Mr. Magazine

“This is really all about authentic storytelling. And consumers are really savvy, they know when they’re being delivered an ad and it’s our job to deliver something that feels editorial and feels like it has a plot to it. And we think about that all the time when we’re creating campaigns, whether it’s for print or digital. The idea that it feels authentic and organic to the client is really important. And coming at that editorially is what makes these things work and why more and more people are coming to us for it.”… Brett Hill

Connecting clients with audiences and spurring them toward action is something HearstMade has become extremely good at. From creating content for print products to storytelling across every major digital and social platform, HearstMade partners with advertisers to set real-world goals and then work toward them, first determining a distribution strategy, and then crafting a creative approach that marshals the unique voices of the brands, the authority of the editors and the depth of the audience data. It’s branded content at its best.

Brett Hill is editorial director at HearstMade and comes to this position after nine years as executive editor of Hearst Magazines’ HGTV Magazine. Brett is a wordsmith and a firm believer in telling a good story, no matter the media form it takes. While some might think launching a print magazine from a digital app was both unnecessary and impossible, Brett and her team did it with Bumble magazine. Their latest creation is an ink on paper product for REI called Uncommon Path, a title that tells the stories of the experiences, events, issues and ideas that shape the relationship between people and life outside. Brett believes that everyone has a story to tell, even advertisers.

I spoke with Brett recently and we talked about her extremely busy life at HearstMade and how she wouldn’t have it any other way. Between meetings and clients (of which they have over 200-plus, Brett’s daily work schedule is challenging, but satisfying. She leads a team of editors, writers and producers to create and distribute campaigns, products and custom publications on behalf of clients. Brett has described HearstMade as a rapidly growing, dynamic operation that creates data-informed print, digital and social content on a global scale, providing best-in-class solutions for its advertising partners. And with partners like Airbnb, REI and Bumble, along with many, many more, it’s definitely easy to see why Brett and her team are so busy and so very proud of what they do with their multiplatform storytelling.

And now, enjoy the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Brett Hill, editorial director, HearstMade.

But first the sound-bites:

On how she would sum up her first year as editorial director of HearstMade: It has been incredibly busy, I’ll tell you that. We have worked with over 200 clients this year; we’ve created over 350 campaigns; we’ve launched two magazines, I’m wearing lots of different hats. It has been incredibly exciting and every day something new is happening and that’s really what I love about it.

On what exactly she and her team do at HearstMade: HearstMade is basically two arms of the unit of Hearst Magazines. We create branded content for clients that live on our own Hearst platforms and we also create custom content for clients like Airbnb, REI and Bumble. So, the first part of my job, which was really up and running already when I started, is creating digital content, whether that lives on our own site, whether it’s amplified on social media, and that takes up a huge part of what we do at HearstMade. We have a creative director, myself, and a team of about 45 people who are creating all of that digital content.

On whether naming this division of Hearst “HearstMade” is like putting the Hearst seal of approval on all the content created under that umbrella: We use the same creative sensibilities and acumen for our advertising partners as we do when we create our own products, so yes, there’s a Hearst stamp of approval, if you will. Our tagline at HearstMade is: Editorial Minds Solving Business Problems. I’m an editor; I’ve always been an editor and I think like an editor. What I like doing best is telling stories through products, and stories that really resonate with our audience and our clients’ audience. It’s like we’re threading the needle between the clients’ KPIs and our brand voices. And that’s our job at HearstMade.

On the thinking behind bringing the digital app Bumble to print: When Bumble came to us, what they wanted was for their audience to become aware that they were more than just a dating site. There’s a platform for making friends or a platform for building your career, and there’s a platform for feeling good about yourself. So, their goal was to help us market them as more than just a dating app. And that’s really what we’ve done with the magazine. The magazine is divided into four sections: one is about feeling good about yourself, one is about making connections through friends, one is about making connections through work, and then of course, there’s the dating section.

On whether in today’s digital world there is still a need for an editor who knows what he or she is doing: Absolutely, 100 percent. This is really all about authentic storytelling. And consumers are really savvy, they know when they’re being delivered an ad and it’s our job to deliver something that feels editorial and feels like it has a plot to it. And we think about that all the time when we’re creating campaigns, whether it’s for print or digital. The idea that it feels authentic and organic to the client is really important. And coming at that editorially is what makes these things work and why more and more people are coming to us for it.

On whether she needed to change hats between creating the print Bumble and their latest creation, the print magazine for REI called Uncommon Path: It’s interesting, the people that are working for me and who work on these projects know the category, so we’re hiring people who know the outdoors category; we’re hiring people who understand the Bumble audience. I don’t need to understand the audience as well as I need to understand how to talk to the clients about telling the stories that they want to tell in a way that we feel really proud of. And we can sort of teach them along the way, much like you teach. And it’s really interesting to work with them. So yes, I wear the same hat in that I’m overseeing creatives, it’s just for different categories and I’m lucky that the people who work under me on those categories know the brands and the audiences really well. So, it doesn’t matter if it’s for a Bumble audience or an REI audience.

On whether she differentiates among her babies: I feel proud of all of them. And so much work goes into each one of them and the relationship with the clients is all different. Obviously, when you get a print product in your hand and you hold it, and you know this better than anyone, that’s a really proud moment, speaking of babies. But it’s equally exciting to see a video campaign that was shot in Switzerland and that we’ve been talking about for months come to life online. It’s a different process, but in the end it’s most important that it feels like a good, cohesive, compelling story that reaches the right audience.

