As we wind the video presentations from the Magazine Innovation Center’s ACT 7 Experience Christian Anderson, Associate Publisher, iostudio and Bobby Stark, President, Parthenon Publishing share their views about Life In Custom Publishing. Enjoy the video below and stay tune for the remaining videos from the ACT 7 Experience.
We continue the taped presentations of the Magazine Innovation Center’s ACT 7 Experience. First is Franska Stuy, the celebrated editor in chief from The Netherlands, talks about her new digital baby Franska.nl. Next is Bo Sacks’ presentation on the Truth About Digital Advertising Lies. And last but not least in this segment is John Harrington’s recap of a life in single copy sales. Enjoy the three videos below and stay tuned for more…
“When people say print is dead, I just think that’s idiotic. Print stays relevant in the sense that it needs to provide an aesthetic, sensory and tactile experience that the web can’t. You ought to use print to display gorgeous photography or a deeper read, where you’re not hunched over your cell phone reading. I just read recently that e-books are plummeting, while printed books are really doing amazingly well. And I think what we’re going to see with magazines is similar. I don’t think the newsy magazines, like Time, are going to do very well in this Internet age. But if your magazine is about a more leisurely, substantial read, or about the imagery; you can have great imagery, but on the web it just doesn’t hit you in the same way, you know? In the same way that vinyl and books are back, I think magazines will definitely have a place.” Maer Roshan
“People like something tangible. The magazine is quarterly right now, and it definitely feels like a coffee table book, but back to the reverse engineering of media; we’re also very focused on our website as well. While we started out as a social network, we’re now a print magazine; a huge event company, in June alone, we’re doing 18 events; and then of course, our digital. Maer is running the contents of the website as well.” Richard Klein
You say 007, folks say James Bond. You say 429, folks-in-the-know say the very successful website, dot429, the online network for LGBT professionals, a brand that also manifested itself through the pages of an ink on paper magazine, aptly named FourTwoNine. But where did the name originates from, well, you don’t have to look further than the dialing pad on your phone. Four is for G, Two is for A, and Nine is for Y. Four Two Nine = GAY. However, the magazine focuses on a myriad of topics, from politics to fashion, and touts itself as much more than just a gay-based magazine. According to publisher, Richard Klein, it’s a men’s title and a brand that aims itself at people of all genders.
Editor in chief, Maer Roshan, who has known success at such high-profile titles as Talk, Radar, and Vanity Fair, hopped onboard with Richard and agrees that FourTwoNine is definitely a differentiator among the LGBT magazine communities.
I spoke with Maer and Richard recently and we talked about the factors that make FourTwoNine a game changer when it comes to content, design and audience engagement within the gay magazine space. It was an often fun-filled conversation, but also a very informative glimpse into what each of them think a gay magazine should be. And according to Maer, it’s most definitely not supposed to be earnest, dull, or predictable.
So, without further ado, enjoy the Mr. Magazine™ interview with the powers behind FourTwoNine Magazine, Maer Roshan and Richard Klein.
But first the sound-bites:
On how FourTwoNine is different than other gay media (Richard Klein):
We’re a small brand, but we’re growing. We don’t really brand ourselves necessarily as a completely gay magazine. We have taken more of a sense that within this landscape right now, there really are no brands, in terms of gender. We see ourselves as more of a men’s title.Richard Klein, publisher and creative director, FourTwoNIne magazine
On how FourTwoNine is different than the many other magazines that Maer Roshan has worked at or started (Maer Roshan): I think in the universe of gay magazines right now; when Richard said that we’re not trying to brand ourselves as gay, I think what makes FourTwoNine Magazine a gay magazine is its sensibility more than its entire content. We did a piece on Adam Schiff, and it’s not exactly a gay story. It has interest to gay people; he happens to be a congressman from West Hollywood, but it wasn’t told from a particularly gay perspective. But it’s within our world, so it made sense.
On how the magazine seems aimed at a very upscale audience (Richard Klein): The magazine was born from Dot429, which was the professional website/social network. When we started that, which was over five years ago now, it was aimed at a very affluent audience within the LGBT community. Really, the professionals. Brands like Cartier, Lexus and Cadillac have longed to really reach this community and demographic, and we are producing a product that they feel comfortable within. There isn’t a lot out there that they’re able to reach this audience with.
On what Maer thinks and says about the magazine at the end of the day (Maer Roshan): Every day it’s going to be something different. I want something that stands on its own and that people will look at and not just say it’s a good “gay” magazine, but they’ll say FourTwoNine is a great magazine, period. And that’s actually enthusing, because a lot of friends of mine who are not gay, but in the media business, subscribe to the magazine and read it and then get back to me. And the fact that it’s them and they have something to relate to, that’s pretty cool to me. As Richard was talking about; we’re aiming for a high demographic, in the sense that we have a culturally aware audience.
On whether they feel there is still room for print in this digital age (Maer Roshan):
For sure. And you know, I went and did The Fix after Radar, which we sold, and it has done very well. It’s like the biggest recovery website in the world now. Obviously, Radar Online, we’ve worked really hard on, and it’s huge now. And then I work with Tina (Brown) and Women in the World for the Times. So, I love what you can do digitally and it gives you a lot of room for things that you couldn’t do in print. But, when people say print is dead, I just think that’s idiotic. Print stays relevant in the sense that it needs to provide an aesthetic, sensory and tactile experience that the web can’t. You ought to use print to display gorgeous photography or a deeper read, where you’re not hunched over your cell phone reading.Maer Roshan, editor in chief, FourTwoNine magazine.
