Mr. Magazine

“We will not pull the plug on the print edition. It does too well with advertisers; it does too well with people who like print, and not just people of a certain age, but across a whole stretch. So, I can’t foresee it.” Bruce Kelley

“The number two media channel that the entire pharmaceutical industry spends in is print. Consumers are hungry for this information and they want to make great choices.” Lori Burgess

For 65 years and counting, Rodale’s Prevention magazine has been the leading authority on health and wellness for the nation. Started in 1950, the magazine has spanned the gamut with information on food, nutrition, workouts, beauty, and cooking. Its dedication to a heathier lifestyle and how to get you there is irrefutable.

The captains of today’s Prevention vessel, Lori Burgess, publisher and Bruce Kelley, editor-in-chief, are as enthusiastically committed to the magazine’s mission as the content on the pages themselves. It’s a perfect fit.

Recently, I was in New York with a group of my students, future industry leaders in the world of magazine media, and I had an opportunity to speak with Lori and Bruce about Prevention’s ability to revitalize and change with the seasons, much like a chameleon, without losing its original DNA, of which the magazine is known for.

Print plus digital, events, books, even a Rodale U where consumers can take E-courses on health and wellness dominated our conversation and proved that these two helmsmen weren’t afraid of innovation or the future at all.

I hope you enjoy this informative conversation between Mr. Magazine™ and two people who believe in the value of their brand and how it can benefit their audience with an unbridled passion that is definitely contagious. I see clean-eating in my future. Enjoy the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Lori Burgess, Publisher and Bruce Kelley, Editor-in-Chief, Prevention magazine.

But first, the sound-bites:

On the ‘new’ Prevention and plans for its future: (Bruce Kelley) Prevention is in the perfect place at the perfect time, that’s my view of it. I came on 15 months ago and it just strikes me that with the millennials being more interested in health than any other younger generation before them, with the Gen X the same, and the Boomers entering a stage where they have to care about their health; Prevention is in this perfect place where health dominates the Zeitgeist in ways that it probably hasn’t maybe in our lifetimes.

On whether after 65 years, Prevention is now the perfect brand: (Lori Burgess) The really interesting factor, to answer your question, is that we did take stock and dissected this brand a few years ago to really ascertain what tomorrow’s Prevention should be. And what we learned was that we didn’t want to change the target focus; we very much wanted it to be for somebody who is really committed to their health and wellness.

On translating the common sense of Prevention into its editorial content: (Bruce Kelley) The way we’re doing it is adopting a digital-first strategy and by that I mean; how do you know somebody is obsessed or really interested in a topic these days? You put up stories on the web and you see which ones they click.

On knowing both the print and digital audience, with a digital-first strategy, and how they are alike or different: (Bruce Kelley) I believe a digital-first strategy is an audience-first strategy, because the health audience in this world today is coming to health content through digital. If you added up all the impulses that people have to search out health content; I don’t have the actual numbers, but it would be an extraordinary, exponentially larger number coming at it through digital strands.

On the numbers of the rate of duplication between the print and digital audience: (Lori Burgess) Our numbers are low too; they’re not quite that low, but they’re very low. To be straight-up with you, the median age of the print is 59. It fluctuates every month digitally, but the new numbers for April just came out and the median age for our website was 33.

On how they’ve been able to monetize their digital and get consumers to pay for web content: (Lori Burgess) Yes, we’re having great success admittedly in both print and digital. I would say to you that we did return Prevention to its roots. Our DNA has always been about breakthrough content and information.

On a major stumbling block they’ve had to face: (Bruce Kelley) I haven’t really encountered a stumbling block. I hate to sound Pollyannaish. The things that people say should be stumbling blocks; I actually think are strengths, the size, for example. Eighty percent of our readers, the people who are drawn to this, and I guess our newsstand reader is in the low 40s on average; they tell us that they love the size.

On whether they can envision a day Prevention would not have a print component: (Bruce Kelley) We will not pull the plug on the print edition. It does too well with advertisers; it does too well with people who like print, and not just people of a certain age, but across a whole stretch. So, I can’t foresee it.

On the target audience they’re going for with today’s Prevention: (Bruce Kelley) It’s not an age, that’s for sure. I think it’s a spirit and the spirit is a great curiosity about things related to what they eat and how they live. It’s ambitious women who are active. And in some ways the conversation about health has changed a lot in really interesting ways.

On why (for the most part) Prevention’s web content is free: (Lori Burgess) Well, who’s to say we will forever. The consumer has been trained to get their content for free on the web, but that’s changing. We were ambitious enough to launch Rodale U, which are basically internet courses that are paid on the web, and is a brand new feature. It’s the same way; we became one of the few magazine brands that had the courage to create an event program and a two-day summit that we charge money for. People don’t come to our events for free. They pay to come.

On whether they think the magazine media industry will ever recover from the Welfare Information Society that’s been created: (Lori Burgess) I’m going to answer this one politically correct. I truly believe that what this company is founded on is something that is far deeper, in terms of importance in people’s lives. Health and wellness is going to become increasingly important as the Baby Boomer becomes older, as an example.

On Lori’s non-politically correct answer to the same question: (Lori Burgess) I think we shouldn’t have done this, but I also think back then, and I remember it; I don’t believe anyone knew what the Internet could be. I don’t think even Steve Jobs back then completely knew what the Internet could be.

On what keeps Lori up at night: (Lori Burgess) I think that we can’t move quickly enough. We have really spread our tentacles well beyond print and digital into the doctor’s offices points of care, into events; we have a lot of big ideas. We’re partnering with some really interesting companies, so I think we just can’t move fast enough. We are nimble, but there’s so much potential for this brand.

On what keeps Bruce up at night: (Bruce Kelley) What keeps me up is thinking of ways to make Prevention customers happy, such as helping them. That probably sounds so sappy. (Laughs)

And now the lightly edited transcript of the Mr. Magazine™ conversation with Lori Burgess, Publisher and Bruce Kelley, Editor-in-Chief, Prevention magazine…

Samir Husni: Prevention has reached the senior age of 65 years old, but now, after 65 years, it’s become younger and more vital than ever. Tell me about the new Prevention and your plans for its future.

Bruce Kelley: Prevention is in the perfect place at the perfect time, that’s my view of it. I came on 15 months ago and it just strikes me that with the millennials being more interested in health than any other younger generation before them, with the Gen X the same, and the Boomers entering a stage where they have to care about their health; Prevention is in this perfect place where health dominates the Zeitgeist in ways that it probably hasn’t maybe in our lifetimes.

Prevention is also produced through a company, Rodale, which has been a part of the health category forever. And I feel more than ever that the company is just so committed and its mission so wrapped up in helping people live a healthier lifestyle and doing it in a very fun way. Rodale is so committed to being a digital force; a force on any platform that people are using, that it was just a perfect place and time for Prevention to essentially say: we’re going to hit a new peak.

Samir Husni: Lately, for maybe the last five or six years, it would appear that Prevention has been trying to find its way. It went through different redesigns, reinventions, approaches to covers and different testing of covers. Do you think, keeping that same DNA, which started 65 years ago, that you have built the perfect Prevention now?

Lori Burgess: I echo to a degree something that Bruce said a moment ago and that is that in a way Prevention is 65 years young, because the time has now come for consumers to get much more serious about their health and wellness. There are so many different forces that are coming into play; the cost of healthcare is through the roof right now.

But the really interesting factor, to answer your question, is that we did take stock and dissected this brand a few years ago to really ascertain what tomorrow’s Prevention should be. And what we learned was that we didn’t want to change the target focus; we very much wanted it to be for somebody who is really committed to their health and wellness.

We did acknowledge that print has historically targeted and been embraced by consumers who are getting older. And we acknowledge with print that what happens to women when they get older is suddenly there’s a day, a moment in time, and it could be a condition which they have been diagnosed with or it could just be the fact that like me, suddenly they’re looking in the mirror and saying, wow, I’m getting older. Why does this hurt in the morning? Or why can’t I recover from going out and having a glass of wine as easily as I once did? So, when a woman experiences these physiological and psychological changes, she wants to get serious about it.

Now what’s different today than five or ten years ago is that the people who are coming into Prevention, and particularly in the print franchise, are Baby Boomers and we all know what they’re like. They’ve got the can-do attitude; they’ve been the people who have changed the world; they’re the people who invented the iPhone 6; all these kinds of people, who have conquered the world, and suddenly they’re waking up and saying, oh my goodness, I’m getting older. Well, I’m going to discover the fountain of youth. I’m not going to let getting older take away my possibilities or the new challenges that I want to face.

To really put closure on what you’re suggesting; we didn’t shift Prevention; we acknowledged with Prevention that we were dealing with a new group, a new mindset of consumers that were coming into our franchise and that our team needed to be a lot more exciting and relevant; a lot more cutting-edge and a lot more ahead of where everybody else was. And I think that’s what really differentiates us.

The sexy part of it is that the digital is attracting a younger audience, because guess what, our kids are living with us and they’re watching us workout like fiends and they’re watching us worry about our parents who might not be quite as healthy as we are. So, these young people are coming into the franchise saying I’m interested in getting healthier earlier, because I’m going to be even better than my parents are.

Samir Husni: You have the perfect name, an ounce of Prevention; you speak to the audience’s common sense; how can you translate that simple, yet ingrained name in the minds of anyone who thinks about health, into the editorial formula of Prevention?

Bruce Kelley: The way we’re doing it is adopting a digital-first strategy and by that I mean; how do you know somebody is obsessed or really interested in a topic these days? You put up stories on the web and you see which ones they click.

We came in, and just in the last year, started doing something that I think no other magazine is doing, where essentially all the editors are digital editors and they put up their beats; they put up great content on Prevention.com and then they watch closely what goes up on social, our social audience is just very engaged, and they watch what drives traffic. Then when we see what the hot topic is at that time and we throw more stories at that topic.

For instance, haircuts; who would have known haircuts that make you look ten years younger would be one of our hottest topics right now. That is informative to us as editors and we have a lot of good editors. They create that content and then they determine how they’re going to get that into the magazine in a way that a print reader will have that same visceral reaction to it.

So when you put the right content onsite and people click on it, the word Prevention starts to mean what that content is. It means feeling better, getting younger; one of our hottest clicks these days is ‘Eight Symptoms that Your Doctor isn’t Telling You About.’ And anybody would be interested in that; any demographic. They click; they learn great health concepts and then we can turn that into great content for the magazine.

Samir Husni: What’s the rate of duplication? I mean, if we’re talking about those two audiences, digital and the magazine, and you have this digital-first strategy instead of audience-first; how do you know that these are the same people?

Bruce Kelley: I believe a digital-first strategy is an audience-first strategy, because the health audience in this world today is coming to health content through digital. If you added up all the impulses that people have to search out health content; I don’t have the actual numbers, but it would be an extraordinary, exponentially larger number coming at it through digital strands.

Lori Burgess: And to go a step further; for us too, it’s coming through mobile, not just digital; 72% that are coming to us are mobile. Think about it; they’ve gone to the doctor; they have a thought and they want to get an instantaneous answer right then and there.

Samir Husni: I took my students to MIN Day recently and spent the whole day there and we listened to one speaker after the other, from digital agencies to you name it, talk about the death of the homepage; the death of the tablet; that everything is now mobile and that’s what drove me to write that it took us 500 years to talk about the death of print, but it only took us five years to talk about the death of the tablet and the homepage. (Laughs)

Bruce Kelley: (Laughs too)

Samir Husni: From all the studies that I’ve seen show that the rate of duplication between the digital audience and the print audience is between 6 to 10%. Do you have any numbers that are different from those?

Lori Burgess: Our numbers are low too; they’re not quite that low, but they’re very low. To be straight-up with you, the median age of the print is 59. It fluctuates every month digitally, but the new numbers for April just came out and the median age for our website was 33. A lot of that, the younger side, is due to social media, which tends to attract a younger audience, but it certainly validates that there are a lot of young consumers.

But when you look at all the data, the similarities, in terms of interests that exist between the Boomers and the Millennials; it’s just profound. They’re almost identical. It’s so cool.

