Advertising Sales

National Geographic Rolls Out $19.99 Custom Cover Initiative

MyShot, National Geographic’s popular social hub that allows users to submit and vote on photos, and YourShot, the related submission site—have been two of the magazine industry’s few unmitigated successes on the Web.

Now, the magazine is offering readers an opportunity to customize the cover of a special print issue—National Geographic’s Your Shot—that will feature “101 of the best readers' photographs submitted to National Geographic magazine over the past three years.”

Wired, you might recall, was one of (if not the) first national magazine to allow readers to customize a cover.

The July 2007 project—funded by Xerox—netted Wired great press, but pulling together the issue, as one former staffer told me, was a “logistical nightmare.”

National Geographic, though, might be looking for some incremental revenue, too. Via the press release:

Looking for a unique Father's Day gift? One that fulfills the fantasy of having a favorite photograph featured on the cover of National Geographic magazine? This month, National Geographic is publishing a special collector's edition, National Geographic Your Shot, featuring 101 of the best readers' photographs submitted to National Geographic magazine over the past three years. Starting Monday, June 15, readers can create and order a unique, customized cover of this special issue, using a photograph of their choice, by going to ngm.com/your-shot-special. The customized version makes a perfect gift to memorialize a special family snapshot.

The custom cover option for National Geographic Your Shot will be available to order, online only, for $19.99 plus shipping. The issue goes on newsstands with a standard cover on Tuesday, June 30, for $10.99.

The 144-page issue, with a trim size of 7"x7", also will also contain advertising—from HP, Fuji and Energizer, among others.

A 48-Year-Old Looks for New Publishing Industry Job, Finds Age Discrimination

Last week I met a former colleague at Starbucks—or, as one Facebook “friend” put it recently, the 2009 version of a Depression-era breadline—for a cup of coffee.  

The colleague, who I will refer to as “Jill,” was recently caught in the undertow of one of her publishing company’s (sorry, “media” company’s) recent downsizings.  “Jill” is an outstanding seller and sales leader.  A divorced mother of two beautiful girls—ages 11 and 14—she has produced great top-line results everywhere she has been employed.  The love her customers and staff members have for her is exceeded only by the degree to which they respect her.  She is, of course, very concerned for her future and that of her daughters.

“Jill” has been hunting for a new gig for the better part of six months now.  Her CV and phone demeanor have earned her a number of face-to-face interviews.  Because we have known each other for close to 20 years, she was quite open about her job hunting experience.  

She has interviewed with Web publishers, ad networks and magazine publishers, but she is not close to landing.  She had been well-compensated, but given the present state of media and the economy, she has articulated her flexibility in this regard.  I believe her.  This woman is a straight-shooter. About half-way through our meeting, she said something that sort of took me by surprise. This vital, smart, attractive woman felt she was encountering ageism. She is all of 48.

Now, I know that age discrimination exists, but if a person with the ability to sell jets to  airline companies—she was offered such a position a couple of years back—is being denied employment due to her age, then our industry has truly gone off the deep end.

One hiring manager at an ad network told her that the position for which she was interviewing—director of advertising—was perhaps a bit too complicated for her. Come on dude, you guys are not splitting the atom over there!  Anyone with an average IQ, degree of creativity and some desire can succeed in the world of digital ad sales. Great leadership, on the other hand, requires much more.  

In tough times, leadership is everything.  As a bit of a sports geek, I can site numerous instances of championship teams that won the Big One precisely because they had experienced veterans guiding less experienced players during crucial moments.  Rarely does one see a team of rookies and early-career players win a championship.  If I need someone to lay down a crucial bunt in the bottom of the eighth or drive a team downfield during the game’s final two minutes, I would prefer to rely on a veteran that has done it numerous times.

Take heed of the analogy, media world, some of you are in the bottom of the eighth or the final two minutes. Simple logic dictates that if someone has done the job many times, they have done so successfully or they would not have had the opportunity to do the job so many times in the first place.