On whether they feel there is still room for print in this digital age (Richard Klein): People like something tangible. The magazine s quarterly right now, and it definitely feels like a coffee table book, but back to the reverse engineering of media; we’re also very focused on our website as well. While we started out as a social network, we’re now a print magazine; a huge event company, in June alone, we’re doing 18 events; and then of course, our digital.
On how Richard balances his roles as both publisher and chief creative officer (Richard Klein): I studied architecture and graphic design as well. When I launched Surface magazine; I launched it as the creative director, but I think in publishing, when you are a staff of a dozen, or less than 20 people, everybody wears a lot of different hats. Maer and I were in New York recently, visiting a number of different partners and advertisers, and focused very much on the business side of things. We both have a clear vision of what the aesthetic of the brand should be; what image-makers we want to work with.
On the strategy behind the multiple covers of the same issue (Maer Roshan):
It’s a general interest magazine in some ways, which is a rarity. It’s obviously a gay magazine, but under that umbrella, we cover fashion; we cover personalities, and many other topics. And what that allows us to do is to showcase different elements of what we’re doing to the different audiences that we have.
On whether Maer believes the journal-like, high cover-priced magazines can overtake the industry (Maer Roshan): I’m glad that you just said that, because there’s one point that I’ve been wanting to make as well, which is, and this is something that I think makes us new and from just looking at other magazines that are like that, the ones that charge a lot of money, and stay longer on the newsstand or are a coffee table magazine, those are not very vital, up-to-date, or in the moment. A lot of times, their content could be from last year and you wouldn’t know, because it’s kind of vague and not trying to keep up with the moment.
On the comparison of FourTwoNine to Monocle (Richard Klein): Monocle is such an iconic brand today, and you mention Monocle to somebody and they know exactly who the reader is and where the magazine fits in the landscape. And I think that’s really important for what we’re doing too. And while we’re a print magazine and events and the website; we’re really creating this brand. And when someone picks it up or we talk about FourTwoNine, we know who we are.
On the origins of the name FourTwoNine for the magazine (Richard Klein): The number 429 on the telephone keypad spells GAY. So, when we launched the social network, we wanted to create a name that wasn’t hitting you over the head, but it was kind of like a handshake, if you will.
On anything either of them would like to add (Richard Klein): I think the only thing that we really didn’t touch on is the West Coast sensibility.
On anything either of them would like to add (Maer Roshan):
Oh, thanks. You know me, I’ve been an East Coast boy for many years, and then I moved to the West, along with a lot of other people. Back in the day, you would have gone to L.A. and thought of it as kind of a second-rate version of New York, but that has changed. Particularly with the political energies; the cultural energy, there has been a big shift westward.
On what either of them would be doing if someone showed up at their house unexpectedly one evening (Maer Roshan): That’s an interesting question; I would be working. (Laughs) Funny enough, recently, I was on my way home and I drove by this theatre here; the Director’s Guild, and I wondered what was going on there. As it turned out, that was where James Comey was supposed to speak. And so I called one of our reporters and told him that he had to get there, because that was where he was supposed to be. So, we both found our way into this place.
On what either of them would be doing if someone showed up at their house unexpectedly one evening (Richard Klein): I moved to Los Angeles from San Francisco a year and a half ago. And I’m exploring the city almost every night. But as I said, we do a ton of events. And there’s always something going on in Los Angeles. We have a really close relationship with Soho House. There’s seems to always be an event or a talk going on at Soho House. A friend of mine just launched a gallery; a kind of popup gallery at her loft. There is literally always a major event going on in Los Angeles. It’s a lot of friends and things are popping up all over the place here.
On what keeps them up at night (Richard Klein): There are a lot of things that keep me up at night. (Laughs) If you’re asking what my worries are; we are holding this with a very careful team. We’re kind of in the throe of that, while we’re starting to see really great traction. It’s still quite a bit of work. But we’re keeping at it. And then just the issue of how to keep us alive. But, as I said, we’re getting it and it’s going well.
On what keeps them up at night (Maer Roshan): Donald Trump. (Laughs) That’s about it. But I wake up every morning excited about being a journalist, so for that, I guess I should thank him.
And now the lightly edited transcript of the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Maer Roshan, editor in chief/chief content office & Richard Klein, publisher/chief creative officer, FourTwoNine Magazine.
Samir Husni: Richard, since you’re more of the publisher and chief creative officer, which is somewhat of a rarity in the magazine business; if someone were to ask you how you differentiated FourTwoNine from all of the other gay media out there today, what would you say?
Richard Klein: It has changed quite a bit. We’re a small brand, but we’re growing. We don’t really brand ourselves necessarily as a completely gay magazine. We have taken more of a sense that within this landscape right now, there really are no brands, in terms of gender. We see ourselves as more of a men’s title.
Samir Husni: Maer, you’ve edited several magazines, whether as top editor or in starting your own. How do you differentiate? If someone asked you: you’re the editor of FourTwoNine, how is that different from anything else you’ve done; what would you say?