On what she would hope to tell someone she had accomplished in another year as editorial director of HearstMade: I will say that we have had a lot of interest based on the work that we’ve done for Airbnb, REI, and Bumble with creating content for other clients. And I feel really good about it; I feel like we have a great portfolio already in our hands. I know that we’re going to continue doing more of that. The branded content that we’re producing is really nonstop and it’s only going to get busier and busier. I think that we do a really good job of being good partners with our clients. I feel like there’s just more and more excitement every day on the 20th floor where we live.

On whether she feels the audience is multiplatform or more segmented: The audience is a multiplatform audience and they want a lot of content, that’s what they want. It’s our job to figure out how to deliver it to them most effectively. They want content on their phone, on their laptop, on their iPad; they want content they can read on the subway, they want content they can take with them on vacation and read leisurely by a pool, so the platforms that we’re creating for are the platforms that audiences are craving. Obviously, we target, depending on who the client is, but it’s not black or white.

On the biggest challenge she’s faced since taking the job: I think it’s a combination between switching gears between meetings with, let’s say, a food client, then fifteen minutes later brainstorming about a high-end fashion client, followed an hour later by a brainstorming meeting about a car company, combined with launching two magazines. It’s very different from when I worked at HGTV Magazine, where I worked for nine years, where I was focused on one brand. I’m now working with 25-plus first brands and 200-plus clients. So, it’s about delivering what all of those people want and there’s a lot of players in every game.

On what keeps her sane: Oh my gosh, working out. I have to work out in the morning before I come here so that I can clear my head. And I know everyone says that, but I’ve realized this year how important it is to come in really clearheaded and feeling physically strong every day. I can’t stress that enough.

On any new print magazines that are up and coming that she can talk about or anything she’d like to add: There are a lot of things percolating that I can’t really talk about right now, but I do want to say that just the way we create content for any of the Hearst brands is by using data to inform the content we create. We use the same strategy in creating content for any client; we understand what an audience is responding to. We create content that we know is going to resonate with them and we see how it performs, and then we create content that continues to drive those channels that we know the audiences are responding to.

 On the biggest misconception she thinks people have about her: I’m a really honest person and I think I’m pretty easy to read, and I believe that’s what makes me good at my job. I work with so many different departments here at Hearst, marketing, sales, all the editors, all the brands, plus all the clients, and I think I have to be straightforward and clear or we won’t get anything done. So, I don’t know that there are any misconceptions about me, but it’s kind of why I think I’m good at my job.

On what someone would find her doing if they showed up unexpectedly one evening at her home: I’m wondering if there’s a word for a multiple of multitasking, because that’s really what I feel like I do when I get home. Laptop is open on the kitchen counter, cooking dinner, responding to emails, chopping broccoli, texting the dog walker, and proofreading a college essay, just loads of multitasking. We have to come up with a name for that. 

On what keeps her up night: Honestly, my six-month-old puppy. That’s what keeps me up at night.

And now the lightly edited transcript of the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Brett Hill, editorial director, HearstMade.

Samir Husni: As you approach your first anniversary, you started the job on October 30, 2018, how would you sum up your first year as editorial director of HearstMade?

Brett Hill: It has been incredibly busy, I’ll tell you that. We have worked with over 200 clients this year; we’ve created over 350 campaigns; we’ve launched two magazines, I’m wearing lots of different hats. It has been incredibly exciting and every day something new is happening and that’s really what I love about it.

Samir Husni: When you got the job, Troy Young, president of Hearst Magazines, said that you would be in charge of creating data-informed content for all platforms, can you expand a little bit on that?

Brett Hill: HearstMade is basically two arms of the unit of Hearst Magazines. We create branded content for clients that live on our own Hearst platforms and we also create custom content for clients like Airbnb, REI and Bumble. So, the first part of my job, which was really up and running already when I started, is creating digital content, whether that lives on our own site, whether it’s amplified on social media, and that takes up a huge part of what we do at HearstMade. We have a creative director, myself, and a team of about 45 people who are creating all of that digital content.

We have editors, a photo team, a video team, a post-production team, a talent team, so all day, all week, they’re creating campaigns for clients that have to, not only resonate with the clients’ KPIs, but feel authentic to the Hearst-brand voices. For example, if we’re creating a campaign for a beauty client that is going to live on Cosmopolitan, that is going to look and sound very different from a campaign for that same beauty client that’s going to live on Elle or Bazaar. So, it’s our job to make sure that the client is getting what they need, in terms of their deliverable, but that we’re also making something that feels really authentic to our brand.

Samir Husni: By naming it HearstMade, is that like putting the Hearst seal of approval, such as a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval, on all of the content that is being produced?

Brett Hill: We use the same creative sensibilities and acumen for our advertising partners as we do when we create our own products, so yes, there’s a Hearst stamp of approval, if you will. Our tagline at HearstMade is: Editorial Minds Solving Business Problems. I’m an editor; I’ve always been an editor and I think like an editor. What I like doing best is telling stories through products, and stories that really resonate with our audience and our clients’ audience. It’s like we’re threading the needle between the clients’ KPIs and our brand voices. And that’s our job at HearstMade.

Samir Husni: Tell me about your first print magazine launch, Bumble. Anytime I mention to my graduate students, who some of them are users of Bumble, I think, when I mention that Bumble launched a print magazine, they’re astonished. And many ask: why? So, what was the thinking behind bringing that platform to ink on paper?

Brett Hill: When Bumble came to us, what they wanted was for their audience to become aware that they were more than just a dating site. There’s a platform for making friends or a platform for building your career, and there’s a platform for feeling good about yourself. So, their goal was to help us market them as more than just a dating app. And that’s really what we’ve done with the magazine. The magazine is divided into four sections: one is about feeling good about yourself, one is about making connections through friends, one is about making connections through work, and then of course, there’s the dating section.

