Mr. Magazine

“We call ourselves digital-led rather than digital-only because our approach to the brand is, what do we need to do to provide our audience, to provide our readers and viewers and the people who care about us with the products they need that will help them the most? And then the business can sustain. The truth is a print product is not out of the picture in the future, whether it’s in the form of an occasional SIP or something more regular; it’s something that we need to consider. There’s always going to be a place for print within the brand at some point.” Carolyn Kylstra…

Since 1979, Self has been helping its readers attain health and wellness through fitness, nutrition, and overall happiness, to become one of the ultimate authorities on the subjects. The Condé Nast brand has been a staple in the marketplace ever since, but in 2016 the company made the difficult decision to fold the print edition of the brand, opting to keep the digital properties and to publish occasional special print editions around multiple health and wellness-related moments.

The brand’s editor in chief, Carolyn Kylstra, said the brand prefers “digital led” to digital-only, and the reason behind that phrase is because the brand still believes in print and in a multiplatform existence, not just a website. In order to continue the meaning behind the brand’s mission, according to Carolyn, which is helping people feel better, being multiplatform is the only way to succeed in today’s marketplace and provide the same factual, entertaining and helpful information the brand has always given to its loyal audience. Print Proud Digital Smart fits Self to a Tee.

So, I hope that you enjoy this conversation with a woman who has come a long way from her days as an entry level employee in this business of magazines and magazine media, just a short 10 years ago, the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Carolyn Kylstra, editor in chief, Self.

But first the sound-bites:

On the transition from digital + print to digital-only: We like to think of it as digital-led, rather than digital-only, because print as a product isn’t something that we’re 100 percent giving up on, we’re just changing the business model. The transition was, obviously, intense, scary and upsetting. It was a big change. I grew up reading Self and it was one of my favorite magazines when I was younger. I got it every single month. I have so much respect for the heritage of the brand and a huge amount of nostalgia.

On whether she thinks changes in digital, such as Snapchat, is helping the platform reinvent itself and in turn is helping digital brands such as Self to sustain and continue: I think again, it’s looking at what the business can sustain, and it’s looking at what makes sense for the audience that you have at that given moment in time. Self has grown. We’ve grown since the print folded. We’ve added people for Snapchat; we’ve added people for social; we’ve added people for video. Obviously, this was a business decision, but it was one that Condé Nast, to their credit, they’ve been incredibly supportive and they’ve given us the resources that we need to be successful in digital.

On whether she ever sees Self following in Wired’s footsteps and charging for its digital content: For Self, it’s something that we’re always talking about. I think paywalls are so smart and so interesting, and I find them really hopeful. They’re just so optimistic, especially in this environment; the media environment right now is so anxiety-inducing. And launching a paywall is just such an optimistic choice because it says that we know that our content is so differentiated and that our audience is so engaged that they are willing to pay for it. And the better our content is, the more willing they will be to pay for it, etc.

On whether the curation and branding process is the same for Self without the print product: The way that I think about it and the way that we talk about it internally is that when we made the decision to no longer publish in print regularly as a subscription product, it forced us to kind of go back to the drawing board. There’s a difference between running a website and running a brand. And the work that we did at the beginning of last year, after the print folded, was figuring out how we take this operation where we were running a website, making sure that we were getting a certain amount of traffic, hitting our KPIs, etc., how do we turn it into something where this is a brand? Where you no longer have that beautiful, incredibly high quality print product that people can hold onto. This is what the brand is and you need something to replace it among your consumers, in the industry; people need to be able to say this is what the brand stands for.

On whether her life is easier now that there are no print deadlines to worry about or she has more deadlines than ever before: That’s a really good question. I came from print originally. I worked at Men’s Health and Cosmo on print before I went fully digital. There are deadlines for everyone. (Laughs) With digital it’s a different type of deadline. Something that we’ve actually been working on this year is, we’ve made the intentional decision, and I think it was February of last year, to stop chasing aggregated news. It was driving a lot of traffic; it was important for the website, but thinking again about what the brand stands for, I kept coming back to the questions, why are we writing about this; what is this serving, in terms of our mission; is this serving our mission?

On whether there was an “A-ha” moment when she knew they had to stop chasing news and treat the website like a brand instead of an aggregated news site: There wasn’t really an “A-ha” moment. One of the things about working in digital, or honestly just working in today’s media environment at all, is that you have to always iterate. You have to look at what’s working, what’s not working; what’s working today isn’t necessarily going to work next week or in two months. (Laughs) Over the first six months, thinking about how we could grow this business, knowing that the realities of today’s media business, what they are, and knowing that the strongest brands are the ones that have the most loyal audiences, it just made sense. It just made sense to make sure that whatever we were putting out there was content, our information, our experiences, our products, or tools that people would find incredibly useful and that they would be emotionally attached to.

On Self’s ability to monitor the audience that may be monetized from their web content and the audience that has no monetary potential at all: We have really wonderful insights and data and analytics. And a lot of information about who we’re talking to and who’s spending time and who’s looking at multiple stories when they’re on the website. Or who’s consuming our content on Instagram or on Snapchat. I think, in a sense, it’s almost easier today than it used to be to understand your audience and understand what resonates with them. And to figure out how to serve them better.

On whether she still feels the same anxiety today as she did when the print component of Self folded: We still exist in the current media environment. I want to clarify that when the magazine folded, I wasn’t worried about the brand. I wasn’t worried that the brand wasn’t an important brand or that people didn’t love it. My main concern was what this said in the marketplace and the fear that our readers might say that since they no longer had the magazine, they weren’t interested. I was quickly disabused of that, because again, our readership has grown. And our engagement has grown and the timespan has grown.

On how her background in print has helped or hindered her since moving to digital: It was so important. I started out at Men’s Health and then I was at Cosmo and I learned so much from really incredible editors at both brands. My first fully digital job, because I did digital things at those brands, I never had a fully print job anywhere because I started in 2008 and it already didn’t make sense to have a fully print anything. And I started at an entry level position, so whatever they told me to do I did. But my experience learning from print editors was absolutely invaluable to my work as a digital editor.

On the advice she would give to future industry leaders: As far as advice, I interview so many entry level people and the things that I always want to say are be enthusiastic for whatever opportunity is coming your way; do the best, be the best that you absolutely can be, and this is going to sound really weird and specific, but format everything you do really meticulously. Everything you turn in, format it really beautifully, because, let’s say you’re an intern and somebody asks you to write a memo outlining what a celebrity has done. An editor is about to interview a celebrity, this is just a completely random example. Make sure that memo is perfect and beautiful and easy to scan and something that the editor will look at and say, this made my life so much easier, this made my job easier and I don’t even have to think when I’m assessing this.

On anything she’d like to add: Other than we’re truly multiplatform and we’re really not digital-only, in the sense that we exist off of digital platforms as well. We have an event series, it’s our Run Club series and it’s not digital; we have products in Target and Bed, Bath & Beyond that’s not digital. And we had an SIP last year; we’re constantly in discussions about other SIPs or other print products, so it’s not just a talking point to say that we’re digital-led, it’s actually true, because again, a brand has to be multiplatform and diversified in order to succeed.

On what someone would find her doing if they showed up unexpectedly one evening at her home: I have a six-month-old, which means my entire life has changed very dramatically in the past year. Before I had the baby, I would stay at work from 6:30 a.m. until 8:30 p.m. on any given night. It was very dependent on the amount of work I had my poor husband just kind of dealt with it. (Laughs) Now, I leave work at 5:30 p.m. on the dot, because I want to make it home in time to put her to bed, so I get home about 6:15 p.m. I give her a bath; I put her to bed. My husband and I have dinner around seven-ish. And then sometimes I’ll finish up the work that I haven’t finished during the day because I’m leaving earlier. But if I’ve been really good and I finished my work for the day, we’ll read on the couch or watch Netflix. It’s really not that exciting.

On what she would have tattooed upon her brain that would be there forever and no one could ever forget about her: I want people to think of Self as the ultimate wellness authority and wellness that they can trust. And that we’re doing everything that we can to make the brand as inclusive and as helpful as possible. I want people to think that we’re doing really meaningful, powerful work that reaches people.

On what keeps her up at night: Politics. I’ll wake up in the middle of the night and I’ll be so angry because my baby is actually sleeping through the night, and I finally have the opportunity to get a solid eight hours, and things that have happened politically, the state of our discourse in this country, fake news and just how mean and toxic people are. And the discourses and how people are talking to each other and the way that so many people don’t have access to healthcare or having their healthcare access threatened, and how so many immigrant families are being threatened right now with being split up or deportation. I feel incredibly, emotionally anxious about the state of our politics right now.

And now the lightly edited transcript of the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Carolyn Kylstra, editor in chief, Self.

Samir Husni: You came to Self simultaneously as the print edition folded.

Carolyn Kylstra: I was actually here for a little over a year before that. So, I have been at Self for the past two and a half years, but about one year ago they folded the print edition.

Samir Husni: And that’s when you became editor in chief.

Carolyn Kylstra: Yes.

Samir Husni: Tell me about that transition from a print + digital to a digital-only entity.

Carolyn Kylstra: We like to think of it as digital-led, rather than digital-only, because print as a product isn’t something that we’re 100 percent giving up on, we’re just changing the business model. The transition was, obviously, intense, scary and upsetting. It was a big change. I grew up reading Self and it was one of my favorite magazines when I was younger. I got it every single month. I have so much respect for the heritage of the brand and a huge amount of nostalgia.

And then on top of that, when a company or business makes a decision like this, that means that there’s obviously major upheaval and change within the organization internally. And so we were very sad to no longer be working with so many of our colleagues and afraid of what the future would hold, and concerned about what the message might be in the marketplace. I think there’s been a kind of assumption that when a brand folds its print publication that’s the first step before it folds altogether. So, when Condé Nast made the decision to change our business model back in December 2016, this is what was on all of our minds. It was not a happy day.

But it was a really big opportunity for the brand and I feel like it really gave us the flexibility that we needed to make the changes that we needed to make in order to succeed in this media environment. And I’m thrilled with how it’s actually turned out. And I feel incredibly hopeful and positive looking to the future, and so proud of the team. And I’m just really excited about what we’re working on now and what we’re going to be working on in the future.

And again, just to bring it around full circle, I started out answering this question by saying that we call ourselves digital-led rather than digital-only because our approach to the brand is, what do we need to do to provide our audience, to provide our readers and viewers and the people who care about us with the products they need that will help them the most? And then the business can sustain. The truth is a print product is not out of the picture in the future, whether it’s in the form of an occasional SIP or something more regular; it’s something that we need to consider. There’s always going to be a place for print within the brand at some point.

Samir Husni: You weren’t being far-fetched when you said that, historically speaking, any brand that kills its print edition, it’s like the kiss of death, it’s over, but the brand was going to live online. And until recently, no digital brand has lived more than 16 months after the print component was killed. Then came Snapchat. Do you think the change in digital is helping the brands continue, that digital is reinventing itself, or is it something else?

Carolyn Kylstra: I think again, it’s looking at what the business can sustain, and it’s looking at what makes sense for the audience that you have at that given moment in time. Self has grown. We’ve grown since the print folded. We’ve added people for Snapchat; we’ve added people for social; we’ve added people for video. Obviously, this was a business decision, but it was one that Condé Nast, to their credit, they’ve been incredibly supportive and they’ve given us the resources that we need to be successful in digital.

So, it wasn’t just, we’re going to cut all of these people and then you’re just going to have to make do. It was, let’s look at this business holistically and think about what makes the most sense right now, given the resources that we have and the resources that we can provide. We expanded our health team, we went from one to four people. In health, we have a big Snapchat team. And Snapchat is absolutely one way that we’ve expanded and grown the brand digitally, but it’s only one platform of many that we’re operating on. Our video views have skyrocketed because we’ve been able to focus a little bit more on video and video strategy.

Our traffic is higher than it’s ever been and that’s because we’ve been able to focus on what we need to be doing digitally, and that’s just on the website. Again, with Snapchat, that basically doubles our audience and we’re reaching a whole new group of people who may not have ever heard of Self before because we’re talking about a younger demographic.

And so, we’re doing what we need to do with the brand in order to get it to a place where it’s really healthy, although that’s what we were doing last year; right now we’re doing great. We’re in a really healthy position, so this year is really about expanding and increasing engagement on all of the platforms that we’re on.

Samir Husni: As you attempt to increase that engagement; you know, Wired just recently announced the paywall, yet the majority of the magazines are still on this welfare information society system, that they don’t charge for content. Do you see that ever changing?

Carolyn Kylstra: For Self?

Samir Husni: Yes, for Self.

Carolyn Kylstra: For Self, it’s something that we’re always talking about. I think paywalls are so smart and so interesting, and I find them really hopeful. They’re just so optimistic, especially in this environment; the media environment right now is so anxiety-inducing. And launching a paywall is just such an optimistic choice because it says that we know that our content is so differentiated and that our audience is so engaged that they are willing to pay for it. And the better our content is, the more willing they will be to pay for it, etc.

I think for Self, we’re constantly talking about what do we do in this space that is different from what everyone else is doing in this space and how can we find products that are so specialized that our audience will be excited to pay for them. We’re still working on that, but it’s a conversation that we’re definitely having.

Samir Husni: You’ve seen how the print magazine was produced when you were working; how has that changed your thinking as a digital-only-for-now editor? Do you go through the same process of curation to create an issue or you feel like you’re on a treadmill and there’s no stopping?