Maer Roshan: That’s a good question. One of the first magazines that I started right after college was a gay weekly in New York, called NYQ, and it was right in the midst of the AIDS crisis. Eventually, it was sold to Time Inc.
But what made me interested in doing this (FourTwoNine) was how much the gay landscape has changed since I did NYQ. And just the definition of how gay people fit into society and what gay culture means has changed dramatically.
Basically, I know how to do a very limited amount of things. I like making new stuff and pushing the envelope a little bit. And adjusting culture and good writing. So, we try to do the same thing in every magazine, and in that way things haven’t changed.
But I think in the universe of gay magazines right now; when Richard said that we’re not trying to brand ourselves as gay, I think what makes FourTwoNine Magazine a gay magazine is its sensibility more than its entire content. We did a piece on Adam Schiff, and it’s not exactly a gay story. It has interest to gay people; he happens to be a congressman from West Hollywood, but it wasn’t told from a particularly gay perspective. But it’s within our world, so it made sense. And we’ve had a great response. We’re one of the earliest people to cover him in that way.
You mix that with some of the other stories that we’ve done, especially when applying a sensibility, and I think that things now are more political for gay people that it’s been in a while. But it defines itself less just as being gay; it’s part of a larger movement.
One of the things that has always amazed me about a lot of gay magazines is that gay culture is humorous and fun, and kind of pushing the envelope. And gay magazines tend to be so earnest and dull. (Laughs) A while back someone had talked to me about doing Logo, the gay network, and they asked me what Logo should be like. And I said Logo should be Bravo, so it’s not ostensibly a gay network. And if we were to put magazines in that way, we would go to a Bravo model over a Logo model, which is earnest and dry…
Samir Husni: (Laughs)
Maer Roshan: …if that gives you some idea.
Samir Husni: Richard, in addition to the great editorial content; even looking at the ads, it seems like you’re aiming at a very upscale audience. Is that by choice or is that another point of differentiation? You’re not a mass magazine, or like you said; you’re not a big major brand, but at the same time, you’re aiming high.
Richard Klein: The magazine was born from Dot429, which was the professional website/social network. When we started that, which was over five years ago now, it was aimed at a very affluent audience within the LGBT community. Really, the professionals. As we built that network, and started speaking to the membership of the network and to partner that with the way we sort of differentiated ourselves from brands like the dating sites that were out there and the hook-up sites, and some of the magazines that aren’t with us any longer, such as “Instinct” or “Next,” that kind of syllabus in the gay landscape.
So, brands like Cartier, Lexus and Cadillac have longed to really reach this community and demographic, and we are producing a product that they feel comfortable within. There isn’t a lot out there that they’re able to reach this audience with.
Samir Husni: Maer, I noticed that you’ve assembled quite a team, from your East Coast editor, Hal (Rubenstein), to all the others working and writing for the magazine; at the end of the day, what do you think and say about the magazine?
Maer Roshan: Every day it’s going to be something different. I want something that stands on its own and that people will look at and not just say it’s a good “gay” magazine, but they’ll say FourTwoNine is a great magazine, period. And that’s actually enthusing, because a lot of friends of mine who are not gay, but in the media business, subscribe to the magazine and read it and then get back to me. And the fact that it’s them and they have something to relate to, that’s pretty cool to me. As Richard was talking about; we’re aiming for a high demographic, in the sense that we have a culturally aware audience.
But I also hate pretentiousness, you know? One of the things that I’d talked to Richard about when he asked me to come over here was, when I think about what the purpose of the magazine is I think “Vanity Fair” meets “Vice.” It has great reporting and great production values and great writing. It’s edgier and pushes the envelope and has its finger on the pulse of culture.
Samir Husni: Maer, you’ve worked at some very high profile titles, whether it’s Talk or Radar, which you started. And then we came to a point where everyone was saying print is dead, we’re folding our print edition and going online. Yet, FourTwoNine is almost reverse engineering; it started as a website and now it’s a print magazine. Do you feel that there’s still room for print in today’s digital age?
Maer Roshan: For sure. And you know, I went and did The Fix after Radar, which we sold, and it has done very well. It’s like the biggest recovery website in the world now. Obviously, Radar Online, we’ve worked really hard on, and it’s huge now. And then I work with Tina (Brown) and Women in the World for the Times. So, I love what you can do digitally and it gives you a lot of room for things that you couldn’t do in print.
But, when people say print is dead, I just think that’s idiotic. Print stays relevant in the sense that it needs to provide an aesthetic, sensory and tactile experience that the web can’t. You ought to use print to display gorgeous photography or a deeper read, where you’re not hunched over your cell phone reading. I just read recently that e-books are plummeting, while printed books are really doing amazingly well. And I think what we’re going to see with magazines is similar. I don’t think the newsy magazines, like Time, are going to do very well in this Internet age. But if your magazine is about a more leisurely, substantial read, or about the imagery; you can have great imagery, but on the web it just doesn’t hit you in the same way, you know? In the same way that vinyl and books are back, I think magazines will definitely have a place.
Richard Klein: People like something tangible. The magazine is quarterly right now, and it definitely feels like a coffee table book, but back to the reverse engineering of media; we’re also very focused on our website as well. While we started out as a social network, we’re now a print magazine; a huge event company, in June alone, we’re doing 18 events; and then of course, our digital. Maer is running the contents of the website as well.