What they had was a very clear voice when it came to dating and women feeling empowered to make the first move, but it wasn’t clear to their audience that they do all of these other things. And that was our job, to make these other platforms that they stand for tangible to their audience, and also to engage new members. And it was sent out through Bumble marketers, that’s how it was distributed. All of the copies were distributed through Bumble marketers at their own Bumble events. It was really exciting to work on, because it really helped us give their brand a voice, and that is something that we talk a lot about at HearstMade.

Samir Husni: With your creative background, do you think the skills that you learned as an editor and that you applied to Bumble, and now you’ve also applied to your latest print launch, Uncommon Path for REI,  do you think those skills are needed in today’s marketplace? That no matter which platform you’re going to be on, there is still a need for an editor who knows what he or she is doing?  

Brett Hill: Absolutely, 100 percent. This is really all about authentic storytelling. And consumers are really savvy, they know when they’re being delivered an ad and it’s our job to deliver something that feels editorial and feels like it has a plot to it. And we think about that all the time when we’re creating campaigns, whether it’s for print or digital. The idea that it feels authentic and organic to the client is really important. And coming at that editorially is what makes these things work and why more and more people are coming to us for it.

So, we have dedicated teams of editors on all of these projects and they come from editorial backgrounds. And thinking like an editor is a really important aspect when we’re considering who is going to work on these projects. It’s really about creating a paper connection with the audience, no matter who that audience is and that’s what editors are good at.

Samir Husni: Did you need to change hats when you went from creating Bumble to creating Uncommon Path? Those are two print products, but if I heard you right, you also created another 198 other things. (Laughs)

Brett Hill: At least. It’s interesting, the people that are working for me and who work on these projects know the category, so we’re hiring people who know the outdoors category; we’re hiring people who understand the Bumble audience. I don’t need to understand the audience as well as I need to understand how to talk to the clients about telling the stories that they want to tell in a way that we feel really proud of. And we can sort of teach them along the way, much like you teach. And it’s really interesting to work with them. So yes, I wear the same hat in that I’m overseeing creatives, it’s just for different categories and I’m lucky that the people who work under me on those categories know the brands and the audiences really well. So, it doesn’t matter if it’s for a Bumble audience or an REI audience.

Samir Husni: Which one of all of these products do you feel like: wow! When you look at those 200 + platforms; when you’re holding Bumble in your hands or you’re looking at a screen, do you differentiate among your babies or they’re all your babies?

Brett Hill: I feel proud of all of them. And so much work goes into each one of them and the relationship with the clients is all different. Obviously, when you get a print product in your hand and you hold it, and you know this better than anyone, that’s a really proud moment, speaking of babies. But it’s equally exciting to see a video campaign that was shot in Switzerland and that we’ve been talking about for months come to life online. It’s a different process, but in the end it’s most important that it feels like a good, cohesive, compelling story that reaches the right audience.

Samir Husni: If you and I are having this conversation a year from now, where you’ll be in your second year as editorial director, what would you hope to tell me you had accomplished in that year?

Brett Hill: I will say that we have had a lot of interest based on the work that we’ve done for Airbnb, REI, and Bumble with creating content for other clients. And I feel really good about it; I feel like we have a great portfolio already in our hands. I know that we’re going to continue doing more of that. The branded content that we’re producing is really nonstop and it’s only going to get busier and busier. I think that we do a really good job of being good partners with our clients. I feel like there’s just more and more excitement every day on the 20^th floor where we live.

Sometimes the magazine is just the starting point of what a client is asking for, but we’re thinking of these business opportunities as more of a larger ecosystem of delivering content. They might say that they want a print product, and that’s great, we can deliver an amazing print product, but once we start talking to them they also realize that we can create really compelling digital content and still show content somewhere very efficient. We can do a photo shoot or a video shoot and from either of those get 50 assets that a client can use in all different ways.

And it’s the same with a print product. Just because a client says at first: I love Airbnb magazine, which everyone does by the way, loves Airbnb magazine, as they should, that’s often just a starting point of a conversation and it turns into a much larger conversation about creating content in a bigger ecosystem.

Samir Husni: As your team learns about that audience and you’re putting the audience first, do you feel that audience is broken into segments: a group that wants social media, a group that wants print, or the entire audience has become more of a multiplatform group in and of itself?

Brett Hill: The audience is a multiplatform audience and they want a lot of content, that’s what they want. It’s our job to figure out how to deliver it to them most effectively. They want content on their phone, on their laptop, on their iPad; they want content they can read on the subway, they want content they can take with them on vacation and read leisurely by a pool, so the platforms that we’re creating for are the platforms that audiences are craving. Obviously, we target, depending on who the client is, but it’s not black or white.

Samir Husni: Since you took this job, what has been your biggest challenge, or has it been a walk in a rose garden for you?

Brett Hill: No, not quite a walk in a rose garden. I think it’s a combination between switching gears between meetings with, let’s say, a food client, then fifteen minutes later brainstorming about a high-end fashion client, followed an hour later by a brainstorming meeting about a car company, combined with launching two magazines. It’s very different from when I worked at HGTV Magazine, where I worked for nine years, where I was focused on one brand. I’m now working with 25-plus first brands and 200-plus clients. So, it’s about delivering what all of those people want and there’s a lot of players in every game.

Samir Husni: What keeps you sane in that environment?

Brett Hill: Oh my gosh, working out. I have to work out in the morning before I come here so that I can clear my head. And I know everyone says that, but I’ve realized this year how important it is to come in really clearheaded and feeling physically strong every day. I can’t stress that enough.

Samir Husni: Is there any new print magazine coming up that you can talk about or anything you’d like to add?