Carolyn Kylstra: (Laughs) The way that I think about it and the way that we talk about it internally is that when we made the decision to no longer publish in print regularly as a subscription product, it forced us to kind of go back to the drawing board. There’s a difference between running a website and running a brand.

And the work that we did at the beginning of last year, after the print folded, was figuring out how we take this operation where we were running a website, making sure that we were getting a certain amount of traffic, hitting our KPIs, etc., how do we turn it into something where this is a brand? Where you no longer have that beautiful, incredibly high quality print product that people can hold onto. This is what the brand is and you need something to replace it among your consumers, in the industry; people need to be able to say this is what the brand stands for.

But at the same time we have the resources that we have in order to hit our KPIs and all of that stuff, so it was a matter of really looking at who do we have, who’s on the team, what skills do they have; what do we need to do to hit our goals? What do we need to do to meet the needs of the business and then how can we adjust to make sure we’re also keeping the brand as established as it is, as that sort of flagship product.

And so the way that we’ve addressed that is we have our daily grind and then we also have our special projects. I separate the team into two groups in my mind. The truth is everyone is working on everything all of the time, but you have your editors who are working on producing the content that people want to read every day, and we think of that as keeping the website afloat and doing what you need to do for the website.

And then you have your loftier, more ambitious stuff that are the packages that you want to do. We have our challenges; we do three fitness/wellness challenges per year roughly, where we engage the community around a month-long experience. And we have a Facebook group that’s devoted to it and its daily newsletters, and it’s a big photo shoot and there are videos attached to it. And that’s just one example of one of the tent poles that we do to make this brand stand for something. And we have community-based experiences and it’s the high quality work that people are used to seeing from the brand.

Samir Husni: Releasing yourself from the print deadlines, is your life now much easier or you have more deadlines than ever before?

Carolyn Kylstra: That’s a really good question. I came from print originally. I worked at Men’s Health and Cosmo on print before I went fully digital. There are deadlines for everyone. (Laughs) With digital it’s a different type of deadline.

Something that we’ve actually been working on this year is, we’ve made the intentional decision, and I think it was February of last year, to stop chasing aggregated news. It was driving a lot of traffic; it was important for the website, but thinking again about what the brand stands for, I kept coming back to the questions, why are we writing about this; what is this serving, in terms of our mission; is this serving our mission? Is it actually, beyond driving traffic, which is obviously important for the business, but beyond driving traffic, is this helping us distinguish ourselves as a brand? Is it helping people understand? When they click on one of these stories, do they know that it’s Self? Do they care that it’s Self? Do we have a particular point of view?

And so what we did was we looked at our mission and decided our mission is wellness you can trust. Self has always been a health and wellness brand. We were launched in 1979 and it was one of the first health and wellness magazines, it was long before wellness became the buzzword that it is today, and the whole point was to help people feel better. So, we kind of circled back to that. We are wellness that you can trust; we have that historical authority, so what does that mean and how do we accomplish that?

We established that we have three underlying values for every piece of work that we create; inclusivity, because people will only be helped by your content and your products and your experiences when they can see themselves in your world. Accuracy, because it’s only helpful if it’s true. And empathy, because we’re all trying our hardest, and no one is perfect, and there’s a lot of pressure and anxiety, and we’re here to help people feel good. They won’t feel better if we don’t make them feel good.

From there, I looked at the news that we were doing, at the aggregated news that we were doing, and decided that it didn’t make a ton of sense for what the brand is. So, we really shifted our editorial strategy in that regard. And to answer your original question about deadlines, that made it a lot more manageable, in terms of work/life balance, because we were no longer constantly online trying to report on things that just happened, trying to write about it.

We had a piece about the Super Bowl halftime show that went up right after, but in a previous year we would have probably had people on call, all that day, writing little pieces all day long. This year we only contributed to the conversation in a way that made sense for the brand. And so the deadline element of it, weirdly enough, has gotten a lot more manageable now that we’re focusing on brand over website.

Samir Husni: What you’re talking about with the web and the brand is common sense. I always say that the word newspaper is an oxymoron, you can’t have news on paper anymore. When was that “A-ha” moment when you knew you had to stop chasing news and treat the website like a brand instead of an aggregated place to put every piece of health and wellness news that was out there?

Carolyn Kylstra: There wasn’t really an “A-ha” moment. One of the things about working in digital, or honestly just working in today’s media environment at all, is that you have to always iterate. You have to look at what’s working, what’s not working; what’s working today isn’t necessarily going to work next week or in two months. (Laughs)

S. I. Newhouse launched the brand in 1979 because when he was growing up his mother always talked about how she needed her “me” time. And so he thought it was so important that there was a brand for women that would help them kind of reclaim their time and practice self-care, even though we weren’t necessarily as a mass culture talking about self-care back then. That’s something that I’ve known and once I was entrusted with the brand became really important to me that I honor this legacy.

So, over the first six months, thinking about how we could grow this business, knowing that the realities of today’s media business, what they are, and knowing that the strongest brands are the ones that have the most loyal audiences, it just made sense. It just made sense to make sure that whatever we were putting out there was content, our information, our experiences, our products, or tools that people would find incredibly useful and that they would be emotionally attached to.

Samir Husni: The founding editor of Self back in 1979, Phyllis Starr Wilson, was reported as saying, as long as we have a willing audience who is capable of paying the price for the magazine, we will have a magazine. Today, you have a big audience, they’re all over the place; how do you determine which is your genuine audience, the ones that are able to be monetized, and the “trash audience,” as Bob Garfield defines those people who receive your website’s content in, say China, and aren’t able to buy your products at all?

Carolyn Kylstra: We have really wonderful insights and data and analytics. And a lot of information about who we’re talking to and who’s spending time and who’s looking at multiple stories when they’re on the website. Or who’s consuming our content on Instagram or on Snapchat. I think, in a sense, it’s almost easier today than it used to be to understand your audience and understand what resonates with them. And to figure out how to serve them better.

Something else that we do is that we’re constantly doing our own version of market research. And we’re constantly soliciting feedback from the people who we reach. After every Challenge, for instance, we send out a survey among the Challenge participants to ask them for their feedback. What did they like; what did they dislike? Did they think the workouts were too hard or too easy? Did they like the recipes? What do they want to see more of, less of? Just things like that. And we take that information and we apply it to the next time that we do it.

We do the same thing on Snapchat to some degree. We put in quizzes and polls that people like to fill out because they like talking about themselves. People love answering quizzes about themselves, but it also gives us really valuable information about what they’re looking for and what they want. We can also tell, based on what people are reading, how long they’re spending on different stories and what kind of content resonates with them. And taken altogether, we know that certain content performs on one platform and certain content performs better on another platform. And how we can make sure that we’re optimizing for the different audiences and the different platforms that exist.

Samir Husni: To quote you about the anxiety: led and fed media environment. Are you now at peace with yourself and with Self as it is a brand today? Do you have the same anxiety as when they folded the print edition? Are you now sailing in calm seas, or just a momentary lull?

Carolyn Kylstra: (Laughs) We still exist in the current media environment. I want to clarify that when the magazine folded, I wasn’t worried about the brand. I wasn’t worried that the brand wasn’t an important brand or that people didn’t love it. My main concern was what this said in the marketplace and the fear that our readers might say that since they no longer had the magazine, they weren’t interested. I was quickly disabused of that, because again, our readership has grown. And our engagement has grown and the timespan has grown.

And what we found with Snapchat was that the content resonates with so many people, and we’re not changing the content to put it on Snapchat; we’re just adjusting it based on what the platform demands. We’re putting it in a certain format, but it’s all the same. It’s all the same message; it’s all the same values; it’s all the same mission. So, in that sense, I feel incredibly excited and optimistic about our future in a way that…I was optimistic about our future last year, but I was anxious that other people weren’t going to be as optimistic as I was.

Samir Husni: How has your print background helped or hindered you since you’ve moved to digital?

Carolyn Kylstra: It was so important. I started out at Men’s Health and then I was at Cosmo and I learned so much from really incredible editors at both brands. My first fully digital job, because I did digital things at those brands, I never had a fully print job anywhere because I started in 2008 and it already didn’t make sense to have a fully print anything. And I started at an entry level position, so whatever they told me to do I did. But my experience learning from print editors was absolutely invaluable to my work as a digital editor.

My first full-time digital job was running a site, being site director at Women’s Health. And I couldn’t have done it without my experience in print, because I knew how to edit; I knew how to write; I knew how to think about the brand and what the brand messaging was. When I was at Men’s Health, I always remember the question for every single thing that we ever created was, where is the service? Because Men’s Health was all about service journalism. And that really drove into my head that you have a brand mission and every arm of that brand needs to fulfill that mission. So, I think I couldn’t have been as successful as I have been without that background in print.

Samir Husni: You’ve come a long way in 10 years, which is almost unheard of in this industry. If you were going to advise future industry leaders, how should they prepare as they enter this field, because we have more students coming to journalism and integrated marketing communications than ever before?

Carolyn Kylstra: I think it’s obvious why. It’s a terrifying time to be in media, but it’s also an incredibly exciting time, because there’s so much going on and there’s so many different ways to reach people, so many different ways to talk to people and make an impact. It just looks different than it used to. The business, obviously, needs to settle down a little bit. But I completely understand why people want to go into the field, it’s more exciting than it was even when I started out.

As far as advice, I interview so many entry level people and the things that I always want to say are be enthusiastic for whatever opportunity is coming your way; do the best, be the best that you absolutely can be, and this is going to sound really weird and specific, but format everything you do really meticulously. Everything you turn in, format it really beautifully, because, let’s say you’re an intern and somebody asks you to write a memo outlining what a celebrity has done. An editor is about to interview a celebrity, this is just a completely random example. Make sure that memo is perfect and beautiful and easy to scan and something that the editor will look at and say, this made my life so much easier, this made my job easier and I don’t even have to think when I’m assessing this.

And it’s so trivial-sounding and it’s so shallow-sounding, but make sure you bold your subheads, make sure you put bullet points, make sure you’re writing in complete sentences with grammatically correct sentences. The little things like that will really make you stand out, which will open up other opportunities for you down the line. That’s really not that helpful, in terms of how to navigate the media industry, but it makes a difference.

Samir Husni: It’s good to hear people like you bringing back those common sense factors to the industry.

Carolyn Kylstra: The other obvious stuff is make yourself a website and put all of your clips on your website; use Squarespace or use WordPress, it doesn’t matter, just make a pretty website that shows what you’ve done and make it easy to contact you, be active on social media, and create a LinkedIn profile. I use LinkedIn constantly to recruit people, just searching different editors or people who have different, specific backgrounds. And that’s how I find a lot of people. Share your work on Twitter, so that you’re easy to find, just things like that.

It’s also common sense, but one of the things that’s frustrating to me is colleges and universities and even grad school programs don’t necessarily teach students how to apply for jobs. And I think that’s just a horrible waste and doing them a huge disservice and people are spending so much money and going into so much debt to attend these colleges and universities and they’re not teaching them the basics about how to be a good entry level applicant. I get so many resumes and so many cover letters where I’m wondering why didn’t anyone tell these people how to write this appropriately to market themselves. I don’t know how to give that advice, but to me, that’s one of the things that is so important. Read as much as you can online about how to write a good cover letter before you send one.

Samir Husni: And don’t copy it. (Laughs)

Carolyn Kylstra: Yes, don’t copy it. It’s little things like that, but it’s also not the students’ fault. I think the colleges and universities really ought to make an effort to do better by their students in this way.

Samir Husni: Is there anything else you’d like to add?

Carolyn Kylstra: No, other than we’re truly multiplatform and we’re really not digital-only, in the sense that we exist off of digital platforms as well. We have an event series, it’s our Run Club series and it’s not digital; we have products in Target and Bed, Bath & Beyond that’s not digital. And we had an SIP last year; we’re constantly in discussions about other SIPs or other print products, so it’s not just a talking point to say that we’re digital-led, it’s actually true, because again, a brand has to be multiplatform and diversified in order to succeed.

Samir Husni: If I showed up unexpectedly at your home one evening after work, what would I find you doing? Having a glass of wine; reading a magazine; cooking; watching TV; or something else?

Carolyn Kylstra: I have a six-month-old, this was something else that happened last year. I found out I was pregnant and then a week later the magazine folded. (Laughs) And my executive editor was in the hospital having just given birth to her first child, so basically the top two people in the brand both took three months off last year for maternity leave. It was a very exciting year.

Anyway, I have a six-month-old, which means my entire life has changed very dramatically in the past year. Before I had the baby, I would stay at work from 6:30 a.m. until 8:30 p.m. on any given night. It was very dependent on the amount of work I had my poor husband just kind of dealt with it. (Laughs) Now, I leave work at 5:30 p.m. on the dot, because I want to make it home in time to put her to bed, so I get home about 6:15 p.m. I give her a bath; I put her to bed. My husband and I have dinner around seven-ish. And then sometimes I’ll finish up the work that I haven’t finished during the day because I’m leaving earlier. But if I’ve been really good and I finished my work for the day, we’ll read on the couch or watch Netflix. It’s really not that exciting.

Samir Husni: If you could have one thing tattooed upon your brain that no one would ever forget about you, what would it be?