Maer Roshan: I don’t think you could have a media property these days and not have web and print and events and all that stuff. The days where you could just have one of those things are over. All of those things play into each other and they’re vitally important . All of these different elements work together and are important in building a community, which we’re trying to do, but also building an ad-base and a web engine base too.
Samir Husni: I started as a graphic designer, even when I was in high school, before I left Lebanon. That was my whole work before I went to college, and now I work more on the business side. How do you balance your roles? Do you work both sides of the brain when you’re the publisher and the chief creative officer? Do you have to change hats or does it just come naturally to you?
Richard Klein: I studied architecture and graphic design as well. When I launched Surface magazine; I launched it as the creative director, but I think in publishing, when you are a staff of a dozen, or less than 20 people, everybody wears a lot of different hats. Maer and I were in New York recently, visiting a number of different partners and advertisers, and focused very much on the business side of things. We both have a clear vision of what the aesthetic of the brand should be; what image-makers we want to work with. While it’s left-lane, right-lane in one sense, they both go hand-in-hand and are very much a brand ambassador to FourTwoNine.
Samir Husni: In the case of the print magazine, I noticed that with the first issue you had different covers; with the second issue, you had three covers that you edited. What’s the strategy behind the multiple covers of the same issue?
Maer Roshan: It’s a general interest magazine in some ways, which is a rarity. It’s obviously a gay magazine, but under that umbrella, we cover fashion; we cover personalities, and many other topics. And what that allows us to do is to showcase different elements of what we’re doing to the different audiences that we have. It’s all tied together by sensibility and point of view, but there are some people who are really interested in one thing and some who are interested in another, so we try and showcase different elements within the magazine that will hopefully resonate with different audiences.
Samir Husni: There is a lot of buzz around these new types of magazines that look like a journal, but read like a magazine. They have the high cover price and the connectivity with the audience; can those types of magazines overtake the industry?
Maer Roshan: I’m glad that you just said that, because there’s one point that I’ve been wanting to make as well, which is, and this is something that I think makes us new, and from just looking at other magazines that are like that, the ones that charge a lot of money and stay longer on the newsstand or are a coffee table magazine, those are not very vital, up-to-date, or in the moment. A lot of times, their content could be from last year and you wouldn’t know, because it’s kind of vague and not trying to keep up with the moment.
And if you look through our issue, we’re as up-to-date as possible. And part of that is because we keep our deadlines really, really late, before we go to press, precisely because we want to stay in the moment. It gives you this rare combination of really good production values and coffee table quality, but most of the content is vital and makes news. Looking at newsstands, which I obviously did a lot before starting this venture, there’s not a lot of magazines that provide both of those things. And that’s what made me interested in this project.
Samir Husni: When I picked up Issue #9 and then Issue #10, the magazine that comes to mind more than anything else is Monocle. I don’t know whether it’s the combination of glossy and matte paper or the design; am I way off here?
Maer Roshan: I could see where you would say that. What you should look at as maybe a better example is Monitor. I like Monocle a lot; it’s very packaged and glib. I’m hoping that we’re less that. When I hold Monocle, I love what it says about me, but I’m not sure that I would be an avid reader of the magazine. Does that make any sense?
Samir Husni: Yes.
Richard Klein: “Monocle” is such an iconic brand today, and you mention Monocle to somebody and they know exactly who the reader is and where the magazine fits in the landscape. And I think that’s really important for what we’re doing too. And while we’re a print magazine and events and the website; we’re really creating this brand. And when someone picks it up or we talk about FourTwoNine, we know who we are.
Maer Roshan: “Monocle” also seems a bit earnest to me at times. I think that we take a little bit more liberties and that’s because of our content and our audience. We have a little bit more of a point of view. But it’s beautiful and very well-conceived and put together. And it’s a compliment for you to compare us to it.
Samir Husni: To me, Maer, FourTwoNine is one of the best magazines that you have created so far.
Maer Roshan: Thank you.
Samir Husni: Richard, what is the origin of the name FourTwoNine? It isn’t the area code.
Richard Klein: The number 429 on the telephone keypad spells GAY. So, when we launched the social network, we wanted to create a name that wasn’t hitting you over the head, but it was kind of like a handshake, if you will.
Samir Husni: Is there anything that either of you would like to add?
Maer Roshan: I think we covered everything; the combination of things that we’re doing. The fact that it’s not just in one sphere, it’s all these different spheres at once.
Richard Klein: I think the only thing that we really didn’t touch on is the West Coast sensibility.
Maer Roshan: Oh, thanks. You know me, I’ve been an East Coast boy for many years, and then I moved to the West, along with a lot of other people. Back in the day, you would have gone to L.A. and thought of it as kind of a second-rate version of New York, but that has changed. Particularly with the political energies; the cultural energy, there has been a big shift westward.
And while we’re a national magazine, I kind of look at it like when I was in New York, working for “Talk” or “Vanity Fair.” You covered the nation, but it was from a distinct New York/East Coast sensibility. It’s kind of amazing to me how few magazines are like this, are rooted in the West Coast ideas and values, but cover the world from that. It’s not really a regional magazine, but takes the best of what the cultures are doing on this coast and magnifies it in coverage and everything else.