Brett Hill: There are a lot of things percolating that I can’t really talk about right now, but I do want to say that just the way we create content for any of the Hearst brands is by using data to inform the content we create. We use the same strategy in creating content for any client; we understand what an audience is responding to. We create content that we know is going to resonate with them and we see how it performs, and then we create content that continues to drive those channels that we know the audiences are responding to.

Samir Husni: What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about you?

Brett Hill: I’m a really honest person and I think I’m pretty easy to read, and I believe that’s what makes me good at my job. I work with so many different departments here at Hearst, marketing, sales, all the editors, all the brands, plus all the clients, and I think I have to be straightforward and clear or we won’t get anything done. So, I don’t know that there are any misconceptions about me, but it’s kind of why I think I’m good at my job.

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; gardening; watching TV; or something else? How do you unwind?

Brett Hill: I’m wondering if there’s a word for a multiple of multitasking, because that’s really what I feel like I do when I get home. Laptop is open on the kitchen counter, cooking dinner, responding to emails, chopping broccoli, texting the dog walker, and proofreading a college essay, just loads of multitasking. We have to come up with a name for that.

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

Brett Hill: Honestly, my six-month-old puppy. That’s what keeps me up at night.

Samir Husni: Thank you.

” I think the successes (of Bauer in 2019) were really that we’re the only major publisher to have absolute growth in the ad revenue, the absolute year after year growth in the subscription revenue and the continued share growth on the newsstand. The successes as well, being our products in a reader-driven company, the changes we made to Woman’s World based on our reader study, taking it even more toward inspirational type of content… And the kind of editorial success, where we feel like we’re still engaging our readers the way that we want to engage them.” …Steve Kotok (On the success story of Bauer in 2019)

Would you believe me if I told you that there is a magazine media company in the United States of America that is doing well, very well indeed, on all fronts: advertising revenue, subscription revenue, and holding its own on the newsstands revenue.  Ad revenue up 38% in the first six months of 2019, ad pages up 24% for the same period.  Subscription revenue is up year to year, and the newsstands, in a market where some publishers have seen a drop as deep as 22%, Bauer has performed better than all the top publishers by dropping only 4% in retail dollars.

Add to that Bauer Media USA publishes the two bestselling magazines at retail in the country, Woman’s World and First for Women. The refocus on women for the entire company has been a continuation of success for Bauer. Success that has produced a partnership with the world’s largest retailer: Walmart. Whoa, Wait. available exclusively at Walmart, originated from a pair of personal shoppers who gained their fame on Instagram (a prime example of print and digital working together) and who now can be found on the pages of print in a magazine you can find both at the frontend by checkouts and in the mainline of the store.

Steven Kotok is CEO of Bauer Media Group USA and believes reader connection is key to media companies being successful today. With the two largest selling magazines on the newsstands, Woman’s World and First for Women, Bauer and its master at the helm know a thing or two about women’s service journalism. So much so that while others are seeing a decline in ad pages and ad revenue, Bauer is seeing increases. No top publisher has performed better than Bauer on the newsstands, and they have the smallest subscription to newsstand sale ratio. Market shares are growing and Woman’s World sells more total copies than any other magazine.

So what’s the secret sauce? How are they performing these daring feats? I asked Steve just that in a recent conversation we had and his answer was simple:  we believe in our connection with the reader. Audience first. Music to Mr. Magazine’s™ ears. During the conversation, I heard the total love for Bauer and for what he is doing in the tone of his voice. The humble and kind way he spoke about his coworkers and his staff, the generosity he gave all the other titles out there belonging to other publishing companies was inspirational. And his true and total belief in Bauer’s mission in women’s service magazines was stalwart.

While many others are still in scared-mode and have a “the-sky-is-falling” mentality, Steve is hopeful. To paraphrase what he said: the sky is always falling to some degree, have hope, it hasn’t hit the ground yet. And Mr. Magazine™ believes it never will.

So, I hope that you enjoy this delightful conversation with a man who is both humble and visionary, the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Steven Kotok, CEO, Bauer Media Group USA.

But first the sound-bites:

On how he would describe the status of magazine media today from Bauer’s point of view: As you know, Bauer is a very unique company in that 90 percent of the revenue comes from our readers, so I wouldn’t say that we’re typical or a bellwether. From our perspective the state of media is obviously a challenging industry, but for us it’s strong. Our readers still connect with our products. Our concern is gatekeepers; it’s the gatekeepers on the retail side, which is part of why we’ve been building our subscription base more aggressively so that we have that ability to connect with them. For our demographic and what we do and the way we do it – service content for the readers we serve, it’s strong. Our concern is the supply chain and things like that, not reader demand.

On being quoted as saying that Bauer was “looking for alternatives” to that supply chain: We are. That may be more of a medium term project, but we’re definitely, on an ongoing basis, kind of pricing out whether there was a shock to the supply chain, because we need to know how to get our product to where the readers are buying it in a different way or very quickly. We make a choice at some point to make that change. It seems prudent to know how we would go about that and to, on an ongoing basis, understand the financial costs, as well the resource and logistical distraction type costs.

On the fact that publishers used to work together to get readers and now that’s not so common: I don’t want to overgeneralize, and I’m sure someone can point to a lot of counter examples, but I’ve generally found that on the reader revenue side there’s a lot of collaboration. I mean, publishers who were supposed bitter rivals would always allow each other to mail each other’s mailing lists for direct mail, for example. Not out of the goodness of their hearts, but out of reciprocity. They wanted that ability and they figured if you mailed their people and they mailed your people, the right people are going to subscribe to the right magazine.

