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Women’s Health Magazine Coins “Well-thy” As The New Wealthy. The Mr. Magazine™ Interview With The Magazine’s “True Grit” Publisher, Laura Frerer-Schmidt…

March 9, 2015

“It is such a beautiful print product and I think to be inspired to make real changes in your life, and some of them may be small, such as a lip gloss that’s moisturizing, and some of them are big, like you’re going to think differently about your life, and then some are medium, such as taking the stairs instead of the elevator, but for those kinds of inspiring changes I think print is a great medium for them. It tells a story and it tells it so completely.” Laura Frerer-Schmidt

Women’s Health is well-thy. And if publisher, Laura Frerer-Schmidt has her way, the magazine will stay that way. Laura coined the phrase “well-thy” when she took the health and wellness print product, owned by parent company Rodale, to new heights. Well-thy has become an energetic movement, much like its equally dynamic composer.

I spoke with Laura recently and we discussed everything about Women’s Health and the “well-thy” movement. From events to social to digital to print; Laura prides the magazine on its totally integrated immersion. According to her animated description, the platforms feed off each other, with no way to differentiate where one begins and another leaves off. Circles of action that propel the audience and inspire positive changes in their lives.

And the numbers don’t lie. Under Laura’s leadership, Women’s Health continues to buck the trend remaining up in advertising sales both print and digitally. In 2015, the magazine remains up through the April issue and is poised to be up in May as well. Women’s Health has always remained true to its voice and that is something that advertisers and consumers value highly.

I hope you enjoy this ebullient conversation with a woman who knows how to motivate herself and the people around her with her “True Grit” nature and a positive outlook on the well-thy future…the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Laura Frerer-Schmidt, Publisher, Women’s Health…

But first, the sound-bites.

On coining the phrase well-thy when it comes to the health and wellness category: You know that wealthy is spelled well-thy, so it’s really about a trend. It’s a macro-trend and a micro-trend on many different levels. It’s where wellness is the new cool and is trendy.

On introducing wellness to the Women’s Health equation: It’s a pretty easy connection to make, actually. When you come to our brand, you’re not coming for a sit-back read; you’re not coming to relax, or be entertained, or watch what other people do; it’s less of a cinematic experience and more of an engaged experience, like a triathlon; like life.

On a major stumbling block she envisions facing and how she plans to overcome it: The market in general is not great. And when I say that; I mean the advertising market. And I also mean media overall. I would like to evolve past what we consider our immediate competitors and think of ourselves like a brand; I mean really think of ourselves like a brand, evolve into every area that we’re not touching so far, which there are only a few left.

On how she views the health and wellness competition outside of Rodale: I think that they’re really smart businesses in that they’re recognizing the well-thy trend and they want a piece of it. It’s a huge market. If you look it up, there are articles in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal that have run about the health market and on how it’s expanding. They want those dollars.

On whether she can picture a day where Women’s Health won’t have a print component: No, I can’t. That’s my gut. I’m going to say right off the bat, no.

On anything additional she’d like to add: I think that this is going to be an interesting year for our category. I’m going to say that consumers need to trust brand identity. And that will be an advantage for us this year. That we are true to what we have always been and that we know who we are and we know what we’re about.

On what keeps her up at night: I think brand evolution keeps me up at night and the other thing is I love my team. I’m very, very involved with each and every one of them.

And now the lightly edited transcript of the Mr. Magazine™ conversation with Laura Frerer-Schmidt, Publisher, Women’s Health…

Samir Husni: Congratulations on reaching a milestone; 10 years in today’s magazine publishing world is a major milestone.

Laura Frerer-Schmidt: Thank you.

Samir Husni: You coined the phrase: wellness is the new luxury; so, wellness is the new wealthy. Tell me a little bit more about the genre’ of wellness and why do you view it as the new luxury?

Laura Frerer-Schmidt: You know that wealthy is spelled well-thy, so it’s really about a trend. It’s a macro-trend and a micro-trend on many different levels. It’s where wellness is the new cool and is trendy. It used to not be this way; I’m 47 years old, so I’m old enough to know. I remember the 80s quite well and it used to be about things and logos all over your body, giant cars and giant diamonds.

But today you see many brands from chic, mass brands to very chic, luxury brands leaning toward health, wellness and strength. I just came back from the Personal Care Product Council (PCPC); the largest beauty conference in the country, a lot of magazine people go there, amongst other media types, as well as very large beauty clients. Every brand I spoke with there, from prestige brands to the mass brands, and most of the mass brands consider themselves quite chic; they all spoke about wellness and health. I’m talking about Cover Girl, Pantene, Clinique, Shiseido; there’s a spin on all brands toward health and wellness because when you’re standing around the water purifier with your water bottle, you are talking, bragging about your green drinks or your triathlon or maybe your new electric car that’s powered by Panasonic batteries; this is the life. It’s the well-thy life. It’s an outdoorsy life; it can be skiing, surfing, running; it can be all of these sports that are really growing in great strides and becoming more social.

I think even the social movement across the country is related to wellness. Being connected to others is one of the critical components for wellness. It’s all a part of this lifestyle and our brand. And our brand happens to incorporate all of these things in a unique way; in a way that most women’s brands do not and I think that’s the key to the success we’ve had in this 10th year.

Samir Husni: How do you explain the confusion a lot of people have with the word health versus wellness? I mean, if someone asked you the unique selling proposition of Women’s Health; how would you introduce wellness into the Women’s Health equation?

Laura Frerer-Schmidt: It’s a pretty easy connection to make, actually. The unique proposition of Women’s Health, and it stems directly from Rodale, our parent company, is that when you come to our brand, and we are a very large brand, in print we’re the fourth largest contemporary women’s magazine in the U.S., with 11 million in audience and about 8½ million uniques in digital on comScore and about 18 million on Coremetrics, which makes us really big in audience; it actually makes us the second largest after Cosmo, and the reason why we’ve been growing so much, despite the industry trend, is because we’re an action-based platform, we’re about #transformingyourlife. So when you come to our brand, you’re not coming for a sit-back read; you’re not coming to relax, or be entertained, or watch what other people do; it’s less of a cinematic experience and more of an engaged experience, like a triathlon; like life. Around 98% of our consumers take some sort of action to change their lives by the time they come to the brand; that’s from Beta Research.

So, it’s unique and it’s working, because in today’s world when you come to us, our digital offers an interactive platform, our print offers a rich platform of information that #transforms your life, and then our social allows you to give us immediate feedback. We actually have more interactions on social than anyone in our set. We may not have total friends and followers that are larger, but our interactions per day on those five platforms, right at 8 million, are huge. It’s the circle of interaction, action and connection, because also, if you think about it, I’m pretty sure Rodale is the only fully integrated company for magazines. So, most of them have silos selling digital and print and we’re all integrated. We’ve always been integrated.

The same person who puts together an idea for Olay here, is giving them a digital platform that feeds the print platform that feeds the social platform that feeds an events platform. Then we’re also connected to our international division, which is really healthy. We have 29 editions internationally; Men’s Health is even bigger internationally, and we also have our books and DVD departments that we feed with partnerships as well,

Starbucks is an advertiser in Women’s Health and in many of our other brands and we actually published the CEO’s book. So, everything kind of comes around in this big circle of action and I think it works.

Samir Husni: Laura, you seem to be on Cloud Nine and you’re doing such a wonderful job with the magazine and the advertising shares and the numbers reflect that; what major stumbling block do you envision facing this year as you celebrate the 10th anniversary of the magazine and what’s your plan for overcoming it?

Laura Frerer-Schmidt: That’s an interesting question. Thank you for asking it. (Laughs) I would say the limitations of the market right now. The market in general is not great. And when I say that; I mean the advertising market.

And I also mean media overall. I would like to evolve past what we consider our immediate competitors and think of ourselves like a brand; I mean really think of ourselves like a brand, evolve into every area that we’re not touching so far, which there are only a few left.

I would definitely prefer to be thought of as a brand instead of a magazine, because we’re so much more than that. When you limit yourself to one thing, just digital or just print or just social, just TV, just products or just events; you’re not a powerful enough brand. And there are some really powerful brands in our business, but I look at right now, and they need to evolve. And they can; there’s a lot waiting for them when they evolve past being mainly a print product.

Samir Husni: Do you imagine the market is going to get even more competitive than it is in 2015?

Laura Frerer-Schmidt: We’ll see who survives. I’m very surprised to see some of the brands that I know and love struggling this year. I think sometimes some of the big brands either go away or they go through such big changes that they evolve to become a little bit less of a competitor. We’ve really been true to our brand for the entire 10 years. We’ve evolved for sure, but we haven’t had to create big, sweeping changes around the identity of the brand because it’s been on trend with the whole well-thy movement and I think being smart enough to take advantage of that and to understand what it is the consumer has been loving from us has protected and grown us.

And my real answer to your question is probably it will be more competitive because I think that it’s a winner-take-all situation. I think that more and more companies are going to certain companies or brands and giving them all their money, or most of their money, because they want to see more than just a campaign run; they want to see a movement. So that means, fewer, stronger and better.

Samir Husni: A few months ago Meredith merged Fitness magazine into Shape; Hearst launched Dr. Oz The Good Life; Time Inc. reinvented Health magazine; Condé Nast reinvented Self… As you look at your competitive set; how do you see that wellness/health market outside Rodale competing with you?

Laura Frerer-Schmidt: I think that they’re really smart businesses in that they’re recognizing the well-thy trend and they want a piece of it. It’s a huge market. If you look it up, there are articles in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal that have run about the health market and on how it’s expanding. They want those dollars.

