FOLIO: Section Blogs by Sales and Marketing

Nine Out of Every 10 Doctors Prefer Print

Dylan Stableford — Thu, 15 May 2008 14:29:24 -0400

No matter what sector or industry you are in, this is a great study to sell the value of print advertising. The study—"What Doctors Think"—documents how physicians prefer to receive their professional information, and magazines top of their list. The study has implications beyond just medical magazines because of the importance and prestige doctors have. The study, with 231 physicians responding, also covered a variety of other perceptions doctors have on the media that serve them.

Use it on a call.

Talk about the importance physicians play in our society. Talk about how, unlike almost any other profession, the information they receive will impact life or death decisions. Then show them the chart. When information absolutely must be accurate and trusted, magazines deliver.

There is another reason to use this study. On April 4th I posted on the just released MediaVest study that measured the amount of trust consumers felt for different media in four major categories. In the fashion, food, and entertainment fields, magazines were found to be most trusted, but in health and wellness onlline sources were tops. Michael Turro posted a comment raising the concern that had print fallen behind with readers in the only category "that could kill them." Cheer up print reps! You can now use this study in conjunction with the MediaVest study. While consumers may find online media in the health and wellness field more trustworthy than print, doctors do not agree.

Download the entire "What Doctors Think" study here ...

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Inside the Time 100 Party

Dylan Stableford — Fri, 09 May 2008 18:30:35 -0400

SEE RELATED SLIDESHOW: Inside the 2008 Time 100 Party

Time magazine celebrated its Time 100 issue—like all lists, an arbitrary collection of the “100 most influential people” in the world—with a star-splashed, blingy black-tie ceremony last night in Manhattan.

The annual event is always a surreal experience—not just in terms of who shows up (last night roughly 40 members of the 2008 list were in attendance). The sheer volume of celebrities in one room presents bizarre comingling opportunities that would appear, at least on the surface, awkward anywhere else (Herbie Hancock with Robert Downey Jr.; Martha Stewart with Rupert Murdoch; Murdoch’s wife with Arianna Huffington; me with … well, anyone).
As Stephen Colbert put it at the event couple years ago: "This is cool ... It's the 100 most influential people hanging out and influencing each other."
Last night’s influentials influencing each other included movie and TV stars (Downey Jr., Tyler Perry, producer Harvey Weinstein, 40-Year-Old Virgin director Judd Apatow, the cast of Saturday Night Live including Amy Poehler, Seth Meyers, Fred Armisen, Jason Sudeikis, Will Forte, Kristen Wiig, executive producer Lorne Michaels as well as alums Chris Rock and Tina Fey), athletes (Lance Armstrong), moguls (Murdoch, Martha, Marc Ecko), musicians (Hancock, Peter Gabriel, Mariah Carey), newsmen (Brian Williams), pundits (Bill O’Reilly, Joe Scarborough), neo-geeks-turned-Web 2.0 millionaires (Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales) bloggers (Williams, TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington) and one presumptive presidential nominee (John McCain, whose security detail swept the bathroom a full 10 minutes before the senator from Arizona even knew he had the urge to relieve himself).
The evening was just as notable for who wasn’t there: Obama, Hillary, Bush, Putin, Pitt, Clooney, Oprah, Springsteen, Radiohead, Agassi, Bloomberg—all of the 2008 list—were no-shows, as were Miley Cyrus, Muqtada Al-Sadr (shocker!) and the Dalai Lama.
The toasts are usually memorable, and last night’s didn’t disappoint: Armstrong toasted a cancer doctor; Downey Jr. choked and fought back tears while toasting his dad for being there for him at his lowest moment. (Downey Sr. then quipped “You’re not my son!”)
There’s truly no event like this, at least, not in New York. I’d imagine pre- and post-Oscar parties have more firepower, but I’d bet the cast of A-list characters there aren't nearly as approachable.
Still, for all of the party's slick production work and behind-the-scene's effort (think about the logistics of coordinating all of the handlers—and handlers of handlers), the Time 100 issue itself doesn’t sell extraordinarily well (last year’s sold 124,400 single copies, merely the tenth best seller at the newsstand for Time in 2007.)
In the end, the Time 100 party is simply a million-dollar branding device the magazine hopes will pay off in terms of future access to world leaders, politicians and celebrities—and luxury marketers, like, say, Swarovski, who had a case of crystals positioned at the end of the red carpet.
It’s a clubby business to be in. I just hope I get a real seat next year.
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How Not to Promote Your Magazine's Special Issue

Dylan Stableford — Tue, 06 May 2008 15:09:57 -0400

Here's an e-mail I received from Time Out New York's publicist, presented without comment:
From: [FLACK REDACTED]
Date: Tue, May 6, 2008 at 2:27 PM
Subject: I see naked people.
To: [REDACTED]

Feeling hot and bothered? So are we, and we've got the boners to prove it.