On retail space shrinking in the giant chains, yet Bauer has just published a magazine specifically for Walmart: There are trends and then there are individual products. An individual product that is going to connect with the readers is still going to succeed in an up market or a down market. The Whoa, Wait Walmart is designed for that Walmart shopper, the content is shoppable. We worked with Walmart; we followed their guidance and were able to put that Walmart label on the cover and it’s actually one of the rare  magazines sold both in the frontend by the cash registers, but also in the mainline.

On why Walmart chose an ink on paper product for an idea that originated on Instagram: I don’t know that they chose it. I think the Whoa, Wait Instagram account and blog, from two women who have really connected with their audience in a very unique way; I think Walmart was aware of the power of that. I think honestly, if we had come to them with a product that they thought didn’t do what the shopper wanted, we wouldn’t have gotten anywhere with them. They get offered a lot of things all the time, so I don’t think they chose it as much as we made them a pitch based on our partners’ understanding of the Walmart shopper and our understanding of the Walmart shopper. And Walmart believed that we hit it right.

 

On why no one has been able to replicate the success of Woman’s World and First for Women: I don’t know that anyone is trying to replicate the formula. Again, we build our business from a different revenue model than a lot of these other also great products. As you are, I’m a lover of magazines, so I don’t look around and see a bunch of terrible products and then just two great ones. There are a ton of great products out there, ours happens to be oriented toward the retail buyer. It’s meant to be purchased for a certain use and a certain environment.

On why Bauer’s numbers are up, subscriptions are growing, ad revenues are up, while many other publishing companies can’t say that: On the subscription side it’s really investment; we believe in our connection with the reader. It hasn’t really been as much of a focus in the past, when the retail supply chain was healthier, it wasn’t as much of a need, but we wouldn’t make those investments if they didn’t return to us in the readers responding and subscribing and renewing, but that’s purely from investment.

On whether it was the right decision to sell the celebrity titles and focus on women’s magazines: It was definitely the right decision. The way that category was going, there needed to be an efficiency of one owner of that category. When we looked again, and as Mrs. Bauer said recently, in terms of decades, not in terms of years, as we looked over the real long-term, if we’re going to make that kind of investment, it seemed like making it in the women’s space was the best place to make it. So, we made the decision to sell, but we’re looking to make acquisitions in the U.S., but probably not in that category. AMI is a very good operator and we respect them a lot, but it’s a tough category. Those titles are down pretty significantly on the newsstand.

On Bauer’s interest in acquisitions: It takes a lot of work to do that, but yes, that’s where we have a big focus going forward into 2020. Again, as a long-term operator we think there are opportunities, whether that’s print properties, like the celebrity portfolio that we think will fare better under AMI’s ownership than maybe things that will fare better under our ownership, or whether it’s more in the digital space. Again, with the focus on properties driven by consumer revenue, or at least consumer action, a consumer performance type of marketing.

On whether they ever ask themselves about publishing another women’s weekly magazine: We do ask those kind of questions a lot. We look at First for Women, which does so well, and think could we raise the frequency of that? It’s strange because First for Women is maybe the only 17 x per year product out there, but it actually seems to be the right frequency for it. We’ve looked at taking it more frequent and for a variety of reasons I think it’s going to perform better at the frequency it is. So, no, I don’t think we believe there’s a way to slice and dice the market that way. We definitely have ideas, things that we’d love to do editorially, but I just don’t know if that… it’s just so tough to get that retail space now. The investment isn’t just investing in the brand and in the staff, it’s really investing in that real estate. It’s not impossible, but I think a weekly would probably be unlikely.

On who devalued magazines at retail, the publishers or the retailers and distributors, who’s to blame: For some products, their demand may have changed. Obviously, there has been an overall decline in retail sales for some. Maxim, where I used to work, we would sell a million of some issues and those days, selling a young men’s product like that, are gone. So, I do think some of it was a readjustment to what types of products work in that medium. I don’t think it was killed by retailers. Like a Maxim, for example, I don’t think we would still be selling a million if not for the evil retailers. I believe that this rapidly changing society and economy, and what content in what medium people want, does change.

On whether he feels the bookazine market is saturated: There’s probably some oversaturation there, But I don’t think that’s uncommon when there’s a growth area in print. I think we’ve seen that in many categories that showed growth, as you see a little bit of a mini gold rush from oversaturation. I don’t think it’s a great thing and that it will equalize to where it should be, but I think it’s a good thing in the sense that the vitality and growth is there and that people want to invest into that.

On what success stories he would share with Mrs. Bauer from 2019: First of all, anyone meeting with Mrs. Bauer should be talking about 2020 and 2030 and what they’re doing to build the company she owns. But if she were to ask, I think the successes were really that we’re the only major publisher to have absolute growth in the ad revenue, the absolute year after year growth in the subscription revenue and the continued share growth on the newsstand. The successes as well, being our products in a reader-driven company, the changes we made to Woman’s World based on our reader study, taking it even more toward inspirational type of content. That’s just as important to her. And the kind of editorial success, where we feel like we’re still engaging our readers the way that we want to engage them.

On any stories he would share with Mrs. Bauer about things that he wished the company hadn’t done: That’s a good question. I think a lot of those are things that you wished you’d done sooner. There are so many things, as much as we want to be a fast-moving company and a low bureaucracy company, there’s still things like the CMS we’re on or certain types of process things, where we could run more efficiently, probably all of those, if we were wiser, we would have gotten there faster. But I don’t think we made any big missteps. I believe there are some things in our own bookazine program that we’ve really made more efficient and more successful, but again, that’s more a matter of things we probably could have done more quickly.