Bruce Kelley: Imagine a strategy where every week on Prevention.com we are telling people about the magazine and a lot of them don’t even know about the magazine, but they’re interested enough that we get a lot of subscriptions through that, number one. We also have a great book business; we have Rodale U, which is our new product, and we tell them about that and they click on it if they’re interested in a digital E-course.

So, Prevention.com becomes the foundation of growth for Prevention, the brand. And the print and all these other elements become the places that we can send them and the places that they can then pick. They can actually as audiences decide which platform makes the most sense for them. Our growth on Prevention.com; we’re over 100% up year over year. In terms of social posts, we’re up over 500%. So the brand is actually blowing up online and that just has so many ways in which it can make the magazine more vibrant; it can allow us to build new products, which our audience can then choose to be a part of.

Our Transformation Challenge, which we just put up on Rodale U, in eight days, sold 10,000 copies. In 21 days a person can transform their life, lose weight, and feel great. And we had 10,000 people who paid $10 or more for a book to go along with it. And they’re on the Rodale U, literally hundreds of them, on threads talking about what they’re up to; what their diet strategies are; commenting on the course and how they’re using it, and just simply sharing.

Lori Burgess: It’s community. It’s like the biggest community out there.

Bruce Kelley: It’s community; it’s Rodale at its best, because that’s what Rodale is; it’s useful, fun ways of making your life better and healthier.

Samir Husni: So, tell me what’s your secret that you’ve been able to monetize digital in this Welfare Information Society that we created on the web? How are you getting people to pay for those things?

Lori Burgess: Yes, we’re having great success admittedly in both print and digital. I would say to you that we did return Prevention to its roots. Our DNA has always been about breakthrough content and information. We’ve led the nation’s conversation about proactive health and wellness. There are a lot of health media channels out there, from the WebMD’s to the health magazines, but no one has the same degree of unrivaled, authoritative perspective; the fact-checking that these editors go through to determine whether something is viable content and should be covered or not, is unprecedented in the industry.

We’re one of the last, I’d say, beacons of true, real journalism, so advertisers value that because, you know what, we’re not talking about try this shampoo or that shampoo. When we write about a particular story, whether it’s on the topic of mammograms or skin cancer, we have to be sure we’re getting it right because the information that we’re giving the consumer could be the difference of life and the choices that they’re making; it’s all about the sciences.

We sit in a very interesting position and as one advertiser said to me about a week ago, you really don’t have competition, because we sit in a really pretty spot.

Samir Husni: What has been the major stumbling block you’ve had to face?

Bruce Kelley: I haven’t really encountered a stumbling block. I hate to sound Pollyannaish. The things that people say should be stumbling blocks; I actually think are strengths, the size, for example. Eighty percent of our readers, the people who are drawn to this, and I guess our newsstand reader is in the low 40s on average; they tell us that they love the size. That’s what they’re attracted to. And that makes sense to me in today’s world. People are in a hurry, they want something quick; they want something mobile, like a tablet. The tablet may not be working as a magazine enterprise, but this magazine is working as one. (Laughs) People still like print. So, I get excited about the possibilities of getting the ‘next generation.’ I get excited because this is their tablet magazine.

And as Lori said, a perception that we’re not young, but the fact of the matter is if you look at the brand, if you look at how fast it’s growing; the 360 count that Mary Berner and the MPA are doing shows us up 25% year over year, which is better than any of our competitors, in terms of just impressions. Where is that coming from? It’s coming from all the mix of things that we offer.

Samir Husni: Can you ever envision Prevention without a print component? Will the Prevention brand survive if you pull the plug on the print edition?

Bruce Kelley: We will not pull the plug on the print edition. It does too well with advertisers; it does too well with people who like print, and not just people of a certain age, but across a whole stretch. So, I can’t foresee it. If things change much more drastically in the industry, then I can imagine it. This is one of the last print publications, but if it goes away, I totally see Prevention absolutely thriving, because look at it; it’s prevention and health content and people consume health content on digital and they do it in all the ways that Rodale is getting very sophisticated about doing it.

Lori Burgess: And just to echo one other thought, we charge for subscriptions now, it’s pretty bold; we charge 12 issues for $24. We’re one of the most expensive magazines in the industry. We may not be the biggest or the fanciest or the heaviest, but we have the confidence in the editorial product to command one of the highest subscription rates in the industry. And if consumers don’t want to pay for that, they can go to our website; much of our website is free and open access to them. But I also have to say we carry an abundant amount of advertising in the OTC (over the counter) and DTC (direct to consumer) categories. We’re the number one media vehicle in all of magazine media for over the counter remedies and for DTC we’re one of the biggest.

The number two media channel that the entire pharmaceutical industry spends in is print. Consumers are hungry for this information and they want to make great choices. And I think that’s the other thing when you’re talking about what makes Prevention so great; Bruce and his team give the whole perspective, so if you and I are having skincare problems, let’s just say; you might, based on all the information these guys give, make a whole different choice than I might choose. But the point is they treat us like we’re smart and they give us the information to make the right kinds of choices. This is one of America’s great media brands.

Samir Husni: For print, you said 59 was the median age. When you’re putting together the magazine, who’s your target audience; who’s the audience that you’re going after?

Bruce Kelley: It’s not an age, that’s for sure. I think it’s a spirit and the spirit is a great curiosity about things related to what they eat and how they live. It’s ambitious women who are active. And in some ways the conversation about health has changed a lot in really interesting ways.

When I was at Health Magazine in the 1990s when it was in San Francisco and it was a very interesting, cutting-edge magazine. Then it was about the science really trying to figure out what the healthy way of life was then, questions like, how do we deal with cholesterol; is the Mediterranean Diet the right one. Does human growth hormone work? There were a lot of mysteries out there.

Now, it’s less about the mysteries, although there are still some mysteries to report on, it’s more about the fact that we know how to live healthy, but how do we inspire ourselves to actually do it? How do we overcome the reality that it does take inspiration and motivation; it does take friendships; it does take, yes, knowledge, but it also takes authenticity and realism about what it’s really like to try and eat clean, for example. You walk into Whole Foods and you’re head begins to explode because there is so much to choose from.

So, we’re there, both as the one advising you what to eat and how to live, but we’re also that spirit; we’re the ones saying just do the best you can; you’ve got the right attitude, and a lot of it is about attitude. A lot of it is about how you perceive your journey that you’re actually getting better and smarter and more excited as you go.

Turning health into this positive lifestyle attitude is a big part of what Prevention is right now. And to me it’s the most exciting part, because motivation is everything in today’s world.

Samir Husni: When you have such a treasure as Prevention and it has such a good place in the marketplace, in terms of advertising and circulation; why did you make your content on the web free?

Lori Burgess: Well, who’s to say we will forever. The consumer has been trained to get their content for free on the web, but that’s changing. We were ambitious enough to launch Rodale U, which are basically internet courses that are paid on the web, and is a brand new feature. It’s the same way; we became one of the few magazine brands that had the courage to create an event program and a two-day summit that we charge money for. People don’t come to our events for free. They pay to come.

So, I think we are working to shift our model, it’s like a vessel on the seas; we were headed to Australia and we decided to shift gears a bit and head toward Alaska and it takes some change.

Bruce Kelley: And I think Rodale has been, maybe more than any other major media company, founded on the principle that if you give customers good information and good inspiration, they’ll pay for it. Hence, Rodale has a very big book business.

And something like an article that’s in our May issue, the cover story, Lose 10 Pounds and Feel Great; it has great content. They’ve paid for the content and they open it up and it inspires them to join the 21-day Transformation.

Now, to get the most out of the Transformation, they go to Rodale U and they get a Sizzle Reel that tells them this is everything they’re going to get out of the 21 days. And it shows people who have done it. And then at the end of that it says it’s going to cost them $9.95. And we really recommend that you buy the Sugar Smart Express book to get the most out of the plan. And so you have 10,000 people who are doing that and you have almost 1,000 who have bought the book as a part of the plan.

It’s good content and it’s the future, in that if it’s really strong content and it’s really deep, people get a valuable experience out of it and they will pay for it.

Samir Husni: If that’s the case and we know that people will pay for good information and good content; why do you think that as an industry when the Internet came, we created this Welfare Information Society? We actually put people on welfare information; here are the tables filled to capacity; come and get it. You were smart enough to create Rodale U, so you shifted the attention from Prevention.com, where you can get everything for free, to Rodale U where you have to pay for it. Do you think our industry will ever recover from the big, huge mistake of giving our content away for free? Cable never did it. And that’s what I don’t understand with our industry. When HBO first started in 1977, they said if you want cable, you pay me $9.99 and we’ll split it between the deliveries. But the internet; no, we told AT&T take all the money, just wire that home and we’ll provide them with all the information for free.

Lori Burgess: I’m going to answer this one politically correct. I truly believe that what this company is founded on is something that is far deeper, in terms of importance in people’s lives. Health and wellness is going to become increasingly important as the Baby Boomer becomes older, as an example. It’s going to have huge implications on our society, on the financial side and on most situations in this country and so, I would say to you if there is ever a company that is going to figure this out by being innovative and nimble enough to try the new ways of connecting and resonating with consumers and creating enough value that consumers are willing to put some skin in the game and pay for it, it is absolutely Rodale.

Scott Schulman and Maria Rodale have really charged the entire team to think from a very innovative perspective. They don’t want us thinking about the way things were; they want us thinking about the way things should be in the future. And I think as this particular brand becomes more ingrained in people’s lives at a time when it matters the most, it gives all of us permission to try new businesses and new experiences to present to the consumer that perhaps haven’t been realized yet.

This brand has that kind of commission. Some brands don’t; this brand and certainly this company have that.

Samir Husni: And your non-politically correct answer?

Lori Burgess: I think we shouldn’t have done this, but I also think back then, and I remember it; I don’t believe anyone knew what the Internet could be. I don’t think even Steve Jobs back then completely knew what the Internet could be.

So, shame on us? But don’t you remember when everything crashed in 2001; no one knew what tomorrow was going to be.

Bruce Kelley: I came most recently from a couple of years at ESPN, where I was peripherally involved in Insider, which was their premium product. That experience really influenced what my thoughts were when I came in to the brand and had my conversation with Scott Schulman about what Prevention could be, because that’s a model, there are others, but that’s a model where there’s a magazine involved, ESPN the magazine, there’s great content behind a paywall, Insider, and people gladly pay $40 a year to get access to that. And I view sports as one of those know-it-all obsessions; well, health is one of those know-it-all obsessions as well.

It’s also a content area where people have true needs and true ambitions that do require expertise and inspiration. So, I’m still going on the theory and so is Rodale as a whole, because we see it. We were just in a big management meeting where that was the message; we have great experiences and great value. Our number one job is to have relationships with the customers so they are like onboard with us. And if it has value to the consumer, they will pay for it.

Samir Husni: My typical last question; what keeps you up at night?

Lori Burgess: Two things keep me up at night. Actually, I sleep very well, so nothing keeps me up at night. (Laughs) No, seriously, I think that we can’t move quickly enough. We have really spread our tentacles well beyond print and digital into the doctor’s offices points of care, into events; we have a lot of big ideas. We’re partnering with some really interesting companies, so I think we just can’t move fast enough. We are nimble, but there’s so much potential for this brand.

And secondly I would say candidly, we are still selling media to young people. A lot of the people who buy media in the digital space and the magazine space are really young. They’re younger today than they’ve ever been. They’re responsible today for bigger budgets than ever. And their organizations are leaner as well. And they don’t have the time to get to know media and individual properties the way they once did. So, I think what keeps me up at night is how do I, as a marketer and a publisher, do an exceptional job in helping young people that really aren’t quite there yet, in terms of their health and wellness, and they’re working in organizations that have reprioritized things; how do I help them feel the passion, the love and the potential that this kind of brand can have in order to reach consumers. That keeps me up late a lot.

Bruce Kelley: What keeps me up is thinking of ways to make Prevention customers happy, such as helping them. That probably sounds so sappy. (Laughs)

(Everyone laughs)

Bruce Kelley: But it’s so true, because of what we just talked about, which is they need that value and experience that makes them say, this brand, whatever it is; whether it’s an issue of the magazine, or this series of articles online, whether it’s a course on Rodale U, or an app that we produce someday; this brand is valuable to them. That’s where the rubber meets the road. And I’ve felt it most recently when I spent time on the threads of the Transformation Challenge, where you have literally hundreds of women in the midst of trying to have 21 of the best days of their lives talking to each other. And occasionally saying I wish the course had discussed this or mostly just saying how great the course is. I’m five days into this and I feel great. I’ve cut sugar out of my life; I’m working out like I haven’t done in a long time; this is working. This is worth it.

