Center for Communication Event – McCann Erickson: Global Dynasty

I attended the McCann Erickson: Global Dynasty seminar on Friday March 20^th. I chose to go to this seminar, because I’m extremely interested in advertising campaigns and hope to somehow be involved after I graduate. The seminar was great. It took place at the McCann Erickson building which was interesting to see on it’s own. We got to speak to someone that worked in commercial production (film), the creative team and the accounting department. I don’t know very much about film and it’s production, but it sounded a lot like filming commercials is very similar to setting up photo shoots. I’ve worked on numerous photo shoots when I interned at WWD. More than just filming, she was concerned with positioning, lighting, etc., all things that I was concerned with in still pictures. The accounting department is certainly important to the whole process, but not the field that I would be interested in. They talked about budgeting and how the numerous teams all work together. I had thought that the financial department was primarily about ad sales. I learned that much more than just sales, they develop budgets and probably speak with the client even more than the creative’s do. Creating an advertising campaign clearly takes a lot of joint effort by all the teams that must collaborate together.

            Further I found it interesting that the main speaker had done all sorts of things in a variety of fields before ending up at McCann Erickson. She talked about how moving from one department from another is an interesting transition that teaches you a lot. Moving around can be beneficial, but salary should not be an issue for that person. I think that it made having internships in a variety of different places even more important. To have a feel for what each department does is essential in being able to move up in the company. I knew that campaigns took a collaborative effort, but I was surprised to learn that the various departments work this closely in such a large company.

The $20 Magazine: Worth’s Odd Recession Strategy

Worth Magazine has raised it’s cover price to $20, but to 110,000 lucky extremely wealthy people it’s free. This seems contradictory and confusing at first, but Worth has a plan. They believe that by sending out the magazine for free to extremely wealthy people the word will trickle down to the slightly less wealthy people about how great the magazine is. The content in the magazine is being redesigned, to be sure that it is selling ‘good stuff’. The paper will be thicker, pictures will be high quality etc. The article explains that if we are all connected by six degrees of separation the wealthy and slightly less wealthy are sepearted by one degree, and the word will spread. Hearing that it is worth it from their wealthy peers, that they may envy etc, Worth is relying on them to put down the $20 an issue. This strategy will also appeal to advertisers who will be assured their advertisements are getting directly to wealthy consumers! We’ll have to see how it goes. The article mentions other magazines that charge a ton of money for the cover price, but they seem a bit different and even more specialized. Self Service a hip fashion magazine from France is $75 an issue. Visionaire a biannual journal/art book is $675 for four issues, it has a lot to offer though. The most recent issue has  photochromatic pages, each created by a famous artist. If the magazine is opened in the sun Yoko Ono’s black and white image transforms into color. Something is unique makes it worth the money and it can’t be produced in a different medium. I hope that Worth comes up with something more to offer than 110,000 free issues!

OK! Magazine, Buzz Media Ink Web-Based Pacte

Ok! Magazine, a primarily celebrity gossip magazine is looking to up it’s revenue. In competition with People and US Magazine, they don’t seem like a huge company. OK! is hoping to change their ‘small’ status in a new merge with Buzz Media. Buzz Media has a collection of about 30 ‘gossipy’ websites including Just Jared, Britney Spears’ and Kim Kardashian’s blogs. Buzz Media will be helping OK! iwth $12.5 million with financial backing from Focus Ventures, a venture based in California. This pact will have both OK! and Buzz Media jointly sell ads, share news stories and cross promote each other. OK! hopes that this will increase their business and put them on the board with their other competitors.

NYSE Warns Playboy of Possible Delisting

Playboy, Inc. has been warned by the NYSE that due to declining revenues that they are in violation of the SEC’s listing criteria. Over a 30 day trading period it’s average market cap fell below $75 million.  Playboy has said that they will comply with the next requirements of the NYSE and SEC. They will now need to submit a plan t explaining how they expect to comply with the listing needs in the next 18 months. In a recent article it had talked about Playboy’s attempting to re-model their magazine-website to be more user friendly, apparently that isn’t enough.

A Magazine With a Puzzle Buried Inside

Instead of putting advertisements on covers, or increasing the cover price, Wired’s most recent issue has been in attempt to satisfy readers. The magazine was filled with little and big riddles, clues and puzzles. The magazine was guest-edited by J.J. Abrams the creator of shows like Lost and Fringe. Steven Bevacqua a postproduction supervisor for the television series “Life,” came home to read the issue and thought he was seeing secret messages. After putting a variety of these messages together he came up with a website which led to an e-mail announcing that he was the first to solve the puzzle. He will be awarded a prize by J.J. Abrams. Wired has encouraged others to attempt to solve the riddles, and more prizes will be awarded. There are some puzzles in between that are still unsolved, and producers encourage people to look for riddles and puzzles that they may have put in unintentionally. 