On anything he’d like to add: The main thing is a lot of it is the people. We’ve done so much work here internally to get to know each other better and to communicate with each other better. The numbers are great, but the hidden strength is that we are all starting to work really well together. There are a lot of new people here and it has taken us time to get to know each other and I think that’s a strength.

On the biggest misconception he thinks people have about him: I’m not sure anyone thinks about me enough to have a misconception. (Laughs) I think people have pretty accurate perceptions. When I was a print guy, people would perceive your ability in a certain way; when I was at the Wirecutter, which was 100 percent digital, people perceived it in a certain way; now I’m at a print company and people perceive it in a certain way. Something that I get when I’m interviewing people is that people’s abilities are  more diverse and flexible than I think most people realize.

On what keeps him up at night: I think when you’re in media, in general, including digital, anyone who started doing this long ago learned that you have to be able to sleep at night. The sky is always somewhat falling, in digital as well, as you see with BuzzFeed and others, I think if you don’t sleep well at night, you should be in a different business, because of its very nature. The idea that you don’t sleep well at night is because something is changing in a scary way, but that’s been the case for 20 years, to the extent that it really shouldn’t be scary anymore.

And now the lightly edited transcript of the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Steven Kotok, CEO of Bauer Media Group USA.

Samir Husni: How would you describe the status of magazine media today from Bauer’s point of view?

Steven Kotok: As you know, Bauer is a very unique company in that 90 percent of the revenue comes from our readers, so I wouldn’t say that we’re typical or a bellwether. From our perspective the state of media is obviously a challenging industry, but for us it’s strong. Our readers still connect with our products. Our concern is gatekeepers; it’s the gatekeepers on the retail side, which is part of why we’ve been building our subscription base more aggressively so that we have that ability to connect with them. For our demographic and what we do and the way we do it – service content for the readers we serve, it’s strong. Our concern is the supply chain and things like that, not reader demand.

Samir Husni: You were quoted recently that you were “looking for alternatives” for that supply chain.

Steven Kotok: We are. That may be more of a medium term project, but we’re definitely, on an ongoing basis, kind of pricing out whether there was a shock to the supply chain, because we need to know how to get our product to where the readers are buying it in a different way or very quickly. We make a choice at some point to make that change. It seems prudent to know how we would go about that and to, on an ongoing basis, understand the financial costs, as well the resource and logistical distraction type costs.

Samir Husni: As they like to say in Europe, in the “golden-olden” days, magazine publishers used to work together, whether it was to establish national distributors, wholesalers… they were always working together. You don’t see that anymore. Has the industry become so fragmented and dominated by publishers that they don’t want to work with each other?

Steven Kotok: I don’t want to overgeneralize, and I’m sure someone can point to a lot of counter examples, but I’ve generally found that on the reader revenue side there’s a lot of collaboration. I mean, publishers who were supposed bitter rivals would always allow each other to mail each other’s mailing lists for direct mail, for example. Not out of the goodness of their hearts, but out of reciprocity. They wanted that ability and they figured if you mailed their people and they mailed your people, the right people are going to subscribe to the right magazine.

On the retail side, it’s a little more competitive for space, but I think there is also collaboration on working to make the larger retail chains understand the value of the magazine retail buyer. People who buy magazines in retail also buy, surprisingly, a lot more groceries and other items.

On the reader side, I think there has always been a lot of collaboration, because it’s not really competitive, people can buy more than one magazine. On the advertising side, I find it’s a little more of a zero-sum game, the ad budgets are fixed and people compete for that. So, I don’t want to overgeneralize, I’m sure people will point to all sorts of ad cooperation, but that’s generally what I’ve seen. And because the U.S. magazine business is kind of more ad-driven, they’re often run by people from that side, but historically I think there has been less of that cooperation than in Europe.

Samir Husni: You mentioned there is cooperation on the retail side, yet you can see that the retail space is shrinking, the nature of the magazines distributed in the retail space is moving from regular frequency magazines to bookazines. And even a giant retailer like Walmart is reducing the space allocated for magazines, yet you have published a magazine specifically for Walmart. Can you elaborate on that?

Steven Kotok: There are trends and then there are individual products. An individual product that is going to connect with the readers is still going to succeed in an up market or a down market. The Whoa, Wait Walmart is designed for that Walmart shopper, the content is shoppable. We worked with Walmart; we followed their guidance and were able to put that Walmart label on the cover and it’s actually one of the rare  magazines sold both in the frontend by the cash registers, but also in the mainline.

So, we had that support with them and Walmart isn’t known as a company that’s not thoughtful about what they do. So, that was based on their understanding of their shopper and their appreciation for what we were offering them. So, I think a good product can still break through decline or growth.

Samir Husni: Why did Walmart choose an ink on paper product for an idea that originated on Instagram?

Steven Kotok: I don’t know that they chose it. I think the Whoa, Wait Instagram account and blog, from two women who have really connected with their audience in a very unique way; I think Walmart was aware of the power of that. I think honestly, if we had come to them with a product that they thought didn’t do what the shopper wanted, we wouldn’t have gotten anywhere with them. They get offered a lot of things all the time, so I don’t think they chose it as much as we made them a pitch based on our partners’ understanding of the Walmart shopper and our understanding of the Walmart shopper. And Walmart believed that we hit it right.

Samir Husni: Bauer has Woman’s World and First for Women, the largest selling magazines on newsstands. Technically, nothing comes close to them, especially with Woman’s World. What’s the secret sauce that you use and why do you think nobody has been able to replicate this formula?

Steven Kotok: I don’t know that anyone is trying to replicate the formula. Again, we build our business from a different revenue model than a lot of these other also great products. As you are, I’m a lover of magazines, so I don’t look around and see a bunch of terrible products and then just two great ones. There are a ton of great products out there, ours happens to be oriented toward the retail buyer. It’s meant to be purchased for a certain use and a certain environment.