But every once and a while you see that little lack of perfection and it makes you think, darn it; we need to be perfect in every way for that customer to feel like a ‘Rodale’ person. A Prevention person; someone you helped to transform their life. And they love you for it.

Samir Husni: Thank you.

“We wanted to make it easy for publishers to communicate to their customers where their magazines were available for purchase; not only via a traditional website, but also making it available via mobile, so that when people are actually in the store, they can get information about what’s available to help facilitate that spur-of-the-moment decision. We want to take off the “mobile blinders”, and put a “mobile spotlight” on our brands..” Joshua Gary

What if you could browse your favorite retailer’s inventory from the comfort of your own home? Or you’re doing your grocery shopping and you decide that you’d like to see the latest issue of your favorite magazine, but you still have food items to buy; what if you could pull up the store’s availability of magazines right there in front of the macaroni and cheese?

With MagNet’s new app – MagFinder – you can do any of those things, and many more. Joshua Gary is Senior Vice President at MagNet, the company that’s using innovation to raise the customer shopping experience to a whole new level.

I spoke with Joshua recently and received a sneak peek of the MagFinder experience. He allowed me a preview of what this app (which doesn’t need downloading, by the way) can do and discussed the many, many benefits it offers to the entire food chain of the magazine media business, with the consumer being the ultimate winner overall.

In this Mr. Magazine™ exclusive, Joshua made me privy to a demonstration of this creative and extremely cutting edge technology and allowed me the honor of being the first to interview him about it. His baby will be publicly christened at the 2015 IMAG Conference in Boulder, Colorado on May 18. And to say he’s a proud parent would be an understatement.

So, I hope you enjoy the interesting and exciting information he shared with me, as you read the Mr. Magazine™ exclusive interview with Joshua Gary, Senior Vice President at MagNet.

But first the sound-bites:

On what MagFinder is all about: Here’s the problem. There’s only been incomplete or outdated information available to publishers and therefore only incomplete information that publishers can make available to their consumers.

On how MagFinder can help a customer find that elusive new title: Now all you have to do is come into our site, type in your title and it’ll tell you where to find that magazine. Using the example title, Simple Grace; I give the app my location, based on the IP address of my computer. It also works on your phone using GPS. So, when it says nearest location within 3.3 miles that’s based on where I’m located at that point. I can click on Simple Grace and it will bring up a listing of where it’s available to buy now, based on the information we’ve received as recently as yesterday.

On the comparison of a Match Finder, Grindr or Tinder to the MagFinder app: (Laughs) It’s meant to inspire and encourage in store purchases and it’s meant to encourage people to see what’s available to them and then to go find that magazine.

On whether he thinks publishers will be jumping on the bandwagon once the app goes public: I believe that once they hear about this vision, I think they will jump in with both feet. Right now, we’ve been spending a lot of time building out the app and we’re coming to a point where we have to make sure it’s accessible to consumers. It hasn’t been released publicly yet.

On any disadvantages he can see with the app: I think this is going to create another level of competition among publishers who want to try to bring people to their own content. When there are five, six or seven gun magazines out there and many of them may look similar, I can see a publisher being concerned that the consumer might choose a competitive product over their own. And then the best content ends up winning. So, for some publishers this app may not work to their advantage.

On any future profile-driven features of the MagFinder app: Let me tell you about our first foray into individual profiles. Once logged in, I flag favorites for a title or category. With those favorites we can customize content delivery to you.

On the fact that the app doesn’t have to be downloaded: Here’s the best part about it; you don’t have to download anything. It is a completely web-based app. I have my link to MagFinder on my phone and when I click on it, it opens up a web browser and it acts, feels and plays like a natively-installed app, but you don’t have to download anything. And we did that on purpose for a couple of reasons.

On what is in it for MagNet: We’re building solutions that ultimately assist in driving consumers to buy magazines, because that will support the entire supply chain. So, this is really right up our alley.

And now the lightly edited transcript of the Mr. Magazine™ exclusive interview with Joshua Gary, Senior Vice President, MagNet.

Samir Husni: Can you tell me exactly what MagFinder is all about?

Joshua Gary: Here’s the problem. There hasn’t been until today an up-to-date, complete portal by which to communicate available magazines to consumers. There’s only been incomplete, or outdated information available to publishers and therefore only incomplete information that publishers can make available to their consumers.

Every publisher has, whether it’s Architectural Digest, Out Magazine or anything else, customer service agents that take inquiries from customers; every one of them receives phone calls and emails from their customers asking where to find magazines at retail. And their customer service will generally ask someone from consumer marketing and consumer marketing either has an outdated list of stores or has nothing at all to offer. Ultimately, they have to go back to the customer with an answer that’s either incomplete, inaccurate or doesn’t really serve their purposes.

The only place where all of the title allocation information comes together is here at MagNet.

We wanted to make it easy for publishers to communicate to their customers where their magazines were available for purchase; not only via a traditional website, but also making it available via mobile, so that when people are actually in the store, they can get information about what’s available to help facilitate that spur-of-the-moment decision. We want to take off the “mobile blinders”, and put a “mobile spotlight”on our brands. In the five or ten seconds we have to help a customer figure out what they might like while standing in line, we try to fill that gap by giving the customer information about what’s available based on our data base because it’s the only complete set of information available to the industry.

We are filling this with all of the allocation information for every magazine that we collect in the United States and Canada for every store we collect as well as showing the covers that we’re scanning on about 4,000 different magazines so that they can see what they’re looking for.

Samir Husni: And just to illustrate your point; when I published my interview with Carol Brooks from Simple Grace Magazine, I was bombarded by emails and by comments on my blog where the interview was published; where can I find the magazine? I can’t find it anywhere. And Carol had to go to my blog to answer the comments from readers on where they could find the magazine. So this is a perfect example; a new title comes to the marketplace, but no one can find it.

Joshua Gary: Exactly. And now all you have to do is come into our site, type in your title and it’ll tell you where to find that magazine. Using the example title, Simple Grace; I give the app my location, based on the IP address of my computer. It also works on your phone using GPS. So, when it says nearest location within 3.3 miles that’s based on where I’m located at that point. I can click on Simple Grace and it will bring up a listing of where it’s available to buy now, based on the information we’ve received as recently as yesterday.

Samir Husni: You’re telling me that you’re creating a Match Finder or Grindr or Tinder for magazines? (Laughs)

Joshua Gary: (Laughs too) It’s meant to inspire and encourage in store purchases and it’s meant to encourage people to see what’s available to them and then to go find that magazine. We have title descriptions, which by the way, we procure and save ourselves. We have an employee at our home office who goes to all of the publishers’ titles websites and looks for mission statements about the magazine and enters that information into the app, so that consumers have an idea of what it is they might be getting.

When you see the cover, it’ll bring up the price; the number of locations within a certain radius of where you’re located; the closest store; a way to filter by distance; the store names and addresses, as well as directions to that store. If I want to go the Wal-Mart, I can see the little dot on my map, the little blue dot is where I’m located at that moment, then you can see the location of that Wal-Mart and if you click on the directions button, it will bring up directions to that store.

Samir Husni: This is such an amazing vehicle, especially with mobile technology and the penetration of mobile and Smartphones; why do you think publishers and magazine media companies aren’t jumping in and helping you, instead of you doing this all on your own? There are certainly a lot of benefits for them in this technology.

Joshua Gary: Yes, there are a lot of benefits for them. I believe that once they hear about this vision, I think they will jump in with both feet. Right now, we’ve been spending a lot of time building out the app and we’re coming to a point where we have to make sure it’s accessible to consumers. It hasn’t been released publicly yet.

Obviously, you have access to the behind-the-scenes prerelease version, but it’s not out there publicly. I do firmly believe that when we do release this publicly to the publishing community, we’re going to get tremendous support. The part that we need to encourage is the sharing aspect, because we still have to rely on the publishing community to support and share our vision. Every person that I’ve demoed this to has wholeheartedly embraced the idea. We haven’t had one publisher who has said to us that this doesn’t serve a purpose or isn’t valuable.

We’ve asked every publisher that we’ve shown it to up until now, which has been about a dozen publishers, major publishers and small guys included; we asked them if they would put a link to MagFinder on their website so that their customers would always know and the answer was an emphatic yes.

Samir Husni: When do you think you’ll be ready to release this?

Joshua Gary: The first release is scheduled for the IMAG Conference in Boulder on May 18.

Samir Husni: So I’ll be seeing you there then.

Joshua Gary: Great.

Samir Husni: Do you see any disadvantage with this? Can you think of a reason someone would argue against MagFinder or see anything negative about this app?

Joshua Gary: Yes. I think this is going to create another level of competition among publishers who want to try to bring people to their own content. When there are five, six or seven gun magazines out there and many of them may look similar, I can see a publisher being concerned that the consumer might choose a competitive product over their own. And then the best content ends up winning. So, for some publishers this app may not work to their advantage.

Samir Husni: That’s always been the pipedream for wholesalers, and I remember the days when Anderson News was in the business of wholesale; wholesalers always wanted to create those categories and tiers within the categories and they wanted to make sure that the top titles; 1, 2, or 3, were the ones that received all the attention. Are we creating something similar to that or is it going to be completely up to the customer to decide?

Joshua Gary: It completely levels the playing field; there’s no preference toward any publisher or another; there’s no preference toward any region and there’s no preference toward any retailer.

Samir Husni: Can you see the day where the customer will come to MagFinder and say here’s my profile; I’m interested in cat magazines or gun magazines, etc.?

Joshua Gary: Yes. And let me tell you about our first foray into individual profiles. On one page of the app, what you’ll see at the very top is a login button. Once logged in, I flag favorites for a title or category. With those favorites we can customize content delivery to you. So yes, you can actually go into MagFinder and find a magazine you like, say Animal Tales, and you’ll see a favorite button and when I hit that button, a green bar appears and that magazine is added to favorites.

And what we’re doing with that information is using it to customize content delivery to you. And it will be based on your preferences, either by an editorial category or by a specific magazine. Not only for whatever might be interesting for you to read in a newsletter, but also to let you know when there’s a new issue of your favorite magazine available on the newsstand. So, the next time that Animal Tales comes out on sale, MagNet will either send you an email, letting you know the new issue of the magazine is available so you can go purchase it, or you can choose on the app itself to have MagNet send you an SMS text message to let you know.

Samir Husni: Technically, after downloading MagFinder and allowing notifications, if the customer has chosen their favorite magazines, let’s say Cosmopolitan or First For Women, the app will have the capability of notifying the customer by either email or text that the new issue of their favorite magazine is out?

Joshua Gary: That’s exactly right. We’re going to make sure that we limit the number of text messages that a customer can receive because we don’t want people to be overloaded or to turn them off because they’re constantly being notified. As we sit here today, the limitation will be one a week, no more.

Samir Husni: So, Joshua, the next question has to be; what took you so long? (Laughs)

Joshua Gary; (Laughs too) So many things to take on at the same time; too many fires to put out. (Laughs again) No, this has been a project that we’ve wanted to do for a long time. It was just a matter of getting the time and the focus associated with making it happen.

Another thing is we didn’t always have a large enough data base of covers. We wanted MagFinder to be very visual, opposed to just reading text; we wanted the customer to be able to see the covers of the magazines, which are scanned at a very high resolution and make sure that they’re ultra-crisp. We have about 4,000 magazines now that we’re scanning per month. We feel like it’s a large enough number of magazines where we can make the app much more visual. We encourage any publisher who doesn’t see their magazine cover to contact us so we can get it added.

Another point is that technology has progressed to the point that we can Tweet, Share and Favorite. We can also make it available on mobile just as easily as on the web with speed as a consideration. There are so many pieces of data that we’re serving up; we wanted to have an app that was fast on the phone. MagFinder Mobile is just as responsive as it is on the desktop. We wanted that to be the case and I think that the technology has now allowed us to do that.

