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takes on some color
Ads, too, in a bid to win back readers. No joke.
By Jennifer Cox
Has Alfred E. Neuman finally sold out?
After nearly half a century of ad-free publishing, satirical magazine Mad—the home of Spy vs. Spy comics, back-page fold-ins and twisted movie parodies—will run advertising for the first time ever in its March issue.
The decision to include ads is a bit surprising, coming from a magazine whose founder, William Gaines, once said of his readers, "We’re trying to teach them, ‘Don’t believe in ads.’"
In a sense, Mad still doesn't. It's careful to note it is not taking ads purely to make money, as serious magazines do, but rather to fund the use of color in its traditionally black-and-white pages.
The March issue is approximately 60 percent in color, and staffers hope the entire issue will be printed in color in the near future.
The new hues are part of a plan to win readers back to the venerable humor title, which one magazine pundit labeled "the single greatest influence on the development of American culture in the second half of the 20th century."
In the early 1970s, its heyday, Mad boasted a circulation of 2.5 million. That number has since slipped to 250,000. An attempt four years ago to rejuvenate the magazine by hiring a fresh crop of writers failed to reverse the trend.
But Mad co-editor Nick Meglin says the use of color has already proven an effective way to sell more issues.
"This gives us the opportunity to be a grown-up magazine," says Meglin, who has served as co-editor since 1985.
"We started to use color a few years ago for a new insert, ‘The 20 Dumbest People and Events of the Year,’ and we noticed a tremendous jump in circulation. The next time we used color in another insert there was another big increase in circulation," says Meglin.
Mad editors may call themselves "the usual gang of idiots," but it didn’t take a genius to realize they were on to something.
"It was the same material, just in color. We couldn’t ignore it—people wanted color."
The decision to start selling ad space, with early takers including Altoids and Nabisco, was just a means to an end, says Meglin.
"We just wanted to improve the quality of the magazine with color," he says. "The advertising was an afterthought, a way to do it."
Mad is owned by Time Warner, but Meglin says the recent merger with America Online had nothing to do with the decision to begin taking ads, despite speculation to the contrary.
"We’re independent from all that. We’ve never really met them," he says of the AOL Time Warner bigwigs. "They don’t want to meet us—we’re slobs. We go to work in T-shirts and jeans."
Don’t expect the magazine to start pulling its satirical punches now that it has advertisers to worry about.
"Mad has always strongly believed in the First Amendment. We will not bend to the whims of our advertisers and they know that," he says. "We’re not concerned with how the advertising will change the content of the magazine, ‘cause it won’t. The advertisers know what they’re getting themselves into."
As for who else might be intrepid enough to put their ads in Mad, Meglin has a few suggestions.
"Our next issue is a special about Hannibal Lecter. Think any fast food chains will want to advertise in it?"
-Jennifer Cox is a staff writer for Media Life.
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