Check out Time Out New York's horny issue, now online, featuring dozens of naked New Yorkers and an interactive pole, I mean poll, where you can vote on who you want to strip next.

It's hot and sweaty outside, but you can get hot and sweaty at your desk. We won't tell.
It's worth noting that Time Out New York's former editor, Brian Farnham, speaking at the 2007 American Magazine Conference, said he had one goal in mind when putting together the 2007 sex issue, his second as editor: Cancelled subscriptions.

"If you do a sex issue and no one cancels, you're probably not doing your job," Farnham said.

It's also worth noting Farnham is no longer with the magazine.
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Are You Good-Looking Enough to Sell Magazine Ads?

Joanna Pettas — Mon, 05 May 2008 12:45:38 -0400

You might not like this.
A recent poll of Cafepharma visitors, a Web site for salespeople in the pharmaceutical industry, asked how a salesperson's physical attractiveness affects their selling. The survey was posted with a big helping of skeptical humor, with only three possible answers to "Which type of rep gets the best results?":
1. An average looking rep that knows their products and can sell.
2. Doesn't matter. Too many other factors come into play regarding sales.
3. A super attractive rep that is an idiot and can't sell.
A bit over 17 percent, about one in six, picked #3.
Some may find this funny, some not. But it raises a serious question of how we as individual salespeople differentiate ourselves in the field. If what we sell and how we sell it becomes a commodity ... what's left?
Do you have to attractive to be a media sales rep? I don't think so. But many may disagree.
[IMAGE CREDIT: UsWeekly]
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Recommend a URL in Your Client's Next Ad

Joanna Pettas — Fri, 02 May 2008 10:48:11 -0400

One way to sell more print ad space is to encourage your advertisers to add a campaign and magazine specific URL to their next print ad. It is one extra step. But here is what happens; a readers sees the ad and is motivated to search the Internet for more information. By using a campaign and magazine-specific URL, the advertiser can track which campaign and which magazine drove the reader to their Web site.
A post on Clickz by James Hering offered tips on how to use campaign specific URLs. Hering references research that indicates many do not like to enter long URLs with a lot of extra slash marks. As result, some marketers now favor campaign-specific URLs, often based on the the tag line of the campaign:

Examples include:

Burger King: haveityourway.com and subservientchicken.com

Mitsubishi: seewhathappens.com

Subaru: need-desire.com

Universal Studios: iwantmyvacation.com

Lincoln Mercury: oneandonlyclearance.com

Dish Network: stopfeedingthepig.com

Audi: neverfollow.com

Now add the magazine initials or just a number to designate a specific media and your client can have it all. Is it better to use a custom campaign URL or extensions of the brand URL? Using the brand URL, of course, reinforces the brand. Which approach is better? The answer: the one that gets your advertiser to include a magazine-specific reference so your media gets tracked!
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Pretend Your Print Product Doesn't Exist

Joanna Pettas — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 13:17:17 -0400

It is happening right now in many many industries and sectors. Web-only competitors, "pure play" online publishers, are sneaking in and winning ad sales away from the online products of print publishers. How can they do this? Don’t we have an insurmountable advantage by having a print product continually advancing our brand in the physical world? How do the pure play Internet companies even stand a chance?
"Pure plays" routinely beat the products of print based publishers because they design a new newsletter, webinar, web section, or website, by starting with a clean sheet of paper. Since they have no print vehicle to get them started the "pure plays" design a media product desperate for attention. Every click through they get has is funneled from somewhere else so there has to be an amazingly good reason for a visit. This “clean sheet of paper” approach results in a high emphasis on focus and functionality. It takes an extremely sharp content focus to stand out against the millions of online destinations and when a visitor arrives there must be a high functionality that keeps visitors coming back.

Print people are spoiled. Too often when a magazine launches a web product the editorial focus the same or similar to the positioning as the print product. As for functionality, too often the mission statement is, “To extend the magazine brand onto to the Internet.” Big mistake. Your website needs its own editorial focus, and mission. While it should compliment your print product it cannot just extend it.

