cases, rearranged places. Chief Technology Officer Phil Wiser, who joined Hearst Corporation last January, quickly became a key resource for our technology teams. In addition to Joanna at Cosmo, we named three new editors in chief: Susan Spencer at Woman’s Day, Larry Webster at Road & Track and Anne Fulenwider at Marie Claire. We were also pleased to welcome Carine Roitfeld as global fashion director of BAZAAR, who, in an industry first, will create fashion editorial that will run in all 26 international editions of the magazine at the same time. This high-profile creative initiative with Carine is among my favorite rule-breakers of 2012 and paves the way for more global content sharing.

Benchmarking industry leadership took a number of creative forms at Hearst in 2012:

• We created the Hearst Design Group by consolidating the editorial staffs of ELLE DECOR, House Beautiful and Veranda under Newell Turner’s leadership, bringing a streamlined, nimble, European publishing model to the U.S.

• Again, in the spirit of not holding onto established orthodoxies, we changed the business models of some titles, including Woman’s Day and Veranda, shifts that have dramatically improved bottom-line performance.

• You will see more brand extensions this year based on last year’s success; Cosmopolitan for Latinas, Delish and ELLE Accessories will all increase their frequency in 2013.

• From its genesis as a column in Good Housekeeping, 7 Years Younger is now a book and a website with extensive social media presence—and the launch has been a collaborative effort across our company.

Always looking for new ways to connect with our readers, Hearst developed fresh, effective commerce initiatives last year, including ShopBAZAAR.com and the House Beautiful Marketplace, a partnership with HSN.

After a year of close collaboration, the Cosmopolitan Collection debuted in September in 700 jcpenney stores nationwide. At year’s end, consumer sales were running more than $1 million per week. (Operating as entrepreneurs entails taking chances: Our 2011 partnerships CLAD and Gifting Grace were discontinued. There will be some swings and some misses—we learn and move forward.)

As you know, Hearst is the largest publisher of monthly magazines around the world, with 284 of our 304 editions outside the U.S. I’m pleased to report that in 2012 our international business grew by more than 50 percent. European shortfalls resulting from the ongoing turbulence in the economy were offset by the strength of earnings from our businesses in Russia and Asia—China, in particular, where ELLE has seen so much success that it moved to a semi-monthly publishing schedule.

Our other lines of business also made bold inroads in new areas. Hearst Integrated Media had its biggest year ever in 2012, selling more than 30 custom programs.

We welcomed new leaders, in the U.S., the U.K. and Latin America, to boost iCrossing’s digital marketing leadership. In 2012, iCrossing won two out of every three pitches and signed 30 new accounts—with its average deal size now 250 percent larger than two years ago. iCrossing’s fourth quarter revenues were the highest in its history.

CDS Global celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2012 and successfully focused on transforming its technology to offer new digital and e-commerce services and diversify its business across industries. CDS Global is a key part of the magazine industry’s tablet media infrastructure and at the same time is building business beyond media—it ended 2012 with nearly 20 percent of its revenue from non-magazine clients.

One thing that’s distinctive about Hearst is how important partnerships are to driving our growth, a key strategy established long ago by our CEO, Frank A. Bennack, Jr. We’re fortunate to operate joint ventures with many of the world’s leading corporations. (These ventures not only generate earnings, but also bring great talent—our just-named Hearst president, Steve Swartz, originally came to the company via a joint venture with Dow Jones). Because of our reputation of being such a good partner, we regularly receive inbound concepts from media companies looking to jointly create new products with Hearst. (So don’t be surprised if we test yet another new magazine by year’s end!)

Finally, a sad note and a heartfelt tribute: Helen Gurley Brown, the Hearst magazine editor who first made Cosmopolitan famous and single women proud to be smart and sexy, died on August 13 at the age of 90. She led Cosmo for more than three decades, leaving an indelible, personal imprint on several generations of women—and their men. Helen’s re-creation of Cosmopolitan produced profits that were quickly reinvested into a diversified set of businesses that helped build the modern Hearst Corporation.