Advertising is often perceived as a young person’s game, but skills such as steadiness in the midst of a storm, true customer-centric behavior, asking the right questions of prospects, motivating staff, forecasting and managing up, down and laterally only get better over time. George Bernard Shaw once said that youth is wasted on the young. He was so right.

So, hiring managers, the next time Jill shows up on the other side of your desk, throw all your preconceived notions away and take the blinders off.  Look at her accomplishments. Monitor her passion and intellectual curiosity. We all saw Susan Boyle at age 48 set the world on fire and become the next big thing. Did you know that Ray Kroc didn’t begin to build the McDonald’s brand until he was 52? Did you know that Handel didn’t write the Messiah until he was 68? How about Roget publishing his first Thesaurus when he was 73 or Grandma Moses picking up her first paint brush at 76?

You get the point—48, 49 or 60 for that matter are truly meaningless numbers.

Top 10 Reasons Print Should Remain a Vital Part of Your Marketer's Mix

Considering that my company publishes a national magazine for college-bound teenagers, you might think the title of this article paints me as self-serving.

Maybe you think I am trying to preserve print because it’s our company’s core product. But even though our printed magazine brings in the lion’s share of our revenue, it’s not why I’m trying to convince you that print is still tremendously relevant.

Actually, our company is much more than print. We are a Web site, an online community, an e-mail marketer, an online newsletter. We have a social media presence, we instant message with our readers, and oh, we print a magazine, too.

But here’s something that may surprise you.

Besides delivering great content to our readers, branding opportunities and leads for our advertisers, our magazine is also an amazing traffic generator. In fact, our magazine is the number-one driver of traffic to our Web site. It’s like buying keywords, only better!

The magazine also drives traffic for our advertisers. Third-party research shows that 60 percent of our readers visit an advertiser’s Web site after viewing their ad in Next Step!

I am going to pitch this list to David Letterman for his show. But just in case he doesn’t pick it up, I’ll share with you my “Top 10 Reasons Print Should Remain a Vital Part of your Marketing Mix.”

10. Print provides differentiation. How many of the millions of Web sites out there have a print magazine to drive traffic to it? The vast minority, I assure you. Print vehicles provide a unique strategy to drive traffic to your online marketing.

9. Print offers incredible branding. Nothing makes a brand more recognized than a beautiful ad in a glossy magazine. A well-designed ad is an engaging experience for readers. And by the way, according to a recent MRI/Next Step poll, 55 percent of teens say they pay a lot of attention to print ads.

8. Print makes introductions. Print is a great party host because of the talent it has introducing readers to your brand. An effective print ad stands in the crossroads between readers and advertisers. And your keyword purchases become more effective if customers have already been introduced to your brand.

7. Print readers are focused. It’s hard to engage in other media when you’re reading a magazine. In the world of multitasking—where people are texting, e-mailing and listening to their iPod while watching TV—it’s hard to get noticed. But it’s hard to do anything else when you’re reading a magazine! In fact, according a survey done by Ball State University, magazines are the exclusive or primary medium 85 percent of the time they are used by consumers.

6. Print travels. A magazine is your companion wherever you go: your favorite chair, your bed, an airplane—even your bathroom. A laptop on the porcelain throne just does not offer the same experience.

5. Print sways trendsetters. “Influentials” (those who sway other consumers) are themselves influenced by print. Check out this influence ranking, from the MRI Survey of the American Consumer:

1.    Magazines: 61 percent
2.    In-store: 58 percent
3.    TV: 55 percent
4.    Newspaper: 53 percent
5.    Radio: 44 percent
6.    Free samples: 39 percent
7.    E-mail: 26 percent

4. Print drives users to other platforms. According to the Retail Advertising and Marketing Association, 47.2 percent of shoppers are most likely to start an online search after viewing a magazine ad. Our own research shows that more than 75 percent of nextSTEPmag.com users type in the URL directly—which they likely got from reading the magazine.

3. Readers are receptive to print. Fact: People remember effective print ads. In fact, magazine ads have the second highest receptivity of any media, second only to TV. But try to “TiVo” a magazine ad!