Samir Husni: I’ve been doing this for over 30 years here at the university and to me, this is the first time that I’ve seen or heard an innovative way to help the newsstands or single copy. All I’ve heard, since I began concentrating on newsstand, is all the problems, but nobody ever offers any solutions. My expectations are that this is going to be something very big and very helpful, because you’re saving the consumer’s time, while still allowing them to shop covers and see issues of the magazines without leaving their home.

Joshua Gary: Exactly. And we see it taking a variety of different angles from here and I’ll give you one example. Off of the home page, one of the things that you’ll notice is that there’s a little bar at the bottom that reads ‘most popular magazine.’ That’s based on our point of sale data, so I can see helping customers find their magazines based on popularity; based on what’s been purchased more often in a store, in a region, in a category or in a state, or even among their friends or social sphere.

I can see the categorization and popularity expanding and becoming much more profile-driven. If you like Cosmo, for example, you might want to check out Glamour. Why would you want Glamour, because your friends are buying Glamour, a new issue just came on sale; any number of reasons.

Samir Husni: It’s just amazing. The only thing even close to this is in Finland, the wholesalers track the sales and every six months the magazines that get the checkouts or the front displays are the ones that sold the highest numbers in the previous six months. It’s not a matter of ‘you pay me and you get the checkout position,’ it’s ‘how many copies have you sold’. And this app is going to show me, for example, that People magazine and National Enquirer have been the most popular magazines, not because they have the best cover or they’re well-liked, but because of the number of copies sold.

Joshua Gary: That’s right. Look under the National Enquirer or Us Weekly; it’s not even Cosmopolitan; in our example here, it’s Fine Homebuilding. It’s telling you what is selling well.

Samir Husni: I am truly fascinated. I can’t wait to download the app and I know I can’t do it now because it’s not out yet. (Laughs)

Joshua Gary: There’s another interesting thing that I’ll tell you. We’re not just necessarily helping them find a magazine, but we also want consumers to be able to browse the inventory in a store at any given time. And there are a couple of different ways to get to that inventory within MagFinder.

You can also click on the Browse button at the top of the app by store. And then you can actually search a particular store.

Samir Husni: Do you know how much time that will save me if I can find all of my first issues through this app? (Laughs)

Joshua Gary: We’ll have to create a special version just for you, Samir. (Laughs too)

Samir Husni: Right. (Laughs again)

Joshua Gary: Don’t forget about Twitter. You can use MagFinder to tell your friends that you’ve purchased a certain magazine; we have a hashtag; there’s a sharing on Facebook element; you can login via Facebook or Twitter. We truly believe the social tie-ins will be an integral part of the success of this app.

Samir Husni: For the first time in this digital age, how can I be the first one to download this app on my Smartphone?

Joshua Gary: Here’s the best part about it; you don’t have to download anything. It is a completely web-based app. I have my link to MagFinder on my phone and when I click on it, it opens up a web browser and it acts, feels and plays like a natively-installed app, but you don’t have to download anything. And we did that on purpose for a couple of reasons.

The first reason was that we wanted to make sure that we had greater accessibility with the least amount of intrusion for publishers and customers. We didn’t want a customer to feel like they had to download something to be able to use it. We wanted to create all the functionality we needed without the customer having to download anything. It still uses your GPS; it still gives you all the recommendations; it’s still just as fast.

This is great because you don’t have to worry about the different iPhones or Samsungs on the market and the cross-compatibility challenges that software services providers regularly face. MagFinder is what’s called a “responsive, HTML5 based application” which means it’s much more compatible across devices and browsers, even on mobile.

As we get into some of the more advanced functionality capabilities that exist within your phone, I expect that we’ll revisit having a natively-installed application, maybe for the purposes of taking pictures or videos. something like that. But as of right now that wasn’t required.

Samir Husni: What is in it for you?

Joshua Gary: If you think about our position in the business; it is partly to try and support and strengthen an efficient, optimized supply chain, and to facilitate the flow of information amongst the various entities associated with the newsstand. From our perspective, it doesn’t do a whole lot of good if we build solutions that only benefit one rung within the supply chain at the others’ expense.

MagFinder will help everyone in the supply chain, because if we’re finding magazines with greater ease, we’re generating interest, not only in the magazine itself, but in the brand’s content in a way right now that publishers can’t easily do. The people that end up benefiting most are customers; however who benefits when the customer benefits? The retailer, the wholesaler, and the publisher benefit as well. If we can help facilitate that success, it’s right where MagNet wants to be

Samir Husni: As I told you earlier, this is one of the first really innovative ways that I’ve seen to reach the magazine customer in their home and on their phone. I’ve heard a lot of questions asked about how to get the mobile blinders to help the industry. And I think with this, we’re telling our customers to keep their blinders on and we’ll help them find their way.

Joshua Gary: We’ll help them figure it out; exactly.

Samir Husni: Thank you.

“If you look at travel media; travel media has had a growth of 37% in the last three years and the research team says that because of two reasons. One: because travel is luxury, and two: because we’re all so attached to our desktops, tablets and phones; at some point in time, people actually want to put those devices away and have a lean-back experience and dream a little bit and plan a trip; do something for themselves.” Jay Meyer

“What we’re seeing from the business community is that obviously, from a brand awareness and storytelling perspective, print is still a really important tool for us and that’s also partially because we’re living in the luxury space. And luxury advertisers have really seen that print still works for them from that perspective.” Nathan Lump

Travel and magazines are two luxuries that go hand-in-hand, or so the powers-that-be over at Travel+Leisure believe whole-heartedly, and I would have to agree with them. While no one necessarily needs to read a magazine or travel to Europe just to see the Eiffel Tower; more often than not, it’s called for, if for no other reason than simply to disconnect from the real world and all of its devices that seem compelled to proclaim yet another notification of information. Something else travel and magazines have in common is their ability to transport you to idyllic locations totally different from the norm, another much-deserved, take-a-breath experience in our world of fast-paced existence.

Jay Meyer is vice president and publisher of Travel+Leisure magazine and Nathan Lump is editor-in-chief. The two are the highly-proud parents of the reinvented, more immersive and transporting travel magazine. With a redesign aimed at the current ravenous appetite affluent consumers have for travel, the magazine reaches out and touches that audience with an experience that shares their own memories through the art of travel. And for some, travel is art. And the new Travel+Leisure magazine showcases that trait beautifully.

I spoke with Jay and Nathan recently about the positive changes the magazine has made and about some of the numbers that support the idea that travel is a hot commodity right now in the world of magazine media. According to Jay, T+L is enjoying its largest audience ever in print, with 6.7 MM and in digital, 3.3 MM. The magazine is twice as large as its nearest competitor and has more millionaires in its audience than any measured publication.

Also, according to Time Inc.’s 10th Annual Time Inc./YouGov Survey of Affluence and Wealth which was recently released; leisure travel is expected to grow the most among all categories studied, with an increase of 15.9% from 2014 to $115.2 billion. When asked about passions, travel was the top response (67%), followed by “spending quality time with my family” (65%).

The findings certainly bode well for the future of Travel+Leisure and the two men whose passion for travel is exceeded only by their ardor for their brand.

So, I hope you enjoy this “trek” into the minds of two avid travelers as they talk about the magazine that always goes with them on their travels – the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Jay Meyer, Publisher, and Nathan Lump, Editor-in-Chief, Travel+Leisure.

But first the sound-bites:

On why Jay believes travel is so hot right now on the publishing scene: If you look at travel media; travel media has had a growth of 37% in the last three years and the research team says that because of two reasons. One: because travel is luxury, and two: because we’re all so attached to our desktops, tablets and phones; at some point in time, people actually want to put those devices away and have a lean-back experience and dream a little bit and plan a trip; do something for themselves.

On Nathan’s opinion of the lean-back experience: I think for me, it’s really true in the sense that when you think about it, we have so much information at our fingertips; no one necessarily needs to read a magazine in order to learn things, so those that do are obviously making a very conscious choice that they want to give a certain amount of their leisure time to that experience.

On whether Nathan can ever imagine Travel+Leisure not having a print component: Sure. We’ve seen the growth in digital and all of us can imagine that world. I don’t think that world is upon us yet. Our readership in print is actually larger than it’s ever been in its history.

On Jay’s opinion of why Travel+Leisure’s audience numbers have increased within its print media, rather than its digital: I think there are a lot of reasons, but the simplest is that we needed to re-platform, which is now done. And in the past we have been producing about 10 pieces of content per week, and Nathan and his team are moving into a place where they’re going to produce 20 pieces of content per day, high velocity publishing, and we expect those numbers to increase exponentially.

On whether as a publisher, digital makes Jay’s life harder or easier when it comes to selling the brand to advertisers: I think digital absolutely makes our lives easier. Nathan was talking about consumer behaviors earlier; if you actually think about the process and mindset of looking at travel as being inspired and then planning and considering and then buying and sharing; we need to be on all of those channels; we’re not there yet, but obviously, digital is a huge part of that process.

On how Jay sees the magazine’s attempt to attract luxury advertisers, but stay grounded and keep the magazine at mass appeal at the same time: The answer is if you look at syndicated research, to your point, we have a really great audience and marketers see that audience as exactly what I said previously, in terms of, they have a healthy income, they take action, they travel, and outside of Travel+Leisure, if you look at it from the advertiser’s brand perspective, these are people that they want as customers.

On the humanization of the magazine and who would appear if Nathan struck the magazine with a magic wand: Everything that we’ve done with the changes to the brand really begins with who we see this reader as, and fundamentally for me, it is that person who Jay mentioned earlier who takes 23 trips per year. So, when you think about that person, that person has been a lot of places, done a lot of things; they’ve crossed a lot of things off of their bucket list and they are fundamentally worldly people. They bring a sophisticated and cosmopolitan point of view to their lives and to their travels.

On why the magazine’s logo wasn’t changed during the redesign according to Nathan: Partially, because I think that the brand is in such a healthy place and it has such great awareness and recognition. I felt why tinker with something that is working for us.

On the biggest stumbling block Jay had to face as publisher of the magazine: In terms of Nathan’s arrival and from that point to where we are now, I think the biggest challenge has been time.

On how he overcame it: Honestly? Relentless hard work and a ton of travel. (Laughs)

On anything either would like to add – Jay first: One thing that I would add is that we kind of summed up that the travel space is doing quite well and Nathan talked about the travel industry as a whole, the GDP and the number of jobs; I would just say that I want to applaud Time Inc. for giving us the resources to make this happen in print and digital, which as you know, doesn’t always happen together.

On what Nathan would like to add: The one thing that I would add, Samir, is that we focused quite a bit on the print magazine, but I think the other thing that is really important here too is the digital piece because obviously we see tremendous opportunity for us to grow and also to evolve our business, particularly leveraging our digital platforms.

On Nathan’s opinion of why it took five to six years for the media industry to realize when it comes to print and digital, it’s not either/or, it’s both: I think for a lot of people there was just some basic fear and lack of understanding of how people were really using the product.

On what keeps Jay up at night: As we move forward, it’s an interesting time in the media world; it’s all about ideas. So, ideas keep me up at night, my own and others.

On what keeps Nathan up at night: What does keep me up at night is the fact that I have so many things that I want to do, that we want to do, and there is always that thinking like, oh no, are we going to be able to do it all and do it all as quickly as I would like.

And now the lightly edited transcript of the Mr. Magazine™ conversation with Jay Meyer, Publisher, and Nathan Lump, Editor-in-Chief, Travel+Leisure.

Samir Husni: First, congratulations on the magazine; I love the new design; actually, I love the whole reinvention of the magazine.

Jay Meyer: Thank you.

Samir Husni: Jay, what’s the status of the travel magazine market today? You’ve reinvented Travel+Leisure; Condè Nast Traveler is upscaling their magazine and changing the size; National Geographic Traveler has a new editor; Smithsonian came out with a new travel magazine and so did Airbnb; suddenly, it looks as though travel is hot. Why do you think this is happening now?

Jay Meyer: Travel is hot. If you look at travel media; travel media has had a growth of 37% in the last three years and the research team says that because of two reasons. One: because travel is luxury, and two: because we’re all so attached to our desktops, tablets and phones; at some point in time, people actually want to put those devices away and have a lean-back experience and dream a little bit and plan a trip; do something for themselves.