But I’m going to say that it is critical in this field that you be fully integrated as a company, fully integrated. And I mean a person doesn’t have to go to three different people to get digital, print and events. You have ideas that come to you that are movements and they’re movements in a social way and in a digital and print way, and they all feed each other. And I think if you look at the biggest client almost all of us have, Procter & Gamble, and as you may know, over the last year they’ve been moving people all around the country and it’s been a huge change for them, because they’re insisting that all of their brands be integrated, so that there’s not a print team for Cover Girl and then across the country there’s a digital team for Cover Girl; they want it all-in-one.

People are being trained now to handle print, TV, digital, social, events and products; just everything, on one team, because they want that message to be integrated. And Rodale has been fully integrated from the very beginning; we were never siloed in that way. And maybe it’s because we needed to be a little more efficient with our dollars; we couldn’t afford to have that many different teams. (Laughs) We have always had our teams, marketing, sales and editorial be fully integrated in print, digital, books, iTunes content and everything else that we do.

Samir Husni: Can you envision a day where Women’s Health will not exist in print?

Laura Frerer-Schmidt: No, I can’t. That’s my gut. I’m going to say right off the bat, no. It is such a beautiful print product and I think to be inspired to make real changes in your life, and some of them may be small, such as a lip gloss that’s moisturizing, and some of them are big, like you’re going to think differently about your life, and then some are medium, such as taking the stairs instead of the elevator, but for those kinds of inspiring changes I think print is a great medium for them. It tells a story and it tells it so completely.

I also think social is great to get people involved in it, because if you send a text to someone or it’s on Twitter and it says a chicken breast is 100 calories and 10 grams of protein, awesome. It just gets the conversation started. Or even a quote: don’t ask who’s going to let me, ask who’s going to stop me and a link to an article on True Grit.

You need all of these things; you need the quick social; you need the interactive digital, and you need the slightly more in depth storytelling of print. And I think that they speak to each other in a way. That’s why our circulation has been strong, our digital and social has grown so much. I think our numbers can be attributed back too all of the platforms linked to each other and it’s a fact, we know that over 30% of our digital traffic comes from social. It’s the circle of a conversation.

Samir Husni: You sound as energetic as the pages of the magazine. What makes Laura click and tick every morning and every day?

Laura Frerer-Schmidt: Oh my goodness, I was born this way. (Laughs)

Samir Husni: (Laughs too) You’re starting to sound like Lady Gaga, born this way.

Laura Frerer-Schmidt: Just like everything in life, my personality has good things about it, and not such good things about it. (Laughs) One of the good things is that my whole life, since I was a kid, I have been a very gritty person. It’s actually a quality measured by Harvard scientists called grit that trumps good looks, intelligence, money and physical prowess. You can win the Olympics and be the third best athlete if you have it.

The reason why I came to Women’s Health, and this is another thing that actually makes me tick; I came to Women’s Health because I read an article in the magazine about True Grit and I was so blown away by it. I starting talking to a couple of the folks here, and about six months later they called and said they needed me to come in. (Laughs)

So, whatever it is that makes me tick, there is definitely a thread of it throughout the brand. And that’s probably what you’re hearing.

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

Laura Frerer-Schmidt: I think that this is going to be an interesting year for our category. There is a lot of change going on with Shape and Fitness merging, as you mentioned, and even Self has gone through a repositioning that was pretty dramatic. I’m going to say that consumers need to trust brand identity. And that will be an advantage for us this year. That we are true to what we have always been and that we know who we are and we know what we’re about. Being true to your brand for your consumer is going to be critical in many ways this year. I believe it will affect everyone’s circulation, their digital audience, social, and then it will affect advertising.

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

Laura Frerer-Schmidt: My renovations. (Laughs) I’m renovating a house. That’s what keeps me up at night for real. But here, I would say, and it’s not a bad thing, it’s a good thing; is the excitement. But sometimes excitement can keep you up. We’re evolving our brand this year and we’ll come to you and tell you more about it, we had things actually happen this morning and last week, and there are some real and unusual new brand evolutions that will be happening that we’re stewarding through that I think will be unique in the industry.

I think brand evolution keeps me up at night and the other thing is I love my team. I’m very, very involved with each and every one of them. I know everything about their lives, or as much as can be known. I help them choose their wedding invitations; I help them get through bad breakups; I help them find an apartment they want to buy; I look at the floor plan with them; I show up and go there; I think Women’s Health is an interesting place because everyone here has evolved their life in some way, which is kind of what the magazine does and what the brand does.

So, I think it’s interesting that people are getting married and having babies and buying their first place, running their first marathon and doing so many things, and if something ever happens with them, and they’re people, they’re humans, stuff happens; I think about and I want to help. And it’s not just because I’m a great person, they are my profits. This is a business about people. It’s about consumers and it’s about the people who create the brands.

So with all these people running around the office, I have to make sure that they’re in a culture that supports them and uplifts them, but that they also are fulfilled and that they’re doing the best that they possibly can. I think about my people a lot.

Samir Husni: Thank you.

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Magazines As Reflectors: The Social Role of the American Consumer Magazines…The Size, Role & Future of Consumer Magazines: A Blast from Mr. Magazine’s™ Past… Dissertation Entries Part 3

March 6, 2015

The social role of magazines: we continue with reflection.

1983

2. Magazines as Reflectors

There is no better way to know what the new trends are in American society than to visit the local newsstands and take a look at the newest magazines that have been published. A visitor to the newsstands in early 1983 will see a huge display of magazines dealing with computers and video games. In 1982, the same was true with magazines dealing with health and fitness. Science had its share of the market earlier with six new magazines published, all with the promise to deliver science to the public in a language it can understand.

The magazine, throughout its history, has been a reflector of American life, or, as Ronald Wolseley put it, “what the owners think is American life.” Wolseley noted that “the solid values of the lives of millions of American families are reported by the national magazine, unsensationally but vividly and accurately, in articles and fiction, in pictures and illustrations.”

Drawing on Marshall McLuhan’s hot and cool theory, Wolseley developed a “much less startling theory,” yet one that he thought might be useful. “The magazines of any nation exist in circles corresponding to the circles created by the interests of the population,” Wolseley’s theory stated. That is to say that magazines play the role of a mirror of society reflecting between their covers week after week what is going on in the real life.

John Tebbel seems to support Wolseley’s theory when he says that magazines “have always faithfully reflected the society in which they are produced.” Tebbel believed that magazines have been, are, and will be reflectors of life in America. He considers this one of their most important functions. “Anyone who wants to understand what Americans thought and believed in the twenties, must read the back issues of the Saturday Evening Post of that decade.”

The above information was written in 1983 and is taken from a portion of my dissertation when I was at the University of Missouri-Columbia where I obtained my doctorate in journalism. And while the majority of the material still holds true, things have changed drastically in some areas.

2015

When you look in a mirror; what do you see? Your own reflection, of course, a mirror image of your features, expression and persona staring back at you.

Now, hold the cover of a magazine up in front of that same mirror; what do you see? Society’s reflection, without a doubt, a mirror image of the interests, issues and trends that hold importance for most American lives. And it doesn’t matter the content of that cover; whether it’s Gwyneth Paltrow on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar, or Mark Zuckerberg, Time’s Person of the Year for 2010; the symmetry and rhythm of whatever topics featured with any given issue, resonate with human beings everywhere.

This is what a print magazine does best: it reflects the souls and mindsets of the human consumer and engages their concerns and delights in a way no other medium ever has or ever will. It was true in 1983 and it still rings resoundingly accurate for the 21st century.

Mimicking cultures and menageries of people is a natural action for magazines; after all they are only echoing what’s going on around them; so, it’s not the fact that they’re capable of doing it; it’s the fact that they do it with such gusto and impact that no other medium can compete. That is the doorstopper; the wedge of ink on paper steel that digital, mobile and even television, can’t pry from beneath print’s portal, the place where the audience finds that ultimate connection and jolt.

So, was John Tebbel right? Have magazines “always faithfully reflected the society in which they are produced?”

• In January 1961, the cover of Time magazine featured Jacqueline Kennedy, apropos of the time since her husband was being inaugurated as President of the United States that same month.
• December 18-24, 1971; TV Guide had the Partridge Family on its cover, as the highly popular show was in its second season by then.

• Kelly LeBrock on the March 1981 cover of Cosmopolitan, a face of the 80s that at the time was considered one of the sexiest women in Hollywood.

• April 1991, Princess Diana graces the cover of Good Housekeeping, vowing to never get a divorce, her response to media when her marriage had begun to fall apart in the early 90s.

• Newsweek’s September 24, 2001 special report cover after the horrible 9/11 tragedy: “After the Terror – God Bless America.”

• The June 2011 issue of O – The Oprah Magazine, dedicated to the 25th and last season of The Oprah Winfrey Show.

• March 2015 cover of Rolling Stone, Madonna shows she still has what it takes to grace the cover of one of the most popular music magazines around.

And these are only a few from the gargantuan list of magazine covers that have distinguished the nation’s newsstands over the decades. Looking at just the above list, I would say John Tebbel hit the print nail on the head when he stated: “magazines have always faithfully reflected the society in which they are produced.”

Wouldn’t you agree?

Until next week, when Mr. Magazine™ talks about the entertainment role magazines have played and still do in our world yesterday and today… and remember, if it is not ink on paper, it is not a magazine.™

Posted in A Mr. Magazine™ Musing, Magazine Power, News and Views | Leave a Comment »

Nifty At Fifty: The Never-Aging, Always-Rocking Cosmopolitan Magazine. The Mr. Magazine™ Interview With Donna Kalajian Lagani, Senior Vice President, Publishing Director & Chief Revenue Officer, Cosmopolitan…

March 5, 2015

“The whole idea of this one-to-one; she (Helen Gurley Brown) used to say that she wanted to have a one-to-one conversation with millions of women at the same time. So that whole idea of community, which is now what everyone is talking about, that’s something that Cosmo has always had. We’ve always said that we were the first interactive medium. Before there was an internet, there was Cosmo.” Donna Kalajian Lagani

Addictive content, beautiful models that articulate style and fashion to readers, and a core concept created by the woman who started it all – Helen Gurley Brown – that is based on relationships and the ability to openly discuss every aspect of the male-female, family-to-family connection. That is the definition of success; that is Cosmopolitan.