Other products are really made more for subscribers and on a more ad-revenue model. And they may be incredibly successful at that, but I don’t know that a lot of other publications are trying to serve the reader that we serve, in the environment that we serve them in. We’re all just doing different things. I do think that we’re the best at what we do, but someone else may be the best at what they do. So, I don’t think others have failed, we’ve just gone a very unique path as part of our European heritage of that kind of reader-driven business model.

Samir Husni: When I look at the numbers, I see that your ad revenues are up, where not too many companies can say that. You have the largest total number of copies sold on newsstands; you’re growing your subscriptions; you’re challenging the retail market – do you feel like a loner in this space, or are you getting ready for call to arms, or is it the New Jersey water instead of New York?

Steven Kotok: (Laughs) On the subscription side it’s really investment; we believe in our connection with the reader. It hasn’t really been as much of a focus in the past, when the retail supply chain was healthier, it wasn’t as much of a need, but we wouldn’t make those investments if they didn’t return to us in the readers responding and subscribing and renewing, but that’s purely from investment.

On the advertising side it definitely comes from hiring great people here. We really focused our message when we focused our company around being a women-focused company. We did a deep reader study and brought those reader insights to the advertising community.

I think a lot of it too is, whether it’s a pendulum or whether it’s a shift, there is a recognition that reader connection is more important than ever. And I think that’s driving, just anecdotally from our experience, and it is from the advertiser’s response, it seems to be driving advertising decisions maybe in a more significant way than it has in the past. Maybe magazines aren’t as glamorous or something, so just the pure efficacy matters more, which is where we think we really separate ourselves with engagement.

It’s hard to say, but I think that there has definitely been a shift and as magazines are trying to get more revenue out of their readers, I think that advertisers also recognize ability to activate is more important. So, we definitely changed our messaging, but I also think what the advertising community values and emphasizes may have shifted as well.

Samir Husni: When you made the decision to sell the celebrity titles and focus on women’s magazines, and in fact refocus the entire Bauer Media in the United States on that, some people asked whether you had lost your mind or just what was going on, the company had launched all of these weeklies and now you were selling them, many may have thought the company was in trouble. As you look back, was that the right decision? And now as a Monday morning quarterback, do you have any regrets or maybe think you should have done something differently, or are you happy with your decision?

Steve Kotok: It was definitely the right decision. The way that category was going, there needed to be an efficiency of one owner of that category. When we looked again, and as Mrs. Bauer said recently, in terms of decades, not in terms of years, as we looked over the real long-term, if we’re going to make that kind of investment, it seemed like making it in the women’s space was the best place to make it. So, we made the decision to sell, but we’re looking to make acquisitions in the U.S., but probably not in that category. AMI is a very good operator and we respect them a lot, but it’s a tough category. Those titles are down pretty significantly on the newsstand.

So, we absolutely know that we made the right decision and it has paid off with the products we have seeing growth, an absolute growth in multiple revenue streams, not just share growth. And we’re going to back that by investing further into the category, whether it’s print or digital. That’s the focus for us really, around the women and health space.

Samir Husni: And did I hear you right when you said you’re looking to acquire or buy?

Steve Kotok: We are. It takes a lot of work to do that, but yes, that’s where we have a big focus going forward into 2020. Again, as a long-term operator we think there are opportunities, whether that’s print properties, like the celebrity portfolio that we think will fare better under AMI’s ownership than maybe things that will fare better under our ownership, or whether it’s more in the digital space. Again, with the focus on properties driven by consumer revenue, or at least consumer action, a consumer performance type of marketing.

Samir Husni: Being the publisher of the only women’s weekly magazine left in the country, a women’s service journalism weekly, have you ever asked yourself why don’t we compete with ourselves and publish another women’s weekly? Or do you think the market can only handle one?

Steve Kotok: We do ask those kind of questions a lot. We look at First for Women, which does so well, and think could we raise the frequency of that? It’s strange because First for Women is maybe the only 17 x per year product out there, but it actually seems to be the right frequency for it. We’ve looked at taking it more frequent and for a variety of reasons I think it’s going to perform better at the frequency it is. So, no, I don’t think we believe there’s a way to slice and dice the market that way. We definitely have ideas, things that we’d love to do editorially, but I just don’t know if that… it’s just so tough to get that retail space now. The investment isn’t just investing in the brand and in the staff, it’s really investing in that real estate. It’s not impossible, but I think a weekly would probably be unlikely.

Samir Husni: What about that retail space? Was it the publishers who devalued the magazines at retail or was it the retailers and the distributors who felt like print was going away? People kept saying print was dead, so why would they carry something that was dying in their stores? Who’s to blame?

Steve Kotok: For some products, their demand may have changed. Obviously, there has been an overall decline in retail sales for some. Maxim, where I used to work, we would sell a million of some issues and those days, selling a young men’s product like that, are gone. So, I do think some of it was a readjustment to what types of products work in that medium. I don’t think it was killed by retailers. Like a Maxim, for example, I don’t think we would still be selling a million if not for the evil retailers. I believe that this rapidly changing society and economy, and what content in what medium people want, does change.

We know that the audience we serve is incredibly engaged in print with our products and there are plenty of products. The growth of the SIP, the bookazine, even with that being so different, that’s been massive growth in a retail print product, which again shows that it may be changing and morphing, but that demand is still there. The smart marketers can kind of keep up with what kind of content people want and in what form.