Samir Husni: If I showed up at either of your houses unexpectedly one evening after work, what would I find you doing; reading a book; watching TV; cooking; having a glass of wine; or something else?
Maer Roshan: That’s an interesting question; I would be working. (Laughs) Funny enough, recently, I was on my way home and I drove by this theatre here; the Director’s Guild, and I wondered what was going on there. As it turned out, that was where James Comey was supposed to speak. And so I called one of our reporters and told him that he had to get there, because that was where he was supposed to be. So, we both found our way into this place. (Laughs) Most of the reporters were waiting outside, but we were saying that we might possibly want to join the FBI, so they ended up letting us in and then I got kicked out. (Laughs again) They checked my ID. But my reporter went in and I think we were one of the only people to be reporting from the actual location of where James Comey was supposed to be. And it’s on our website now.
I go out with friends and try to keep up with the culture, because that’s my job, but also because I love it. A lot of it goes into the things that excite me, and that ends up making me a good editor, I think. Curiosity brings a lot of different stuff. I try to keep up with all the appointments, television, things like that. I still read books, because I’m old school that way. And I hang out with friends.
Richard Klein: I moved to Los Angeles from San Francisco a year and a half ago. And I’m exploring the city almost every night. But as I said, we do a ton of events. And there’s always something going on in Los Angeles. We have a really close relationship with Soho House. There’s seems to always be an event or a talk going on at Soho House. A friend of mine just launched a gallery; a kind of popup gallery at her loft. There is literally always a major event going on in Los Angeles. It’s a lot of friends and things are popping up all over the place here.
Samir Husni: My typical last question; what keeps you up at night?
Richard Klein: There are a lot of things that keep me up at night. (Laughs) If you’re asking what my worries are; we are holding this with a very careful team. We’re kind of in the throe of that, while we’re starting to see really great traction. It’s still quite a bit of work. But we’re keeping at it. And then just the issue of how to keep us alive. But, as I said, we’re getting it and it’s going well.
Maer Roshan: Donald Trump. (Laughs) That’s about it. But I wake up every morning excited about being a journalist, so for that, I guess I should thank him.
Samir Husni: Thank you.
Will the electric car come back? And movies American can’t see are two from many topics revealed in the August issue of Modern Man magazine.
The editor writes, “Each month the pages of Modern Man represent the sum total of labor by writers and photographers working in widely-scattered cities around the earth. Typical of the wide span of distance covered by these journalists are the contents of this current issue.”
The two aforementioned stories (the return of the electric car) and (movies American can’t see) include the following ledes:
Once America’s leading car, electrics outsold gasoline buggies until they proved unpractical – now they may return in atomic version.
U.S. ideas of morality ban many European pictures and incense foreigners who see film violence as more indecent than nudity.
Did I fail to mention that Modern Man August’s issue was from 1955? Check the magazine and the spreads from the issue below:
The afternoon of day 3 of the Magazine Innovation Center’s ACT 7 Experience opened with Josh Ellis, Editor in Chief, Success Magazine leading a panel discussion on what it takes to launch a magazine. The panel included the following industry leaders from editorial, sales & marketing, advertising, design and distribution areas:
Joe Berger, Publishers Marketing & Sales Consultant, Joseph Berger Assoc.
Nicole Bowman, Founder & Principal, Bowman Circulation Marketing
Marshal McKinney, Design Director, Garden & Gun
Jennifer Reeder, VP, Sales, Democrat Printing
Steve Viksjo, Co-Founder and Creative Director, Jarry magazine, and
Bryan Welch, Founder, B the Change Media.
Check the video below and stay tuned for more videos to come…
We continue to post the videos from the Magazine Innovation Center’s ACT 7 Experience that took place on the campus of The University of Mississippi’s School of Journalism. What follows are two morning panels, the first dealt with magazine distribution from publisher to customer and the second recalled stories of magazine launches… enjoy and stay tuned for more to come.
(Left to right) Marshall McKinney, Design Director, Garden & Gun magazine, Bryan Welch, founder and CEO, B the Change Media, Jennifer Reeder, VP of Sales at Democrat Printing, Joe Berger, Publishers Marketing & Sales Consultant at Joseph Berger Associates, Nicole Bowman, Founder & Principal at Bowman Circulation Marketing, Steve Viksjo, Co-founder and Creative Director at Jarry magazine, and Josh Ellis, editor in chief, Success magazine.
“If you go into the magazine business with a specific age range in mind,” Welch continued, “you are excluding people who might share the passions of your audience. Demographics are, in a sense, used to create tribes of your audience: this group is liberal democrat, that group conservative republican, and so on. When we set out to de-tribalize the content of our magazine we stumbled across a huge audience that we didn’t aim for, we didn’t know about, and we would have excluded if we had been limited to a demographic profile.”
The panel was moderated by Josh Ellis, editor in chief of Success magazine, and focused on magazine launches, and opinions were shared on what it takes to launch a magazine. You need to start with a product champion, Reeder said: “Someone with the dream.”