Recently, I was in New York and had the chance to speak with Donna Kalajian Lagani, Senior Vice President, Publishing Director and Chief Revenue Officer of Cosmopolitan. Donna is an open, friendly and totally animated person who welcomed me in her office on the 38th floor of the Hearst Tower. She shared her thoughts on Cosmo’s upcoming 50th birthday and its past and, more importantly, the brand’s future.

We talked about what it takes to keep a magazine fresh and successful with its readers after 50 years on the newsstands and how the brand is pivotal in its presentation, in terms of its digital/print relationship. The conversation was lively, fun, and totally a joy to participate in. I hope you have as much enjoyment reading it as I did visiting with the inimitable Ms. Lagani. Cosmopolitan is a world filled with beauty, fashion and advice that you might not necessarily get from your mother, but you’d definitely get from your best friend.

But first the sound-bites…

Sound-bites:

On the secret ingredient that continues to make Cosmopolitan click, tick and stick with its audience: I think it’s that we understand in this country and all around the world, one of the most important things to women is to talk about their relationships. Relationships with their family, boyfriends and their girlfriends; and if you look at any pop culture today, any television shows or movies; it all comes back to the relationships.

On Cosmopolitan’s sense of community that has been going strong for 50 years: You brought up something great when you talked about Helen; the whole idea of this one-to-one; she used to say that she wanted to have a one-to-one conversation with millions of women at the same time. So that whole idea of community, which is now what everyone is talking about, that’s something that Cosmo has always had. We’ve always said that we were the first interactive medium. Before there was an internet, there was Cosmo.

On whether the brand would exist without the print component: Sure, I think the community would exist. Of course it would. It would be a different community and certainly shaped differently. But the magazine isn’t going anywhere. I like to say when the earth is over there will be cockroaches and there will be Cosmo. We are an enduring brand through thick and thin.

On the major stumbling block the magazine faces today and how she plans to overcome it: What we often hear from advertisers is digital, digital, digital. I think one of the stumbling blocks is that younger marketers coming up in the business are being brought up by digital media. That’s what they know the best and that’s what they’re the most comfortable with. And we just need to be sure that we continue to educate them and have them understand that when someone crawls into bed at night or boards a plane or goes to the beach, and they’re reading a magazine, there is something very close and intimate about that.

On why she believes Hearst never stopped investing or believing in their print product: It’s that the consumer demand was and is still there. As long as we have 17 million women every month who are reading Cosmo; that’s really powerful. So, why shouldn’t we invest in something that consumers are showing incredible demand for? And innovation is just part of what we always do.

On how she combats the stereotype of sex-only that the magazine seems to have cultivated: I think that stereotype comes from people who don’t read the magazine; that may be their perception and we know that perceptions are very difficult to overcome. But what we have to do is to show people what we’re actually doing.

On her most pleasant moment over the last 20 years at Cosmo: Maybe because it has just happened, but I would have to say standing up on the stage in Times Square and looking 360° around and seeing Cosmo everywhere put a shiver up my spine and tears in my eyes.

On what keeps her up at night: Just thinking about all the fun and exciting new things that we can continue to do with the brand. What’s next and what’s new?

And now the lightly edited transcript of the Mr. Magazine™ conversation with Donna Kalajian Lagani, Senior Vice President, Publishing Director and Chief Revenue Officer of Cosmopolitan.

Samir Husni: You have a brand that’s 50 years old, yet it’s still going as strong as ever. What’s the secret ingredient that makes Cosmopolitan continue to click, tick and stick with its audience?

Donna Kalajian Lagani: I think it’s that we understand in this country and all around the world, one of the most important things to women is to talk about their relationships. Relationships with their family, boyfriends and their girlfriends; and if you look at any pop culture today, any television shows or movies; it all comes back to the relationships. And that’s what differentiates Cosmo from any other women’s media brand that’s out there. We really understand that relationships are the heart and core of everything.

If you’ve been around for 50 years that also means that you have had to adapt, change and stay very modern. And I would say Helen Gurley Brown, of course, who was the founder of our brand and the long-time, four-decade editor set the standard. Three years ago when Joanna Coles, our editor-in-chief, came over, she elevated everything about the brand. She kept the heart and the core and the DNA of Cosmopolitan the same as Helen had it, which was important. And remember when Helen launched our magazine, she was at the beginning of the women’s movement, the beginning of the sexual revolution and believed that women could have it all, believed that our mission as a brand was to empower women to have whatever they wanted.

Joanna comes onboard three years ago; she dusts off the original mission and brings back the original DNA of our brand to be all about empowerment. And she’s brought smarter voices into the magazine; she’s just elevated everything. So, on one hand, we’re 50 years old and on the other, we change every moment. The photographers, models and the stylists; everything has been elevated in the magazine and that has kept us really fresh.

And it’s not just about the magazine. It’s about the community of Cosmo, which is so much bigger than just the magazine. On our website; we’re up to 30 million unique visitors a month, that’s huge, and 9 million social followers.

Samir Husni: I remember a quote from Helen Gurley Brown where she was telling her husband after she published the book, Sex and the Single Girl, that she was getting all these letters and having to spend a lot of time answering them, and he asked her why she just didn’t do a magazine so that she could respond to everyone at the same time.

Donna Kalajian Lagani: That’s exactly right.

Samir Husni: So this sense of community has been going strong for 50 years. And Cosmo is still, by far, the leading selling magazine on college campuses; the second or third largest-selling monthly on the newsstands; yet you hear people in ad agencies and other places saying young women don’t read anymore. We don’t have anyone coming to us to advertise in print any longer. Why do you think there is this stereotype that’s as far from reality as you can get? Do you face those problems when you call on advertisers, telling you that young women no longer read print anymore?

Donna Kalajian Lagani: We face it, but it can also be just a negotiation ploy. They’re using that as a way to negotiate with us, perhaps. But you brought up something great when you talked about Helen; the whole idea of this one-to-one; she used to say that she wanted to have a one-to-one conversation with millions of women at the same time. So that whole idea of community, which is now what everyone is talking about, that’s something that Cosmo has always had. We’ve always said that we were the first interactive medium. Before there was an internet, there was Cosmo.

So, are women reading magazines? Of course they are. We’re selling 3 million copies a month; we’re reaching 17 million women every month. But we have to do more than that; we have to be everywhere that 18 to 34-year-old is; we have to make sure that we’re intersecting with her. So when she wakes up in the morning and rolls out of bed, reaches for her phone; the first thing she wants to see is cosmo.com.

And what we’re doing now with Snapchat is very cool. We’re not supposed to be telling numbers, but I can tell you this; we guarantee 700,000 views per day and we’re over-delivering above that, 700,000 views per day of Cosmo on Snapchat. That tells us that our community has a thirst for this information, not only monthly with the magazine, but daily online and certainly daily on Snapchat.

Samir Husni: Do you think that community would exist without the print magazine?

Donna Kalajian Lagani: That’s a great question. Sure, I think the community would exist. Of course it would. It would be a different community and certainly shaped differently. But the magazine isn’t going anywhere. I like to say when the earth is over there will be cockroaches and there will be Cosmo. We are an enduring brand through thick and thin. You said it: we’re the number one best-sold magazine on college campuses and yes, we still are the best-sold magazine on the newsstands.

Samir Husni: What is the major stumbling block that you’re facing today and how do you plan on overcoming it?

Donna Kalajian Lagani: I would say what you said, what we often hear from advertisers is digital, digital, digital. I think one of the stumbling blocks is that younger marketers coming up in the business are being brought up by digital media. That’s what they know the best and that’s what they’re the most comfortable with. And we just need to be sure that we continue to educate them and have them understand that when someone crawls into bed at night or boards a plane or goes to the beach, and they’re reading a magazine, there is something very close and intimate about that, especially for beauty and fashion advertisers where it’s all about the color and seeing and touching and being able to rip out; I don’t think that’s ever going to go away, that whole tactile experience. Do you think that’ll ever go away?

Samir Husni: Oh, I agree, it never will. In fact, I’m known in the industry as the one who defines a magazine as: if it’s not ink on paper, then it’s not a magazine. I even trademarked that phrase.

Donna Kalajian Lagani: There you go; I love that. I think what we have to keep doing is showing marketers all the innovative things that can be done in our magazine that does break through.

Two things: it’s our 50th birthday, so we thought OK, we knew it was coming; it wasn’t a surprise. We planned on it and said, OK – let’s celebrate our 50th and we are Cosmo; we only know how to do things in a very big way; what could we do that would make a very big brand statement? Do you know what we did on New Year’s Eve? We went to Times Square on New Year’s Eve and we had 30,000 pink hats and balloons, we had two musical stages; everywhere you looked that night was Cosmopolitan. And every single person that I have spoken to since saw what we did on New Year’s Eve, because it was live-streamed on Cosmo.com everywhere around the world. So, that was sort of a big, big brand way to say: here we are, this is Cosmo, and we’re powerful. And everyone got that.

Then every single month this year, and there are such cool things that you can do with print; we’ve done special sections or units every month in the magazine. We did this in partnership with Cover Girl. And what we did is took their Colorlicious brand, which is their new line of lipsticks that have four different shades, we took the colors to make it really native, you’ve heard of native advertising for digital, we did native advertising for print, and we took the background of the colors of the magazine and made it into the same color family as the lipstick.