The overall goal of the magazine was to attempt to keep people intrigued by print. None of the puzzles can be accessed or solved online, it’s all about print this time. The article says, “The project is also meant to illustrate the vitality of the Wired print magazine (whose total paid circulation has held steady over the last year at around 700,000). “Blog posts can effectively summarize a story and give you the takeaway idea,” said Thomas Goetz, the deputy editor of Wired. But print publications, he said, are still better suited to conveying “the nuance and effort of understanding the complexity of an idea and why it matters — what the riddles and wrinkles are within an idea.”’ It’s a reminder to us that although print media may be ‘dying’ it still has plenty of value, and we shouldn’t forget that completely in the new digital media and internet.

‘Us Weekly’ Cover Pushes Envelope

The news on magazines seems to be wrapped up in new cover ideas that are about to print! US Weekly is the newest magazine that is putting an advertisement on their cover. The latest issue will have 2 covers essentially. The first is a mock cover supposed to look like a US Weekly from 1940′s promoting HBO’s new show “Grey Gardens”. The magazine has explained it is in no way to trick consumers, that is why there is an “ADVERTISEMENT” note on the top of the page. The real cover, looks modern as ever with Lindsay Lohan. The ASME has not yet seen the cover and has not yet been able to comment, I think it’s safe to say they most likely will not approve.

ASME Cites ESPN the Magazine, EW

The ASME has officially stated that ESPN the magazine and Entertainment Weekly violated their regulations by having advertisements on the cover. ESPN admitted that they may have pushed the limits a little bit, but at first did not think they would get in trouble. Though it is not ‘good’ to be scolded by the ASME it doesn’t mean much. Their rules are not official, they are just generally followed. The ASME sends a scolding letter, which has now happened, but otherwise not much else seems to go wrong. Magazines can be banned from the magazine awards, but usually aren’t. In the current economy magazines are picking and choosing their battles. Parent & Child magazine will be running an ad on every cover of 2009 issues, and their very happy.

In Switch, Magazines Think About Raising Prices

Most magazines rely on advertising revenue for profit, but The Economist is trying a new method. At the moment it is making more money from its consumers than its advertisers. Generally subscription prices for a magazine come out to be less than a dollar an issue, a great deal considering that most magazines can be anywhere from $3-$10 for a single issue from a newsstand. Magazines didn’t fret about this, they relied on advertising revenues. Since they relied on advertisers, they just assumed that this would pay for the subscription prices, to ship the magazine alone cost about 80 cents, so absolutely no revenue was being made on it’s own; it was almost like a bill. Currently, with advertisers dropping by the minute however, subscriptions and consumers are becoming more interesting. The revenues from the subscriptions are no longer the ‘gravy’ (as mentioned in the article), they are becoming much more valuable. The Economist has raised it’s subscription price, and although other magazines worry this will cause people to cancel, the Economist is doing very well. They now claim that they rely on consumers more than advertisers. Others are still skeptical, it has shown that people cancel subscriptions after just the slightest increase. On the other hand it has also been found that people do not value content anymore if prices are higher or lower.

Playboy Site to Attract Ads With Tasteful Redesign?

Playboy has refurbished their website to become more ‘advertiser friendly’. The website has become more news oriented with a culture and lifestyle news section, decreased promotion for the club, and in order to see the “girls section” there is an additional fee. Playboy hopes that this will lead to increased advertising revenue. Bridgestone Tire and Patron Tequllia have already taken part in advertising on playboys website. Playboy hopes to bring in other fragrance, grooming, packaged goods and gaming companies. Playboy.com further hopes to make their website more interactive with more video, entertainment guides for After Hours and regularly updated content.

Magazines Blur Line Between Ad and Article

Recently magazines have been doing just about anything to stay on their feet. With advertising sales dropping drastically, magazines have been looking to new and innovative ways to get advertisers to buy ad space in print media. There is no actual law about what is and is not appropriate advertising in magazines; everyone would of course prefer if we didn’t mistake advertisements for editorial. The American Society of Magazine Editors gives out The National Magazine Awards once a year, which has previously been reason not to place ‘drastic’ advertising in magazines. The American Society of Magazine Editors has placed rules and regulations for magazines to be able to enter for the award, one of the rules is no advertisement on covers. As the economy worsens, especially for print media, magazines are looking at what is most important to them, the award is seeming less and less of a priority, and advertising sales are becoming huge. Scholastic Parent & Child recently put an advertisement on their cover, and the VP of Scholastic, Inc. said that she has sold the cover for ad space for all of the remaining 2009 issues, and she’s thrilled that she’s increased ad revenue by 10%, she basically said the company could care less about the award. Other comapnies like Time, Inc that are becoming innovating with advertisements, believe that they have found a way around the ASME guidelines and feel that they’ve in no ways gone against their rules. Even if Time, Inc has not officially gone against the rules, I’m not sure their new advertising is what the ASME had in mind for ‘good magazines’ either. The biggest issue for the ASME is that they are not the ‘advertising police’ and they rarely ban magazines anyway, if you apologize more or less and don’t reapeatedly offend everything is forgotten.