Berger agrees with the need for vision, but wants it rooted in practicality: “You have to be brave, a little crazy…and you have to do your homework.” For him, homework includes understanding the business and managing your expectations. “I can arrange for where your magazine is going to want to go. But once it’s on the stands, it’s the publisher’s job to make people want pick it up. We can help by showing how it’s done. Beyond that, it’s important to be realistic about what can happen. When it comes to newsstand, all of the challenges are the results of consolidation. We might not like it, but we can’t change it. It’s what happens in economics, it’s what happens in capitalism. We can rail about what happened in 2003, but we’re in 2017. So let’s forget about what went before and ask: how can we sell your issue? We have the same number of magazines, but less space. How do we let the audience know that the magazine is there and they can get it?”
“Passion is the raw material of the business we’re in,” Welch said. “For me , that’s the invigorating thing about it. It’s also the terrifying thing. If you put together a team of passionate idealists who believe in your vision, and what you are doing fails, the people you are with go down with you. That’s a lot of responsibility.”
“Your responsibility is to your audience as well as your team,” McKinney added. “You want to serve your core reader at all costs. You’ve built trust with that reader—never, ever violate that trust. Give them a healthy dose of what they’ve learned to expect, and surprise them when you can. You can do a lot of counter-intuitive things. You can make a cover that won’t sell on the newsstand, for example, if it builds your mythology and continues to build your brand. But the thing you can never do is betray your reader.”
And how does print fit into this apparently digital age?
“I can’t name a digital product that has lived on its own,” Welch said. “If you don’t have events or a print publication or both, you have no way of monetizing what you are doing.” That does not mean ignoring the opportunities offered online. “You meet the people online. You monetize them through print and events.”
“Use your social media presence to announce the launch through the influencers,” said Viksjo.
In this group, tilted to entrepreneurs, some of the points made at John French’s “How to Save a Magazine” presentation on the previous day were not entirely embraced. As Welch put it, “I am outraged at the idea that you want to launch your magazine for the investor. You need to launch it for the reader! You cannot serve two masters.”
McKinney agreed. “It’s like kicking your reader in the crotch, when you come in and dismantle the editorial. It might work on some level, but it isn’t keeping the audience in mind.”
“A business on the verge of bankruptcy is in a place where some crotches need to be kicked,” Welch reflected. “But not the reader’s. Never the reader’s.” And who is the reader? Someone who shares in the passion of the magazine. “Twenty years ago I took a sacred vow never to use the word ‘rate base’ in a professional setting. It’s the dumbest idea. Managing to a circulation level ignores the value you get from each member of the audience.”
“You need to be clear on who your readers are,” Bowman added. “If you are not clear on who you are trying to serve, you are not going to be able to find your audience.”
“I’ve worked for a magazine that got started with $7000 and a box of cards,” McKinney said. “And another with $12 million in its launch budget that almost had to shut down. It’s a wild ride.”
“And God help you if your project is good enough to attract venture capital,” Welch said. “The relationship with the VC is a path to their control.”
To make an impression, McKinney advised, “Print on great paper. Don’t skimp. Some of the most coveted real estate in the world is the American coffee table. That’s where you want to be.
“Our physicality is what distinguishes us,” Welch said. “It’s what allows us to monetize our stories in a way we cannot do without that physicality. How much leverage could I get by upgrading that physical experience? We can measure the impact on the newsstand. And what is the advertisers real response? There might be a lot of value there.”
“People want to own things,” Berger said. “We’ve got the web, the video, all this other stuff which is interesting, but they don’t own it. A magazine, they can own.”
And what words of wisdom can this group leave with us? “Your readers are the center of your business,” said McKinney. “Hold them captive in your mind. Build from there.”
And Welch finished with: “Be emphatically who you are. Think of the most outrageous thing you want to say and say it with the first issue. Set a marker out there. Don’t bother testing sell lines that don’t get you excited. Make aggressive statements about your entity. And be faithful to your audience, so that they know who is showing up.”
Right to left, Sebastian Raatz, Executive VP, Bauer Publishing, USA, Jay Annis, VP/Business Manager, Hello & Hola! Media Inc.; Steve Crowe, VP/Consumer Marketing, Meredith;William Michalopoulos, VP/Retail Sales & Marketing, PubWorX; Curtis Packer, Director of Promotions, OTG; and Samir Husni.
“The problem is not the ink on paper,” he continued. “The problem is what are we putting on the ink on paper. If we are still doing things the way we were pre-digital, we have a problem.”
With this in mind, he assembled and moderated a team of experts on the last day of the ACT 7 Experience (April 27, 2017) to address these problems: Jay Annis, VP/Business Manager, Hello & Hola! Media Inc.; Steve Crowe, VP/Consumer Marketing, Meredith;William Michalopoulos, VP/Retail Sales & Marketing, PubWorX; Curtis Packer, Director of Promotions, OTG; Sebastian Raatz, Executive VP, Bauer Publishing, USA. What follows is an important excerpt from that discussion panel:
Husni: Popular wisdom has it that it doesn’t make sense to launch a magazine anymore, the problems are rife. Does it still make sense, for example, to use direct mail?
Crowe: At Meredith, direct mail still makes sense for us. For The Magnolia Journal, direct mail response was through the roof. Meredith has existing channels, and Magnolia was able to bring a channel of its own. From day one, response was amazing. It helps to start with a well-known brand, and a channel.