And we just did a cover peel-off where with the subscriber covers we actually take the ad and put it on the front cover of the magazine with the Cosmo logo. It’s very intrusive and it really stands out. And that’s the kind of thing that can really be done only in print.

For the March issue we did a multiple cover with Lancome. In April, and it’s not out yet; with Unilever, we developed a big section on hair. So their ad: Cosmo cover hair secrets inside, which tells the consumer to open up the magazine, and then becomes what we call a nested booklet; it’s 24 pages of content, all with advertising from Unilever brand. Then it can be removed and held onto.

Samir Husni: Why are Hearst Magazines in general and Cosmo specifically, doing a lot of this innovation in print? If you look at the paper quality of your magazines and the size; Hearst did not ignore print while running after digital. Hearst invested in print, and went after digital, providing the customer with both. Why?

Donna Kalajian Lagani: It’s that the consumer demand was and is still there. As long as we have 17 million women every month who are reading Cosmo; that’s really powerful. That’s bigger than the top-ten network television shows, in terms of a GRP. If Cosmo were a rating point in magazine brand alone; we’d be bigger than the top-ten TV shows. So, why shouldn’t we invest in something that consumers are showing incredible demand for? And innovation is just part of what we always do. That’s what makes me wake up in the morning; what am I going to do today that’s different from yesterday? And that’s what makes my job so much fun. I have so much fun at my job, if you can’t tell. (Laughs) I love my job. And part of what is so much fun about it is that I’ve been here for 20 years and I’ve never had the same job two years in a row. Every year we’re doing something different; every year we’re recreating something. And that’s what a media brand is and does; we’re this living, breathing thing that we have to keep nurturing and coming up with new things to do to keep the audience and the advertisers delighted.

Samir Husni: Give me a synopsis on a day-in-the-life of Donna.

Donna Kalajian Lagani: I wake up in the morning and roll out of bed; I look at Cosmo.com, download what I’m going to read for the day onto my tablet; I make breakfast every morning for my 17-year-old son, when he’ll let me. (Laughs) And then the day gets really busy; I spend a lot of time out of the office and with clients. I spend a lot of time ideating about all of the cool new things we could be doing with the brand and I’m out on the streets all the time with our salespeople. And that’s why I have fun.

Samir Husni: Does your 17-year-old son read Cosmo? Just so he can know the mind of the opposite sex, maybe?

Donna Kalajian Lagani: He does sometimes. But his 17-year-old girlfriend does. (Laughs)

Samir Husni: How do you feel about the fact that when most people think about Cosmo, they think about sex, when we know that there is much more to Cosmo than just sex. How do you combat such a stereotype?

Donna Kalajian Lagani: I think that when Joanna Coles came onboard and pivoted the editorial, it made that objection pretty much go away. We are reporting on Washington; we’re reporting on politics; we’re reporting on women’s health issues; we just won an ASME award last year for the excellent piece we did on contraception.

I think that stereotype comes from people who don’t read the magazine; that may be their perception and we know that perceptions are very difficult to overcome. But what we have to do is to show people what we’re actually doing. I’ve always said, and I don’t know whose quote this is, but I’ve stolen it and it’s a good one; you’re entitled to your own opinion, but you’re not entitled to your own facts. And the facts are that of course we cover relationships; sex is an important part of what we do at the magazine; it’s an important part of what all girls are about today, but the amount of beauty, fashion and journalism and health that we do exceeds that. So, those are the facts.

Samir Husni: In 2008 we were hit by a double whammy: the economy crashed and technology really came onto the scene. Do you recall how life was before 2008 and then right after?

Donna Kalajian Lagani: Oh, yes, definitely. (Laughs) Before 2008 people were marketers who spent more in advertising-to-sales in overall advertising. I think after that everyone really tightened on the amount they were doing as an advertising-to-percentage-of-sales ratio. And the internet was there, but it didn’t come up in every conversation.

But that doesn’t bother me because it’s such an important part of our brand. We love the internet; I love mobile and I love the tablet and what we’re doing on Snapchat; it’s just part of who our community is. And what’s fascinating about it is the duplication is practically nothing. The duplication between our magazine brand and our digital brand is only 3 or 4%, so that says to me that the community of Cosmo is only getting larger. And isn’t that a good thing for us at the Hearst Corporation and isn’t it a great thing for marketers too?

Samir Husni: I know that the duplication of content is very little.

Donna Kalajian Lagani: Very little.

Samir Husni: Is their audience duplication, or do you know?

Donna Kalajian Lagani: That’s what I’m saying; 3 to 4% duplication is it. So that’s why the footprint is just getting larger.

Samir Husni: Five years from now, you and I are sitting and talking about Cosmo at 55; what will you tell me?

Donna Kalajian Lagani: That it’s as beautiful and young as ever. We will continue to have a very large print footprint and probably an even larger mobile footprint.

Samir Husni: Many publishers had put a lot of odds and wagers on the iPad; on the tablet, and then five years later nothing really came from it. Now are we moving our wagers from the tablet to mobile?

Donna Kalajian Lagani: Well, I wouldn’t count the tablet out. We still have about 200,000 subscriptions that are sold – paid for. And I would suppose as the tablet increases in just the percentage of Americans who own one, that that number will probably continue to grow. Mobile is a big play. Right now, 65% of all of our traffic comes from mobile. So, girls that are reading Cosmo.com; they’re all doing it either on their mobile phone or on their tablet. It’s very important today and will probably be more important five years from now.

Samir Husni: You’ve been at Cosmo for 20 years; what has been the most pleasant moment for you? An experience that you can remember thinking: Wow!

Donna Kalajian Lagani: Maybe because it has just happened, but I would have to say standing up on the stage in Times Square and looking 360° around and seeing Cosmo everywhere put a shiver up my spine and tears in my eyes. I was literally teary-eyed thinking, oh my goodness, Helen, you’re up there in the universe looking at this great brand. It was a very proud moment for our brand. (See Times Square picture above).

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

Donna Kalajian Lagani: We’re doing a lot of really fun stuff to celebrate 50 years; we touched on Unilever and next month in Austin, Texas, South by Southwest, for the first time, is doing something called South by Style, which is sort of the convergence of technology and fashion and Cosmopolitan is the their media partner. We have a 1,000 sq. foot space where we’ll be having incredible speakers come in and talk and it’ll be a place where women can come and listen to those great speakers and at the same time get their hair touched up and get their nails redone; just a place to unwind a little. And our sponsors for that are Intel and Cover Girl.

And in May, we’re doing two big birthday issues; why have one birthday per year, when you can have two? In that May issue we have an iconic cover; I can’t tell you who it is. But for that same issue we have a spectacular opening that’s done by L’Oreal Paris; they’re doing a butterfly gate of advertising, adjacent to a very interesting, cool cover model.

In November is our other big issue for the year and we’re going to celebrate with a heck of a party; I hope you’re in New York; you can come and hang out with us.

Samir Husni: Just send me an invite and I’ll be here. Now, my typical last question; what keeps you up at night?

Donna Kalajian Lagani: Just thinking about all the fun and exciting new things that we can continue to do with the brand. What’s next and what’s new? What’s going to delight the reader and the advertiser?

Samir Husni: Thank you.

Posted in Innovation in print, Magazine Power, News and Views, The Mr. Magazine™ Interview | 1 Comment »

Newsweek One Year After The Print Re-Launch: Profitable And Self Sustaining. The Mr. Magazine™ Interview with Newsweek’s Editor in Chief Jim Impoco.

March 4, 2015

The story of Newsweek is unlike any other magazine story. Born in 1933 and killed in print in 2012 under the watchful eye and leadership of one of the most celebrated editors of our time, Newsweek was bought by IBT Media and relaunched in print in 2014. And like the phoenix, it rose from the ashes and its dismal fate to become better than ever.

With a different publishing and business model, Newsweek now sets the standard of what a weekly should be. It looks and reads like a monthly, but is published on a weekly basis. I asked Jim Impoco, Newsweek’s editor in chief, who oversaw the relaunch of the weekly a year ago, about the reasons behind the success of Newsweek today, a year after its relaunch. His answers are sweet and short, but adds a lot to the story of Newsweek, the little magazine engine that could:

Samir Husni: Now that Newsweek is celebrating its first year after its return to print, what did Jim Impoco do that Tina Brown did not do?

Jim Impoco: The main difference is that we got to try a different business model with a more targeted, limited distribution. That option was not available before. We’ve discovered that Newsweek is a pretty hard brand to kill off and expect that to remain so.

Samir Husni: What was the major stumbling block you’ve faced during the relaunch and how were you able to overcome it…

Jim Impoco: We relaunched with the Bitcoin cover and it created a fair amount of controversy on social media platforms. Our view on that story has never changed and we were happy to have opened up the conversation.

Samir Husni: What was the most pleasant moment during this one year journey?

Jim Impoco: Expenditures coming into alignment with spending – ie, we became profitable and self sustaining. And we’ve produced hard-hitting long-form journalism that has moved the dial.

Samir Husni: If we are to look into the future, where do you see Newsweek a year from now?

Jim Impoco: With the caveat that our crystal ball is still in Beta, we expect to grow the whole operation as well as our audience, and remain in the thick of the news business.

Samir Husni: What do you consider the most important three issues you’ve published this past year.

Jim Impoco: ISIS Inc., Somaly Mam, Bitcoin

Samir Husni: Do you feel you set the bar high for what a newsweekly should be in print in this digital age?

Jim Impoco: Who has time to set bars? We’re just happy to be in the gym.

Samir Husni: What keeps Jim Impoco up at night?
Jim Impoco: Caffeine. Questions about what keeps Jim Impoco up at night.

Samir Husni: Thank you.