Samir Husni: Do you feel that whole bookazine market, with Meredith putting out 1,200 titles or more a year, with AMI putting out bookazines… I’ve lost count with all the bookazines on the newsstands.

Steve Kotok: If you’ve lost count, that’s something. (Laughs) You’re the counters of all counters.

Samir Husni: (Laughs too).

 Steve Kotok: There’s probably some oversaturation there, But I don’t think that’s uncommon when there’s a growth area in print. I think we’ve seen that in many categories that showed growth, as you see a little bit of a mini gold rush from oversaturation. I don’t think it’s a great thing and that it will equalize to where it should be, but I think it’s a good thing in the sense that the vitality and growth is there and that people want to invest into that.

If it changes and consumers start wanting something else in the medium that we’re providing, in that retail environment, obviously, someone will figure that out first. Then there will be other people who feel they’re good at connecting with those consumers in the retail environment and they will probably follow again. Hopefully, that happens.

So, yes, it’s concerning when you’re trying to put out your own product. I think last year the total number of SIP/bookazine products increased double digits, but a significant decline per publication, in terms of the average sale per publication. So, that’s obviously concerning, but people who aren’t being successful at it will probably eventually leave the market and those of us who are committed to it will try and continue and hopefully thrive or at least make a living at it.

Samir Husni: If I’m a fly on the wall when you’re meeting with Mrs. Bauer, what success story will you share with her from 2019?

Steve Kotok: First of all, anyone meeting with Mrs. Bauer should be talking about 2020 and 2030 and what they’re doing to build the company she owns. But if she were to ask, I think the successes were really that we’re the only major publisher to have absolute growth in the ad revenue, the absolute year after year growth in the subscription revenue and the continued share growth on the newsstand. The successes as well, being our products in a reader-driven company, the changes we made to Woman’s World based on our reader study, taking it even more toward inspirational type of content. That’s just as important to her. And the kind of editorial success, where we feel like we’re still engaging our readers the way that we want to engage them.

So, I think those are the major successes. We have lots of other little seeds we’re planting, but if we were done talking about 2020 and 2030, I think that’s what is important.

Samir Husni: Would you point out anything to her that you wished the company hadn’t done in 2019?

Steve Kotok: That’s a good question. I think a lot of those are things that you wished you’d done sooner. There are so many things, as much as we want to be a fast-moving company and a low bureaucracy company, there’s still things like the CMS we’re on or certain types of process things, where we could run more efficiently, probably all of those, if we were wiser, we would have gotten there faster. But I don’t think we made any big missteps. I believe there are some things in our own bookazine program that we’ve really made more efficient and more successful, but again, that’s more a matter of things we probably could have done more quickly.

Hopefully, we’ll try enough new things in 2020 that there are a few mistakes, but for this year it was mostly good things that probably could have happened sooner.

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

Steve Kotok: The main thing is a lot of it is the people. We’ve done so much work here internally to get to know each other better and to communicate with each other better. The numbers are great, but the hidden strength is that we are all starting to work really well together. There are a lot of new people here and it has taken us time to get to know each other and I think that’s a strength.

My immediate team is really excellent and the whole team is great. When I got here, the biggest thing that struck me was how proud people were to work at Bauer. They may have loved everything, they may have had things that they wanted to tell me that we could change, but the pride of the people working here was really exciting.

When you see numbers and things like that, the hidden piece of that is all the people working.  And half of the good things or 90 percent of the good things happen where I’m not even going to know about it enough to know that it’s two people working together, figuring out something better that doesn’t make a big Mrs. Bauer presentation. That’s the one missing piece from the numbers that’s worth mentioning.

Samir Husni: What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about you?

Steve Kotok: I’m not sure anyone thinks about me enough to have a misconception. (Laughs)

Samir Husni: (Laughs too).

Steve Kotok: I think people have pretty accurate perceptions. When I was a print guy, people would perceive your ability in a certain way; when I was at the Wirecutter, which was 100 percent digital, people perceived it in a certain way; now I’m at a print company and people perceive it in a certain way. Something that I get when I’m interviewing people is that people’s abilities are  more diverse and flexible than I think most people realize.

The idea, especially in this day and age, of anyone attached to any particular medium is… I get the question all the time, to me I’m a consumer revenue guy, whether that’s print or digital. And I think the same goes for people who are great at connecting with brands and in helping them understand how to spend their promotional money. In this day and age, that kind of transcends the medium. I have no compunction in hiring a print person to sell digital or a digital person to sell print because it becomes such a consultative type of sell that you’re really doing marketing programs for people.

I’m not sure that’s a misconception about me or just media in general, but really it’s about understanding the way a customer, whether that’s a reader or an advertiser, engages with what you’re doing, more than it’s about the medium itself.

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

Steve Kotok: (Laughs) I think when you’re in media, in general, including digital, anyone who started doing this long ago learned that you have to be able to sleep at night. The sky is always somewhat falling, in digital as well, as you see with BuzzFeed and others. I think if you don’t sleep well at night, you should be in a different business, because of its very nature. The idea that you don’t sleep well at night is because something is changing in a scary way, but that’s been the case for 20 years, to the extent that it really shouldn’t be scary anymore.

When I work with younger people in digital, I always tell them and it’s always been borne out, whatever your number one traffic sources are today, you just have to assume they won’t be around in five years because that’s the nature of how this medium changes. Facebook traffic, where people used to get Yahoo linked to whatever; I just think all parts of media, maybe the whole concept of media, at least the parts that I know, are just changing so rapidly. At this point, I sleep very well at night because I expect exactly the level of change that we’re getting, which is rapid and kind of complete. I hope my colleagues are the same because we need great, well-rested people guiding our content company.

Samir Husni: Thank you.