Carolyn Kylstra: I want people to think of Self as the ultimate wellness authority and wellness that they can trust. And that we’re doing everything that we can to make the brand as inclusive and as helpful as possible. I want people to think that we’re doing really meaningful, powerful work that reaches people.

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

Carolyn Kylstra: Politics. I’ll wake up in the middle of the night and I’ll be so angry because my baby is actually sleeping through the night, and I finally have the opportunity to get a solid eight hours, and things that have happened politically, the state of our discourse in this country, fake news and just how mean and toxic people are and the discourses and how people are talking to each other and the way that so many people don’t have access to healthcare or having their healthcare access threatened, and how so many immigrant families are being threatened right now with being split up or deportation. I feel incredibly, emotionally anxious about the state of our politics right now.

Samir Husni: Thank you.

“To Answer Your Question Regarding Print Versus Digital, I Also Believe With The Proliferation Of Fake News, I Do Believe That Quality Printed Stories Have An Opportunity To Maintain Or Grow Audience.” Eric Zinczenko…

“The notion that print is dead is not accurate. I think print isn’t dead, it’s just different. Gone are the times where you can operate with an inflated rate base or 12 times per year as a standard. And I think gone are the days too where you were just concerned with whether there was enough fax paper in the machine where you got all of your signed insertion orders back. Those days are behind us. But print for many companies, Bonnier included, is still profitable. It’s just not at the margins that we once enjoyed. And I feel strongly that brands that sit one or two in a category or vertical can thrive if managed correctly.” Eric Zinczenko…

“For companies that are evolving, in challenging their orthodoxies of the way legacy media companies have operated, for the companies that are evolving, those are companies that are seeing opportunity in front of them. And I think maybe companies that are more stuck in the way that we’ve done things for decades, I think it could end up being the worst of times for them. I do feel that the only thing predictable is that disruption is going to continue.” Eric Zinczenko…

When you talk about legacy media, one name that cannot be left out is the Swedish-born Bonnier Corporation. For over 200 years, Bonnier has been in the publishing business in one facet or another. The United States presence of this heritage company formed in 2007 when the American office opened for business. Today, its brands range from Field & Stream to the award-winning Popular Science, with many, many more in between.

And the man heading up this heritage company and all of its robust titles is CEO, Eric Zinczenko. Eric has been successfully progressing the journey and holding the ship steady-as-she-goes since 2015. Before taking on the CEO leadership role, he served as executive vice president of the company, coming from Time Inc. in 2007 as a part of Bonnier’s original management team.

With Eric’s guidance and vision, Bonnier has seen record financial growth and its strongest operating margins. Under his leadership, the company has broadened its capabilities outside traditional media by diversifying into new revenue-growth areas in licensing, agency services, content syndication, digital and events.

I spoke with Eric recently and we talked about his vision for the company and his successes so far. From the record financial growth to the new revenue streams (all of which he has done with a 36 percent decrease in workforce since taking on the role of CEO in 2015), it would appear that legacy media companies can do more with less. Eric credits a lot of the company’s success and his own ability to visualize those strategies for improvement to Bonnier’s ownership, saying that for a media family who has seen everything from wars to disruption in the over 200 years they’ve been in the business, they’re not easily moved. Being patient and not panicking and keeping the lines of communication open only enhances the company’s success.

So, I hope that you enjoy this conversation with a man who “subscribes to the ethic of constant improvement” in all he does and revels in the “privilege of leading (Bonnier) and his colleagues through incredible and complex times” – the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Eric Zinczenko, CEO, Bonnier Corporation.

But first the sound-bites:

On whether he thinks this is the best of times, the worst of times, or somewhere in between for magazine media: I think it’s somewhere in between. For companies that are evolving, in challenging their orthodoxies of the way legacy media companies have operated, for the companies that are evolving, those are companies that are seeing opportunity in front of them. And I think maybe companies that are more stuck in the way that we’ve done things for decades, I think it could end up being the worst of times for them. I do feel that the only thing predictable is that disruption is going to continue.

On what his life has been like for the last three years as CEO of Bonnier U.S.: I think I’d start with something you mentioned, and it’s a quote that I think of often: today will be the slowest rate of change that we’ll experience in our lifetime. From this point on, disruption, technology, and media consumption habits will only be changing and accelerating. And I believe that has had a profound effect. So to your point, I have 25 years in the media business, 12 of those at Bonnier; I’ve worked for all of the major publishing companies, I’ve had time at Time Inc., I’ve had time at Condé Nast, I’ve had time at Rodale, and then the last three years as CEO. And what I’m still adjusting to is how complex these businesses are and how complex these times are, so coming to the office every day, and I said this in a past presentation, it feels like every day Jenga, where our businesses are constantly under pressure.

On moving their CMS system to Arc: We moved to a new platform with our digital and that platform is Arc, which is owned by the Washington Post. We moved to Arc because here at Bonnier we’ve spent the last five years trying to move everyone to a proprietary CMS system that we had. And that CMS system was called Sandcastle. So, we made a decision based on economic factors, based on how we wanted to operate, and the CMS of Arc would be stronger than our own proprietary CMS, so it would have more of a suite of opportunities for us from a digital perspective. So, that was seen as not only an efficiency measure, but actually an opportunity.

On whether he sees a value in print in today’s digital age: I do. The notion that print is dead is not accurate. I think print isn’t dead, it’s just different. Gone are the times where you can operate with an inflated rate base or 12 times per year as a standard. And I think gone are the days too where you were just concerned with whether there was enough fax paper in the machine where you got all of your signed insertion orders back. Those days are behind us. But print for many companies, Bonnier included, is still profitable. It’s just not at the margins that we once enjoyed. And I feel strongly that brands that sit one or two in a category or vertical can thrive if managed correctly.

On whether he feels paywalls, such as Wired has implemented, and other forms of payment for digital will be an accelerated trend: I hope it’s an accelerated trend, but I do feel firmly it will be a trend. I think the newspaper industry has done a pretty inspirational job of getting people to pay for their content, and I think the magazine industry has lagged behind the newspaper industry. But I really do believe there’s opportunity there. You mentioned Wired and I think they’re an inspiration too. So, this is something that we’re absolutely taking interest in at Bonnier and we’ve talked to some consultants that can help us unlock the potential there.

On whether 2016, since he said it was one of the best years of his career, was a walk in a rose garden for him, or there were challenges along the way: It wasn’t a walk in a garden, I don’t think. (Laughs) You know it’s funny, I say today, there are no gifts in our industry. There are no gifts. So, everything that you do is earned today. And 2016 was difficult. I think the biggest challenges for that year were to get people to believe. At the time, when we talked about diversifying and shifting away from our sole reliance on print and digital media, I think that raised some eyebrows. But here we are a few years later and the strategy is taking hold.

On the positives and negatives of a company like Bonnier that has a presence on both sides of the Atlantic: Well first, the positive is we’re lucky to have wonderful ownership. We’re a 200-year-old media company with a media family that has seen it all. They’ve seen disruption; they’ve seen wars and more, therefore they have a very patient, respectful, Scandinavian perspective on everything. So, the pressure is absolutely there to deliver on what you promise, if you say it, it better happen, but they also understand market factors, and they never panic. I mentioned that I am preparing for a board meeting now and I can tell you that my presentations look different today than when I started, where there was just numbers and here’s the strategy.

On the magic wand he uses to do more and better with less workforce: I will not speak for any other company, but I think the experience here is that we had areas of improvement where we could have been more financially disciplined. And the magic wand has been to maximize shareholder value and do it in a smart way. And I think when you make changes like the changes we have made since 2015, it’s very important to communicate those changes and explain why we’re changing and how we’re going to change. Communication is a big factor.

On what he would have tattooed upon his brain that would be there forever and no one could ever forget about him: He subscribed to the ethic of constant improvement in all he did.

On what someone would find him doing if they showed up unexpectedly one evening at his home: Reconnecting with my family and hearing of my kids’ day is the quickest way for me to separate from my work. If work stress is near a high and requires more, I’m a wine enthusiast so I will settle with a great glass of wine and break out my bass guitars and play some music.

On what keeps him up at night: I know most answers from CEO’s are funny. (Laughs) They say they don’t worry and sleep just fine, but truth be told, sleep is difficult for me sometimes. My mind races for what’s next to be done; what could we be doing different; is there enough urgency in our approach; am I giving enough to the office and to my family. The good news is I care about my personal fitness and health to make sure I get a pretty exhaustive workout every day, so the body has no choice but to sleep. I do go to bed early each night and I’m an early riser to be available for communication with Stockholm if necessary.

And now the lightly edited transcript of the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Eric Zinczenko, CEO, Bonnier Corp.

Samir Husni: In magazine media as a whole, it has been the best of times, it has been the worst of times. What’s your view on the industry? Has it been the best of times, the worst of times, or somewhere in between?

Eric Zinczenko: I think it’s somewhere in between. For companies that are evolving, in challenging their orthodoxies of the way legacy media companies have operated, for the companies that are evolving, those are companies that are seeing opportunity in front of them. And I think maybe companies that are more stuck in the way that we’ve done things for decades, I think it could end up being the worst of times for them. I do feel that the only thing predictable is that disruption is going to continue.

Samir Husni: Disruption, as you said, has been moving even faster. June 2018 will be three years for you as CEO of Bonnier in the U.S. What can you tell me about those three years of your very busy life? You’ve been in the media business for years, but as you move toward your third anniversary in June, tell me about those years.

Eric Zinczenko: I think I’d start with something you mentioned, and it’s a quote that I think of often: today will be the slowest rate of change that we’ll experience in our lifetime. From this point on, disruption, technology, and media consumption habits will only be changing and accelerating. And I believe that has had a profound effect. So to your point, I have 25 years in the media business, 12 of those at Bonnier; I’ve worked for all of the major publishing companies, I’ve had time at Time Inc., I’ve had time at Condé Nast, I’ve had time at Rodale, and then the last three years as CEO. And what I’m still adjusting to is how complex these businesses are and how complex these times are, so coming to the office every day, and I said this in a past presentation, it feels like every day Jenga, where our businesses are constantly under pressure.

For a company like Bonnier, we’re not about to just bolt through acquisition, many times we have to manage with what we have. The questions that I have asked each day coming to work have been are we pivoting aggressively enough to new business opportunities? Are we trying to preserve what we have and are the skills and the years of experience, not only in my role, but the roles of many of my colleagues, and the way we think, is it even relevant for the way change is headed? We know that legacy problems and legacy issues can become increasingly destructive, yet we’re still managing a legacy business, so are we doing all we can to position ourselves for success? Those are the things that I think about.

When I took over the role in 2015, the financial situation for the company was a bit different and it required urgency. We ended the year 2015 where we needed to be. And for me, 2016 could be considered maybe the best moment of my career, where in 2015 I stood in front of my board and shared our plans of how we were going to diversify the company, and then in 2016 we delivered on everything we had promised, and then some. We were able to triple our ad year in 2016; we were able to grow new revenue streams, and we did it with 18 percent less workforce than the year prior.

Then here comes 2017 with its own set of challenges and I’m preparing for a board meeting where 2018 looks different. So, to summarize, I just think it’s been a time of accelerated change and it’s important and a leadership moment for me to try and get the company to think differently, break our orthodoxies and move into new areas of growth.

Samir Husni: And 2018 has witnessed some of that accelerated change, you’ve closed some titles, and recently the announcement was made that you’re moving to a new publishing platform, Arc, with Bonnier’s digital channels. Can you tell me about those changes?

Eric Zinczenko: We moved to a new platform with our digital and that platform is Arc, which is owned by the Washington Post. We moved to Arc because here at Bonnier we’ve spent the last five years trying to move everyone to a proprietary CMS system that we had. And that CMS system was called Sandcastle. So, we made a decision based on economic factors, based on how we wanted to operate, and the CMS of Arc would be stronger than our own proprietary CMS, so it would have more of a suite of opportunities for us from a digital perspective. So, that was seen as not only an efficiency measure, but actually an opportunity.

And in terms of our brands, we are tracking the vitality of each of our brands and what we’re finding is the brands in print that are in leadership positions in their particular vertical are the ones that are thriving or doing well. And then some of our other brands that sit maybe two, three, or four in a vertical, those are the ones that are being challenged. And in the case of some of our other brands, we’re just taking them out of print, but still operating them digitally.

Samir Husni: For someone who has been in this business for a quarter of a century or more, do you see a value in print in today’s digital age?

Eric Zinczenko: I do. The notion that print is dead is not accurate. I think print isn’t dead, it’s just different. Gone are the times where you can operate with an inflated rate base or 12 times per year as a standard. And I think gone are the days too where you were just concerned with whether there was enough fax paper in the machine where you got all of your signed insertion orders back. Those days are behind us. But print for many companies, Bonnier included, is still profitable. It’s just not at the margins that we once enjoyed. And I feel strongly that brands that sit one or two in a category or vertical can thrive if managed correctly.

And I think an example of that would be Popular Science, where back in 2010 the late Steve Jobs, if you remember he held up the first iPad and presented Pop-Sci as the first magazine on the iPad. At the time we had over one million print subscribers and we had about 70,000 digital subscribers. Now you would think if there were any infinity group that would switch to digital it would be the readers of a technology product like Popular Science, but fast forward a decade to the end of 2017, we had one million print subscribers. So, I think Pop-Sci still has the strongest circulation economics of any of our brands too. It’s clear that readers still want Popular Science in print.