Posted in Magazine Power, News and Views, The Mr. Magazine™ Interview | Leave a Comment »

New Magazine Launches: A February To Remember

March 2, 2015

While most of us have had a ‘Frozen’ February and had to ‘Sift’ through quite bit of snow and ice; new magazines have kept right up with Mother Nature’s upheavals. From Disney’s new children’s bi-monthly magazine, Frozen, to the epicurean delight of Sift; new titles offered a warm haven to escape to during a cold winter month that for most of us went beyond the mere chill of wintry winds and cold temperatures.

February 2015 saw 65 new titles hit newsstands, with 16 of those launches promising regular frequency. Specials were once again diversely niche, offering everything from March Madness to The Sound of Music. Cooking and eating healthy remained a strong voice in new magazines and also book-a-zines devoted to notable topics such as The Civil Rights Movement, Science & Entertainment.

So, I hope you enjoy the beautiful covers for February 2015 and are getting ready for spring renewal with warmer temperatures and sunshiny days and more new magazines to discover in the marvelous month of March!

To check and see each and everyone of the February magazine launches click here.

Posted in New Launches, News and Views | 1 Comment »

The Social Role of the American Consumer Magazines…The Size, Role & Future of Consumer Magazines: A Blast from Mr. Magazine’s™ Past… Dissertation Entries Part 2.

February 27, 2015

1983

The social role of magazines: we start with education…

1. Magazines as Educators

Consider any subject that comes to mind and the chances are good that there is a magazine to cover it. Indeed, magazines could be considered up-to-date encyclopedias. The depth of information that a reader gains from magazines cannot be found in any other mass medium. With the increase of variety in magazines year after year, much more so than any other medium, magazine readers are offered a wealth of reading matter that assists them in their pursuit of knowledge and education. Roland E. Wolseley in his book The Changing Magazine referred to this huge content of the magazine as “a jungle of reading matter.”

The educational role of the American magazine was recognized even in its earliest years. In 1788, George Washington wrote a letter to Philadelphia publisher Matthew Carey in which he expressed the hope that American magazines would succeed because he considered them “easy vehicles of knowledge” that are “more happily calculated than any other, to preserve the liberty, stimulate the industry and meliorate the moral of an enlightened and free people.” John Tebbel, commenting on Washington’s letter, noted that magazines were incomparably better purveyors of knowledge than the newspapers of Washington’s time.

The above information was written in 1983 and taken from a portion of my dissertation when I was at the University of Missouri-Columbia where I obtained my doctorate in journalism. And while the majority of the material still holds true, things have changed drastically in some areas.

2015

Magazines have always worn many hats when it comes to the roles they play in our society. From the days of Washington to the instantaneous information highway of today’s digital age; the printed magazine has blazed the trail of tomorrow and it always will.

One important representation they delivered then and still do now is the execution of educating society. While the internet offers us information with just a “click,” there is one blaringly relevant fact that the ease of the mouse can’t argue with: before one gleans that knowledge that awaits them in cyberspace, one must know what the heck they’re looking for. Think about that for a moment.

Mr. Magazine™ in his official role as a professor and educator.

Before Google or Bing or any other search engine can “educate” you; your fingers have to compose the knowledge that you seek in the form of a question or a statement first. And that’s all well and good; provided you already know what you’re trying to learn. If that sounds confusing; let me simplify:

The definition of learning is knowledge acquired through experience, study, or being taught. And while a subject that you’re familiar with or partially know about is an apropos goose to drive to the internet’s market; what about things that you’ve never heard of before or even thought about? How do you Google those? The answer is simple: you don’t.

But with a magazine you can be intrigued by a cover or a tagline; pick it up from the newsstand and flip through it; see a story on how to decorate your home on $2.50 and before you know it; you’re learning about something that you had no idea you were ever interested in.

But that’s just one way magazines educate us and broaden our mind spans. They also help us to digest unbelievable issues that face our world today. Things like bombings and unexpected deaths and the controversies that sometimes plague our political scene.

And with the ever-growing population of niche magazines out there; there is no limit to our ability to pinpoint a topic and delve into it. From raising your own hybrid chickens to cultivating a crop of yucca plants; there is a magazine for it. And new ones are being born each and every day.

In 1983 I wrote: Consider any subject that comes to mind and the chances are good that there is a magazine to cover it. Indeed, magazines could be considered up-to-date encyclopedias. The depth of information that a reader gains from magazines cannot be found in any other mass medium.

In 2015 I write: Consider any subject that comes to mind and the chances are good that there is a magazine to cover it. Indeed, magazines could be considered up-to-date search engines that know what you’re interested in before you do. The depth of information that a reader gains from magazines cannot be found in any other mass medium.

Magazines are a fount of knowledge by their very existence and they remain today exactly as they were in 1788 when Washington wrote his letter to Matthew Carey: “easy vehicles of knowledge” that are “more happily calculated than any other, to preserve the liberty, stimulate the industry and meliorate the moral of an enlightened and free people.”

In other words, Professor Magazine is in the house…

Until next week, when Mr. Magazine™ weighs in on magazines as reflectors of our society…

Posted in A Mr. Magazine™ Musing, Magazine Power, News and Views | Leave a Comment »

Making Digital Permanent OffScreen: The Mr. Magazine™ Interview With Founder/Editor Kai Barch. A Launch Story

February 26, 2015

“There were a number of reasons (he chose print) and one of the first was really quite selfish. I was doing web designs for clients and I got really tired of producing something that didn’t last very long; whenever you create a website or some other digital design, it lives as long as the next release cycle or the next version number.” Kai Brach

Issue 10 of Offscreen magazine.

There is absolutely no doubt that we live in a digital age. From our laptops to our smartphones; being onscreen is a way of life for humans these days. But who are the people out there molding the web and building these virtual worlds that we all so embrace? Where are their stories; their tales of success and failure? Finally there’s a magazine that points to that place on the map; that continent called Cyber.

Offscreen is a print magazine all about people who use the internet and technology to be creative, solve problems, and build successful businesses. It’s an ink on paper that embraces digital – some might say integration at its best.

Kai Brach is a one man operation of Offscreen; he is the publisher, editor and art director for the publication. For ten years he was a web designer before he decided that he needed something more tangible than the virtual worlds of the internet to fulfill him. He needed to feel his work would last beyond mere pixels; he needed the collectability of print. He needed more than a software update; he needed the final version.

I spoke with Kai recently through Skype from his home in Melbourne, Australia. We talked about the life of a web-designer-turned-print-publisher; the fact that he taught himself InDesign and the basics of Magazines 101. Kai is an extremely ingenious and talented young man who knew what it would take to lift him to the next level of his creativity – from pixels to print – he found fulfillment in the printed word.

So sit back and enjoy this unique conversation with a man who learned for the first time what the phrase ‘final version’ truly means – a printed magazine – the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Kai Brach, Publisher & Editor, Offscreen…

But first the sound-bites:

On why a web designer would choose a printed product: There were a number of reasons and one of the first was really quite selfish. I was doing web designs for clients and I got really tired of producing something that didn’t last very long; whenever you create a website or some other digital design, it lives as long as the next release cycle or the next version number.

On the launch of Offscreen: It was a weird feeling because you send it off and a few weeks later this product, this magazine, comes back; especially for someone who hasn’t ever done anything in print before; it was a pretty amazing experience.

On his major stumbling block with the launch: On the editorial side, and I still find this really challenging, working with 40 or 50 different contributors and getting them to give you what you want when you need it. That was and still is the biggest challenge of making any magazine; it’s working with the contributors.

On his most pleasant surprise: The good thing was when I got the first issue in the mail, that was great, but what was even better was seeing other people get it in the mail and talk about it on Twitter and put the photos on Instagram, letting me know that opening the mail smelled amazing and that they had completely forgotten that print had these other multi-sensory experiences that they don’t get when they sit in front of a screen all day.

On whether he would ever work in the digital realms again: Sure. I think everything has an expiration date and every project we do comes to an end at some point and I would never say I would not go back to digital.

On what keeps him up at night: I think most of my worries that give me sleepless nights relate to contributors who are not getting back to me or are being late or telling me that they can’t do something at the last minute. Contributor worries definitely keep me up at night.

And now the lightly edited transcript of the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Kai Brach, Publisher & Editor, Offscreen…

Samir Husni: I was fascinated with your own personal digital background and the content of your magazine is all about the web and digital. Why did you choose print for your magazine?

Kai Brach, founder, editor and publisher Offscreen magazine.

Kai Brach: There were a number of reasons and one of the first was really quite selfish. I was doing web designs for clients and I got really tired of producing something that didn’t last very long; whenever you create a website or some other digital design, it lives as long as the next release cycle or the next version number. So you produce something and it’s online now and two weeks later it’s already changed or it’s gone and disappeared into the ether that is the internet.

This process was not fulfilling at all and I really wanted to produce something that lasted longer than the average website. I wanted to create something that I could put on my shelf and say, look, this is what I made, and it will last as long as I have it on my shelf.

That was one of the reasons that I decided I was going to stop doing client work and try my hand at something completely different. If it turned out OK – I knew that I would be proud of it.

The other reason was there’s so much stuff being produced online. I personally find myself either reading something on my Kindle, iPad or my iPhone, which I don’t have an iPad any longer, but when I read something on any of my mobile devices, I get probably 10 minutes of read time before I’m interrupted by an email or some other notification. Or I’ll try to scan over articles or longer reads, but I find myself never engaging with them properly. And I noticed that whenever I read a book or a magazine on my travels, when I’m on the train or on the plane, that’s when I actually enjoy reading. So, I thought that it would be nice to have the things that I care about, reading about the web and how people build companies and how people are creative with technology, to read about that in a format that I actually absorb properly and not just scan through or quickly run over because I have another 15 messages to answer.