To compete, pretend your print product does not exist, then ask, "Given all online destinations and content on the web, why should anyone visit my website?" To beat the pure play publishers, you have to think like one. You too have to start with that clean sheet of paper and work your way forward.
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Why RFPs Get Misused

Joanna Pettas — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 14:30:49 -0400

RFPs are a game. As a best practice for buyers, RFPs simplify the buying process and weed out media that is off the mark, allowing more time with more approprate media. But with buyers under pressure to make decisions more quickly, RFPs get misused. When they become the primary tool of evaluation, insightful media buying sufferers.
James Hering—writing for the ClickZ Network back in 2003—posed this summation showing both sides of the sales desk.

From the seller side, we hear:
"So I'm supposed to tell you why my site is better than the 180 other sites that received an RFP?"
"Great, another 'we expect totally out-of-the-box thinking' proposal!"
"Gee, we get a grand total of two hours to pull together a rock-solid proposal that nails the objective. How convenient."
"We're honored to be invited to be a strategic partner and meet the client's long-term goals with the exciting test budget of $5,000?"
From the buyer side:
"Why don't publishers respond to my requests in a timely manner?"
"I asked for a proposal with a limit of $20,000, yet I get a package for $50,000. What's up with that?"
"I clearly asked for specific targeting criteria, yet 80 percent of what they're offering doesn't meet the stated objectives."
"Ten seconds after emailing the RFP, I get a call with questions for the same information that's noted in it. Didn't he read it?"
Hering makes the following suggestions for media sellers:
Timing is key. Responding in a timely manner is fundamental to a buyer who is trying to wrangle several proposals. Always acknowledge when you get an RFP and note if you plan to participate. (Note to sales managers: Make sure you properly transition accounts. Nothing is more frustrating to a buyer than sending an important request to a dead email account or blank voicemail box.)
Respond appropriately. If the RFP is not clear about where questions should be directed, find out how you can inquire, then provide questions in written form.
Read the proposal from top to bottom at least twice before you ask your first question. You'll be amazed at how things can become clearer after a second reading.
Meet the request. Sure, you've got sales goals, but be sure to totally address the request first. Then, provide additional options. Let's face it, almost everyone loves options. Still, we all get turned off if our initial request is overlooked. Nail the request (including the budget), then upsell all you want.
No rug-pulling, please. Make sure the inventory is there when you sell it. If it's perishable, just make sure the buyer knows the details and any corresponding restrictions. Nothing will drive a buyer insane faster than getting a client excited about an opportunity only to have to call back 10 minutes later with an "Oops, we didn't have all the details" apology.
Just keep in mind, every time you get an RFP someone is inviting you to do business with them!
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Magazines Top Source of Readership Trust

Joanna Pettas — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 09:41:01 -0400

According to a study by MediaVest, magazines are more trusted than online for content in the three areas of entertainment, food/cooking, and fashion/beauty. But online is more trusted for health/wellness information.
Here are the five key findings of the study:
1. Print is more trusted than online in every category but Health/Wellness. Readers find print more trustworthy than online by a margin of 24 percentage points for Fashion/Beauty, 7 points for Food/Cooking, and 5 points for Entertainment.
2. Readers find online more Health/Wellness more trustworthy online than in print by a margin of 3 points.Despite the abundance of online content, few see online replacing print, with just 12% of respondents strongly believing that a publisher’s website could easily replace the printed magazine within the next 5 years.
3. Titles fail to deliver value online. 79% of dual magazine/online users agree that the online site should provide something new & different from the magazine. However, only 44% strongly believe that the publishers' sites are actually offering something unique.
4. Low duplication between print and online. Hovering between 1% and 6% for all categories but entertainment, where for certain titles, duplication reaches 10% at most.

5. Fashion/Beauty relies most faithfully on the printed publication, as it focuses on general trends. People are seven times more likely to go to the print publication for this category.
Read more here ...
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OK! Calls Out Us Weekly, People on Cover

Dylan Stableford — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 14:12:26 -0400

Price wars between celebrity magazines are nothing new—we all remember the move by American Media Inc.'s Celebrity Living to drop its newsstand cover price to 25 cents a couple of years ago. (Celebrity Living, of course, is dead.) But rarely if ever do you see a magazine call out the competition by name as OK! has done this week, touting that its $2.99 cover price is “$1 cheaper than Us Weekly & People!” (OK!—it's worth noting—is going for the trifecta with this one: Britney, Jamie Lynn and Suri).
The cover, however, has another problem, this time related to its Britney Spears’ “scoop” (see how the Spears Family made our just-announced FOLIO: 40 list): the cover shot it is using to illustrate Ms. Spears’ 15 lb., four-week weight loss is actually from a Glamour photo shoot three years ago.
We already know magazines will do anything to justify a Britney cover. This one, though, seems to be an attempt to appease the Spears family publicist(s) for its next scoop feeding.
The Celebrity Newsstand | Second-Half 2007 Circulation

