Even though Hearst Magazines has six publications over 100 years old, the old publishing world is gone, according to Cathie Black, president of Hearst and one of the most prominent publishing executives leading print media’s charge into the 21st century.
In a luncheon keynote address during Marketing Week’s Media Day in Toronto, Black outlined several ways in which Hearst is extending its reach with readers by bringing its brands from print-locked “magazines” to broader media platforms.
Cosmopolitan, which prints in 61 countries, has content Black calls “liquid,” appearing on a specialty television channel, an iPhone application, several web properties, and a channel on Sirius XM satellite radio.
“We call that the 360-degree experience,” Black said. “Not all magazines have that brand power, but that is the experience we want to be able to offer our consumer.”
Overall, 80% of the company’s profits come from lines of business that did not exist 15 yeas ago.
However, Black said her company will not be in the “device business,” leaving such pursuits to Amazon and Apple, makers of the Kindle and iPhone respectively.
“I think the device business is far too complex,” Black said. “We want to be ubiquitous and agnostic. We want to make sure our platform can move across multiple devices.”
Black also highlighted several initiatives her publications have taken to offer new advertising opportunities. GQ recently partnered with Lexus to create an augmented reality cover featuring actor Robert Downey Jr.
“It was not inexpensive,” Black said, but Lexus funded the initiative, getting its own augmented reality run-of-press ad.
Hearst’s Food Network Magazine, which launched earlier this year, experimented with new advertising and structural models in an attempt to prove an ink-on-paper magazine still has value to advertisers.
Its advertising and editorial staff are both drastically smaller than that of most American national publications. Editors have varied skill sets and multi-task, and there was no celebratory launch party to present the publication to readers or advertisers.
And for the first few issues, ad inventory was given away.
“One of the things we learned is it doesn’t matter how low the price is for advertising in a test issue. When you get the advertising rate where it should be, our advertisers inevitably say ‘You’ve raised your rates so much.’ In the beginning, for those first three issues, the revenues from advertising wouldn’t have mattered a whole lot anyway when we’re testing the consumer proposition.”
Circulation after six issues reached 1.1 million, and the upcoming December issue will have 111 ad pages.
