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| Magazines | |
in magazine land Some titles are showing strong gains in ad pages Jun 2, 2008
Still, a number of magazines are showing strong gains, in some cases double-digit increases in ad pages over the prior-year period. They include The Economist, OK!, Every Day with Rachael Ray, Women's Health, Wondertime, Men's Journal, Guideposts and Parents, among others. One might write off some of those gains to good fortune, a title being in a category of magazines that's somewhat insulated from the spending cuts that have swept through media and magazines in particular. But that's only a small part of it, if at all. In fact in many cases the gaining titles are in some of the worst-hit categories. By far the bigger factor is what the magazines are doing for themselves. They're investing dollars, they're repositioning, they're creating new voices that reach readers in new ways, they're building staff, they're adding features to their web sites, they're selling aggressively, they're taking chances. They're heeding an age-old maxim of magazine publishing: Invest during downturns, as others cut back, and you'll win market share. In some ways, the Economist best exemplifies this aggressiveness. The title competes in two of the roughest ad categories, newsweeklies and business titles, which were each down nearly 14 percent over the quarter, yet its ad pages were up more than 5 percent. For that, North American publisher Paul Rossi credits the magazine's ongoing push to build circulation in the U.S. market, which rose 13 percent in second-half 2007, to 720,882, over the year-earlier period, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. "Circulation helps push up our rate base, which is good, but what it really does is grow the readership numbers," he says. That in turn had made the magazine more attractive to more advertisers. "It allows us to go into other categories. Historically we would get luxury import cars, but now we have more Detroit cars. We can now go deeper into personal finance." "People want to know why we're up in pages," says Rossi. "At the end of the day we have a product that’s never been more relevant, and more and more people are finding it." *** In the case of Women's Health, whose ad pages were up 51 percent over the first quarter, its growth comes from a different way of talking to its readers. If the old mantra of women's titles was to prey on their insecurities, the new mantra, exemplified by the Rodale title, is that it's just fine to be who you are, and we're here to help you be even more. "We’re all about it's good to be you. We encourage women and give them all the information we can," says publisher Mary Murcko. "We empower them to challenge themselves a little bit and have the confidence to do what they want and not to be afraid." It seems to be the language women relate to. A sister publication to Men's Health, the title launched in October 2005 with a rate base of 400,000, and that was quickly bumped to 850,000 and then in January to 1.1 million. "We‘ve found our voice and our perspective pretty early in the plot," says editor Tina Johnson. "We’ve been speaking in the same voice women use to speak to themselves." *** At Every Day with Rachael Ray, where ad pages were up 38 percent in the first quarter, there were several factors at work. Certainly one is that Ray is all over television, and yet viewers never seem to tire of her bouncy good humor. But also the title launched in late 2005 with a very practical approach to cooking: putting interesting meals together in little time, and that set it apart from the traditional culinary titles, where growth had slowed for the most part. But publisher Anne Balaban says it goes beyond that. "Rachael brought a different point of view to the marketplace. She’s about ‘have fun and if there’s something you want to do, it doesn’t have to be perfect, just go ahead and do it.’" Thus the magazine's tagline, "Take a Bite Out of Life" "In this economic environment, marketers want to align their brands with something that puts a smile on customers’ faces, and that’s what we do," Balaban says. *** At Guideposts, ad pages were up nearly 37 percent in the first three months of the year. Publisher Amy Molinero says sales have slowed for second quarter but are still ahead of a year ago, and that's for several reasons. The magazine has pushed deeper into food, with editorial support, and it's added to its sales staff. "Also, we've done well in the travel category, which is also new," says Molinero. Though the magazine has published for more than 60 years, it only began taking advertising in 2001. It has a rate base of 2.345 million. “If the brand doesn’t stay current, people can go other places. So we really acknowledge the new mom. We literally target Gen-Y moms. She’s very different from the Gen X moms who preceded her,” says Newman.
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