And so print was becoming almost like this island where I could go and relax and discover the actual process of reading again. It was really nice and calming. And that was the other reason; I just wanted to create something that people would not find distracting and that they wouldn’t feel pressured to read on the go.

So those were the main reasons, I guess. And then, of course, it’s hard to charge money for digital content, where you can put it in a magazine and provide a nice product experience; you make it something people want to keep, a collectable item, it’s then easier to charge people for it. Which doesn’t necessarily mean that you make a lot of money with it, because in publishing, and I’m sure you can attest to this fact, it’s really hard to actually make a lot of money, especially when it comes to independent publishing.

Samir Husni: Tell me the story of the launch; were you in Germany or had you already moved to Australia when you came up with the idea? Briefly, recount for me the launch of Offscreen.

Kai Brach: I was already in Australia and working as a web designer, but then I decided to stop doing that and gave myself six months to figure out what I wanted to do. I started traveling for those six months. I went to Europe and the U.S. and a few other places and I actually met up with quite a few people that I knew from the web industry.

It was during that time that I actually started to enjoy the stories that happened behind the scenes. We talked to a start-up guy who was very successful, but when you talk to him personally, you realize he went through a lot of failed attempts before he became successful and those stories that I was hearing from different people while I was traveling, encouraged me to somehow put them in a book or e-book or podcast, somewhere I could publish them.

So, I came back from my travels six months later and I decided at that point that I wanted to make a print magazine. I didn’t really know where to start, but I contacted some other magazines that I had sitting on my desk and asked them very simple questions about how to get started; what tools do you use; what production companies do you use; what printer do you use; just lots of questions.

Then I emailed a lot of printers in Germany and Australia, because I know German and the Germans know a thing or two about the printing press. (Laughs) I contacted various printers and asked them quotes based on very random numbers that I thought would make sense. I asked for a quote for 3,000 copies in the beginning and then I compared quotes and pretty much decided; OK, Germany is the only place where it makes financial sense to produce a magazine because in Australia it was extremely expensive. The cost of living is really high here.

From there, I decided to make a magazine based on the quote that I had. I had a quote based on 96 pages and I knew that was my limit. I put together a spreadsheet of people that I wanted to have in the first issue. Some of the people that I met during my travels were in the first issue, but also people that I knew through Twitter and Facebook were in there too.

Basically, I emailed a lot of people just asking them questions such as whether they would be interested in doing an interview with me and have that conversation printed in a magazine.

Of course, if you ask a web designer or some other digital person if they want to do an interview for an exclusive print magazine, you usually get some frowns and some weird looks, but once they saw the first issue, they really appreciated the magazine as well.

So, I pretty much taught myself just like when I did web design. Then, I jumped online and I actually did a course on a website called linda.com, which is an online tutorial where you pay $25 and you can watch videos of people using InDesign and preparing things for print and using color management; all those sorts of things. I taught myself how to use InDesign in a couple of weeks and of course, I used a lot of magazines that were sitting on my desk as a source of inspiration. I copied a bit here and there, but tried to be creative in other ways and after three months or so I did the PDF version of the first magazine and sent that to the printer in Germany and then I waited for four weeks or so and pretty much camped in front of my mailbox for the first issue to arrive.

It was a weird feeling because you send it off and a few weeks later this product, this magazine, comes back; especially for someone who hasn’t ever done anything in print before; it was a pretty amazing experience.

Samir Husni: What was the major stumbling block with this launch and how did you overcome it?

Kai Brach, bringing virtual to reality.

Kai Brach: There’s the production side and then there’s the editorial side. The production side is, of course, figuring out how to avoid typographic issues, making the writing good, issues such as that. And that was a big challenge for me, because as a web designer I’m not used to creating something that has a final version. As a web designer, you produce something; you put it online and then you iterate and iterate and iterate until it’s as good as it can be. Coming to that final version was a big challenge for me on the production side.

On the editorial side, and I still find this really challenging, working with 40 or 50 different contributors and getting them to give you what you want when you need it. That was and still is the biggest challenge of making any magazine; it’s working with the contributors, especially if you’re trying to interview really busy people and get them to sit down and do a lengthy interview with you.

On top of that, keep in mind that I’m the only person behind Offscreen, so there’s no team. I do all the editorial, design, publishing and distribution myself. Every day I put on all these different hats and sometimes you get stuck in a certain area and it just doesn’t move forward.

So production was difficult because I was a web designer before I was a print magazine publisher and it was really hard to come to that final version and send it to the printer and be happy with it.

And the biggest challenge on creating the editorial side of it was dealing with so many different people at the same time and you have all these deadlines lined up.

Samir Husni: What was the most pleasant surprise?

Kai Brach: I think getting the magazine in the mail; the first issue, especially, was amazing. Unfortunately, other issues you get after that; you always see the things you can improve upon, instead of the things that you’ve done right. If you ask any publisher, he’ll always tell you that most of the time they always see things that are wrong with it, instead of the great things about it.

The good thing was when I got the first issue in the mail, that was great, but what was even better was seeing other people get it in the mail and talk about it on Twitter and put the photos on Instagram, letting me know that opening the mail smelled amazing and that they had completely forgotten that print had these other multi-sensory experiences that they don’t get when they sit in front of a screen all day.

Hearing the feedback from people with every single issue is what I live on and what I look forward to.

Samir Husni: Do you ever see yourself going back to web design and working within the digital sphere again?

Kai Brach: Sure. I think everything has an expiration date and every project we do comes to an end at some point and I would never say I would not go back to digital. At the same time, I’m still part of digital. I’m interviewing all these people and I also design and run my own website and I do a lot of social media activity. So, I’m still a part of digital and working within the digital industry as much as I am working in print.

But who knows what the future holds? Print is a great project and I really enjoy it, but I think every publication has a point in time where it either completely reinvents itself or it just stops. The makers or the publishers try their luck with something else.

Samir Husni: I hope you have a long life with Offscreen because the concept itself and the stories you’re telling, the people you’re profiling, is our world today. We live in a digital age, nobody can deny that. But very few people actually know those stories and I think you’re not only doing a great favor for the printed magazine industry, but also the digital world. You’re taking the fantasy out of digital and the virtual out of digital and bringing it to reality.

Kai Brach: I think there’s a lot of content that’s similar to what I do in the magazine that exists online. But for a lot of people when you put it into a magazine; first of all, it reaches a different category of readers. With magazines there is a category of readers that like to discover new things. When they go to shops or they see a magazine on a coffee table somewhere else, it’s a different type of reader that gets excited; you can’t really compare them with someone who subscribes to a certain blog or follows someone on Twitter.

But at the same time the content online is similar, there are a lot of interviews on podcasts and in e-books that everyone can listen to. Of course, my housemate who’s an architect probably wouldn’t listen to a two hour podcast about a digital product. So, for those people, they will discover that world through a magazine that they stumble upon. Would they stumble upon a podcast? Not really. (Laughs)

Samir Husni: Tell me a bit about your background. Are you originally from Germany, or did you grow up in Germany? And what’s the link between Germany and Australia?

Kai Brach: I’m German. I grew up there and lived there until 2002. I moved to Australia and settled here about six years ago. I was working as a web designer and I also did a lot of traveling and spent a few months in New York and went to other places around the world. I worked while I was on the go. I think that was one of the things that I was worried about when I started the magazine: would I be able to maintain that nomadic work pattern that I had, because I love being flexible and being able to go anywhere and work from my laptop. Luckily, I can still do that, but there are a few reasons I need to establish an address and be at home for, in terms of publishing. But 90% of it I can still do on the road, so I still travel.

Samir Husni: And you’re based in Melbourne now, right?

Kai Brach: Yes, in Melbourne. I spend a bit of time every year in Berlin, maybe one or two months. There is a lot of activity, in terms of independent publishing in Europe at the moment. I attend a lot of conferences and it seems for independent publishing; Europe is the place to be at the moment.

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

Kai Brach: (Laughs) What doesn’t keep me up at night? Today I actually woke up at 4:00 a.m. Not because I was worried, but because I woke up for something and then I started thinking about my emails and how I had confirmed most of the interviewees for the next issue.

I think most of my worries that give me sleepless nights relate to contributors who are not getting back to me or are being late or telling me that they can’t do something at the last minute. Contributor worries definitely keep me up at night.

Samir Husni: Thank you.

Posted in A Launch Story..., Magazine Power, New Launches, News and Views, The Mr. Magazine™ Interview | Leave a Comment »

On Audience First & The Characteristics Of A Successful Magazine… An Interview With Mr. Magazine™

February 23, 2015

“We definitely live in a digital age, there is no escaping that. And as I wrote recently in my Mr. Magazine™ Manifesto for 2015, there is no media company today that can exist without being platform agnostic. However, our audience is not necessarily platform agnostic. Some of our audience still want a printed magazine, some want online only and some want a printed newspaper.” Samir “Mr. Magazine™” Husni

Recently I was interviewed by one of my colleagues, Debora Wenger, a 17-year broadcast news veteran, and associate professor of journalism and director of the undergraduate program at the University of Mississippi’s Meek School of Journalism and New Media. She conducted the interview for the benefit of her Journalism 101 students and discussed some of the content of a new book she and I and another colleague have written called Managing Today’s News Media: Audience First. (FYI, the book will be published this summer by CQ Press, an Imprint of SAGE Publications, Inc.”

Within the interview we discuss what it takes to be a successful print magazine in the digital age that we live in today in comparison to the way things used to be in publishing days gone by. The information may surprise you…

So sit back and enjoy the flipside of this Mr. Magazine™ interview as the man usually asking the questions, this time around provides the answers.

You can either click on the video below and watch the interview, or you can read the sound-bites and the complete transcribed interview below.