Which brings me to 2013: Every member of the team has the chance to make a Helen Gurley Brown–level contribution, one that can have a long-lasting, positive impact on our company and colleagues.

Many are hard at work on achieving exactly that.

Esquire Editor in Chief David Granger and Publishing Director Jack Essig will soon announce a bold new partnership—an initiative that will dramatically expand the Esquire franchise. The brand also has big plans in the works to celebrate its 80th anniversary this year.

Our consumer marketing colleagues are collectively rethinking how we bring our titles to market by striking new partnerships with retailers—as they cast aside the “same old way” of doing business—and building world-class digital marketing capabilities.

The company’s digital leadership team is working on plans to “future-proof” our digital business models for a world where more than 50 percent of our traffic will be on small screens, and our readers will demand fresh, high-quality content from our brands around the clock.

The team at Hearst Magazines International is readying another dozen launches in 2013, from France to Australia.

And there’s so much more.

I’m also pleased to announce that in 2013 we will put greater emphasis on the training and development of our team. In the last few weeks we’ve had the good fortune to welcome to Hearst Tower inspirational executives like Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and HSN CEO Mindy Grossman to talk about how they are managing change at their companies. In 2013, we will significantly step up these programs and our exposure to some of the business world’s smartest minds. We will also invest more in digital training of all kinds.

Regardless of the headlines, change in GDP or cyclical trends, our teams are pushing ahead to create a successful 2013. This is the spirit that has put Hearst at the forefront of the industry.

Like you, I get a lot of e-mail newsletters. A few months ago, one contained an especially insightful passage that succinctly sums up the opportunities for our company and industry:

If one thing is clear, it’s that over the next 20 years the shortest distance from A to B is going to be anything but a straight line. To survive, much less to thrive, will require being both clever and smart. Clever means a willingness to try new things—be scrappy and make bold bets, even if they may not pay off. Smart means keeping your eyes on the year-2032 prize—be ready to cut off the experiments that aren’t working and cultivate your willingness to let go of the legacy as the time comes.

I am so proud of all the talented and smart men and women at Hearst who work to empower, educate and encourage our readers, advertisers and partners. In picas and pixels, you are simply the best, through all kinds of weather. And I know you are not alone—supported by family and friends who encourage you to do your best work and reach for the stars.

Thank you, again. I wish you a new year filled with personal and professional success and happiness.

Sincerely,

David Carey
President
Hearst Magazines
@CareyAtHearst
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More Tablet Owners Prefer Yearly Magazine Subscriptions

Bill Mickey — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 15:23:56 -0500

NEW YORK—At MPA Digital’s Social Media Summit Thursday, Ethan Grey, vice president of digital with the association, revealed results from its latest study slated to be released in January.

The data, which was conducted with Gfk MRI and surveyed 796 adults aged 18-plus who owned a tablet, shows that in general, tablet owners prefer to buy yearly subscriptions to digital magazines. About 56 percent of respondents prefer to purchase a one-year subscription, 31 percent prefer to buy monthly subscriptions, 11 percent normally buy half-year subscriptions and just 2 percent prefer multi-year subscriptions.

When asked about the type of digital magazine content they prefer, more than half—55 percent—say they read current and back issues. The remaining 45 percent prefer to only read the most current issues.

“This is an avenue for increased dollars in revenue for magazines,” Grey said.

Additionally, respondents find the price of digital magazines to be fairly reasonable—about 49 percent said they “agree somewhat” that pricing of digital magazines is fair.

When it comes to bundling, 34 percent of respondents “somewhat agree” that they are only interested in a digital subscription if it comes with a free print subscription. The second highest group of respondents—30 percent—“somewhat disagree” when asked if they are only interested in a digital subscription if it comes with a free print subscription.

Many respondents (44 percent) say they “somewhat agree” that the automatic downloading of their magazine subscriptions is convenient. About 36 percent “strongly agree.”

When it comes to loading times, 59 percent say they “somewhat agree” that the time it takes to download a magazine app is reasonable, with 27 percent saying they “strongly agree.”