We believe, and these products were built for, the reader and viewer of Travel+Leisure who wants to be inspired and we call those people: experience-collectors. They travel 23 times per year; they all have passports, and they have a really healthy income. And that 23 times per year breaks down to 13 business trips and 10 leisure.

Samir Husni: Nathan, you wrote in your letter from the editor that reading a magazine is a luxury. Can you expand on that a little bit more and on what Jay just said, in terms of the lean-back experience?

Nathan Lump: Sure. I think for me, it’s really true in the sense that when you think about it, we have so much information at our fingertips; no one necessarily needs to read a magazine in order to learn things, so those that do are obviously making a very conscious choice that they want to give a certain amount of their leisure time to that experience.

I’ve spent a lot of time looking at what behaviors look like across the platforms. One of the things, and it sounds very intuitive and I think it’s important to keep it in mind, because we live in a digital age, if I’m looking for information about something in particular, I’m going to engage in digital behaviors around finding that information. If I’m a traveler and I’ve decided to go to Spain; I’m not sitting around waiting for my Travel+Leisure to come and hoping there’s going to be an article about Spain in it for me. I’m going to go online and find out more information about the place that I’m going to go to.

From the magazine reading experience, I think what that means is we have this audience whether they purchased the magazine on the newsstand or they’re a subscriber, they’re interested in travel; they’ve decided to give us some of their leisure time, and they’re basically coming to us in an open mindset. They’re saying, I am open to the idea of discovering new places, new experiences and new things, so they’re issuing an invitation to us to get them excited.

For me, editorially, the bar that we set for ourselves, particularly in print, is to try and create an experience that is immersive and rich enough that we are, in fact, actually getting people excited about things that they didn’t know they should get excited about. And that’s a lot of what I mean when I talk about the luxury of magazine reading.

I would also add, just building on what Jay has said too about the travel category in general, and you probably know some of this, so forgive me if I’m telling you something that you already know; travel is over a $7 trillion industry globally. One in every 11 jobs is generated by the travel industry, so this is a huge category. It’s bigger than a lot of other categories or industries that we think about when we think about media and verticals.

When you look at spending; over the years travel has become much more essential to people. Twenty years ago when you used to ask people if times got tough, what would you cut out of your lives in terms of spending, travel would be right up there at the top. This has actually changed in the years since and it’s become much more of a thing that people say they wouldn’t cut out. They’ll say they won’t buy that new sofa, but they’re still going to take that trip. And that’s been a really important shift.

Recently, Time Inc. released the results of an annual survey that we do, a survey of affluence and wealth, and among the findings, one that I found compelling was of all the discretionary spending categories that these folks said they were going to spend money on this coming year; their desire for travel was the second biggest category in that survey for spending after automobiles. So, it’s obviously a real priority for people, which I think contributes to the durability of the category.

Samir Husni: As an editor-in-chief, Nathan, can you ever imagine Travel+Leisure not having a print component after what you told me about the strength and power of print?

Nathan Lump: Sure. We’ve seen the growth in digital and all of us can imagine that world. I don’t think that world is upon us yet. Our readership in print is actually larger than it’s ever been in its history.

Jay Meyer: Yes, it’s at 6.7 million.

Nathan Lump: I would say that for the moment we see print still as a healthy piece. Obviously, digital is a really important growth opportunity, but we still see that there is a desire for this kind of luxurious, more lean-back experience, at least, in our category.

Samir Husni: Jay, it has been your print audience that has almost doubled in number, rather than your digital audience. Yet, when I look at statistics and numbers from other magazines and hear about their 3 million in print circulation and their 25 million in digital audience, why do you think Travel+Leisure’s audience is still attached to the print media?

Jay Meyer: I think there are a lot of reasons, but the simplest is that we needed to re-platform, which is now done. And in the past we have been producing about 10 pieces of content per week, and Nathan and his team are moving into a place where they’re going to produce 20 pieces of content per day, high velocity publishing, and we expect those numbers to increase exponentially.

Now, having said that, I think the key was to re-platform and redesign, so that we were able to move this forward.

Samir Husni: Did digital make your life easier or harder, Jay, in terms of selling the brand Travel+Leisure? Is digital making your job as a publisher harder or can you just walk into any ad agency and not hear the word crazy when talking about the reinvention of a print magazine in this digital age?

Jay Meyer: I think digital absolutely makes our lives easier. Nathan was talking about consumer behaviors earlier; if you actually think about the process and mindset of looking at travel as being inspired and then planning and considering and then buying and sharing; we need to be on all of those channels; we’re not there yet, but obviously, digital is a huge part of that process.

Nathan Lump: I would add that what we’re seeing, and Jay correct me if I’m wrong, what we’re seeing from the business community is that obviously, from a brand awareness and storytelling perspective, print is still a really important tool for us and that’s also partially because we’re living in the luxury space. And luxury advertisers have really seen that print still works for them from that perspective.

And then digital gives us an additional tool in our toolkit to do that, but also to help those partners who are interested in really driving bookings or consideration via their own website. It satisfies those kinds of needs, so in fact, I think it gives us, from a strategic perspective; it gives us more to sell as opposed to selling against. It allows us, depending on what the partner is looking for, to provide them with the product that makes sense for them, or in many cases, both products because many of our advertisers advertise across platforms with us.

Jay Meyer: And that’s really the point. I think what we’re seeing and what we’ve seen in the last couple of years is that most core partners of Travel+Leisure are using both. They’re not choosing one over the other; they’re actually using both for different reasons.

Samir Husni: Jay, as I look at the May issue and the variety of ads; we go from Cartier to GEICO; can you briefly tell me how you’re trying to capture that luxury market and at the same time stay grounded and be as mass as the magazine can be since you are the largest travel magazine?

Jay Meyer: That’s a good question and a tough question. And the answer is if you look at syndicated research, to your point, we have a really great audience and marketers see that audience as exactly what I said previously, in terms of, they have a healthy income, they take action, they travel, and outside of Travel+Leisure, if you look at it from the advertiser’s brand perspective, these are people that they want as customers.

On the luxury side, if you break down the 6.7 million, we actually have 1.1 million who are millionaires. So, there is a super healthy top end of that audience and certainly the luxury marketers understand that and want to reach those people.

Samir Husni: Nathan, let me shift gears a little bit and talk about the content. If you could humanize the magazine, strike it with a magic wand and have a person appear; would I see Nathan materialize, and if so, what type of conversation would he and I have about Travel+Leisure?

Nathan Lump: That’s a good question and I may end up answering it in a slightly roundabout way. Everything that we’ve done with the changes to the brand really begins with who we see this reader as, and fundamentally for me, it is that person who Jay mentioned earlier who takes 23 trips per year. So, when you think about that person, that person has been a lot of places, done a lot of things; they’ve crossed a lot of things off of their bucket list and they are fundamentally worldly people. They bring a sophisticated and cosmopolitan point of view to their lives and to their travels. So, from my perspective what that means is, editorially, we need to be where they are. We need to be as sophisticated as they are or more so, because they’re looking at us to surprise them and to give them novelty.

We’re really trying to push the boundaries in terms of what we give them, making sure that we are not only super current and in the know, but that we’re also really insightful. These folks are also, I think, really engaged with the world and understand what’s going on around them, they comprehend that travel is a tool for understanding the world.

You’re going to see in upcoming issues, such as in our June edition, our cover story is about Cuba; we have another big story in that issue looking at New Orleans 10 years after Katrina. These are two of the big stories of our time and we’re looking at them particularly through the lens of travel because we know that our audience use travel as a means of understanding. It’s pleasurable, of course; we want to capture the pleasure and the joy and fun of travel, but we also understand that we need to engage with some of the big issues, so, you can tell me if I’m answering your question, but I’m trying to conjure that reader.

And if we’re personifying ourselves; I want to be them. I want the product to feel, in that way, very intelligent and sophisticated, very worldly and with a very strong global perspective; that we’re paying attention to the entire world, we’re engaged with that; we’re as interested in what’s happening on the other side of the planet as we are with what’s in our backyard.

Samir Husni: So, when the June issue arrives at my home and I peer through the peephole in my door; do I see Nathan standing there?

Nathan Lump: Well, sure; I am definitely this person myself, I would say. I’m a serious traveler and have been my whole life. I probably travel a bit more than 23 times per year; that may or may not be recommended. (Laughs)

Samir Husni: (Laughs too)

Nathan Lump: But I love it. For me, travel is the great passion in my life; it is the thing that has changed me. It’s opened my eyes to so many things. I grew up in a small town in Wisconsin and I’ve had this travel bug ever since I was a child. Who knows why – I do try to bring to the product my own passion for this subject.

In the very first issue that I touched, which was the December issue of last year, and was largely completed when I arrived, but I did make a couple of small changes to it; we changed the cover, but I also wrote my first editor’s note for Travel+Leisure. And one of the things that I said in there was that I believe the fundamental hallmark of a traveler is curiosity. A true traveler is genuinely curious. And they don’t lose that. The more that they see and travel; the more curious they become. And that is absolutely true of myself in my own life and I definitely bring that to the page.

So, yes, I hope that the magazine is a reflection of me in that way.

Samir Husni: You’re also sounding like a journalist because I tell my students that a true journalist is a curious journalist. I tell them they don’t need a degree in journalism; they need a degree in curiosity.

Nathan Lump: I completely agree with that and that’s the thing about our subject matter. A lot of people say that this is fluffy stuff, but I really charge my team with bringing a journalist’s point of view to the work that we do. And that doesn’t mean that it’s all serious, a lot of travel is about joy, and the traveler’s experience is having fun, but I think there is a lot about learning and exploring and seeing the world and that is journalism.

Samir Husni: So, my next curious question is why did you leave the design of the logo the same? You changed everything except the nameplate.

Nathan Lump: That’s true. Partially, because I think that the brand is in such a healthy place and it has such great awareness and recognition. I felt why tinker with something that is working for us. Sometimes an editor will come in and feel that they have to change absolutely everything, including that, but because our brand has such great awareness and such great affection from our readers, I didn’t want to confuse them in that way. I just thought it was better to keep that piece stable.

Samir Husni: Jay, what has been the biggest stumbling block that you’ve had to face with Travel+Leisure and how did you overcome it?

Jay Meyer: In terms of Nathan’s arrival and from that point to where we are now, I think the biggest challenge has been time.

Samir Husni: As in the company, the magazine, or real time? (Laughs)

Jay Meyer: No, real time. In terms of setting the course of what we wanted to do with the product and who we were talking to and actually making that happen in a very short amount of time, which was certainly tough on both sides of the house.

Samir Husni: How did you overcome it?

Jay Meyer: Honestly? Relentless hard work and a ton of travel. (Laughs)

Samir Husni: (Laughs too)

Jay Meyer: I think Nathan and I would have the same answer, which is just relentless determination to make sure it happened.

Samir Husni: Is there anything else either of you would like to add?

Jay Meyer: One thing that I would add is that we kind of summed up that the travel space is doing quite well and Nathan talked about the travel industry as a whole, the GDP and the number of jobs; I would just say that I want to applaud Time Inc. for giving us the resources to make this happen in print and digital, which as you know, doesn’t always happen together.

Travel as a category is not a core category for Time Inc. and not one that they have played in before Travel+Leisure arrived here. So, we applaud them for seeing the opportunity and giving us the resources to make it happen.

Nathan Lump: The one thing that I would add, Samir, is that we focused quite a bit on the print magazine, but I think the other thing that is really important here too is the digital piece because obviously we see tremendous opportunity for us to grow and also to evolve our business, particularly leveraging our digital platforms.

As Jay said, and as you know, we re-launched the print magazine and the website at the same time, and like Jay said that almost never happens. I can’t think of the last time someone did it. And we did it because I was really committed and the company was committed and supportive of the idea to reimagine the platforms holistically, understanding the ways in which they’re related to each other and the existing dialogue they have with each other and they allow us to do slightly different things to serve our audience.

From my perspective, what we’re going to be doing digitally; you’re going to see a lot more from us and the dispersion of the website is really just the beginning. There is a lot more to come in terms of features and functionality, but also in terms of how we use that to engage and serve the audience.