Now for the sound-bites:

On his passion for magazines: It started as a hobby before it turned into my education and my profession. I was probably nine or ten years old when I bought my very first copy of Superman in Arabic when it first came to Lebanon, my home country. And I fell in love with the art of storytelling; fell in love with holding something in my hands that I could read on my own and at my own pace and didn’t have to depend on my father or my grandfather to tell me about.

On how he believes digital technology has affected magazines: This is going to be very important in how we apply the usage of technology to print because for one thing the technological advances that we have now makes it possible to print the magazine a few hours before it is available to the general public on the newsstands or by mail. So, those deadlines that used to be like two or three weeks ahead of time; now Time magazine can change their cover on Tuesday night before they print on Wednesday and have the magazine on the stands the next day.

On whether all successful magazines need to have a relationship with their readers: When you hear about people falling in love with Time or falling in love with Cosmopolitan or Woman’s World; they’re not necessarily falling in love with the ink on paper, but with the content. Somebody once said that successful magazines are those that are purveyors of meaning. Add to that, say the meaning of life; ‘what is in it for me?’

On whether he believes a magazine provides information that you can’t get anywhere else: Not necessarily that it provides you with information that you can’t get any other place, but rather explains the information in a way that you can’t get any other place, because in this day and age it is so easy for anyone to tell you what’s going on.

On whether magazines have adapted to the social changes of today: Definitely. And we have to remember when television came onto the scene; television became part of the American household in the late 1950s and early 1960s, television fundamentally changed the mission of magazines.

On his opinion of provocative, powerful covers and whether they spark public discussion about important topics: Magazines today are finding themselves playing the role of initiator and a lot of good magazine covers are those that ignite the discussion. Not only start it, but ignite it.

On the role advertising plays in the success of today’s new magazines: The majority of the big established magazines are still making at least 80% of their revenue from advertising, but it’s just the opposite with the new magazines, where they make 80% of their revenue from their customers who buy the magazines.

On why he believes journalism and marketing/communications students should be as passionate as he is about magazines: One simple reason: I tell students all the time that there are three F’s in journalism that all marketing or communications people need to pay attention to, as long as they’re not part of your grades: fun, fame and fortune.

Professor Debora Wenger asks and Mr. Magazine™ answers…

And now the lightly edited transcription of the Mr. Magazine™ interview conducted by Professor Debora Wenger…

Debora Wenger: Tell me a little about your passion for magazines. I know it’s been a part of your life for many, many years.

Samir Husni: It started as a hobby before it turned into my education and my profession. I was probably nine or ten years old when I bought my very first copy of Superman in Arabic when it first came to Lebanon, my home country. And I fell in love with the art of storytelling; fell in love with holding something in my hands that I could read on my own and at my own pace and didn’t have to depend on my father or my grandfather to tell me about. I could use my own tone of voice, flip the pages myself, and it was as though somehow the ink transferred into my blood. And since that day my heart began to pump ink instead of blood. (Laughs)

Debora Wenger: Obviously, you and I talk a lot about the future of journalism in particular, and you’re very passionate about the future of magazines. We live in a digital world right now and obviously digital technology has had an impact on all forms of communication; could you talk a little about how you see digital technology affecting magazines.

Samir Husni: Well, we definitely live in a digital age, there is no escaping that. And as I wrote recently in my Mr. Magazine™ Manifesto for 2015, there is no media company today that can exist without being platform agnostic. However, our audience is not necessarily platform agnostic. Some of our audience still wants a printed magazine, some want online only and some want a printed newspaper; we have to be careful before we make a decision on what we’re going to do to identify our audience. That’s why you and I and another colleague have written the book: Audience First.

This is going to be very important in how we apply the usage of technology to print because for one thing the technological advances that we have now makes it possible to print the magazine a few hours before it is available to the general public on the newsstands or by mail. So, those deadlines that used to be like two or three weeks ahead of time; now Time magazine can change their cover on Tuesday night before they print on Wednesday and have the magazine on the stands the next day.

Technology has helped a lot in terms of the speed of printing. The cost of printing, because of technology, has become so cheap that anybody and their neighbor can now launch a new magazine. The cost of entry into our business has become so small and that’s one reason that we are seeing more magazines being published now more than ever before.

Debora Wenger: In fact, we make the point that you’re talking about in the text book: despite the doom and gloom that you hear about print, the magazine industry is very robust now and has been for many, many years. In the text we talk about a number of characteristics of successful magazines and I’d like to walk through them with you one by one and get your take on whether you believe that these are in fact legitimate characteristics or if there is anything that you would add or take away from this list.

The first one is the relationship between magazines and readers and that all successful magazines actually have a relationship with their readers; what’s your response to that?

Samir Husni: If we go back in history, magazines in the United States and the rest of the world were the very first national medium; they were the very first mass medium worldwide which connected people virtually in California, in Mississippi, in New York; so when you received a copy of your Life magazine or Look or Saturday Evening Post, there was this virtual community, you knew that people in California were reading the exact same thing as here. You have to remember radio was local, newspapers were local; so the only thing that was a national marketing tool was the magazines.

That virtual community continues to exist into today. When you hear about people falling in love with Time or falling in love with Cosmopolitan or Woman’s World; they’re not necessarily falling in love with the ink on paper, but with the content. Somebody once said that successful magazines are those that are purveyors of meaning. Add to that, say the meaning of life; ‘what is in it for me?’ When I pick up a magazine, it’s like an older sister giving me advice, a younger brother terrorizing me or a friend coming to visit; so in fact it’s that sense of virtual community that has helped magazines succeed.

If I look at a magazine as a human being, then I’m spending time with a friend; I’m spending time with a consultant, or a doctor, without actually having to go any other place.

One very successful example that people always give is Cosmopolitan. When Helen Gurley Brown wrote her book about Sex and the Single Girl, she started receiving letters at home and her husband, who was a psychiatrist, asked her: why don’t you do a magazine and answer all these questions? And that’s how Cosmopolitan came about. With the magazine, she began answering the virtual community, instead of each one individually. And of course Cosmopolitan, which will celebrate 50 years in 2015, has become one of the most successful women’s magazines in the United States.

Debora Wenger: And that leads us into what is considered the second characteristic of a successful magazine; that it provides you information you can’t get anywhere else. Do you see that as a fundamental characteristic of successful publications?

Samir Husni: Not necessarily that it provides you with information that you can’t get any other place, but rather explains the information in a way that you can’t get any other place, because in this day and age it is so easy for anyone to tell you what’s going on. What we used to call our friends of journalism: the five W’s and the H; the Who, What, When, Where, Why and How, are easily accessible now via online and social media.

But the ‘what is in it for me’ and specifically for me; the more that I can make the magazine content give me the answer to that simple question, what’s in it for me, the more my relationship with the magazine is going to be successful, because I truly believe in the magazine business, just like in any other successful business, we have to be in the business of addiction. We have to get people addicted to the advice, addicted to the way of explaining how life goes on; how you can lose weight in this way or that way; how you can get to know your husband or wife better; how you can meet your boyfriend or girlfriend and what you can do. The more we create this habitual repetition of the information and the explanation of the information, the more we are creating that relationship that when the magazine comes to your mailbox and you open it up and see the magazine in there, you say: wow, she’s back; she’s here, rather than: oh no, here she comes again.

Debora Wenger: (Laughs) I think you have already referenced this to some extent with the story about Cosmopolitan, but the next characteristic that’s mentioned is magazines that are successful have adapted to social change. Certainly, there was a societal shift about the time that Cosmo came out with the statement: it’s OK to talk about sex, and have that topic be a feature in every single magazine. Do you agree that magazines that are successful have adapted to social changes?

Samir Husni: Definitely. And we have to remember when television came onto the scene; television became part of the American household in the late 1950s and early 1960s, television fundamentally changed the mission of magazines. Magazines until that era were the only national medium and the only connectors of that virtual community. So, when television came there was no need for the magazines to be that national, virtual community. When you sat down and watched TV back then, one-third of the country was watching the same thing you were watching.

Connectivity shifted from the virtual printed medium in your hand to the screen of the television in your den. We saw the beginnings of a social movement and a change in the role of American magazines, starting with magazines like Rolling Stone, MS, Playboy, Cosmopolitan and The Advocate; all these magazines had a specialty, a goal in mind that they wanted to relate to a specific community.

We started serving clusters of communities and when social media came onto the scene, where every person and their brother can be their own publisher and have their own blog; magazines starting playing a different role; one that said: OK, I know you have a community, but you need a voice for that community that can reach more people who think like you. And that’s why we’re seeing the power of that social impact. When we put the Boston Bomber on the cover of Rolling Stone; all of a sudden all hell broke loose. Everybody in the country was talking about it. When Time magazine put the mom nursing her three-year-old child on its cover, the whole country was talking about it. Magazines still impact culture, especially with the power of the printed cover. You don’t go looking for it; you’ll see it when you walk inside the grocery store or at the airports; it’s in your face.

Magazines are adapting and editors are getting cleverer in the use of things that they know will ignite social media.

Debora Wenger: Which leads to another one of the characteristics which is they define the major issues of society. They are leaders in setting the agenda for public discourse and they take sometimes controversial and important topics and put them in the public spotlight. And it sounds like that you definitely agree that with a provocative, powerful cover; you can actually spark public discussion about important topics.

Samir Husni: When I wrote my dissertation in 1983 about what makes magazines survive and fail; I wrote that magazines have two roles: they have a commercial role like any other business, if you’re not making money, you’re not going to stay in business, but they also have a social role. Magazines have been the best reflectors of society. They initiate some things, such as when Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated or Robert Kennedy was assassinated. Esquire magazine took the lead trying to ban gun advertising and trying to have all the magazines unite in the ban. When the September 11th catastrophe took place, magazines initiated putting the American flag on every cover of the magazines during their October issues.