To answer your question regarding print versus digital, I also believe with the proliferation of fake news, I do believe that quality printed stories have an opportunity to maintain or grow audience. And I think that the magazine printing process, which is still viewed as maybe a detriment, in terms of time to market, I still is an opportunity because it allows time to fact check; I think it allows time to make sure that the story is accurate and they can try for a more timeless perspective. And I believe that.

Samir Husni: As you do this balancing act between print and digital, when do you think you’re going to see that turnaround where people are paying for digital, whether through paywalls or something else, instead of the welfare information society that has, for the most part, existed since the digital explosion? We see brands like Wired, New York Magazine, and The New Yorker having paywalls; do you see this as an accelerated trend?

Eric Zinczenko: I hope it’s an accelerated trend, but I do feel firmly it will be a trend. I think the newspaper industry has done a pretty inspirational job of getting people to pay for their content, and I think the magazine industry has lagged behind the newspaper industry. But I really do believe there’s opportunity there. You mentioned Wired and I think they’re an inspiration too. So, this is something that we’re absolutely taking interest in at Bonnier and we’ve talked to some consultants that can help us unlock the potential there.

Samir Husni: You mentioned that 2016 was one of the best years of your career after achieving what you promised the board in 2015. Was it a walk in a rose garden for you to attain that achievement, or did you have some major challenges along the way?

Eric Zinczenko: It wasn’t a walk in a garden, I don’t think. (Laughs) You know it’s funny, I say today, there are no gifts in our industry. There are no gifts. So, everything that you do is earned today. And 2016 was difficult. I think the biggest challenges for that year were to get people to believe. At the time, when we talked about diversifying and shifting away from our sole reliance on print and digital media, I think that raised some eyebrows. But here we are a few years later and the strategy is taking hold.

I used an example back in 2015 that we need to operate this company just as a portfolio manager would operate a retirement account or a mutual fund, where the ideas are to diversify your revenue and the profit coming in. In 2015 we had 50-something percent of our revenues coming from traditional print; we had 28 percent coming from digital media; and then we had about 20 percent coming from ancillary. And we’re looking to, by 2020, be in a situation where we’re more like 33 percent in those three areas. So, it’s much like future-proofing a retirement account, that’s the way we’re trying to run Bonnier. And that has been a challenge.

Since that time we have had to go through restructures and realignment of the company, and hire new competency in these areas like events and licensing and in some of our marketing services and agency work. And that’s competency that we have to find from outside the office. And that’s been a challenge, the realignments and the restructures.

Samir Husni: Correct me if I’m mistaken, but you are the only surviving company that is still based in Europe, but with a presence in the United States, in terms of the magazine media. Hachette was bought by Hearst, G&J left. What are the positives and negatives of being on both sides of the Atlantic?

Eric Zinczenko: Well first, the positive is we’re lucky to have wonderful ownership. We’re a 200-year-old media company with a media family that has seen it all. They’ve seen disruption; they’ve seen wars and more, therefore they have a very patient, respectful, Scandinavian perspective on everything. So, the pressure is absolutely there to deliver on what you promise, if you say it, it better happen, but they also understand market factors, and they never panic. I mentioned that I am preparing for a board meeting now and I can tell you that my presentations look different today than when I started, where there was just numbers and here’s the strategy.

So, the positive is we have a patient board, a privately-held company, and on the flip side we have a geographic challenge, where my days are a bit different. I’m up many times at 4:30 or 5:00 a.m. to make sure that I’m available for communications with Stockholm. And there’s plenty of travel between Scandinavia, Stockholm and here in New York. But they’ve been patient and they believe in our diversification strategy.

Samir Husni: I hear from almost every CEO that I interview that they’re doing more with less. You told me earlier that your workforce is now 18 percent less than it used to be, yet you’re doing more.

Eric Zinczenko: Let me make a correction, it was 18 percent from 2015 to 2016. Then we had our recent restructure too, so it’s a 36 percent reduction in workforce since I became CEO, and many industry peers would state the quality of Bonnier content didn’t slip, but is actually the strongest yet, as evidenced by the numerous National Magazine Awards and the most recent nominations of General Excellence for Saveur and Popular Science.

Samir Husni: So, what’s that magic wand you’re waving at work that you can produce better and more with 36 percent less workforce? Was the industry spoiled, printing money, that it didn’t care how many people it hired? What’s your magic wand?

Eric Zinczenko: I will not speak for any other company, but I think the experience here is that we had areas of improvement where we could have been more financially disciplined. And the magic wand has been to maximize shareholder value and do it in a smart way. And I think when you make changes like the changes we have made since 2015, it’s very important to communicate those changes and explain why we’re changing and how we’re going to change. Communication is a big factor.

Culture is very important here, and it’s something that I take seriously. And I think culture remains a challenge. I believe it’s an enormous challenge for any media company right now, to keep everyone motivated and leading through the unprecedented disruption. When an organization is going through constant restructures, at times it’s like juggling eggs. It’s impressive when you can pull it off, but it becomes a real mess when it’s done in the wrong way. And we really do try. The approach has been a transformation here at Bonnier of more of a startup approach.

I think most legacy media companies start with the idea of cutting. So, they speak to the manager and find out who on their staff that they can reduce by one or two. And then the next year comes along and they have to cut more. They go back to that manager and that manager picks two more people. But I believe what companies really need to do is start from a zero base, in more of a startup mode. So, it starts with the CEO; who does the CEO need next, it’s the CFO. After the CFO, who’s next? And that’s really how we’ve tried to organize the company and that was part of our big realignment that we just did a month ago.

It’s interesting, there’s other principles we try and speak about here, and again, it’s to break these orthodoxies of the way that we’ve done things, but my view is we have these wonderful brands at this company, if it makes money it makes sense. Imagine an Amazon employee back in the ’90s saying, wait a minute, we ship books, that’s what we do. Or Google back in the ’90s; wait, we’re a search engine company and that’s what we do. There are opportunities everywhere if you just stay true to the brand and you understand your audience and your customer. There’s a lot of opportunity out there.

Samir Husni: If you could have one thing tattooed upon your brain that no one would ever forget about you, what would it be?

Eric Zinczenko: He subscribed to the ethic of constant improvement in all he did.

Samir Husni: If I showed up unexpectedly at your home one evening after work, what would I find you doing? Having a glass of wine; reading a magazine; cooking; watching TV; playing with your two children; or something else?

Eric Zinczenko: Reconnecting with my family and hearing of my kids’ day is the quickest way for me to separate from my work. If work stress is near a high and requires more, I’m a wine enthusiast so I will settle with a great glass of wine and break out my bass guitars and play some music.

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

Eric Zinczenko: I know most answers from CEO’s are funny. (Laughs) They say they don’t worry and sleep just fine, but truth be told, sleep is difficult for me sometimes. My mind races for what’s next to be done; what could we be doing different; is there enough urgency in our approach; am I giving enough to the office and to my family. The good news is I care about my personal fitness and health to make sure I get a pretty exhaustive workout every day, so the body has no choice but to sleep. I do go to bed early each night and I’m an early riser to be available for communication with Stockholm if necessary.

Samir Husni: Thank you.

“A lot of our readers are planning renovations and so for them it goes back to the old-school, tear sheeting as they flip through and see spaces with ideas or colors or patterns that resonate. Something that they may want to consider for their upcoming decorating project or renovation project in the case of a kitchen or bath; it really enables them to either tear sheet or dog-ear the page and bring it to their kitchen designer or interior designer to share what they really love and may want to consider for their own home. And I think print allows them to do that.” Beth McDonough…

“From a team perspective, I’m looking from a marketing side and hiring members of the team who have an understanding of how all of the pieces work together and can really bolster one another, because we would never advocate that somebody shouldn’t be doing digital or shouldn’t be doing social. But what we look to do is figure out how we can come up with a program where the print and the digital and the video and the experiential can all combine together to be successful and to support the various aspects of the overall program.” Beth McDonough…

Traditional Home magazine has been connecting home décor and affluent consumers for almost three decades. The brand today reinterprets classic elegance, but in contemporary and cutting-edge style. So, what began as a special interest title for Meredith has grown into a legacy of beautiful design and a shoppable resource for its readers.

Publisher Beth McDonough comes from the marketing side of the business, so transitioning into the role of publisher seemed like a natural next step for her. I spoke with Beth recently and we talked about the ink on paper magazine and how important that facet was to the brand, while also combining those integrated solutions, digital, video and experiential, to be successful and support the various aspects of the overall program. It was a Print Proud Digital Smart conversation that uplifted all parts of marketing and sales, to not only benefit the brand, but the advertising and consumer customer as well.

So, I hope that you enjoy this conversation with a publisher who believes in keeping the “Traditional” side-by-side with the “Digital,” enabling her brand to move confidently forward into the next 30 years, the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Beth McDonough, publisher, Traditional Home magazine.

But first the sound-bites:

On how she would define the word “traditional” in this day and age: That’s a great question. In the research that we’ve done, when we ask 10 readers or 10 designers what traditional design is, we kind of get 10 different answers, but we do see certain adjectives come to the top all of the time. And we hear things like authenticity, craftsmanship and high quality. Those are all things that editorially have always been incredibly important, but I think to define traditional for us is really looking at design that’s rooted in great classic design, but reinvented or reimagined for the way that consumers live today.

On what she attributes the longevity of Traditional Home to and why the print magazine and the brand keeps clicking with readers: We are a millennial; we’re about 28-years-old, as I like to joke. (Laughs) I think the longevity of Traditional Home can be attributed to our editorial point of view in that our readership, when we look at the geographic diversity, we really touch the home enthusiast from coast-to-coast. So, we see a very strong following for our readers in affluent suburbs, places like Grosse Pointe, Michigan and Lake Forest, Illinois. And I think our editors do a very good job and this is a conscious effort on their part to ensure that the homes and the design talent that they’re featuring in the magazine also represents that geographic diversity. They understand that there’s amazing design in Oklahoma and Colorado, and that it’s not just New York and L.A. that are the epicenters of great design.

On whether her job today selling the magazine to advertisers is easier, the same, or harder: Good question. Well, I guess it depends upon who I’m talking to in the advertising community, obviously. (Laughs) If it’s somebody in New York who thinks that the sun rises and sets on the Big Apple, it’s harder to get them to understand a Midwest or a Southern mindset potentially, but I think the numbers help us paint the picture of how popular Traditional Home is and continues to be. We recently met with our circ team to look at the latest AAM (Alliance for Audited Media) publisher’s statement; we’ve seen a six percent growth year over year, looking at December 2017 versus 2016.

On why she thinks people still want a Traditional Home in print: It’s twofold. One I think is the category. We hear from our readers that they love to sit and look at the full bleed images of these gorgeous interiors. A little bit of it is escapism, like any magazine reader, it’s a moment of relaxation for them. It’s a little bit of a luxury for some to have that quiet time for themselves to really enjoy the journey of going through these other people’s homes and understanding the story behind each one of them.

On whether Meredith’s many “Home” titles have helped to nourish Traditional Home or created competition within the company: Honestly, within Meredith I think Traditional Home really does have a unique position. Certainly, there is healthy competition for certain accounts with our brands like Better Homes & Gardens, but if you use the comparison between those two brands, Better Homes & Gardens is just so much bigger, and I think so much more of a reach vehicle, that an advertiser looking to go into Better Homes & Gardens, even in the home category, may have different goals and objectives than somebody coming into Traditional Home, where among the upscale shelter category we are still the largest circulation.

On whether she thinks the acquisition of Time Inc. by Meredith will open new doors for the Traditional Home brand: That’s a great question, but I think it’s too soon to tell. We’re hopeful from a Traditional Home brand perspective that joining our brethren in what I would call the affluent group of Food & Wine and Travel + Leisure could potentially introduce us to some new brands in the affluent category that would be non-endemic to us. Those affiliated products like wine or wonderful travel destinations, because we know entertaining is such a core passion point and we know travel is a passion point.

On how her job as publisher has changed over the last few years: I don’t know if you’re aware, but this is my first role as publisher. I have been in the industry for over 20 years, but I have always come up through the marketing side of things, so I am an imposter in the sales role. It will be three years in April that I have served as publisher of Traditional Home. I think that in this role I have seen more of an evolution, in that myself and my team aren’t selling just print, we’re really selling integrated solutions to our advertising partners. For me, it’s not just getting somebody in the magazine so we can hit our numbers on the next issue. It’s really about working with them as a partner to hopefully develop a long-term relationship that can evolve and grow as their business challenges and needs change. And that we can be a trusted and dedicated partner with integrated solutions that help them achieve their goals.

On whether she’s hiring different types of people to help with those “integrated solutions” when it comes to marketing and sales: From a team perspective, I’m looking from a marketing side and hiring members of the team who have an understanding of how all of the pieces work together and can really bolster one another, because we would never advocate that somebody shouldn’t be doing digital or shouldn’t be doing social. But what we look to do is figure out how we can come up with a program where the print and the digital and the video and the experiential can all combine together to be successful and to support the various aspects of the overall program.

On what she would hope to tell someone that she’d accomplished one year from now: That’s a great question. I would like to still see us as something that’s valued in print, but that we’d been able to embrace new technologies. First, to always continue to experiment, I think that’s what’s really fun about this ever-evolving marketplace. All of these new digital technologies give us the opportunity to see how we can take our amazing content from the print product and push it out to attract new audiences.