So, the digital piece of it is, I think; we don’t really look at it as a threat; we look at it as an opportunity. I’ve actually been more focused on digital, although I have a long background in print, I’ve been more focused on digital in recent years. And that’s also a little bit unusual for a magazine brand editor. The last five or six years, I’ve been almost exclusively focused on digital products, and so I really see the ways in which we can leverage that.

Samir Husni: Nathan or Jay, why do you think it took us almost five or six years to except the fact that it’s not either/or, it’s both?

Nathan Lump: I think for a lot of people there was just some basic fear and lack of understanding of how people were really using the product.

I also think too that some categories have been more challenged by digital than we have in the travel verticals; for instance, news media have had a harder time adjusting to the balance between print and digital. And those are obviously some of the biggest and best-known brands out there. So, I think that’s also driven the narrative a little bit. Publicly, because the news organizations have such large audiences, such a big pulpit, they’ve also been the ones that have in some ways seen digital be more of a challenge to print than we have in the travel verticals.

Samir Husni: My typical last question, and I’ll start with Jay; what keeps you up at night?

Jay Meyer: I’m not a strong sleeper, so a lot of things keep me up at night. (Laughs) I would say, and I won’t speak for Nathan, but I’m ambitious and curious. As we move forward, it’s an interesting time in the media world; it’s all about ideas. So, ideas keep me up at night, my own and others.

Samir Husni: And Nathan?

Nathan Lump: You kind of stole it from me, Jay. (Laughs) What does keep me up at night is the fact that I have so many things that I want to do, that we want to do, and there is always that thinking like, oh no, are we going to be able to do it all and do it all as quickly as I would like. Like Jay said, the world is evolving so quickly and so is the industry, that there’s always that concern if you’re moving along with it quickly enough. I think that’s why we’ve been so aggressive in the last six or seven months and why we’re going to keep that pace up. That is really the biggest thing, honestly, for me.

Samir Husni: Thank you.

“Print is not dead for us; it’s thrilling. Of course, I hear it in other magazines and it scares me to death because I’m such an old print horse that I never want it to go away. And so it’s really exciting for me to be at a magazine where there’s never talk of not doing print anymore. Yes, it’s doing well.” Diane Anderson-Minshall

Although we live in the 21st century and in an era of natural enlightenment overall; unfortunately, there is still a stigma attached to the three letters HIV virus and the implications and stereotypes that may follow.

That’s why the powers-that-be at HIV Plus magazine decided that their message of care and concern for people who suffer from HIV and all chronic, medically-managed illnesses would be better served to rebrand without those three letters. Hence, Plus magazine was born with the intent of opening up a whole new conversation with people who felt uncomfortable picking up the magazine when it was known as HIV Plus.

Diane Anderson-Minshall is editor-in-chief of the magazine and is a staunch advocate for the magazine’s mission. I spoke with Diane recently and we talked about the rebranding and how the hope of reaching more people with the magazine’s message was the driving force behind the change in title and design.

I hope you enjoy the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Diane Anderson-Minshall, Editor-in-Chief, Plus magazine, and a woman whose passion for the HIV/AIDS community and all who endure the pain of chronic illnesses, is genuine and far-reaching.

But first the sound-bites:

On changing the name from HIV Plus to simply Plus: We did have people who told us if you don’t have HIV in the title, even though we’re still a magazine for people with HIV, but if we don’t have it in the title, it looks like a health magazine about several things, including HIV. You don’t have to be HIV positive to read it.

On the new tagline; you’re more than your status: The bottom line is we’re recognizing that our readers have HIV, which is a chronic manageable condition and it’s not a definer of their lives, so we have to recognize that they need more out of a magazine than just treatment information. They’re looking for a whole magazine for the whole totality of their lives.

On keeping the website and social media with the original name: We didn’t rebrand the website or the social media sites and part of that is because a magazine is something that is very visible versus a website where anyone can sneak onto it; we all know that because we sneak onto certain websites all the time.

On the new celebrity-oriented covers and whether they convolute the message the magazine is trying to render: I don’t actually. I think that our mission is the same. We started doing celebrity covers when I came onboard as editor-in-chief and part of that is because celebrity covers are aspirational. I think that we’d be foolish to not recognize that people like to see aspirational profiles of other people who are doing something related to their lives.

On whether any celebrity has ever rejected the magazine’s offer to be on its cover: Yes, absolutely. I’m not sure I can name who those people are, but that absolutely happens all of the time. And those are oftentimes celebrities who are doing something with an AIDS charity already, but who don’t want to be associated with a magazine. Sadly, it has happened a number of times.

On the biggest stumbling block she’s had to face: The biggest stumbling block was getting our people who write for the magazine to recognize that our readership is a high school educated level readership, because I think people find that’s sometimes harder to write to.

On her most pleasant moment at the magazine: There have been so many. But at the U.S. Conference on AIDS last year in San Diego, for example, we made a life size cover of the magazine, with just the logo and a little bit of text, and then basically people came up and posed in front of the magazine like they were the cover star of the magazine. And then they Tweeted out the photos or we did and that was a great moment.

On whether she considers herself a journalist first or an advocate for the magazine’s mission: I consider myself a journalist first, but there’s no denying that this is advocacy journalism. There’s just no denying that in order to do this magazine, you have to consider yourself an advocacy journalist.

On anything else she’d like to add: One thing that people do keep asking me is whether we’ve made this change because we’re losing money? And this is the very first time I can say this, because a lot of times I’ve been at publications where what I’m about to say was not the case; where we did make a change and it was because we needed to deal with dropping revenue. In this case, we’ve been doing phenomenally well and we’ve been consistently doing well over the last few years that I’ve been here.

On why she believes print is not dead: Print is not dead for us; it’s thrilling. Of course, I hear it in other magazines and it scares me to death because I’m such an old print horse that I never want it to go away. And so it’s really exciting for me to be at a magazine where there’s never talk of not doing print anymore.

On what keeps her up at night: In terms of publishing, just production can keep me up at night. Just knowing production is two weeks away and that I have to file 80,000 words by then. That can keep me up at night. And that’s just the very beginning of what keeps me up at night.

And now the lightly edited transcript of the Mr. Magazine™ conversation with Diane Anderson-Minshall, Editor-in-Chief, Plus magazine.

Samir Husni: Why did you change the name of the magazine from HIV Plus to just Plus?

Diane Anderson-Minshall: My publisher, Joe Valentino, and I had been talking for a couple of years about whether the name of the magazine was kind and modern and really reflected all that we were doing with it for readers. We started doing some informal questioning of those readers and of people who distribute the magazine; because we’re a bit like WebMD in that we reached our quarter of a million reader’s right at the point of care, for the magazine in particular, of course, the mobile app and the web as well.

We started talking about how the name was; what we were doing with it; if it was reaching readers, that kind of thing, because when we started the magazine in the late 1990s it was a very different landscape in terms of who was reading the magazine and the kind of information that we were providing.

In the last couple of years, we’ve definitely become much more service-oriented than we were before. The magazine before had been very newsy, of course in part because it was also run by that staff of The Advocate, which is an LGBT news magazine, so it had been very newsy, but maybe wasn’t as useful when it came to what readers were looking for at that point.

This sort of informal questioning and surveying people kind of coalesced at the U.S. conference on AIDS last fall, where we did informal focus groups and we talked with a lot of people who were reading the magazine and also people who provided the magazine, like social workers, clinicians and people who ran LGBT centers or health centers or AIDS service organizations.

And when we started questioning them, we found a couple of things at that point and one of them was that we had a number of people who came up to the booth, picked up the magazine and said, oh my, I love Plus magazine and I read it all the time. And that made us realize that there was a chunk of our readership that was already calling us Plus magazine, sort of like the little HIV in our masthead or our logo at that point wasn’t resonating for them that it was part of the name of the magazine the way we had designed it.

And then at the same time we spoke with a number of people who said, I have a lot of people who read your magazine when they’re at my office or at the center, or getting their monthly healthcare or shots, but they won’t take it home, in part because it’s called HIV Plus. It’s really clear that it’s a magazine only for people with HIV.

So, I asked those people by just dropping the word HIV from the title, would it allow them to take the magazine home and feel comfortable about it? And the consensus was from all these people, yes, just removing the word; those three little letters from the title kind of eliminated the stigmatizing language that led with the virus. And this helped us think, well, OK, maybe this is a time for us to rebrand ourselves as Plus and eliminate the stigmatizing language that leads with the virus and tell our readers that at this point we understand that they more than their HIV status; you’re you, plus a little something more and for a lot of our readers that can be HIV or Hepatitis C or another condition.

At the same time, the change would open the magazine up for those people who would not pick it up or take it home because of having that HIV in the title. The change would make those people feel comfortable and safe to carry the magazine on a subway or read it in their cubicle or leave it on their coffee table if their friends come over.

A part of it was we recognized that there were different types of people reading our magazine and several of those people were very happy and proud to use HIV as a way to describe themselves and those are the people that we feel we were reaching at that point, and those people aren’t often living in the areas hardest hit by the virus. And we knew that there were a lot of people living in areas where they weren’t getting the right kind of treatment or getting connected to care; they’re weren’t getting the right kind of information because they were afraid for people to recognize that they had HIV.

So, we did have people who told us if you don’t have HIV in the title, even though we’re still a magazine for people with HIV, but if we don’t have it in the title, it looks like a health magazine about several things, including HIV. You don’t have to be HIV positive to read it. That’s kind of our angle; we’re trying to work to get those people who are afraid to pick up the magazine and we’re asking those people who lead with HIV in their lives to understand that we’re not going in the closet about being a magazine for people with HIV, we’re just asking them to make some considerations for those people who are afraid to pick up the magazine. By losing those three little letters in the title, we sort of open ourselves up for those people to join the conversation and have access to the information that they desperately need and aren’t getting yet.

Samir Husni: And that led to the new tagline under the name: because you’re more than your status?

Diane Anderson-Minshall: Yes, I mean, we’re really just sort of playing around with different things and for me; I kept thinking with Plus, we wanted to tell our readers that we get you, you’re you, plus something extra, in this case, HIV, but it could be other things too.

But the bottom line is we’re recognizing that our readers have HIV, which is a chronic manageable condition and it’s not a definer of their lives, so we have to recognize that they need more out of a magazine than just treatment information. They’re looking for a whole magazine for the whole totality of their lives.

Samir Husni: You’re website is still HIV Plusmag.com…

Diane Anderson-Minshall: It is and that’s actually going to stay that way for now. We didn’t rebrand the website or the social media sites and part of that is because a magazine is something that is very visible versus a website where anyone can sneak onto it; we all know that because we sneak onto certain websites all the time. People generally don’t see a browser history; they don’t look into what we’re searching for, so you can actually go onto HIV Plusmag.com without feeling the stigma. And I’m assuming a lot of people will still do that, so you don’t feel any stigma when you do it because no one knows what you’re doing online, versus a magazine which is very visible; it’s something that you take home or have on your coffee table or next to your bed.

It’s something very different for people when they’re carrying the magazine versus reading the website. And we recognize that sometimes those are two different audiences with two different needs. So, we went ahead and left the social media and the web and our mobile app with the brand HIV Plus for a variety of reasons, but that’s one.

And then another reason is that making a change to those things right now; we just don’t want to scare off the readers that are accessing us through those channels at this point and we don’t need to lose traffic or any of those kinds of things. And we felt like again, with the website and the social media accounts, it just wasn’t as pressing to change those because people aren’t monitoring you when you’re looking at those sites versus when you have a magazine and it’s everywhere around you. Does that make sense?

Samir Husni: Oh yes, that makes perfect sense. In fact, you give more ammunition to my fight that digital and print each has its own role in today’s world.

Diane Anderson-Minshall: Yes, absolutely.

Samir Husni: We all know that we live in a digital age and as you mentioned, it’s much easier for somebody with HIV to sneak onto the web and look for answers or help; yet with the magazine, it’s like announcing it to the world. As you move into Plus, even into the design of the cover with its celebrity-oriented nature; do you see any conflict between the message the magazine is providing and the look of the magazine?

Diane Anderson-Minshall: I don’t actually. I think that at this point, we’re the leading provider of HIV health information through the magazine and our online portals and mobile platforms and we still have the same mission, which is bringing accurate and trustworthy information about HIV and other related mental and physical health conditions, but in a way that’s empowering and entertaining and up-to-the-minute.