The all-you-can-eat magazine model of Next Issue Media, said Grey, could become more popular, at least based on this data: 27 percent of respondents “strongly agree” when asked if they like having the ability to pay a flat subscription fee for a large library of magazines. About 46 percent “somewhat agree.”

When rating five digital newsstands, respondents thought most highly of Apple, with 90.8 percent saying the Apple Newsstand is excellent or good. When it comes to a browsing experience for new titles, Apple tied with Barnes & Noble’s Nook at 81 percent.

More information on digital magazine reader preferences will be released this January by the MPA.

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A Response to 'Subcompact Publishing'

Bill Mickey — Thu, 29 Nov 2012 15:48:19 -0500

An essay by Craig Mod has been making the rounds lately among media watchers. It's a terrific read. Mod, a current independent writer and former Flipbook employee, touts what he's calling the Subcompact Manifesto, which places a premium on a minimalist approach to digital publishing.

His manifesto emerges out of one of the main criticisms 'traditional' publishers have received for their tablet magazines and apps: They're unwieldy, hard to use, have too many bells and whistles and take up too much room. But most importantly, they're tied to print production schedules, design and pricing. In other words, tablet editions are not exploiting the medium in the open, nimble, socially-forward way they could and/or should be.

As Mod says:

So why do so many of our digital magazines publish on the same schedule, with the same number of articles as their print counterparts? Using the same covers? Of course, they do because it’s easier to maintain identical schedules across mediums. To not design twice. To not test twice (or, at all).

Unfortunately—from a medium-specific user experience point of view—it’s almost impossible to produce a digitally indigenous magazine beholden to those legacy constraints. Why? Not least because we use tablets and smartphones very differently than we use printed publications.

The key here, for Mod, is the "indigenous magazine"—a product born exclusively for the mobile-digital platform, free of any print production and pricing frameworks.

He goes on to highlight The Magazine, created by Marco Arment, as a perfect example of the digitally indigenous magazine. It's short (four or five articles), it's design is breezy and open, it's file size is small, it's cheap and easy to snack on.

This all may be true, and there's probably an audience for The Magazine and future brands just like it.

But what's wrong with publishing a tablet magazine that's full of print magazine design and rich media content, that's $4.99 for a single copy and might take all night to download to Apple's Newsstand? Nothing, really, because there's room in the market for the digitally indigenous magazine and the digital magazine that's married, for good or bad, to its print namesake.

I understand that with digital comes an expectation of disruption and re-invention. And not just an expectation, but actual disruption. But it's also a world where all sorts of business models live and play.

I don't think Mod is necessarily saying all publishers need to drop their old-school, print-legacy-based digital magazines and start producing $2, 4-article, scrolling mini-apps. He does say though, that publishers are balking at producing products like these because they're not based on a familiar model and they're not likely to produce immediate and significant returns. Funnily enough, neither have the full-blown tablet magazines, for now.

What will be interesting to see is how much the subcompact model informs or influences the sedan version of digital magazines—or simply rides next to it.

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On the Nature of Technology Transitions

Bill Mickey — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 16:04:34 -0400

Two significant industry conferences in the last couple of weeks were dominated by the question of whether print is dead. At the American Magazine Conference two weeks ago, Ben Horowitz, co-founder, Andreessen Horowitz, said this:

“Babies born now will never read anything in print. At the same time, people in their 40s and 50s will never stop reading print. Face the reality that print will eventually go away.”

(You may recall that Mark Andreessen and some college classmates invented the browser that became Netscape in 1994.)

Similarly at the AMC, Jeffery Cole, director of the Center for the Digital Future at USC said this: “Some magazines will always remain in print. Especially those with strong design principles. However, the majority will see their print roots begin to completely break down by the end of the decade.”

(It’s worth noting that a futurist who heads “The Center for the Digital Future” would probably be fired for predicting the print business model will prevail into the future.)

In a fiery opening speech at the AMC, the new CEO of MPA, Mary Brener, said the old-line magazine industry can prevail if it has “chutzpah and balls.”

“I love magazines and I believe in magazines. I believe that magazines—on both print and digital platforms—have a bright future. I am pissed that we as an industry have allowed others to hijack our story, our narrative. A narrative that is now dismissive of print magazines.”