Michalopoulos: To say print is dead is ridiculous. Hearst is launching Air BNB, a digital property that wants a print presence.
Raatz: I cringe to hear that “print is not dead.” It brings to mind the Saturn ad saying that the brand is going away. The push back makes it sound as if print’s continuing existence is debatable. It isn’t. Coming up with great magazine ideas is not any harder than it used to be. Magazines that fail, fail faster, leaving less damage in their wake. Magazines with great content and curation will still succeed. But the dialog about failure makes it that much harder to get into launch mode.
Husni: How easy is it to launch a magazine?
Annis: Go back to 2008 and look at the decline since then. It isn’t all that different from what happened to other merchandise categories in the same stores. The difference is that the retailers are reading about it, from us. The coverage makes them believe it is digital, as opposed to the recession, that has brought down print. So they are cutting back on display, on space, and that is contributing to the problem. When we launched Hola, we had a limited distribution, we targeted the Spanish-speaking market. We used our money to target display in that market. Four issues in, with a limited distribution, we’re selling 20-25,000 copies. And we found a few distributors who only target that market, and they make up a third of their sales. Looking at their formula will be part of the solution going into the future.
Husni: From a retailer point of view, how is distribution changing?
Packer: OTG is an airport retailer, and in airports the majority of sales are still magazines. We use technology to support magazine sales. You can order them right off our app, and one of our crew members will bring it right to your table. We want to expand that out to subscriptions, for example. We bring magazines out of stores and we put them in the food halls. You can buy magazines while you wait for your food. In our busiest airport, Newark, 25% of the magazine sales come from the OTG Quick-Serve restaurants.
Husni: What is the difference between a successful direct mail campaign and junk mail?
Crowe: Editors want beautiful packages. We do a lot of testing. We use premiums and get it to the customer first. It’s a transactional piece.
Husni: Have you seen a change in the response rate since the dawn of the digital age?
Crowe: They’ve held for some time.
Husni: How are you using digital to enhance direct mail?
Crowe: We promote special offers if you go online. Some groups are responsive, some less so, but we want people to start transacting with us online.
Michalopoulos: On the newsstand side, we push out regional emails about events where publications are being sold. Targets through email lists the promotion of a particular issue in a particular area.
Annis: We have over a quarter million followers on Facebook since August. Traditionally, Facebook followers want everything for free, but we’re going to be testing direct mail packages online. We can deliver our message to the customers’ phones while they wait at checkout; we can message them a special offer when they pass the magazine section. Or, here’s an idea: use drones to drop packages on every household! (Laughter)
Husni: We’ve been speaking about “audience first.” How are you using the audience data that is available?
Raatz: Bauer has always launched magazines, less on data and more on an understanding of our consumer, based on anecdotal evidence—deriving from our conversation with our existing audience members. Front-end magazines are impulse purchases. If you overlay smartphone adoption rates with checkout sales, as the one grew the other declined. This didn’t affect mainline sales, but the market for smartphones is pretty saturated right now. Presumably the checkout decline will level off.
Husni: Who is to blame for that decline?
Michalopoulos: Merchandising is a huge problem. When you go into a store, you encounter out of stocks, empty wire, old issues on sale—and, at the publisher level, still a lack of information. The rubber meets the road at the store level, at the merchandising level. And it’s a big, big problem. We’re seeing less of a drop off in airports and bookstores because they are doing a better job merchandising. We’ve heard that people are making more frequent, smaller trips to the stores, fill-in trips—so we need to change up the mix at the front end so it turns more frequently, so the more frequent shopper is offered new products. There needs to be a way to address that mix.
Packer: I am passionate about magazines, so I don’t accept less than 100% compliance. I don’t think industry members are doing a great job of sending the message of why magazines are great. Publishers are concerned about putting out a product, but often have nothing to do with the content or the cover. It’s got to be all about the customer, not about the publisher. What does the customer want?
Annis: We deliver the magazine to the wholesaler, the wholesaler to the retailer, the merchandiser comes in and puts it up. We spend millions of hours, millions of dollars, creating content and getting it out, and leaving it in the hands of a high-turnover merchandiser to put the magazine out in the correct way into the pockets we’ve bought. It isn’t happening. The secondary distributors have a different, maybe a better model—all of their drivers also do the merchandising, and they are on commission, so they take an interest in how things are put out, how the rack is dressed. This could be part of the solution. People who have skin in the game will do a better job.
Husni: Why do we hear nothing but doom and gloom from our own people?
Crowe: The publishers are so removed, so much of the whole process is outsourced.
Annis: We need to get back out in front of retailers. If we took 1% of our sales, we would have $3 million for an advertising campaign to the retailers, to convince them to treat magazines differently. Our business is not down the way you think. Look at the retailers that have kept the space, they have done much better.
Husni: We see Hearst and Conde Nast teaming up—tell us about that.
Michalopoulos: They have combined both staffs of consumer marketing, production, fulfillment, allowing us to handle outside clients. We’ve acquired ProCirc. We’re looking to see if there are opportunities with retailers. Consumer Reports is partnering with Good Housekeeping to sample a wider audience. PubWorks can create these opportunities.