And so I think that our mission is the same. We started doing celebrity covers when I came onboard as editor-in-chief and part of that is because celebrity covers are aspirational. I think that we’d be foolish to not recognize that people like to see aspirational profiles of other people who are doing something related to their lives. Everybody picks up a magazine with a celebrity on it; it’s much harder to get people to pick up a magazine without a celebrity, so there’s no reason for us not to run those as well.

What we do is interview celebrities who are either people who do have HIV or have some relationship to HIV or AIDS, maybe through a family member or they work in a social cause related to it as a charity or they’re playing a role of an HIV-positive person on television or in film. And those are some of our most popular pieces.

What I think of these celebrity pieces is a little bit like the cherry in the cough syrup, you know; we need to make this sweet for people to pick up and then they get the information they need inside. The celebrity covers bring people in.

You’re at the doctor’s office and you’re looking at the array of magazines on the table and you’re next to us and you’ve got Sofía Vergara on the cover of WebMD and we’ve got somebody to compete with that so you’ll pick us up. And then you’ll find the information that you need; the treatment and medication information, but also the fitness, mental health, nutrition, sex and dating advice and the real, but aspirational profiles of other people living healthy lives with chronic conditions.

Samir Husni: Have you ever been rejected by a celebrity or a celebrity’s agent who said, no, we don’t want to be on the cover?

Diane Anderson-Minshall: Yes, absolutely. I’m not sure I can name who those people are, but that absolutely happens all of the time. And those are oftentimes celebrities who are doing something with an AIDS charity already, but who don’t want to be associated with a magazine. Sadly, it has happened a number of times.

And then we’ve also reached out to some celebrities we know who are HIV-positive themselves and tried to see if they were ready to have their coming-out interview and they were not. We don’t hold any ill will in those cases because we understand how difficult it is to come out about being HIV-positive, but again if you’re a celebrity with all the resources of the world at your fingertips and you’re not able to come out about being positive, imagine how difficult it is for the 18-year-old kid in the southeast who’s just found out he’s positive and has no resources.

Samir Husni: What has been the biggest stumbling block that you’ve had to face since becoming editor-in-chief of the magazine and how did you overcome it?

Diane Anderson-Minshall: The biggest stumbling block was getting our people who write for the magazine to recognize that our readership is a high school educated level readership, because I think people find that’s sometimes harder to write to. We’ve had to refocus the magazine a little bit and recognize that there are a couple of things happening here with this readership and one is that the readership isn’t college educated. And that changes how you’re writing things. I have a policy where I send back any story if I have to go to the writer and say, do you understand this sentence, and they say no, and I respond, then neither will our readers. I’ll send back anything where I can’t understand it and I think it’s really hard for people to like medical stuff without getting very science-oriented and boring. So, I believe we have a responsibility to our readers to make this stuff more interesting and understandable; to make it information that they’re going to want to read, rather than information that feels like it’s a package insert.

I feel like in a lot of ways one of our responsibilities is to take what pharmaceutical companies are saying about their medication for example, or about clinical trials or studies or new research and development, take that information and then translate for actual readers. And that’s a really heated task because there’s just such a big disconnect between science, academia and the way that they speak and the way an average real person does and the way that we understand things.

That’s actually been a challenge, making the magazine more service-oriented and more understandable to a group of readers who basically don’t know that kind of language and information that I think we sometimes fall back on.

We’re a niche magazine and I’ve always managed niche magazines, but I think in this case, we’re a niche magazine that’s finding out consistently that we have a wider audience than we once thought and so we’re trying to understand how to reach and speak to that audience cross range; 90% of our readers are men and among those, over half are people of color, and a larger majority are gay or bisexual, so that means we have 10% of women who are almost entirely straight, some are transgender, and of our readership, only about 88% have HIV, so I feel like we speak to the health needs of these readers more than any other magazine does. And I can say that even though we belong to the company that has the two largest gay publications on their roster; that we can speak to the health needs of gay and bisexual men in a way that other publications just can’t because we have the know-how and the experience.

But I do think we speak to both gay men and straight women and across different ethnic groupings; it’s a pretty broad range.

Samir Husni: And what has been your most pleasant moment at the magazine?

Diane Anderson-Minshall: There have been so many. I went to the ‘HIV is not a Crime,’ which is an anti-criminalization conference that was held last summer and was the very first, and is basically aimed around reforming HIV criminalization laws in the country, many of which were put together in the 1980s when AIDS was a terrifying thing and a lot of the lawmakers who originally worked on those initial laws are now arguing for those laws to be updated, reformed or ditched completely. I went to the conference, both to cover it and lend any advice and to really just support it to show that our organization supports that movement.

And I met so many people there who just treated me like a rock star, being the editor of Plus magazine, and it was amazing seeing these people who are frontline activists, working directly with politicians and people who had gone to the White House to speak to President Obama about HIV; people who are really major players in what we would call the HIV activist movement. And they were just very excited to have Plus represented there and excited to meet the people behind the magazine. I wouldn’t say it was like being One Direction or something, but it was really amazing.

Certainly, when we go to these events, it’s for us; it’s partly about a new opportunity for audience development, because that’s a part of what events are for publishers and their publications. And we love it. When we go these events we see people moving between our platforms with the brand, and once they get one platform, they explore the other and we’re a part of that when we’re doing these events.

But at the U.S. Conference on AIDS last year in San Diego, for example, we made a life size cover of the magazine, with just the logo and a little bit of text, and then basically people came up and posed in front of the magazine like they were the cover star of the magazine. And then they Tweeted out the photos or we did and that was a great moment because, again, when we’re trying so desperately to reach people who are afraid to pick up the magazine, at the same time, we have all of these other people who are so proud of the work that they’re doing or so proud of the life they’re living.

And some of them aren’t activists; they’re ordinary people living with HIV. But they were so proud to be on the cover of the magazine, to be like cover stars. Just the excitement and the energy around something like that; it wasn’t even about our social media numbers shooting up, which they did, but it was really about that wonderful feedback that people were getting what we were doing, that they like what we’re doing and that we’re giving them something that’s really adding to their lives.

Samir Husni: What do you consider yourself? I know you’re the editor-in-chief, but what do you consider yourself to be first, a journalist, an advocate, or a rock star?

Diane Anderson-Minshall: (Laughs) I consider myself a journalist first, but there’s no denying that this is advocacy journalism. There’s just no denying that in order to do this magazine, you have to consider yourself an advocacy journalist. I think those two things are first and the rock star is very, very far down on the line. I have moments of feeling like a rock star, but I know I’m not.

Samir Husni: (Laughs) Is there anything else that you’d like to add?

Diane Anderson-Minshall: I feel like we reflect the best the country has to offer in coverage of HIV and Aids and we’re trying to take a magazine that’s largely a service publication and work in hard-hitting news and health investigations and have the latest treatment information, and these interviews that are always inspirational, for our readers.

We’ve won a number of awards for our coverage of HIV and AIDS, including the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association; they have an excellence in HIV/AIDS coverage award which we’ve won a few times. We’ve won some other awards as well and I was given the Western Publishing Association; the Maggie Award last year. They have an inaugural leadership award and I was given that for the work on HIV Plus mobile app. So, we get pretty good validation from other journalists in other areas media.

One thing that people do keep asking me is whether we’ve made this change because we’re losing money? And this is the very first time I can say this, because a lot of times I’ve been at publications where what I’m about to say was not the case; where we did make a change and it was because we needed to deal with dropping revenue.

In this case, we’ve been doing phenomenally well and we’ve been consistently doing well over the last few years that I’ve been here. In fact, we’ve often been the top print magazine in the company and that includes both Out and The Advocate magazines, because our ad sales are consistent and we don’t face the same economic setbacks that other advertising arenas do, like fashion or travel and advertising industries, for example. Pharmaceutical industries have specific things they need to advertise and they have requirements for that advertising, so as long as the medication market is robust, then we continue to have consistent ad sales, which is our primary driver of funds.

So, it’s important for me to make it clear that this was not a decision we made because we weren’t selling, it was quite the opposite and I’m really proud of that.

Samir Husni: So, you’re telling me that print is not dead?

Diane Anderson-Minshall: Print is not dead for us; it’s thrilling. Of course, I hear it in other magazines and it scares me to death because I’m such an old print horse that I never want it to go away. And so it’s really exciting for me to be at a magazine where there’s never talk of not doing print anymore. Yes, it’s doing well.

Samir Husni: My typical last question; what keeps you up at night?

Diane Anderson-Minshall: Everything. Even though we’re doing well, we still have limited resources allocated to editorial, so we still have everyone doing the job of four different people.

In terms of publishing, just production can keep me up at night. Just knowing production is two weeks away and that I have to file 80,000 words by then. That can keep me up at night. And that’s just the very beginning of what keeps me up at night.

Samir Husni: Thank you.

“When I’ve worked at legacy publications, we’d create this content that was basically designed to be an adjacency to advertising. Whatever, fine. Then the advertising disappears. Advertising definitely comes and goes; you have to make sure that you have a product at the end of the day that your readers actually care about, because the advertising dollar today will disappear tomorrow.” Adi Ignatius

Focusing on areas such as leadership, finance, marketing and the art of managing people, among many other business-related topics, Harvard Business Review (HBR) is a magazine dedicated to improving all facets of management in today’s fast-paced world.

Adi Ignatius is editor-in-chief, or as he likes to refer to himself, the balancer-in-chief of HBR. He came to the magazine in 2009 from TIME, where he was deputy managing editor, helping to oversee the week-to-week editing of the magazine and was also responsible for many of TIME’s special editions, including the Person of the Year and TIME 100 franchises.

After coming onboard at Harvard Business Review, Adi set about reinventing the academic read into more of a consumer-type magazine, one that has seen circulation growth and subscription prices increase since his joining the team.

I spoke with Adi recently and the discussion was both fun and informative. He has definite opinions on where HBR is heading and the future of magazine media in general.

So, I hope you enjoy this conversation with a man who believes in the timelessness of his brand and the collectability factor he thinks all magazines need today, the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Adi Ignatius, Editor-in-Chief, Harvard Business Review.

But first the sound-bites:

On the transition he had to make in 2009 when he came to HBR right after the Market crash: When I came on in 2009, Harvard Business Review hadn’t written a word about the recession and that seemed odd. I understood that the magazine always wanted to be timeless in everything it did, but it seemed that this was a different period; readers were desperate for information about the worst economic situation that we’ll all hopefully face in our lifetimes. Luckily, the people who run this place wanted somebody who had that kind of metabolism, someone who could bring a sort of timely sensibility to the timeless tradition and deal head-on with some of the topics people were worried about.

On the advice he would give media leaders about the future of print today: I think getting past the sense of a lot of things that we thought were traditionally important like print, front pages, home pages, viewing yourself as only a destination site; I think you have to let go of these assumptions and really follow where the market is going and where readers are going. And make sure your content is unique and valuable and make sure you are maximizing every possible connection and platform that you could be on.

On some of the stumbling blocks that would prevent magazine media from implementing his common sense advice: We all know where this plot line is heading; we all know that we are moving rapidly toward a more digital, or even fully digital, future. The problem is we’re in the present. And the present is still in some ways attaching more value to the print part of our operations than is likely to happen in the future. So, it’s very difficult to handle that transition when we’re still relying on print for the bulk of our revenue and ad revenue, in some cases. It’s very hard to forego the short-term revenue that we all depend on to make the sort of long-term future digital.

On whether he thinks publishers are placing too much dependence on social media these days: We used to depend on LinkedIn for a huge amount of traffic, but when LinkedIn realized they weren’t simply a place for people to search for jobs, they decided to have content and stickiness, and a lot of that content was HBR. Then they sort of realized that they could be developing their own content and didn’t really need partners. So, that was a moment of panic, but I think as long as you’re creating content that’s valuable to your audience, whether it’s a big or a niche audience, you can adapt to these things.

On whether he can ever see a day when HBR will not have a print component: In theory, yes; it’s not a part of any of our plans at this point. I can imagine a reduction in print, in the number of print copies, and I would say that’s probably likely for us. And that would be driven by two main things: the decline in print advertising, which is real and profound and we see no sign of that being reversed, and more interestingly, a kind of shift in consumption habits.