On any stumbling blocks she’s had to face in her role as publisher: I’d have to say that it’s been a pretty smooth transition. And again, I think because before I made the transition into my new role, marketing and sales are so intertwined, and prior to me sitting in this specific seat I was always involved in conversations with clients in understanding what they were looking for in a partner before we put ideas and proposals and presentations together for them. So overall, it’s been a pretty seamless transition.

On anything she’d like to add: The only thing I might add is that our new editor in chief, Jill Waage, is doing an amazing job. She’s been in her role close to 10 months now and she has accomplished so much with her team. She’s a great collaborator, she’s not somebody to come in and tell everybody how it’s to be done. She has done a good job listening to not only her team, but to the challenges of sales and marketing, meeting designers and clients; it’s just been an absolute pleasure working with her.

On what she would have tattooed upon her brain that would be there forever and no one could ever forget about her: I think being calm, because this is always an industry where challenges will come up along the way. And individuals who know me, know that I’m a thoughtful person who is always looking to find a solution that works for all parties involved. So, I think if I were to leave something, that would be it; to stay calm and to find a positive solution.

On what someone would find her doing if they showed up unexpectedly one evening at her home: Honestly, it would be cooking. My husband and I finally just redid our kitchen. We bought the “money pit” 11 years ago, and we have slowly been lovingly restoring an old Victorian; it’s about 110-years-old. So, last year we tackled the kitchen and I have to say it’s the one room that we spend the most time in when we’re not sleeping and we kind of treated ourselves to a really lovely space. So, ever since we finished our kitchen, I would say we cook in it non-stop.

On what keeps her up at night: Other than my children? (Laughs) I would say how to keep my team energized and curious, because everybody is so busy with the daily demands of life and the job. What keeps me up at night is how do I give them the motivation and the time to read about new things, to get out of the daily grind so they can be inspired? And to learn about new things that potentially we could incorporate into our business model and continue to keep the brand healthy and growing.

And now the lightly edited transcript of the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Beth McDonough, publisher, Traditional Home magazine.

Samir Husni: Being the publisher of Traditional Home in this new day and age, how would you define the word “traditional” in the 21st century?

Beth McDonough: That’s a great question. In the research that we’ve done, when we ask 10 readers or 10 designers what traditional design is, we kind of get 10 different answers, but we do see certain adjectives come to the top all of the time. And we hear things like authenticity, craftsmanship and high quality. Those are all things that editorially have always been incredibly important, but I think to define traditional for us is really looking at design that’s rooted in great classic design, but reinvented or reimagined for the way that consumers live today.

And I think you see that with so many heritage brands, not only in the home design space, but also in fashion, where they’re legacy brands, they’ve been around for decades; a lot of them have been founded as family businesses and many of them are still family-run.

We’ve talked to different textile companies where some of their bestsellers today were literally introduced 50 years ago. Their designers have gone back in and either recolored those patterns or maybe played with the scale of the patterns just to give them a little more of a modern-day edge or feel. And again, it’s looking to the past and reimagining for today.

Samir Husni: Mentioning the past, what do you attribute the longevity of Traditional Home to and the reason it keeps on ticking and clicking after all of these years as a print magazine and as a brand?

Beth McDonough: We are a millennial; we’re about 28-years-old, as I like to joke. (Laughs) I think the longevity of Traditional Home can be attributed to our editorial point of view in that our readership, when we look at the geographic diversity, we really touch the home enthusiast from coast-to-coast. So, we see a very strong following for our readers in affluent suburbs, places like Grosse Pointe, Michigan and Lake Forest, Illinois. And I think our editors do a very good job and this is a conscious effort on their part to ensure that the homes and the design talent that they’re featuring in the magazine also represents that geographic diversity. They understand that there’s amazing design in Oklahoma and Colorado, and that it’s not just New York and L.A. that are the epicenters of great design.

Our readership resonates when they see projects in their regions because while there are always design trends every year that make the headlines, I think there are always geographic variations from a design perspective. And so, I think our longevity can be attributed to the fact that what the editors are putting out, either in print or on our social and digital channels, really resonates with our readers across the country.

Samir Husni: Do you think your job today selling the magazine to advertisers is easier, the same, or harder?

Beth McDonough: Good question. Well, I guess it depends upon who I’m talking to in the advertising community, obviously. (Laughs) If it’s somebody in New York who thinks that the sun rises and sets on the Big Apple, it’s harder to get them to understand a Midwest or a Southern mindset potentially, but I think the numbers help us paint the picture of how popular Traditional Home is and continues to be. We recently met with our circ team to look at the latest AAM (Alliance for Audited Media) publisher’s statement; we’ve seen a six percent growth year over year, looking at December 2017 versus 2016. We have a six percent growth in our paid subscriber base and I think that speaks volumes in this day and age as to the popularity and the wanted-ness of our brand among affluent design lovers.

Samir Husni: You’ve had a six percent increase in paid circulation, so why do you think people still want a print magazine today?

Beth McDonough: It’s twofold. One I think is the category. We hear from our readers that they love to sit and look at the full bleed images of these gorgeous interiors. A little bit of it is escapism, like any magazine reader, it’s a moment of relaxation for them. It’s a little bit of a luxury for some to have that quiet time for themselves to really enjoy the journey of going through these other people’s homes and understanding the story behind each one of them.

The other piece of that is a lot of our readers are planning renovations and so for them it goes back to the old-school, tear sheeting as they flip through and see spaces with ideas or colors or patterns that resonate. Something that they may want to consider for their upcoming decorating project or renovation project in the case of a kitchen or bath; it really enables them to either tear sheet or dog-ear the page and bring it to their kitchen designer or interior designer to share what they really love and may want to consider for their own home. And I think print allows them to do that.

Samir Husni: Traditional Home is one of the titles that Meredith started as a special interest publication, as a bookazine before the term was ever used. Then it became a frequency magazine, in line with what Meredith has done over the years. Today, Meredith is one the largest magazine publishing companies around. Do you think that environment of Better Homes & Gardens and all of the other “Home” magazines have helped nourish Traditional Home or created a set of competitors within the company?

Beth McDonough: Honestly, within Meredith I think Traditional Home really does have a unique position. Certainly, there is healthy competition for certain accounts with our brands like Better Homes & Gardens, but if you use the comparison between those two brands, Better Homes & Gardens is just so much bigger, and I think so much more of a reach vehicle, that an advertiser looking to go into Better Homes & Gardens, even in the home category, may have different goals and objectives than somebody coming into Traditional Home, where among the upscale shelter category we are still the largest circulation. We have the largest rate base at 850,000 when you look at us against the Hearst Design Group titles and Architectural Digest.

So, within our upscale shelter category we’re still the largest, but I think that an advertiser coming to us is maybe looking for a slightly more affluent consumer who most likely is working with a professional designer. We carry a lot of the “To The Trade” accounts where you can only access those products through a design professional.

Samir Husni: Do you feel that the acquisition of Time Inc. by Meredith is going to open new doors for you?

Beth McDonough: That’s a great question, but I think it’s too soon to tell. We’re hopeful from a Traditional Home brand perspective that joining our brethren in what I would call the affluent group of Food & Wine and Travel + Leisure could potentially introduce us to some new brands in the affluent category that would be non-endemic to us. Those affiliated products like wine or wonderful travel destinations, because we know entertaining is such a core passion point and we know travel is a passion point.

We hear stories about how our readers go to Europe or Asia and come back with beautiful pieces from their travels that they then present in their home and it gives them the opportunity to tell the story of where they found them or the artists they met. And then having that storytelling aspect incorporated into their home.

So, back to your question, it would be great if we could potentially put some programs together that would help us in those categories, but I think time will tell as to whether that will be possible.

Samir Husni: How has your job as publisher in the last few years changed? Are you still doing the same thing you did three years ago or has the whole job of publisher changed dramatically like the role of an editor has?

Beth McDonough: I was thinking about this question and I don’t know if you’re aware, but this is my first role as publisher. I have been in the industry for over 20 years, but I have always come up through the marketing side of things, so I am an imposter in the sales role. It will be three years in April that I have served as publisher of Traditional Home. Prior to that I have always been in a dedicated marketing role, obviously working closely with the sales team and the publisher.

So, to answer your question, I think that in this role I have seen more of an evolution, in that myself and my team aren’t selling just print, we’re really selling integrated solutions to our advertising partners. For me, it’s not just getting somebody in the magazine so we can hit our numbers on the next issue. It’s really about working with them as a partner to hopefully develop a long-term relationship that can evolve and grow as their business challenges and needs change. And that we can be a trusted and dedicated partner with integrated solutions that help them achieve their goals.

Samir Husni: Well, as a very good imposter who has done a great job…

Beth McDonough: Thank you.

Samir Husni: …are you hiring different types of people to help you with the marketing and sales? You said that you are no longer just selling print, you’re selling integrated solutions. Does that need a different type of people than just salespeople?

Beth McDonough: From a team perspective, I’m looking from a marketing side and hiring members of the team who have an understanding of how all of the pieces work together and can really bolster one another, because we would never advocate that somebody shouldn’t be doing digital or shouldn’t be doing social. But what we look to do is figure out how we can come up with a program where the print and the digital and the video and the experiential can all combine together to be successful and to support the various aspects of the overall program.

So, from a marketing perspective I do look to individuals who may have come up through print, but who have had experience on the digital and social side and still have that holistic view and understanding of how each serves its own particular role within an integrated program.

And it’s the same for the sales side. I love working with seasoned professionals and I would say the majority of them have spent most of their years in print, but some of them have done stints on a more digital-centric property. So again, I think I really look to individuals who still have a passion for print, because that’s where our brand is rooted first and foremost, but understand how all of the pieces can work together to create a successful integrated approach.

Samir Husni: If you and I are talking one year from now, what would you hope to tell me that you’d accomplished in 2018?

Beth McDonough: That my home looks a lot nicer. (Laughs)

Samir Husni: (Laughs too).

Beth McDonough: That’s a great question. I would like to still see us as something that’s valued in print, but that we’d been able to embrace new technologies. First, to always continue to experiment, I think that’s what’s really fun about this ever-evolving marketplace. All of these new digital technologies give us the opportunity to see how we can take our amazing content from the print product and push it out to attract new audiences.

So, I think if we were to look to the future I would like to say that we’d grown our audience even more and that we’d demonstrated to these new generations that beautiful design is still something that is attainable. But also at the end of the day is something that’s very personal and meant to create a wonderful environment for your family where hopefully you can make memories and have wonderful moments.

Samir Husni: Having come from the marketing side of things, has your role as publisher been like a walk in a rose garden for you, where you said to yourself, wow, I love this, or have there been a few stumbling blocks here and there?

Beth McDonough: I’d have to say that it’s been a pretty smooth transition. And again, I think because before I made the transition into my new role, marketing and sales are so intertwined, and prior to me sitting in this specific seat I was always involved in conversations with clients in understanding what they were looking for in a partner before we put ideas and proposals and presentations together for them. So overall, it’s been a pretty seamless transition.

I will say with some of the Excel grids on the financial side; I have gotten glasses (Laughs), so we’re spending more time with Excel grids. But overall, knock on wood, it’s been pretty smooth sailing overall. And I love the challenge. I think it’s been a really nice next step for me professionally to move into this new role and to continually challenge myself, personally and professionally.

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

Beth McDonough: The only thing I might add is that our new editor in chief, Jill Waage, is doing an amazing job. She’s been in her role close to 10 months now and she has accomplished so much with her team. She’s a great collaborator, she’s not somebody to come in and tell everybody how it’s to be done. She has done a good job listening to not only her team, but to the challenges of sales and marketing, meeting designers and clients; it’s just been an absolute pleasure working with her.

So, she too, should be credited with putting a lot of wind into the sails of the brand. I love having her as a partner in crime and I really look forward to what the future holds for the brand under her leadership.

Samir Husni: If you could have one thing tattooed upon your brain that no one would ever forget about you, what would it be?

Beth McDonough: I think being calm, because this is always an industry where challenges will come up along the way. And individuals who know me, know that I’m a thoughtful person who is always looking to find a solution that works for all parties involved. So, I think if I were to leave something, that would be it; to stay calm and to find a positive solution.

Samir Husni: If I showed up unexpectedly at your home one evening after work, what would I find you doing? Having a glass of wine; reading a magazine; cooking; watching TV; or something else?

Beth McDonough: Honestly, it would be cooking. My husband and I finally just redid our kitchen. We bought the “money pit” 11 years ago, and we have slowly been lovingly restoring an old Victorian; it’s about 110-years-old. So, last year we tackled the kitchen and I have to say it’s the one room that we spend the most time in when we’re not sleeping and we kind of treated ourselves to a really lovely space. So, ever since we finished our kitchen, I would say we cook in it non-stop.

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

Beth McDonough: Other than my children? (Laughs) I would say how to keep my team energized and curious, because everybody is so busy with the daily demands of life and the job. What keeps me up at night is how do I give them the motivation and the time to read about new things, to get out of the daily grind so they can be inspired? And to learn about new things that potentially we could incorporate into our business model and continue to keep the brand healthy and growing.

Samir Husni: Thank you.