Packer: Publishers need to understand the changing nature of the business. I will not take a magazine under $4 anymore—it just isn’t worth it, it takes up too much space. I sell a ton of Monocle, of Harvard Business Review. It’s time for publishers to start recognizing the premium value of what they offer people, as opposed to treating magazines as a throwaway product created for the advertising. Terminals will become a larger and larger part of the business, because traffic in airports is continuing to grow. And magazines are still the biggest part of the retail revenue in airports.
Crowe: Meredith is 90% subscriptions, so newsstand is relatively inconsequential. The volume is not what we’re worried about, we want to drive efficiencies. We do have our line of SIPS which do more on newsstands.
Husni: Time Inc. puts out 150 so-called “book-a-zines” a year now. Many other publishers are doing them as well. Do you think that is impacting the sale of the regular magazines on the newsstand?
Raatz: It’s certainly affecting units. Is it affecting dollars? At those cover prices, probably not.
Crowe: If they take one of our book-a-zines instead of a cheaper, rate-base title—so be it. It’s still a win.
Husni: Do we need rate base, or is that an antiquated business model?
Crowe: For now my boss is telling me to make the rate base. Our goals are to make profit and to make rate base.
BoSacks (from audience): I’d like to offer a billion dollar idea: how about 100% sell through, no returns?
Annis: We ship Hola Espana Weekly to certain markets, and have two wholesalers with very high discounts, no returns. It hasn’t been sustainable for them.The solution might be a hybrid: we’ll send 100 copies, you have to pay for at least 65 of them.
Raatz: Sell through is a huge issue. We have trained consumers to buy magazines based on abundant display. European shoppers, by comparison, know there is just one big beautiful section in a store with magazines, as opposed to, for example, 24 pockets at checkout. The average sell through in the U.S. is about the same as the average return rate in Europe.
Husni: Can you do this in the U.S.?
Raatz: I don’t think it’s a distribution question, I think it’s a consumer expectation question. In Costco, there is one deep pocket and efficiencies are higher. But do we tell Wal-Mart to take away all of its pockets at checkout and put them in one place in the store?
The Magazine Innovation Center’s ACT 7 Experience opened day 3 with a welcome from Dr. Jeffery Vitter, Chancellor of The University of Mississippi and was followed by Meredith’s Doug Kouma keynote opening address in which he showcased the launch story of The Magnolia Journal magazine…
More ACT 7 Experience videos will be posted as they become available. Stay tuned.
On the eve of the last day of ACT 7, Tony Silber, vice president of Folio, entertained us as a drummer in the ACT 7 band at Ground Zero Blues Club in the Mississippi Delta town of Clarksdale. The next day, that same Silber was leading a panel of publishers who told us their stories of recent magazine launches.
The range of successful launches represented on stage was enormous. It included Jarry, focusing on cooking and lifestyle for gay men; ROVA, a new print magazine for millennials who love to hit the open road in their RV’s; Take, which tells stories about the artists of New England; Good Grit, a social culture magazine for the South; Good Day, which will introduce the Grange and its mission to an audience beyond its current membership; Art+Design, which is bringing the New Orleans culture to 17 countries worldwide; Via Corsa, offering post-purchase adventure for automobile enthusiasts; and HGTV, a home lifestyle publication inspired by the title brand.
Addressing the topic of the balance between passion and business, publishers weighed in with their experiences of translating their passion into revenue. “If I did it as a performance art piece, I would lie in a fetal position and cry for an hour,” Michael Kusik, publisher of Take magazine volunteered. “But I saw Take as an opportunity to address an audience that is being missed. There are vast numbers of experiences people can have if they get in the car and drive.”
“I think you literally have to have a streak of insanity to start a magazine—I feel that every day,” added Laura Bento, founder and editor of Good Grit. “The reality of being an entrepreneur is that you are one step away from being homeless all the time. ‘So kids, you can sleep in a closet for a while, it’ll be fine.’” Her advice for publishers looking for financing: “Ask for three times more money than you think you need. Or four times. Or ten times…you are going to need way more money than you think you will.”
“The definition of passion is the willingness to suffer for what you love,” said Steve Martin, founder and publisher, Art+Design magazine. “I think every publisher can relate to that. We suffer every day for what we love. At Art+Design, we take everything the magazine has made and put it back into the magazine. In so doing, we’ve grown it from 80 pages to 154 pages, with a circulation of 10,000 per issue.”
“We’ve historically had many millions of members, but for the Grange, as for all similar organizations, there’s been a big drop off in membership,” Amanda Brozana, editor, Good Day! magazine added. “But you don’t need to be agriculturally driven to be part of it. We need to communicate this message—so Good Day! is a necessity. The passion part is needing to tell our stories.”
“At Via Corsa, we go around the world and look for car things to do,” said Ron Adams, founder & publisher, Via Corsa magazine. “It often turns into family adventures, which is a passion in our lives. We’re committed to doing what it takes to bring cool automotive adventures to print. Paradoxically, we are beginning, out of necessity, to move away from that passion to take care of the business side.”
“HGTV Magazine is very much a business,” Dan Fuchs, vice president/chief revenue officer, HGTV Magazine, said, to laughter from the audience. “I’m passionate about the business, but there are levels of responsibility with deadlines, economics, company accountability. From issue one, you need to stick to your positioning. If you waver, your readers and advertisers will check out. There is a commitment to following through on your positioning.”
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