2. You can pass along print, and it has longevity. Magazines get shared and passed on in households and among friends. And they stick around. Check out your own coffee table. Any magazines there that have been hanging around a few years? Have you ever tried to share a Web site in a dentist office?

1. Print is a lead-generation tool! Used correctly, print drives leads to your prospect funnel. Good print vehicles have a mechanism to deliver targeted leads to their advertisers. (Yep, we have one too.) So at the very least, consider print a unique, effective lead generation tool!

So there you have it, the top 10 reasons why print should remain in your marketers’ media mix! The world is changing fast, and you have to keep up. Your ability to combine the new with the proven will determine your success.

How Much is a Magazine’s Content Worth? Part One

I love magazines.

Despite most days feeling like someone pushed the self-destruct button and we're all scrambling for the escape pods, I will always love them, especially and above all, the printed format.

I'm no fetishist or luddite, though, and while I tend to favor print, my definition of a magazine is platform neutral. I've worked in magazine publishing for over 15 years now—from audience development to advertising sales, freelance editorial to events planning, corporate to D.I.Y.—and stand firmly with the digital generation that's purportedly out mugging elderly newspapers in broad daylight, and striking fear in the hearts of cowardly and superstitious magazines in the middle of the night.

Seeing subscription offers like the one above for Fast Company and Inc.—two solid print magazines devaluing their editorial content at only 75 cents an issue while simultaneously making it all available for free online—I think that the death of the current ad-supported model is inevitable and, arguably, a good thing.

Portability and endurance are two theoretical advantages print magazines have over their digital competitors, but the ability to deliver engaging, focused and original content cheaply and on a consistent basis is much harder to do in print than it is online, where expectations are lower and the exchange rate is more favorable. Paradoxically, magazines' own online presences are, more often than not, commensal partners at best, if not outright parasites.

In a typical ad-supported print magazine, even the best editorial intentions are constricted by the costs of printing and postage which are subsidized by the diminished and ever-fluctuating advertising revenues that ultimately dictate page counts. They're further contradicted by mixed messages about the actual value of the content itself, as in the insulting subscription offer above.

My Relationship with Print Brands

I was doing some Spring cleaning this weekend, and part of it involved going through the ridiculous piles of magazines that had accumulated around the house over the past several months—a wide range of titles reflecting personal interests, competitive research, random newsstand browsing and "forced-free trials." While sorting them into save and recycle piles, I was struck by how many of them I hadn't flipped through yet or even recalled pulling out of the mailbox, including some of my supposed favorites.

The pile of unread copies of the Atlantic was perhaps the most galling. I often note it as one of my absolute favorites, and yet its exemplary collection of well-written, long-form journalism rarely gets more than a quick flip-through when it shows up in the mailbox, set aside to read when I have more time that never seems to materialize.

Coincidentally, I also subscribe to Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish (via Google Reader and, for a short while, on Twitter), but the volume of content he generates can be overwhelming, and I've found myself lately only skimming headlines and rarely clicking through to read full posts. While his purposefully fleeting bits of data, links and reflexive commentary are of a higher quality than some magazines' feature articles, they're usually buried under his steady stream of content by the end of the day, unlikely to ever be seen again, except possibly via a relevant Google search somewhere down the road.

I ended up saving most of the unread copies of the Atlantic, fully expecting to read and enjoy them in the near future, partly  from having the Atlantic brand and what it represents steadily drummed into my head every day, courtesy of Sullivan and Ta-Nehisi Coates' hyperactive RSS feeds.

Meanwhile, included in the recycle pile were several copies each of New York, W and Wired, three magazines I started receiving, unrequested, out of the blue a while back. New York and Wired weren't totally unreasonable guesses based on surface demographics—I'm assuming they both pulled me from the Atlantic's mailing list, or possibly the New Republic's—but I actively hate the former's editorial focus, and the latter is an occasional newsstand pickup whenever the cover looks interesting. W, though, made absolutely no sense at all and represents the kind of junk mail "audience development" that fluffs up far too many magazines' mailing lists for advertisers' benefit—missing rate base means make-goods and deeper discounts—and ultimately hurts them both in the end when complaints about a lack of ill-defined results leads to a vicious cycle of even lower ad rates and a further devaluing of content.