TITLE SINGLE COPY SALES %CHNG OVERALL %CHNG

In Touch 1,228,056 0.10% 1,271,354 0.20%

Life & Style 672,463 -9.70% 681,723 -9.50%

OK 550,100 7.10% 935,375 23.50%

People 1,428,760 -8.50% 3,618,718 -3.50%

Us Weekly 1,005,086 2.70% 1,928,852 10.10

SOURCE: ABC Fas-Fax
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Is This the ‘World’s Most Expensive Magazine’?

Joanna Pettas — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 16:51:53 -0400

The Four Seasons team: John Hamilton, contributor; Mark Caskie, editor, World of Four Seasons; Susan Weissman, executive editor; Jaimey Easler, design director; and Duncan Christy, editorial director.
Who says we’re in a recession? Probably not Four Seasons magazine.
The magazine held a cocktail party last night in the Cosmopolitan Room of New York’s Four Seasons to celebrate its relaunch under Pace. One hot topic of conversation among the 100 or so guests was the number of ad pages it managed to secure.
“I couldn’t even find the editor’s letter,” someone said to me. Why? Because it was preceded by 46 pages of ads for Gucci, Versace, Prada, Sotheby’s and other brands I could never afford. (By my count, the ad page total is 81 out of 176.)
Apparently, I can’t afford the magazine either: “It’s free as long as you can pay for the room,” said a woman introduced as “marketing guru” for Four Seasons, “which probably makes it the world’s most expensive magazine.”
On a side note, the editor’s letter offers an interesting reflection—that magazines should resemble a great dinner party, with the “liveliest assemblage of guests drawn from all quarters of life,” whose voices “should be neither chorus nor babel, but an interesting, even fascinating, series of soloists to whom we listen with pleasure.” I wonder if they need to be able to afford the magazine too...
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Social Networking is Hot, But is It a Business?

Joanna Pettas — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 11:25:59 -0400

In earlier posts I have cautioned against adding online products to your magazine's brand portfolio because other publications seem to succeed at using them. There are strategic reasons for all online products but they may not fit your requirements. For example, blogs are fantastic web site traffic builders that can lift site traffic and thus rates. But trying to monetize blogs directly by selling sponsorships on them is typically much harder.
This week's Economist turns that same analysis to social networking and comes up with a similar cautionary tale:
"The big internet and media companies have bid up the implicit valuations of MySpace, Facebook and others. But that does not mean there is a working revenue model. Sergey Brin, Google's co-founder, recently admitted that Google's “social networking inventory as a whole” was proving problematic and that the “monetisation work we were doing there didn't pan out as well as we had hoped.” Google has a contractual agreement with News Corp to place advertisements on its network, MySpace, and also owns its own network, Orkut. Clearly, Google is not making money from either.
Facebook, now allied to Microsoft, has fared worse. Its grand attempt to redefine the advertising industry by pioneering a new approach to social marketing, called Beacon, failed completely. Facebook's idea was to inform a user's friends whenever he bought something at certain online retailers, by running a small announcement inside the friends' “news feeds”. In theory, this was to become a new recommendation economy, an algorithmic form of word of mouth. In practice, users rebelled and privacy watchdogs cried foul. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's founder, admitted in December that “we simply did a bad job with this release” and apologised.
So it is entirely conceivable that social networking, like web-mail, will never make oodles of money. That, however, in no way detracts from its enormous utility. Social networking has made explicit the connections between people, so that a thriving ecosystem of small programs can exploit this “social graph” to enable friends to interact via games, greetings, video clips and so on."
Read the whole article here ...
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Why Hillary Clinton's 'Red Phone' Ad is Perfect for Magazine Ad Sales

Joanna Pettas — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 16:27:09 -0400