But I say the whole definition of the argument—print versus digital—misses the point. It frames the question inaccurately. Of course we’re both.

Berner also said, “We are not in the printing business. We are in the content business.” That reminded me of all the times I’ve heard industry prognosticators describe the supposedly fatal error of the railroad industry early in the last century. Railroads thought they were in the railroad business, the thinking went, when they actually were in the transportation business.

Well, the truth is the railroads—with their thousands of miles of track and their expensive, highly specialized locomotives and heavy equipment—were in the railroad business. And railroads got superseded by better technologies in the form of cars and airplanes. That they didn’t transform was not their fault. It was unrealistic to think they could. This pattern has been repeated countless times in the history of enterprise.

But: Berner is right in saying the media companies are in the content business, and as such, should not be tied to a particular distribution form.

At the other conference, the ACT III Experience at Samir Husni’s Magazine Innovation Center at the University of Mississippi, the keynoter, ASME’s Sid Holt, correctly said that no one really knows what the future will bring in media. Anyone who says they do is bluffing. But we do know this: Those who say print in its current form will live on, and ignores the opportunities and threats in new technologies, are playing a risky game.

There are plenty of positive statistics presented by Berner and others:

• The number of brands advertising in magazine media has increased by 57 percent since 2009.
• Combined unduplicated magazine media audiences,  across print and online, have increased by 4 percent.
• 91 percent of U.S. adults read magazines.
• 96 percent of adults 18-24 read magazines.
• The top driver of Web search is print magazines.

But for every stat along those lines, there are other, unclear signals:

• Magazine ad pages for the first half of 2012 are down 8.8 percent, according to PIB, following declines in consecutive prior years.
• Ad spending on magazine media is declining.
• Spending on marketers’ own Web sites is dramatically increasing.
• Technologies have emerged that connect buyers more directly to sellers, meaning the role of traditional media must evolve.

At the ACT III conference, Bob Sacks said the loss of dominance doesn’t necessarily equal death. But the truth is, sometimes it does equal death. New technologies frequently totally replace older ones. Has anyone bought a typewriter lately? Or a word processor? Horses supplied human land transportation for 6,000 years. They don’t anymore. Have you bought an LP lately? Or film for your camera?

And transitions can take a long time. Johannes Gutenberg gets credit for inventing the printing press, but the Phaistos Disk, discovered on Crete 104 years ago, is the earliest known printed document, dating to 1700 B.C., 3,100 years before Gutenberg. Why didn’t printing take hold earlier? Because the technology was not enough of an improvement on existing technologies to cause people to change.

And Nikolaus Otto built the first internal-combustion gas engine in 1866. But it wasn’t’t until the third decade of the 20th Century, nearly 70 years later, that cars became ubiquitous.

And you can bet that at annual horse-and-buggy conferences and trade shows for every one of those 70 years, prognosticators were insisting there would always be a role for the horse and buggy.

Bob Sacks is right. We’re in an era of realignment. And realignments can take a long time. In the meantime, we can better understand our customers, innovate, iterate and reinvent our businesses before someone else does for us.

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Behind Mother Jones’s Recent Dual Cover Strategy

Bill Mickey — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 14:59:57 -0400

For their November/December 2012 issue, the editors and creative director at Mother Jones decided to do a split run cover, with a completely different cover story and image for subscribers and newsstand buyers.

Subscribers get “No Way Out,” a long-form investigative piece on solitary confinement in California state prisons written by Shane Bauer, who himself was imprisoned in Iran for 26 months, six in solitary, when he was picked up on the Iraq border in 2009. The cover image is a realistic illustration by Tim O’Brien of a tormented man in a prison cell.

The newsstand cover story is “Sweet Little Lies,” a story by Gary Taubes and Cristin Kearns Couzens about the sugar industry’s 40-year long campaign to cover up evidence about the bad affects of the sweet stuff: obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and its addictive nature. For that cover, also an illustration by Tim O’Brien, there’s a pitcher of Kool-Aid with a grinning skull superimposed on it. (Note that on the newsstand the issue is simply dated December 2012.) By Mother Jones standards this is considered a lighter, more accessible story!