“In GQ, the one thing I go back to print for is not only are you speaking to a particular type of person, who might actually be different than someone who’s looking at us online, but also it’s a space where people still find glory in. People want their cover. It’s a moment. And when you have something like that, that still has cultural weight and is something that people gravitate to, both as a reader and as somebody in it, you’re not going to give that up ever, if you don’t have to.” Jon Wilde…

“Each individual brand’s task is to take a look at what is that business model; what is that business plan; and how do you create ancillary revenue streams around what the core is. And if it’s Vogue, what do you build around that to help some of the challenges that you’re seeing in print. But it’s not to go away from print, it’s to fortify it.” Rob Dechiaro…

GQ has been the go-to source for men’s style and fashion for over 60 years. The brand’s voice has been clear and strong throughout that time span, from its print roots to today’s multiplatform existence. While its print format remains robust and a vital part of the equation, the digital aspect of the brand has never been more innovative and creative. And it has never been in better hands.

Jon Wilde is the executive digital director and Rob Dechiaro is the general manager. The two together are determined to make GQ’s footprint in the world of digital engagement Sasquatch-sized as they move toward discovering new revenue streams and new ways to delight and surprise their audience.

I spoke to both Jon and Rob on a recent trip to New York and we discussed the new innovations and new ways they’re trying, to monetize the brand’s digital platforms. From the success of their editorially-driven “Best Stuff Box,” to their latest endeavor to utilize the brand’s expertise when it comes to helping guys dress, a product recommendation site they’ve added to their e-commerce called “GQ Recommends,” the brand is moving forward confidently in its plans to monetize its digital platforms in more ways than just a paywall. In an effort to get closer with its readers and grow revenue, the new commerce site promises a positive way to cultivate that deep bond with the audience that GQ has always been about and bolster revenues in the process. And it proves that being Print Proud Digital Smart, very digital smart, I might add, is the way a legacy brand commands its spot in the 21st century.

So, button up your shirt and straighten your tie, you’re about to enter the classiness that is GQ and meet two of its digital best, the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Jon Wilde, executive digital director, and Rob Dechiaro, general manager.

But first the sound-bites:

Jon Wilde, GQ’s Executive Digital Director.

On how they differentiate between the print content and the digital content (Jon Wilde): I worked on the magazine for five years before I came over and took over the site editorially. And one thing I can say is we don’t think of something as being one place or the other. What we think of is what’s the execution across a variety of platforms. So, it isn’t that one thing exists here and one thing exists there, it’s how does something that we’re really excited about exist everywhere, but in a time and space and way that is particular to that platform.

On whether coordinating the content between the many platforms makes his job as executive digital director easier or harder (Jon Wilde): It’s more complex, for sure. There are more people in those rooms. When you settle on doing something; when you think about doing something; you’re not thinking just will it make a good cover and a good story, you’re thinking will it resonate online? Will it hit the audience? How do we get it to the audience that we know we want to get it to? Is it going to say the right thing that we want to say, because a magazine can be a closed space, but the Internet, as we all know, has its’ own conversations and fluctuates in moments. You’ve got to really be aware of how something is going to land, and whether you’re moving it in that space or not.

Rob DeChiaro, GQ’s General Manager.

On whether coordinating the content between the many platforms makes his job as executive digital director easier or harder (Rob Dechiaro): I think the reality is a testament to Jim (Jim Nelson, editor in chief) and to Jon and the entire editorial staff. The content is strong enough to resonate across all platforms. I think it’s our job to make sure that it connects with that audience in the most natural way, based on that platform, because the content is just that good and it should be able to span all of those audiences to anybody who cares about GQ.

On whether each Condé Nast brand has its own business formula, some going digital-only like Self and some launching new print like GQ Style, or whether one day all of the brands will adopt the same business plan (Jon Wilde): Anybody who can prognosticate the future of print in media, please come on over and tell us what that looks like. (Laughs) We’d love to see into your crystal ball. You can’t treat brands as if they’re all one in the same. The New Yorker; the print version of that defines the thing. It’s carrying it around with you; it’s getting the tote bag; it’s sitting it on your coffee table. That’s a reading experience that I don’t think anyone plans on giving up anytime soon. When you talk about Self, what they do maybe is a more digital native thing. The crowd that they’re talking to; the audience that they have; where they live and what they’re looking for in that information, they made a decision which made a lot of sense for them. It’s intriguing watching them really push into Snapchat.

On whether each Condé Nast brand has its own business formula, some going digital-only like Self and some launching new print like GQ Style, or whether one day all of the brands will adopt the same business plan (Rob Dechiaro): I think what you’re hearing from Jon is clear as to what we’re seeing at Condé Nast as a whole. Each individual brand’s task is to take a look at what is that business model; what is that business plan; and how do you create ancillary revenue streams around what the core is. And if it’s Vogue, what do you build around that to help some of the challenges that you’re seeing in print. But it’s not to go away from print, it’s to fortify it.

On whether any celebrity would ask to be featured on just the website (Jon Wilde): It depends on who you’re talking about. Yes, JAY-Z is probably not going to come and just do a quick Q & A, but just this past month we did a major digital-only photo shoot with Taylor Kitsch, pretty big deal. There are definitely a group of people who exist largely on our website. They come through in moments where we do our own photo shoots with them. We’re doing a lot of that kind of thing now. We’re doing our own videos with them. The cast of “The Good Place” is a really good example; people are loving it. We shot four of the main cast members, not including Ted Danson, and we’ve done our own photo shoots with them; we’ve done these large Q & A’s. And they’ve resonated hugely, traffic and time spent, in terms of those things; they’ve all shared them happily. It’s a different moment.

On how they can monetize these digital-only content moments (Rob Dechiaro): At the end of the day, monetization across all digital platforms; there’s not going to be a silver bullet. There’s going to be a lot of things that we have to build in different ways based off all of the platforms that we have to go to. That’s when we talk about footprint; that’s when we talk about engagement. Those are two things that we’re continuously talking about. If you look at our audience, where are they consuming content and how do we find them and engage them, then we can talk about monetization. We have to make sure that we’re delivering that content, and that experience of GQ, in all of those places, on all of those platforms. Then we can determine the best way to monetize.

On why they believe Snapchat’s Discover platform has succeeded where other platforms have failed (Rob Dechiaro): I think part of it is the fact that they caught wildfire with the younger audience. And that’s a big aspect of it. They took the idea of messaging, which a lot of that younger audience uses Snapchat for. If you watch the young audience use Snapchat, they’re using it to message their friends, they’re not text messaging. And that becomes a platform where all of that audience is there on Snapchat. So, they had “Discover” play into that.

On why they believe Snapchat’s Discover platform has succeeded where other platforms have failed (Jon Wilde): From an editorial side, Snapchat’s “Discover” is really fascinating for us. It’s this really interesting way to reach a crowd that we might not normally reach. We’re a magazine; I don’t know how many 13-18 year-olds are spending $20 of their hard-earned cash on a magazine being sent to them. But I can tell you that demographic is a much larger percentage of our audience on Snapchat Discover. So suddenly we’re reaching them; we’re seeing what they’re responding to.

On whether they think there will come a day where, like Wired, GQ will start putting digital content behind a paywall (Rob Dechiaro): I think there’s going to be an analysis and conversations around any sort of paying experience across all Condé brands and I think across all magazine brands. I believe that’s the next iteration of the web as we see it, especially with the amount of information and what’s going on around us in culture. For GQ in particular, I think it’s going to come down to really looking and analyzing what truly engages our audience at an in depth level.

On whether they think there will come a day where, like Wired, GQ will start putting digital content behind a paywall (Jon Wilde): The interesting thing about the paywall is that it’s often talked about as if it exists in only one way, and I think what Rob really wisely alluded to is that there are a wide variety of ways you can put in a paywall. It could be just to get to the content or just to get to our expertise, which I know Golf Digest does. It could be to get to a variety of newsletters that brings something to you and deliver it daily to your inbox.

On how they define content in this day and age (Jon Wilde): What is content? (Laughs) We’re contenting right now. That’s a tough thing, especially with a brand like GQ. As Rob mentioned, we can cover anything. We’re not in one space. We do entertainment and we do style; we do some tech and we do dating and relationships; we do grooming, but we also do politics, travel and food. If there’s a thing that a guy is interested in, and at this point that should be just about everything, we’re probably going to have a moment with it. So, what isn’t content for us? Probably nothing.

On how they differentiate, as they plan to monetize their digital audiences, between the engaged audience and those that are considered out of range, that “trash audience” that exists online in places that cannot possibly affect their revenue streams one way or another (Rob Dechiaro): I think Jon alluded to it just a moment ago with the idea of engagement. And the idea of the one-and-done traffic; you need to take that with a grain of salt. And I think that’s what we’re going to start doing. We want to find the audience that’s coming back two, three, four times a month and really focus on what they’re doing onsite.

On how they differentiate, as they plan to monetize their digital audiences, between the engaged audience and those that are considered out of range, that “trash audience” that exists online in places that cannot possibly affect their revenue streams one way or another (Jon Wilde): As we track people as they move through our spaces, there are two things we look for. There’s engagement, which is the time they spend with us. We don’t want somebody who just kind of pops in for 10 seconds. I mean, it would be nice for them to pop in for 10 seconds, we’d love to get them in the door, and hopefully we can show them some other things that will keep them around. But we’ve also starting talking, obviously, about footprint, which is really interesting for us because coming into 2017 our social footprint was right around 7.4 million. By the end of the year we moved that up to 9.2 million. And it’s still steadily growing. So, that’s Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and Snapchat.

On why they think print hasn’t been able to reach those large-scale circulation numbers like 9 or 10 million the way digital can (Jon Wilde): To me, the really basic thing is the Internet is now with you at all times and you’re going to it. And you’re going to go there for a million reasons, but it’s always there. It’s a lot more, in some ways, passive. You’re there and if something flows through your timeline, you’re going to spend some time with it hopefully, if it’s good. Whereas, with magazines, you had to actively reach out. You had to send a card in and hope that in a month and a half they sent you the issue, and hope you didn’t have to follow up on it. Maybe you had to send a check because nobody was doing credit card payments that well. Or they sent you a bill and you missed it. It was tough. You had to really want a magazine then.

On what they’ve done to keep their digital audience “sticking” around (Jon Wilde): What did we do to make people stick? We make good stuff. The tough thing is, obviously there’s a lot of stuff you can do on the product side, particularly with a website, to help people move around more. You can have better recirculation; you can have a nicer design; you can have moments that are really sticky, like video and deeper stories. When it comes down to it, what GQ does amazingly well; what every Condé Nast brand does really well; what every brand that is worth a damn does in this word really well is, deliver good, enticing, intriguing, unexpected stuff. It is paramount.

On anything either of them would like to add (Jon Wilde): One thing that we haven’t talked about, which is interesting to us, is the e-commerce movement. It’s amazing for us to step into there, because we’ve been doing a version of it for 60 years. It will be 61 this year. We’ve been helping guys figure out what to wear, whether it’s to buy their first good-fitting pair of khakis or their 17th amazing Gucci jacket. We’ve been there to help say we have our eye on you and we know what’s going to work and maybe what won’t. And now we’re in a space where we can feed that beast we’ve created. We did a survey last year that told us somewhere between 30 and 40 percent of our readers wanted more product recommendations. So, we’ve gone really hard at that with everything from “Best Stuff,” which I talked about and is editorially-driven to find the best stuff in the category. And on up to this new thing we’ve launched, this new product called “Recommends.”

On anything either of them would like to add (Rob Dechiaro): I think the way Jon describes it summarizes a lot of the questions that you were asking. Just going through that process where Jim talks about really understanding what your audience is doing. We got those results back from the survey, about 30-40 percent, and then we dug in and asked what is the experience that we can build for them, to simply give them more to do with the site? From an engagement perspective that meant changing the product, changing the design.

On what someone would find him doing if they showed up unexpectedly one evening at his home (Jon Wilde): I’m not impervious to the same things everybody is in this business, in this world. I’m probably on some combination of my phone and my laptop. I’ve probably got something on Netflix going and a half-eaten something on a plate in front of me, because I received a text or an email that I need to get to. The wide world of me just never stops. It just doesn’t. We’ve got weekend editors that are running full-time; we have things that we have to get prepped for. But none of us would be here if we didn’t really enjoy this process.

On what someone would find him doing if they showed up unexpectedly one evening at his home (Rob Dechiaro): I completely agree with Jon. It’s going to be somehow tied to work. And I think that’s why we got into this media business. It is definitely addictive. When you get home, when I get home, it’s about surveying everything that’s happening around us, maybe not that’s directly tied to GQ, so that we can find those instances where we need to extend again to connect our audience, where we know technology is giving us the opportunity to have all of those platforms.

On what he would have tattooed upon his brain that would be there forever and no one could ever forget about him (Jon Wilde): He did the best with baldness as he could. (Laughs)

On what he would have tattooed upon his brain that would be there forever and no one could ever forget about him (Rob Dechiaro): I think we all just kind of hit it on the head when we were talking about the idea of getting into the media business and I think we all did that for a particular set of reasons that are to ourselves, but for me it’s that we enjoy the ride. I enjoy the ride of experiencing all of the things that are happening in tech and media and the world around us, because media plays in all of it. And if I want to be remembered for anything, it’s that we didn’t take ourselves too seriously and we enjoyed the ride.

On what keeps them up at night (Jon Wilde): Trying to make people want more. And figuring out what exactly that is in a world that is flooded with “more.” It used to be pretty easy when you made a magazine. You went up against some other magazines, but now everybody makes content. You’re trying to horn in.