The role of reflecting society and initiating issues is shifting a little bit; we are becoming more of the initiators because social media is now the bigger reflector of society. Anybody these days now has access to tell you what’s taking place in their lives; that they’re waking up and having a cup of coffee or they are coming to class sleepy.

Magazines today are finding themselves playing the role of initiator and a lot of good magazine covers are those that ignite the discussion. Not only start it, but ignite it. Social media can then pour as much gasoline as it wants onto the fire or they can pour water onto it.

Debora Wenger: So you touched on what is the last characteristic that’s mentioned in the text as being indicators of a successful magazine and that’s the idea that they are adjusting to current economic conditions and limitations; although advertising still plays a significant role, but there’s more than just being funded by advertisers for magazines. What would you say about that?

Samir Husni: That’s a definite. When you look at the magazines that were published, let’s say, in the 1980s, the average cover price of a magazine then was $2.50. The average cover price of a new magazine today is more than $8.00. So, we’re shifting the business model, where it used to be that a big chunk of our money came from advertisers, now we are seeing the customer, the reader is carrying some of that burden.

But the majority of the big established magazines are still making at least 80% of their revenue from advertising, but it’s just the opposite with the new magazines, where they make 80% of their revenue from their customers who buy the magazines.

That’s why you’re also seeing a new shift taking place. Where we used to have a lot of magazines published on a regular frequency, weeklies like TV Guide selling 80 million copies every week, those magazines don’t exist anymore. Now you’d need 100 magazines, if not more, to sell 80 million copies in one week.

What we are seeing is that magazines are becoming more of a coffee table item, glossier and more like what we call book-a-zines. And with very high cover prices: $14.99 is becoming more the norm and they’re published less frequently. You have a lot of new magazines coming to the marketplace now published four to six times per year. In fact, in 2014, I saw more titles being published four times per year than any other frequency.

Nobody can compete with the speed of technology or social media. Any magazine that’s trying to compete with the delivery the same way social media delivers, is going to have the same fate the magazines of 1960s did when they tried to compete with television. No matter how many copies Life magazine increased their circulation by, 7 million or 8 million, or Look, or the Saturday Evening Post; they were never able to reach the 70 million a television channel could reach.

We’ve learned our lesson and we’ve learned that the best way to survive is to create a product, create content that the readers are not only willing to pay for, but can also afford to pay for. That remains the number one cornerstone for survival.

Debora Wenger: Before we wrap up, how about a few words to students about why they should be as passionate about magazines as you are.

Samir Husni: One simple reason: I tell students all the time that there are three F’s in journalism that all marketing or communications people need to pay attention to, as long as they’re not part of your grades: fun, fame and fortune.

Debora Wenger: Thank you.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Posted in Innovation in print, Magazine Power, News and Views | Leave a Comment »

The Size, Role & Future of Consumer Magazines: A Blast from Mr. Magazine’s™ Past… Dissertation Entries Part 1.

February 20, 2015

1983

Magazines, both consumer and trade, form the largest mass medium in the United States. In fact, it is almost impossible to know for certain how many different magazines exist at any one time. The Standard Periodical Directory lists 66,681 in the United States and Canada. Ayer’s Directory of Newspapers and Periodicals lists 12,010, excluding several thousand company or regional church magazines. Either of these figures puts the American magazine far ahead of any other mass medium in the country. This includes daily newspapers (approximately 1,750), television stations (850), and radio stations (6400).

A magazine is defined as a printed and bound medium that appears periodically at least four times a year. It is a publication that is intended for and available to the general public by subscription and/or through the newsstands for a stated price and meets the U.S. Postal Service requirements for second class mailing privileges. The role the American magazine plays is by far more complex, yet more flexible, than any other medium. Magazines depend on a mixture of advertising and consumer money to survive. The trend today is to reach an equal split between advertising and circulation revenues, including newsstand sales and subscriptions. Newspapers, radio, and television stations, by contrast, depend almost completely on their advertising revenues.

2015

Today some people define magazines differently than the original rendering. In the digital world e-zines and their cyber-content are designated ‘magazines.’ I contend that if it is not ink on paper, it is not a magazine.™ Some things do not change and that statement is one of them. Virtual content on a screen that you cannot physically touch, turn the page and then roll up and place conveniently under your arm for travel is not a magazine, with the last prerequisite being more important to people than one might think. What you see on a screen is digital content, web pages, mobile information, or anything else that it ‘actually’ is, but it is definitely not a magazine.

And while the trend in 1983 was to reach an equal split between advertising and circulation revenues, including newsstand sales and subscriptions; today things are a bit less cut and dried when it comes to advertising dollars and those precious ad pages that magazines have always depended on.

With the advent of digital, many publishers saw the future of magazine media in a land of make-believe, beyond that quasi rainbow of pixels the world had suddenly become so fascinated with. Unfortunately, their abandonment from the always-sturdy decks of print had them jumping ship before they had the complete picture. Sometimes placid waters are turbulent underneath.

But when many boarded digital’s gangplank and strolled lightheartedly onto its bow and began to seek virtual advertising to join their journey, the dollars that had always been there before were nowhere to be seen. Hence, advertisers themselves were in a bit of a quandary. If the publishers weren’t putting the future into and onto print; how could they continue to buy space and peace of mind inside the covers of ink on paper?

So the trend for the 21st century became innovation and creativity; coming up with new and exciting ways to generate revenue and continue the singular experience that print magazines had and always would offer.

Of course recently there has been a migration back to print from the Land of Oz – or digital – whichever you’d like to call it, a migration and integration. Digital-only sites that have never been print are seeing the value and collectability of the printed word and magazines that had once been print, but folded to create pretty pages on a screen are coming home to ink on paper.

The one thing that hasn’t changed is the role of magazines; they’re still more complex and flexible than any other medium out there. And they were, are, and always will be reflectors of our society by mirroring the issues that are important to us as humans in a way that nothing else can.

Case in point, this week’s covers of The New Yorker (see above) celebrating its 90th anniversary and this Sunday’s covers of The New York Sunday Magazine (see below). You have noticed I said covers and not cover, because both magazines have multiple covers for their issues this week: The New Yorker has nine covers and The New York Times Sunday Magazine has four covers. The covers alone are the best reflectors of our history, present and future.

Compare that to a page on a digital screen and think whether it would have made the same impression? Not hardly. What are the odds that the large mass of people who viewed that cover and bought that magazine from the newsstands, received it in their mail box, or had it arrive with their Sunday paper, would have all been looking at it simultaneously online? And would they have given it more than an exemplary glance before they scrolled on to something else? Highly doubtful. There is power in the printed word.

So, while the numbers may have changed somewhat since 1983, daily newspapers in the United States (1,382 in 2011), radio stations (14,728 full power stations in 2011) and TV stations (1,774 in 2011), the message of magazines and their impact haven’t.

And remember; if it is not ink on paper, it’s not a magazine™…

Watch for more ‘Dissertation Entries’ every Friday on the Mr. Magazine™ blog…
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Posted in Magazine Power, News and Views | Leave a Comment »

Crossing Over From The Virtual World Of Digital To The Real World of Print: My Wedding, The Magazine Debuts…

February 20, 2015

I guess the trend of websites and digital entities discovering print is continuing with full force. After Pineapple, Porter, Ponder, Unmapped, Atlas, Sneaker News, all recipes, delish, and many others, mywedding.com is the latest crossover to the real world of print from the virtual world of digital.

The editors of My Wedding, The Magazine write in the first issue, “Welcome to the first print edition of mywedding. A year ago we were just beginning to dream about this day, much like many of you are dreaming about a certain day in your own near future. The past twelve months have led us through a world of growth and change as we’ve navigated new trends and fallen more deeply in love with the art of sharing love stories. All of our careful preparation and planning has brought us to this place: a brand new magazine devoted to authentic, original representations of love and the celebrations that accompany it.”

The premiere issue of My Wedding, The Magazine comes in at a hefty 228 pages and $12.99 cover price.

Welcome to the world of magazines mywedding.com and keep in mind “If it is not ink on paper, it is not a magazine.™”
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Posted in New Launches, News and Views | Leave a Comment »

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Mr. Magazine

Archive for the ‘News and Views’ Category

Women’s Health Magazine Coins “Well-thy” As The New Wealthy. The Mr. Magazine™ Interview With The Magazine’s “True Grit” Publisher, Laura Frerer-Schmidt…

Magazines As Reflectors: The Social Role of the American Consumer Magazines…The Size, Role & Future of Consumer Magazines: A Blast from Mr. Magazine’s™ Past… Dissertation Entries Part 3

Nifty At Fifty: The Never-Aging, Always-Rocking Cosmopolitan Magazine. The Mr. Magazine™ Interview With Donna Kalajian Lagani, Senior Vice President, Publishing Director & Chief Revenue Officer, Cosmopolitan…

Newsweek One Year After The Print Re-Launch: Profitable And Self Sustaining. The Mr. Magazine™ Interview with Newsweek’s Editor in Chief Jim Impoco.

New Magazine Launches: A February To Remember

The Social Role of the American Consumer Magazines…The Size, Role & Future of Consumer Magazines: A Blast from Mr. Magazine’s™ Past… Dissertation Entries Part 2.

Making Digital Permanent OffScreen: The Mr. Magazine™ Interview With Founder/Editor Kai Barch. A Launch Story

On Audience First & The Characteristics Of A Successful Magazine… An Interview With Mr. Magazine™

The Size, Role & Future of Consumer Magazines: A Blast from Mr. Magazine’s™ Past… Dissertation Entries Part 1.

Crossing Over From The Virtual World Of Digital To The Real World of Print: My Wedding, The Magazine Debuts…

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