On the cover price of HBR: Yes, we are higher-priced, but this magazine is for people who love ideas and you’ll find ideas in this publication that can improve your company and your career, well beyond what we’re charging. That’s essentially our value proposition.

On whether the collectability factor is important in magazine media today: I think we’ve all realized the value of the archives. We have an archive that goes back 25-30 years and subscribers get full access to anything that we’ve published during that time. And we tested that a couple of years ago and found out that subscribers were willing to pay significantly more when they realized they had access to that archive.

On anything else he’d like to add: That was a reinvention in 2010 and by any measurement that you could use, it worked. Our circulation has risen and is now at a record level, about 300,000. We have to do this again. We have to reinvent the business model again for all the reasons that our colleagues in the industry are doing it.

On what keeps him up at night: Our situation is a little more complicated because we also need contributors to feel like we’re the best place for them to publish their ideas. We’re this hybrid; we’re somewhere in between a normal magazine and an academic journal. And that sometimes keeps me up at night; whether I can keep that balance intact, while still driving the business forward. That’s what I do; I’m balancer-in-chief.

And now the lightly edited transcript of the Mr. Magazine™ conversation with Adi Ignatious, Editor-in-Chief, Harvard Business Review.

Samir Husni: You’ve been at Harvard Business Review since 2009, so you had just come onboard when the Market crashed. Can you describe how the transition for you was during that precarious time?

Adi Ignatius: I interviewed for the job in 2008, so when I came on in 2009, Harvard Business Review hadn’t written a word about the recession and that seemed odd. I understood that the magazine always wanted to be timeless in everything it did, but it seemed that this was a different period; readers were desperate for information about the worst economic situation that we’ll all hopefully face in our lifetimes. And a publication like Harvard Business Review could provide insight.

Luckily, the people who run this place wanted somebody who had that kind of metabolism, someone who could bring a sort of timely sensibility to the timeless tradition and deal head-on with some of the topics people were worried about.

We took that opportunity to kind of reinvent the magazine, the website and set out a path for growth from that.

Samir Husni: If you were going to apply the same formula that you did for the Harvard Business Review on its business side to magazine media today, in 2015; what type of magazine would you create to help magazine publishers and editors adapt to all the changes that are taking place and what advice would you give those media leaders about the future of print today?

Adi Ignatius: I wouldn’t necessarily get hung up on print. I don’t think the answer for all of us is finding out a way to maximize print; some of us will be print; some of us will be digital, and then some of us will be a hybrid.

I think getting past the sense of a lot of things that we thought were traditionally important like print, front pages, home pages, viewing yourself as only a destination site; I think you have to let go of these assumptions and really follow where the market is going and where readers are going. And make sure your content is unique and valuable and make sure you are maximizing every possible connection and platform that you could be on. That’s obvious maybe, and the hard part might be actually implementing that. I guess that would be my first bit of advice.

Samir Husni: What do you think are some of the stumbling blocks that are stopping people from implementing that common sense solution?

Adi Ignatius: I guess some of them you’re probably very familiar with. We all know where this plot line is heading; we all know that we are moving rapidly toward a more digital, or even fully digital, future. The problem is we’re in the present. And the present is still in some ways attaching more value to the print part of our operations than is likely to happen in the future. So, it’s very difficult to handle that transition when we’re still relying on print for the bulk of our revenue and ad revenue, in some cases. It’s very hard to forego the short-term revenue that we all depend on to make the sort of long-term future digital. And we all think that we can manage that transition and jump from one to the other and do it at the perfect time versus our knowledge of a company like Kodak, which knew very well the digital future was coming, didn’t handle the transition well at all. And that’s what happens if you don’t.

But I think one big problem is simply the fact that print remains hugely important for most of our business models and, as I said, it’s very difficult to forego the short-term revenue.

The second thing is just the landscape is moving so quickly. If you look at social media, the Harvard Business Review is very successful in social media. We have a huge number of shares and a huge number of followers; we generate a lot of traffic through social media. What will our relationships be with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and others in a few years; it’s impossible to know. Probably very different from what they are now.

There’s a fundamental uncertainty that means we’re all experimenting a lot, but it’s somewhat difficult to have as much confidence in precise, future digitally-focused plans because it’s such a moving target.

Samir Husni: Do you think we’re making the same mistake as we did when we put all of our dependence upon advertising, because now we’re trying to depend so much on social media? What if Facebook decides to listen to the rumors I’ve been hearing and becomes an enclosed website, where it won’t take you to your website?

Adi Ignatius: I think we have to be open to that possibility. I think the most important thing is not to panic. There will be surprises like that. We used to depend on LinkedIn for a huge amount of traffic, but when LinkedIn realized they weren’t simply a place for people to search for jobs, they decided to have content and stickiness, and a lot of that content was HBR (Harvard Business Review) and I think HBR was some of the best performing content on that site.

And then they sort of realized that they could be developing their own content and didn’t really need partners. So, that was a moment of panic, but I think as long as you’re creating content that’s valuable to your audience, whether it’s a big or a niche audience, you can adapt to these things. So, we don’t have the same kind of relationship with LinkedIn now, but we’re working on developing other relationships with LinkedIn. Facebook and Twitter are great referrals to our site. If they’re cut off, we’ll figure something else out. A good brand with good content just has to be nimble. And if some of these things happen, we’ll figure something else out; I really do believe that.

Samir Husni: Can you foresee a day when HBR will not be in print?

Adi Ignatius: In theory, yes; it’s not a part of any of our plans at this point. I can imagine a reduction in print, in the number of print copies, and I would say that’s probably likely for us. And that would be driven by two main things: the decline in print advertising, which is real and profound and we see no sign of that being reversed, and more interestingly, a kind of shift in consumption habits. The challenge for us is to truly make digital a long-form reading experience that is as effective as print is now. And that involves new personalization, new utility, kind of a reinvention of what a long-form article is online, which is what we’re doing.

You talked about advertising before; the trap that many legacy publications have fallen into over the years is the pursuit of advertising at the expense of the relationship with the reader and the creation of quality content.

Nowadays, native advertising is viewed as a panacea for a lot of publications and a lot of native advertising solutions are great. We at HBR haven’t plunged into that yet, but we will and that’s fine. But I worry when I see some legacy publications, when they talk about what they’re doing; all they seem to be able to discuss is native. And my only feeling on that is advertising comes and goes, that is fact.

When I’ve worked at legacy publications, we’d create this content that was basically designed to be an adjacency to advertising. Whatever, fine. Then the advertising disappears. Advertising definitely comes and goes; you have to make sure that you have a product at the end of the day that your readers actually care about, because the advertising dollar today will disappear tomorrow. And there will be a new model, fine, you just have to make sure that you’re creating content that people actually care about and that isn’t just being created or advertising dollars.

Samir Husni: Somebody recently told me that the magazine industry doesn’t have an ink on paper problem; it has an advertising problem. Do you agree?

Adi Ignatius: Meaning what, exactly?

Samir Husni: That advertising is disappearing from print.

Adi Ignatius: Well, yes, that’s true. There are other models; some of the magazines that you and I love most are essentially subsidized by, I don’t know, a wealthy benefactor, maybe, something like that.

Samir Husni: (Laughs)

Adi Ignatius: And that’s also a good model. At HBR, just so you know; we’re not subsidized by the school, quite to the contrary. I’ve worked at Dow Jones and I’ve worked at Time Inc. And at HBR, we’re as commercially focused as any other publication that I’ve ever worked at. And we have to be successful on the bottom line and we have to be significantly profitable and the money that we make goes back to Harvard Business School to fund its case studies and research.

So, we’re very much in the real world and we’re very aware that advertising dollars have disappeared, but we’re a premium-priced subscription. Advertising is an important revenue source for us, but subscription is a more important source. What we’ve been able to accomplish in recent years is to increase circulation and increase the average price of a subscription and we want to keep doing that. So, I think there are ways if you have the right model and a target audience.

Samir Husni: With the price of the newsstand edition for just one copy, you can buy a year’s subscription to other magazines.

Adi Ignatius: Yes, that’s true. But I think if you get a subscription offer from Time magazine for $20 for a year and a half, it feels a little like the magazine is saying this publication has no value, please subscribe. And that’s not our approach. Yes, we are higher-priced, but this magazine is for people who love ideas and you’ll find ideas in this publication that can improve your company and your career, well beyond what we’re charging. That’s essentially our value proposition.

Samir Husni: One of the things that you mentioned earlier in our conversation was the need to create this timely, yet timeless, content. Do you think this is the future of print, that the printed word has to have a collectability factor and that it can’t be something described as disposable?

Adi Ignatius: I think we’ve all realized the value of the archives. We have an archive that goes back 25-30 years and subscribers get full access to anything that we’ve published during that time. And we tested that a couple of years ago and found out that subscribers were willing to pay significantly more when they realized they had access to that archive. And I think other publications are doing the same thing and unearthing archival ways that are proving valuable, informative and fun. I think in that sense, a smart curation of archives is a way to prove the timelessness of some of the ideas that we publish. And we want to do more of that.

The Harvard Business Review in the past was only about timelessness and I think the brand has proven adaptable enough that now, particularly on the web, we do things that are really timely.

Samir Husni: On a personal level with the magazine; what has been the biggest stumbling block that you’ve faced and how did you overcome it?

Adi Ignatius: When I came in 2009, we decided that we were going to reinvent the magazine. The company had just hired a consultant who had done focus groups and research and who had talked to people and concluded that the way we used to produce our covers, I don’t know of you remember it, but HBR used to be like an academic journal or like National Geographic in the old days, where the table of contents was fully listed on the cover.

And the consultant concluded that the table of contents on the cover was as iconic for Harvard Business Review as the red border is for Time magazine. And that you mess with that at your own peril. And I wasn’t sure that I bought that. (Laughs) And I saw the focus groups and heard what they were saying, things like, yes, I’m a marketing guy and I can see the table of contents, check out if there’s anything for me and if I’d really like to read it.

But to me that meant they were looking at the table of contents and if there wasn’t anything that appealed to them, they weren’t even going to open the magazine or even tear the plastic covering off, so all that work that one does to produce a magazine, the photos, the layout, the headlines and callouts; they weren’t even going to see any of that.

And our readership was pretty much going to decide that they should just go online and research what they wanted and buy articles there and they weren’t even going to subscribe.

So, we decided to do nothing that was revolutionary, but basically remake HBR more like a magazine. Maybe it was late in the era of print magazines, but it was still very important to us to create more of a personalization. HBR articles are hard going, so we wanted to make them somewhat more accessible, in terms of the art, headlines and presentation, because that’s it, right? You want people to read the articles they didn’t think they wanted to read from the table of contents, but they’re drawn into it for some reason and realize how interesting it really is.

Samir Husni: Anything else you’d like to add?

Adi Ignatius: That was a reinvention in 2010 and by any measurement that you could use, it worked. Our circulation has risen and is now at a record level, about 300,000; our newsstand sales, even in this climate, basically have risen every year from 2010 onward, we average about 40,000 on the newsstand at $17.95, so by any measure, that’ s been successful.

We have to do this again. We have to reinvent the business model again for all the reasons that our colleagues in the industry are doing it. We’re kind of in the process of a strategic rethink to redefine what it means to be a subscriber, a member who belongs to Harvard Business Review. And I believe we’ll have some pretty interesting things to talk about in a few months.

Samir Husni: My typical last question; what keeps you up at night?

Adi Ignatius: (Laughs) Business thinkers often say that you need to focus on one audience primarily and that would be readers, focus on your readers and keep your eye on them. But our situation is a little more complicated because we also need contributors to feel like we’re the best place for them to publish their ideas. We’re this hybrid; we’re somewhere in between a normal magazine and an academic journal.

And maintaining that sweet spot requires us to play this game of wanting HBR to be more accessible, but it also needs to sustain its level of rigor so that we remain true to who we are, but we also remain the place for the kind of authors that we want, who come up with the great ideas and that we remain the place they want to publish them. And that sometimes keeps me up at night; whether I can keep that balance intact, while still driving the business forward. That’s what I do; I’m balancer-in-chief.

Samir Husni: Thank you.