On what keeps them up at night (Rob Dechiaro): Echoing what I said earlier about enjoying what we do, but it’s also being able to enjoy what you do and make a difference. Given everything that’s happening in the world around us; how do we do what we do, but make a difference to people in a positive way? And I think that should be the goal of all of us. We have to impact people in a positive way.

And now the lightly edited transcript of the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Jon Wilde, executive digital director, and Rob Dechiaro, general manager, GQ.

Samir Husni: No one is talking about print versus digital anymore. You have to be in it all. H

ow do you differentiate in your thinking when it comes to what content belongs to print and what content belongs to digital?

Jon Wilde: I worked on the magazine for five years before I came over and took over the site editorially. And one thing I can say is we don’t think of something as being one place or the other. What we think of is what’s the execution across a variety of platforms.

So, let’s take an easy example; a cover story, right? We’ve got Colin Kaepernick sitting right in front of us on the table here, so we’ll go with that one. A big, huge moment for us last year, naming him our Citizen of the Year in the December issue. We knew that needed to be a big visual moment for print; that it needed to be something that stood out on the newsstand and said something loud and clear. And we got that obviously with the cover.

Our rollout online was interesting because the story we did inside was a compilation of 10 people who were close to him that were speaking about what he was trying to do on the activism front, how he made that movement from player to social activist. We took those, where in-book they were a compilation, online they all got broken up. All of those voices became individual voices that spoke to Colin, but also had their own. So, Ava DuVernay could speak to what Colin was doing, but also a little about what she was hoping to achieve. It became bigger in scope online.

We knew on Twitter that those photos were going to be a driver, we’ve seen our covers like this, especially in the social activism space, just really resonate. So, we had a different plan for seeding those out there, and for using Instagram, our biggest social platform, as a place to gather those. It became our most-liked Instagram photo ever.

In those ways, as we’re pulling these things together, we’re thinking that we know what the story is going to be; we know what the images might be; let’s figure out what the video is; what’s the plan for Instagram where we have four million people; what’s that Instagram story. Maybe we’re taking some of those extended-cut quotes and matching them up with beautiful behind-the-scenes video that we shot up in Harlem, such as we did when we recreated that iconic Muhammad Ali photo session.

So, it isn’t that one thing exists here and one thing exists there, it’s how does something that we’re really excited about exist everywhere, but in a time and space and way that is particular to that platform.

Samir Husni: And does coordinating that content between the many platforms make your job easier or harder? You’ve been there before, pre-digital.

Jon Wilde: It’s more complex, for sure. There are more people in those rooms. When you settle on doing something; when you think about doing something; you’re not thinking just will it make a good cover and a good story, you’re thinking will it resonate online? Will it hit the audience? How do we get it to the audience that we know we want to get it to? Is it going to say the right thing that we want to say, because a magazine can be a closed space, but the Internet, as we all know, has its’ own conversations and fluctuates in moments. You’ve got to really be aware of how something is going to land, and whether you’re moving it in that space or not.

We’re constantly having those conversations. When we’re just talking about covers, maybe before it would have been five or six print editors, now it’s myself and our editorial director, and Carly (Carly Holden, executive director of Communications) is in that room, and our head of Social is going to be in that room; our video guys are going to factor into that too. All of us come together to create these moments; you have to have everybody in there. It’s a little bit more complex, but also it leads to a bigger, richer story all of the time.

Rob Dechiaro: I think the reality is a testament to Jim (Jim Nelson, editor in chief) and to Jon and the entire editorial staff. The content is strong enough to resonate across all platforms. I think it’s our job to make sure that it connects with that audience in the most natural way, based on that platform, because the content is just that good and it should be able to span all of those audiences to anybody who cares about GQ.

Samir Husni: Last year you published GQ Style, so you’re not leaving print by the wayside. Yet, there are some other Condé Nast brands like Teen Vogue and Self that you decided to stop the print versions. Does each brand at Condé Nast have its own business plan or business formula? Or will we eventually see a trickle-down formula that will apply to all brands?

Jon Wilde: Anybody who can prognosticate the future of print in media, please come on over and tell us what that looks like. (Laughs) We’d love to see into your crystal ball. But yes, you can’t treat brands as if they’re all one in the same. The New Yorker; the print version of that defines the thing. It’s carrying it around with you; it’s getting the tote bag; it’s sitting it on your coffee table. That’s a reading experience that I don’t think anyone plans on giving up anytime soon.

When you talk about Self, what they do maybe is a more digital native thing. The crowd that they’re talking to; the audience that they have; where they live and what they’re looking for in that information, they made a decision which made a lot of sense for them. It’s intriguing watching them really push into Snapchat. And I think their Snapchat audience is bigger now than their website audience, which is amazing. They’ve managed to find the place where their people are. And at all times, that’s what we’re looking at. The New Yorker’s people are print folks, that will never go away. You see W becoming fewer issues, but more of a coffee table moment, almost a coffee table book. GQ Style is like that.

In GQ, the one thing I go back to print for is not only are you speaking to a particular type of person, who might actually be different than someone who’s looking at us online, but also it’s a space where people still find glory in. People want their cover. It’s a moment. And when you have something like that, that still has cultural weight and is something that people gravitate to, both as a reader and as somebody in it, you’re not going to give that up ever, if you don’t have to.

Rob Dechiaro: I think what you’re hearing from Jon is clear as to what we’re seeing at Condé Nast as a whole. Each individual brand’s task is to take a look at what is that business model; what is that business plan; and how do you create ancillary revenue streams around what the core is. And if it’s Vogue, what do you build around that to help some of the challenges that you’re seeing in print. But it’s not to go away from print, it’s to fortify it.

It’s to make sure that you have a lot of things going on to hit the multiple touchpoints that we were just talking about, when you think about digital and print working together. That’s how we look at it. It’s just about how do you build around that and around the audiences that we have in print to do different things within digital.

Jon Wilde: And the talk of engagement and how that’s become a bigger metric, certainly digitally. But I don’t know if you have any bigger engagement than somebody picking up a magazine actively and deciding to flip through it. And we still largely see some of our biggest stories in those moments where people gravitate to GQ, moments that have resonance, that cause ripple effects on through the Internet, they originated there. And it’s because it comes with a weight and a care and something that’s tangible, even if it’s on your screen.

Samir Husni: Correct me if I’m wrong, but no celebrity will ever ask to be featured on your website; they want to be on the cover of the magazine, if they can.

Jon Wilde: I’m going to disagree with that. It depends on who you’re talking about. Yes, JAY-Z is probably not going to come and just do a quick Q & A, but just this past month we did a major digital-only photo shoot with Taylor Kitsch, pretty big deal. There are definitely a group of people who exist largely on our website. They come through in moments where we do our own photo shoots with them. We’re doing a lot of that kind of thing now. We’re doing our own videos with them.

The cast of “The Good Place” is a really good example; people are loving it. We shot four of the main cast members, not including Ted Danson, and we’ve done our own photo shoots with them; we’ve done these large Q & A’s. And they’ve resonated hugely, traffic and time spent, in terms of those things; they’ve all shared them happily. It’s a different moment.

And in some ways, especially when you get into a younger actor, who’s at an ascendant moment in their career; what they can get out of a digital-only piece is not just eyes. When we put your great photo on our timeline, people don’t say that’s a digital-only piece. A great cover looks as good as a great shoot that we did just for the website. You’re still getting part of that GQ elevation.

Samir Husni: And how are you going to monetize that?

Rob Dechiaro: At the end of the day, monetization across all digital platforms; there’s not going to be a silver bullet. There’s going to be a lot of things that we have to build in different ways based off all of the platforms that we have to go to. That’s when we talk about footprint; that’s when we talk about engagement. Those are two things that we’re continuously talking about. If you look at our audience, where are they consuming content and how do we find them and engage them, then we can talk about monetization. We have to make sure that we’re delivering that content, and that experience of GQ, in all of those places, on all of those platforms. Then we can determine the best way to monetize.

We can’t sit here and think that we’re just going to monetize on site anymore. We’re going to have to monetize through partnerships with Twitter; with Instagram; with Snapchat. If you look at what we’ve done with Snapchat, there was a conversation at a Condé Nast level about whether we should be on the Snapchat platform. We were identified as a brand. Now we’re creating franchises in content that matches what we do in book, matches what we do on GQ.com, but now we can monetize it on Snapchat through a partnership with Snapchat.

I think it’s just examples from that. We have to make sure that when we find those areas that we know we can engage our audience with, it’s going to feel as if it’s one-off revenue models, but that’s the reality of the digital experience right now. And I think that’s what we have to focus on.

Samir Husni: Why do you think Snapchat’s “Discover” has succeeded where so many other platforms have failed?

Rob Dechiaro: I think part of it is the fact that they caught wildfire with the younger audience. And that’s a big aspect of it. They took the idea of messaging, which a lot of that younger audience uses Snapchat for. If you watch the young audience use Snapchat, they’re using it to message their friends, they’re not text messaging. And that becomes a platform where all of that audience is there on Snapchat. So, they had “Discover” play into that.

And I think they’re still trying to figure exactly how that works out and where they do that in the Snapchat experience, but it’s taken the partnership that Snapchat has created with all of these brands to create content specific for that platform, which makes it feel to the audience as if you’re publishing specifically for that platform. Now, we know that we’re creating the content; we’re expanding our content that we’re already creating, and that somebody who maybe just goes onto Snapchat, for them it feels very native. And I think that’s of the utmost importance.

Jon Wilde: From an editorial side, Snapchat’s “Discover” is really fascinating for us. It’s this really interesting way to reach a crowd that we might not normally reach. We’re a magazine; I don’t know how many 13-18 year-olds are spending $20 of their hard-earned cash on a magazine being sent to them. But I can tell you that demographic is a much larger percentage of our audience on Snapchat Discover. So suddenly we’re reaching them; we’re seeing what they’re responding to.

A lot of times we’re taking content that we’ve already made, but we’re redesigning it, recrafting it, repurposing it and figuring out a different angle. We’ve also had some times where we’ve actually created wholesale new shoots, new videos, that are only living on Snapchat. And what that has let us do is reach out to maybe the next generation of GQ readers, maybe introduce ourselves to them. Let them know that we’re still the place to go to figure out how to grow up and be an adult man. How to maybe get a little bit more stylish after your mom has been buying your clothes for you at the mall for the last five years. (Laughs)

But we’ve also been able to take a little bit back from that and ask what are the new waves where people are moving; what are the things that people are grabbing? Everything from time spent on there to the number of times they actually screen-grab something, we find ourselves higher than benchmarks. And so, we’re really heartened to be able to kind of walk into that space and reach a new set of eyeballs. And take something away while giving them something they seem to be really enthusiastic about.

Samir Husni: Wired is experimenting with the paywall. Now, after putting the audiences on a Welfare Information Society, giving them everything for free, the industry is seeing the futility of that. Do you think there will be a time at GQ where you will start putting content behind a paywall?

Rob Dechiaro: I think there’s going to be an analysis and conversations around any sort of paying experience across all Condé brands and I think across all magazine brands. I believe that’s the next iteration of the web as we see it, especially with the amount of information and what’s going on around us in culture. For GQ in particular, I think it’s going to come down to really looking and analyzing what truly engages our audience at an in depth level.

If you look at the way The New Yorker or Wired are doing it, they’re doing a paywall based off a metered experience and based off an audience that’s coming back multiple times. For GQ, we cover a lot of categories. We cover a lot of things and that’s something that GQ does extremely well and we’ve done for a lot of years. And we’ve earned the right to do that.

I think the step for GQ on where we go to a paid experience, a paywall, a service; something that gives the audience a reason to have to pay, to want to pay, we’re going to have to look at what aspects of our coverage deserve to be behind that experience.

Jon Wilde: The interesting thing about the paywall is that it’s often talked about as if it exists in only one way, and I think what Rob really wisely alluded to is that there are a wide variety of ways you can put in a paywall. It could be just to get to the content or just to get to our expertise, which I know Golf Digest does. It could be to get to a variety of newsletters that brings something to you and deliver it daily to your inbox.

You might consider it a minor paywall in that we have a “Best Stuff Box” now that we’re selling, which the Best Stuff is our kind of branding for us going out and rigorously testing something and finding the things that we really love, particularly menswear, but also in things like tech, grooming, and products that we know guys are really eager to find the best in. We’ve bundled some of that in a box and we’ve started selling subscriptions to it. We’ve had a mind-blowing take rate in the fact that it was really only soft-launched up until a couple of weeks ago when it became super-available online.

And the interesting thing is people are looking at that and when they subscribe to it, it’s $150 to subscribe for a year, they’re also oftentimes taking a subscription to the magazine. And you’re seeing this kind of back and forth between wanting to pull from our expertise, which is we’ve found something cool and we’ll send it to you, and also the fact that they would like to get a little closer to the content and the things that we do. So, I think that we’re really in an amazing place to figure out a paywall or paywalls could be in other places.

Samir Husni: How do you define content in this day and age?

Jon Wilde: What is content? (Laughs) We’re contenting right now. That’s a tough thing, especially with a brand like GQ. As Rob mentioned, we can cover anything. We’re not in one space. We do entertainment and we do style; we do some tech and we do dating and relationships; we do grooming, but we also do politics, travel and food. If there’s a thing that a guy is interested in, and at this point that should be just about everything, we’re probably going to have a moment with it. So, what isn’t content for us? Probably nothing.