The Save Pile

One unrequested magazine actually made it to the "save" pile, thanks to my wife. Gourmet was sent to me—almost as much of a reach as W—but after a couple issues, she was intrigued enough that we might actually subscribe to it for real, assuming they don't just keep sending it to us for free.

Notably, I don't regularly (if ever) visit any of these brands' Web sites and wouldn't pay to access their content online, though Gourmet at least has the potential to develop a multi-platform option that would appeal to my wife.

I'm not a fan of using one's own habits as a benchmark, but I suspect there's a lesson here for publishers and marketers alike: impressions have nothing to do with engagement, and in the end, engaging content appropriately packaged will find its audience.

That's a victory for quality content curated with an emphasis on a specific community over generic demographics, but it poses a serious dilemma for publishers who are overly dependent on advertising and have conditioned readers to expect to pay as little as possible, if anything at all, to receive that content.

The one question so few publishers want to answer but can no longer avoid is, how much is their content really worth?

More on that later this week...

Jimmy Kimmel Channels Infamous Jon Stewart MPA Appearance at 'Upfront' Event for Advertisers

RELATED VIDEO: Kimmel's Upfront Presentation

A few years back, the Magazine Publishers of America organized a rally during television’s “Upfront Week”—the annual glitzy gathering of network executives and media buyers where fall programming lineups are unveiled by their on-screen stars—staging a peaceful protest outside of the Upfronts wearing goofy t-shirts. The stunt was part of the MPA’s three-year, $40 million advertising campaign touting the power of the print medium—and to remind potential ad buyers heading into the network’s pitch that magazines  are here too!

Perhaps the MPA should’ve hired Jimmy Kimmel.

Kimmel, comedian and the host of ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live, spoke to advertisers during his network’s presentation, and promptly eviscerated Jay Leno, the business of Upfronts—and ABC itself.

“If Jimmy Kimmel still has a job at ABC on Wednesday,” the New York Times wrote, “he is either a very lucky or very deft comedian, or he has great blackmail photos of the network executives.”

“Everything you’re going to hear this week is [bullshit],” said Kimmel. “Let’s get real here. Let’s get Dr. Phil-real here. These new fall shows? We’re going to cancel about 90 percent of them. Maybe more.

“Every year we lie to you and every year you come back for more,” he continued. “You don’t need an upfront. You need therapy. We completely lie to you, and then you pass those lies onto your clients.”

Kimmel added: “I think all our shows are going to work this year. I really do … I don’t, really. The important thing to remember is, who cares? It’s not your money.”

Déjà View

The scene reminded me of another event staged for advertisers in which a comedian, hired to entertain, took a hard left turn into a Friar’s Club roast territory.

The comedian, you may recall, was Daily Show host Jon Stewart, who was hired by the MPA for a reported $150,000 to host an Advertising Week event in 2005. Instead, he delivered a blistering rant on the magazine industry in front of a roomful of gasping advertisers and shocked magazine executives.

It started innocently enough. "Do the men on the cover always have to be—what's the word—glistening?" Stewart asked Men's Health editor Dave Zinczenko. "I enjoy health, yet when I read the magazine, I don't know whether to go to the doctor or rub my nipples."

Stewart turned to Jim Kelly, Time magazine’s editor at the time: "Time magazine has been a tradition in America, yet...what's happened? One federal prosecutor says 'let me see your notes' and immediately everyone pulls their underwear over their heads and hands it over—Not only that ... Newsweek breaks the story."

Soon, though, it devolved into an attack on print’s relevance in the 24-hour news culture.

"The way news is driven today is not through print," Stewart said. "I don't consider print media as relevant," adding that his infamous appearance on CNN's Crossfire that year wouldn't have had the same impact in print. "I wouldn't have walked into a newspaper or magazine and gotten angry, because they're not the ones driving the discourse."