“No Way Out is a great story, but we felt that it might not sell that well on newsstands, where the potential buyer is not as familiar with our magazine,” says Mother Jones creative director Tim J Luddy.

Early last year Mother Jones did another split cover for similar reasons. Editors Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffery wrote about their decision for the January/February 2011 issue to put a story about gang rape in Haiti on the subscriber cover, but deliver a newsstand cover story that highlighted the pot business: “As compelling as all that is in a story, it’s a tough sell on the newsstand. Even assuming that anyone tempted to buy this magazine probably isn’t expecting cheerful (our joke is that the Mother Jones tagline should be ‘It’s Worse Than You Think’), rape gangs are pretty heavy stuff to hit a new reader with on our first encounter.”

That both current covers were illustrated by Tim O’Brien was more by chance than design, says Luddy. “I did a separate set of conceptual sketches for the Sugar and Solitary covers. Once we decided on final ideas, it just happened that Tim was our top choice for each image.”

The actual cost for producing and printing two separate covers for Mother Jones is minimal, since they already print different covers with a UPC code and a subscriber address. And Mother Jones does its own in-house proofing. As Luddy says, “The only additional cost is the extra wear and tear to the creative director and editors,” along with the additional fee for the illustrator or photographer.

How does Mother Jones handle the covers on other platforms? On their website, or for any online editorial use, they rotate between the two. For their Zinio app or other digital versions that require a cover, they use the newsstand version. For development and fundraising, they use the subscriber cover, since according to Luddy, “That’s the kind of story our donors like to support.” For circulation (blow-in cards, etc.), however, they go back to the newsstand version.

Are split covers worth the effort and is there a payoff? There’s a long history of entertainment magazines like TV Guide and Entertainment Weekly doing multiple covers. But they usually promote the same story, albeit with different cover images (like doing a separate cover for each cast member of Lost). It’s much less common to take the Mother Jones approach, although idiosyncrasy for a smaller independent title can work to its advantage.

When I was creative director at Reader’s Digest we tried a similar split cover strategy for several issues, but found that it confused readers, and got us plenty of complaints. It also didn’t pay off at the newsstand; in fact one of the covers was the worst-selling of the year. And Luddy reports that last year’s Mother Jones split cover was also one of their worst-selling issues for 2011.

So why bother? Newsstand sales are only about 10 percent of Mother Jones’s total paid circulation, so featuring a “softer” story at retail is a strategy that’s aimed at luring in new readers rather than one that’s designed to materially boost single copy sales.

Nevertheless, I wondered whether the strategy had any downside for the brand overall. Liz Gettelman, Mother Jones’s public affairs director, put it this way:

“The game has changed when it comes to print magazine covers. In the print era you would rarely see a logo separate from a cover image. But now, the logo is a much more prominent feature, since that alone (without cover art) is usually a publication’s branding image on platforms like Twitter and Facebook, and on websites. The split covers signal to readers that we are versatile and robust enough to be able to highlight various types of coverage. So long as they all feel like Mother Jones stories, then we are actually staying true to our brand.”

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The U.S. Loves Its Social Smartphone Apps

Bill Mickey — Tue, 04 Sep 2012 16:37:40 -0400

A new report conducted by app store analytics firm Distimo finds that the United States is the most "socially savvy" country by virtue of its download volume of social apps.

According to Distimo, out of the most popular apps downloaded, 20 percent of the volume is apps from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and the like. In countries in Europe and South East Asia, social app download volume doesn't exceed 10 percent.

These findings are part of a larger look at how social media app downloads compare to other apps. As an example, the report finds that while download volume among the 100 most popular apps in Apple's App Store increased 43 percent over the last two years, the top 100 social applications increased 193 percent between July 2010 and July 2012.

Further, Facebook lost its prominence by July 2012 as the top downloaded social app, falling to the third spot behind Instagram and Twitter (as measured across Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Korea, United Kingdom, and the U.S.).

For the full report, click here.
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