That said, you’re always aware of your resources and your bandwidth. We’re also always asking the question, what do we want to achieve? As we switch from the raw, impressionistic news views, we need to just get uniques, uniques, uniques in the door. And when you do that, we’ve all seen what that leads to. It leads to scale, certainly, but not a very fun scale. You kind of race to the bottom and you’re chasing whatever is trending. Whereas now, as we move into engagements and little bit more of the notion of having a footprint growth, which is bringing people in who really want to be around all of our stuff, you start to care a lot about what the thing is that you pull off and write about. And it has to be something that’s meaningful and that means something on the platform that you’re putting it on.

And when you go back to that idea of what’s digital and what’s print, it all goes back to whether it’s a good story for GQ. Do we have something valid to say and is it going to resonate in the place and with the people that we’re speaking to? And that math generally points you in the right direction on a day-to-day basis. Sometimes you try a thing out and it doesn’t work, and you say okay, lesson learned. (Laughs)

Samir Husni: I interviewed Bob Garfield, who’s supposedly considered the “Marketing Guru” media writer. And he said with all of this digital growth, there’s also a lot of “trash audience” in those numbers. People reading the website or watching the videos in China, Hong Kong, or Lebanon. How do you differentiate, as you plan to monetize these digital platforms, between the trash audience and the engaged audience?

Rob Dechiaro: I think Jon alluded to it just a moment ago with the idea of engagement. And the idea of the one-and-done traffic; you need to take that with a grain of salt. And I think that’s what we’re going to start doing. We want to find the audience that’s coming back two, three, four times a month and really focus on what they’re doing onsite.

Now, we’re going to have to have a serious conversation with our friends and marketers on the advertising side and our other partners to determine what does scale look like versus what does an engaged audience look like. And how do you change your models at which you’re measuring your advertising, which we all know that we need to have in a conversation.

But to me, from an audience perspective, you just have to determine who is coming back and who is in love with your brand. And who is coming back multiple times per month, I think it has to be on a monthly basis, and you have to make sure it’s the people who are reading and scrolling through the content that are the true and genuine eyeballs. It just has to be taken with a grain of salt from scale perspective until we have the technology and everything built out from a measurement perspective that we can easily filter that out. It’s all about engagement.

Jon Wilde: As we track people as they move through our spaces, there are two things we look for. There’s engagement, which is the time they spend with us. We don’t want somebody who just kind of pops in for 10 seconds. I mean, it would be nice for them to pop in for 10 seconds, we’d love to get them in the door, and hopefully we can show them some other things that will keep them around. But we’ve also starting talking, obviously, about footprint, which is really interesting for us because coming into 2017 our social footprint was right around 7.4 million. By the end of the year we moved that up to 9.2 million. And it’s still steadily growing. So, that’s Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and Snapchat.

The intriguing thing about that is while you’re not running at scale, because you’re not just trying to collect every eyeball that flows through the timeline on Facebook, what you are trying to get is people who want to stay with the brand. They want to click follow and they want to click subscribe, and they want to see the next thing that comes out even though they don’t know what it is. And so that’s what we’re really focused on right now.

You’ve got engagement, once they’ve been brought in and you see if they can move through your space really well; can you get them to like a photo and maybe drive them to see a video that maybe gets them intrigued enough to come to your website. They may see a few pieces and buy a Box from us. But also you want to keep growing those spaces where what you’re putting out there is special enough for them to say they want to subscribe. Not just to the magazine, but to Instagram and then everything kind of reaches them. And then we can make those cool things that make Colin Kaepernick, who looks great on the cover, look amazing on Instagram. And then that brings another great round of feedback.

Samir Husni: Why do you think in print no one has been able to reach that scale of nine million or 10 million? The largest magazine circulation will hit one million and then it stops. What is the difference between the engagement of your audience on digital and the engagement of the print audience?

Jon Wilde: Two things. To me, the really basic thing is the Internet is now with you at all times and you’re going to it. And you’re going to go there for a million reasons, but it’s always there. It’s a lot more, in some ways, passive. You’re there and if something flows through your timeline, you’re going to spend some time with it hopefully, if it’s good. Whereas with magazines, you had to actively reach out. You had to send a card in and hope that in a month and a half they sent you the issue, and hope you didn’t have to follow up on it. Maybe you had to send a check because nobody was doing credit card payments that well. Or they sent you a bill and you missed it. It was tough. You had to really want a magazine then.

And that’s a thing nowadays; it’s heartening when you still have people like that, because they’re the kind of diehard readers that you want to keep close and deliver the really cool stuff to.

But we’ve got a big distribution platform now, where everything kind of flows by their eyes. And that’s where you get into the scale, making good content engagement space, where you know it’s probably going to cross in front of them at some point, but what’s going to make a grab and stick, entice and intrigue, and want to stay with them? When we now talk about subscribing, it’s tapping a button really quickly.

And interestingly, I think the same thought processes are still there, that it was with the magazine. Am I willing to give over something of myself to it? In this case, a lot of time. It’s time nowadays, right? Am I willing to give over entre to my newsletter? Am I willing to give over my timeline that I curated really nicely? You’re still weighing something, but it’s a lot easier to get there.

Also, like you said, we gave a lot of stuff away for free for a long time. Free gets a lot of people in the door, and now you have to figure out how you monetize what was free for so long.

Samir Husni: One of the things that I always tell the students is, on the web, same as in print, you have to learn how to make somebody click, tick and stick. The clicking and ticking is always there, it’s the sticking that is sometimes difficult. What did you do to make people stick?

Jon Wilde: What did we do to make people stick? We make good stuff. The tough thing is, obviously there’s a lot of stuff you can do on the product side, particularly with a website, to help people move around more. You can have better recirculation; you can have a nicer design; you can have moments that are really sticky, like video and deeper stories. When it comes down to it, what GQ does amazingly well; what every Condé Nast brand does really well; what every brand that is worth a damn does in this word really well is, deliver good, enticing, intriguing, unexpected stuff. It is paramount.

It is why you can blow up and grow to scale, and ultimately it would be kind of empty. Whereas, we may never reach those kind of BuzzFeed-ian, hundred-million-esque heights, but what we did have was great stuff. Amazing stuff. Stuff that you couldn’t deny was good. When you have that, you can always build something around it.

We’re also blessed because our reader could conceivably be anybody. We know we’re aimed at guys; we know demographically where that kind of sweet spot is, but our readership in a lot of places is 25 percent or more female. You put out a great story like Colin Kaepernick, that doesn’t just stay in one space. That’s always been the driving force from Jim Nelson on down.

Samir Husni: And that cover story made the rounds, from Fox News to CNBC, so you covered the entire gamut. Some folks loved you and some folks didn’t. (Laughs)

Jon Wilde: Right. (Laughs too) I don’t know that Fox News was in love with it, but when you can put something out there and people care enough to talk about it, you’ve done your job, I think. We have at least.

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

Jon Wilde: One thing that we haven’t talked about, which is interesting to us, is the e-commerce movement. It’s amazing for us to step into there, because we’ve been doing a version of it for 60 years. It will be 61 this year. We’ve been helping guys figure out what to wear, whether it’s to buy their first good-fitting pair of khakis or their 17th amazing Gucci jacket. We’ve been there to help say we have our eye on you and we know what’s going to work and maybe what won’t.

And now we’re in a space where we can feed that beast we’ve created. We did a survey last year that told us somewhere between 30 and 40 percent of our readers wanted more product recommendations. They wanted us to tell them more specifically what to buy. They wished that there was an easier process to find those things on our site.

So, we’ve gone really hard at that with everything from “Best Stuff,” which I talked about and is editorially-driven to find the best stuff in the category. And on up to this new thing we’ve launched, this new product called “Recommends.” It’s kind of a store within GQ, but it’s still editorially-driven and it turns over often throughout the week as we recommend more products, pull ones out that maybe have gotten old or have gone off sale.

And it’s this great warehouse where a guy can walk in and say that he needs a new shirt and then ask what GQ thinks he should get. He doesn’t have to search; he doesn’t have to go to Google and type in GQ shirts and hope that the first thing that pops up is the most recent one. He can walk in there and see the 40 shirts that GQ thinks he should buy that day.

And it’s been great. We’ve seen an amazing response to it. It’s already driving 11 percent of our affiliate revenue on GQ.com, and we’re really pushing hard on affiliate, in both GQ and across Condé. We’re seeing a huge click-thru rate on that as well, which is interesting because we pair it with editorial stories, kind of going back to the stickiness and engagement.

They come to us because they want to figure out what shirt or what suit they should buy, what pair of shoes, but then they also click on a piece because there’s a reason they came to GQ. It’s because our voice and our point of view is as much what they want as just the clothes themselves. So, that’s been really heartening to see our e-commerce click with our reader.

Rob Dechiaro: I think the way Jon describes it summarizes a lot of the questions that you were asking. Just going through that process where Jim talks about really understanding what your audience is doing. We got those results back from the survey, about 30-40 percent, and then we dug in and asked what is the experience that we can build for them, to simply give them more to do with the site? From an engagement perspective that meant changing the product, changing the design.

But then we figured out a different revenue stream to tie to that, so that it’s not something new and big to replace print, that’s not the plan of this. This is something we didn’t run at; this is something we’ve been doing for a very long time. We just used technology and the platforms that were engaging our audience to make it easier, and to better engage them on that platform. And I think that really summarizes what we do from a commerce perspective. But honestly, the way we started that, the way we used that process, should be the way we evolve GQ as a brand throughout the next several years.

To Jon’s point about the data that we’re gleaning, in that it’s both editorial and commerce, 40 percent of the people who are on that commerce experience, that we built specifically for making it easier to go buy those products, 40 percent of those people are then clicking on an article of content to go read. That’s how you build the stickiness. But that comes from an understanding of what our audience desires. And just tying all of that together.

Samir Husni: If I showed up unexpectedly at your home one evening after work, what would I find you doing? Having a glass of wine; reading a magazine; cooking; watching TV; or something else?

Jon Wilde: I’m not impervious to the same things everybody is in this business, in this world. I’m probably on some combination of my phone and my laptop. I’ve probably got something on Netflix going and a half-eaten something on a plate in front of me, because I received a text or an email that I need to get to.

The wide world of me just never stops. It just doesn’t. We’ve got weekend editors that are running full-time; we have things that we have to get prepped for. But none of us would be here if we didn’t really enjoy this process. Some of us get a little tired of it; some of us walk out and take two-week vacations and think about not coming back. (Laughs) Ultimately, there’s a little bit of a drug in it, whether for good or for bad. But you’re probably going to find me doing some work.

Rob Dechiaro: I completely agree with Jon. It’s going to be somehow tied to work. And I think that’s why we got into this media business. It is definitely addictive. When you get home, when I get home, it’s about surveying everything that’s happening around us, maybe not that’s directly tied to GQ, so that we can find those instances where we need to extend again to connect our audience, where we know technology is giving us the opportunity to have all of those platforms.

So, to me, the downtime away from just GQ is really about understanding what are the new platforms? Netflix; what if something happens with Netflix where it would make sense for GQ to get involved? And just taking all of those things that are happening around us and really making sure that we’re constantly thinking about how our audience could possibly want to find GQ there. And that’s something that we can’t forget and should be our downtime.

Samir Husni: If you could have one thing tattooed upon your brain that no one would ever forget about you, what would it be?

Jon Wilde: He did the best with baldness as he could. (Laughs)

Samir Husni: (Laughs too).

Rob Dechiaro: I think we all just kind of hit it on the head when we were talking about the idea of getting into the media business and I think we all did that for a particular set of reasons that are to ourselves, but for me it’s that we enjoy the ride. I enjoy the ride of experiencing all of the things that are happening in tech and media and the world around us, because media plays in all of it. And if I want to be remembered for anything, it’s that we didn’t take ourselves too seriously and we enjoyed the ride.

Jon Wilde; Yes, I think it’s that we made people want more. When we do our job well, we make people want more. It’s the thing that we’re always on the hunt for; it’s why we don’t mind being up until 9:00 or 10:00 p.m. on our phones. If the things that I put out into the world make people want more, then I’ll feel pretty good about my time spent.

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

Jon Wilde: Trying to make people want more. And figuring out what exactly that is in a world that is flooded with “more.” It used to be pretty easy when you made a magazine. You went up against some other magazines, but now everybody makes content. You’re trying to horn in.

Literally on Instagram, we have four million followers, which is a lot, but also think about, we have to squeeze in between your best friend who just went on vacation, or your cousin who just had a baby. To that, everything is content, but the bar got higher. The bar shot up. Which is weird, because we talk about the bar lowering, but really for the bar to make it through the noise and to hit, it skyrocketed. And in some ways that’s tough. But in a lot of ways you step up your game. And stepping up your game is never easy, but it means you always feel like you’re working as damned hard as you possibly can to do something good.

Rob Dechiaro: Echoing what I said earlier about enjoying what we do, but it’s also being able to enjoy what you do and make a difference. Given everything that’s happening in the world around us; how do we do what we do, but make a difference to people in a positive way? And I think that should be the goal of all of us. We have to impact people in a positive way.

There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t walk in here and the team around me makes me better and I hope I make them better. And I think we need to do that for our audience, and our audience needs to do that for us. So, what would keep me up at night would be how do we continue to make that impact? How do we continue to make a positive difference in the world?

Samir Husni: Thank you both.