Many credit Hillary Clinton's presidential primary wins in Ohio and Texas to her controversial "Red Phone" ad designed to raise doubts about Barack Obama's experience on national security.
Despicable sleaze? Clever politics? Love the ad or or hate it, what I saw was a common sales tactic that every media sales rep uses at some time in their career.
When you sell a product where the outcome cannot be predicted, like a presidential candidate or a media buy, raising doubts about your competition, a.k.a "playing the fear card," is an effective way to win business.
On your next sales call:
If you are in a competitive sell where you have the more established, better known, or widely accepted product you can ask "what if" questions to raise doubts about your competition in the mind of your media buyer. Clinton's ad raised asked "what if" an inexperienced president got a 3:00 AM Red Phone crisis dropped in his lap.
Media questions you can use to raise doubts about competition:
"What if your ad campaign fails because you did not cover a key demographic (that my media covers better)?"
"What if your ad campaign fails because you bought the cheaper media whose circulation is poor?"
"What if you ad campaign fails because you bought the cheaper media upstart instead of the media with the proven track recored?"
And if the media buy is very high profile:
"This is an important media buy. If it fails a lot of people could get hurt. Hey, remember the old saying from the 80's computer industry , "No one gets fired for buying IBM."
Don't push too hard. If your "sales technique" shows you will be branded as a manipulative huckster. To play the fear card you stoke the latent anxieties of your buyer but never overtly say the anxiety is totally justified. After you leave their office you just want them to worry about their media buy if it isn't with you.
Click here to read Larry David's take on the red phone.
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Are Ski Magazines Recession-Proof?

Dylan Stableford — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 09:24:04 -0400

In the midst of an economic slowdown, businesses in all industries are battening the hatches and bracing for what looks like an ugly ride. The storm looks even more brutal for publishers given rising postal and paper prices.

So what are we and our customers doing in the midst of this besieged economy? Going skiing, of course!

In every cloud there’s a silver lining, and for my company, Storm Mountain Publishing (we publish Freeskier and Snowboard magazines) that silver lining is snow. Lots and lots of snow. The big fluffy kind that makes grown adults forget their financial woes, throw caution to the wind and spend their money on ski gear and ski travel. Ah yes, the power of powder.

One huge benefit of our vertical market is that we’re somewhat “recession-proof” as it relates to the broader economy. Our business is snow. When the white stuff falls, our industry booms, recession or no recession.

Perhaps it’s the needed sense of escapism. Perhaps it’s just the allure of the mountains. Whatever the reason, snow inspires our customers to spend money on skiing and snowboarding. And it’s happening right now: above-average—even record—snowfall across North America has helped fuel explosive growth in the winter sports category, amidst some of the worst economic conditions our country has seen in decades.

So far this season, all snow sports sales channels are reporting growth in unit and dollar sales, underscored by an overall growth of approximately 13 percent over the same period last season. Even better news for Freeskier’s market, the twin tip ski category (skis used in terrain parks, half pipes, etc.) is the hottest selling type of ski on the market. Sales of twin tip skis are up 60% in units and 62% in dollars compared to last season.

So, while other businesses are worrying about the subprime mortgage crisis, GDP and the credit crunch—we’re dancing around our office doing everything we can to please the snow god, in hopes that the sky keeps falling.

Because snow, above all else, equates to a good season of ad sales and business for us.
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Who Says Magazines Are Not Interactive?

Joanna Pettas — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 12:56:52 -0400

Not my 14-year-old, Jenni, who (with profound apologies to GL magazine) found a way to interact with that publication in a way that is ... well, meaningful for a 14-year-old.
Magazines, and most print media, are more personal because you can hold them in your hands. From here interactivity can take on many forms: physical coupons, tear outs, inserts, pop ups, contest entry forms, and blow ins. There is a physical interactivity that comes from the act flipping pages. There is a lot of interactivity that comes from the more personal physical connection that only print can make ... even for a 14-year-old!
More here ...
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McDonald's Reaffirms My Faith in Print Advertising

Joanna Pettas — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 19:55:42 -0400

You gotta love it! Here is a print ad for McDonald's Big 'n' Juicy Burger that uses almost no ad copy and a lot of paper to communicate how their bigger hamburgers need bigger napkins to handle them. The double-page spread was printed on napkin paper and ran in Sweden's Metro newspaper to promote the idea.
Is paper-based ad messaging dead? I don't think so!
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TITLE	SINGLE COPY SALES	%CHNG	OVERALL	%CHNG
In Touch	1,228,056	0.10%	1,271,354	0.20%
Life & Style	672,463	-9.70%	681,723	-9.50%
OK	550,100	7.10%	935,375	23.50%
People	1,428,760	-8.50%	3,618,718	-3.50%
Us Weekly	1,005,086	2.70%	1,928,852	10.10