Agency Spy

Nielsen Business Media is laying off between 40-50 staffers, reports PaidContent and Folio. The layoffs hit the editorial departments of Adweek, Brandweek, Mediaweek, Editor & Publisher and the Hollywood Reporter. Nielsen reported overall revenues of $4.7 billion in 2007, an increase of about seven percent over the previous year. The company’s total debt, however, was $8.25 billion on December 31, with cash balances of $399 million. This also comes after Adweek has scaled back on issues.

Creativity is a good trade journal, but the magazine is “evolving” by upping its profile to full on proper ass magazine. Key changes will include more content sans more advertising; heavier quality paper stock complete with perfect binding that will help the journo transition from a folded up monthly that ends up in the recycling bin to a beautiful print product you keep on the shelf. The first issue, to be released in May, will feature the winners of this year’s Creativity Awards. Judges are currently judging on the 2008 crop of entrants. You can see last year’s winners here. You can also reserve your complimentary issue, here.

Virgin Mobile Canada’s new print ad featuring Eliot Mess. That was fast.

Nielsen, the monopolistic TV rating agency of choice, has decided to rebrand itself. The sheriff wants you to know that not only do they do TV ratings, but they do it all - web, print, you name it and they count the eyeballs. As Jossip points out, sometimes they do it a little poorly, but what are you gonna do about it? Hunh, tough guy?

The company plans on doing a little print, a little online, radio and mobile, newsstands and mailings to get the good word out. Nielsen will also be the sole advertiser for a special issue of The New York Times sports magazine, Play, which will be dedicated to the 2008 Olympic Games according to AdWeak. The total media spend for all this rebranding was not released, but consider that a centerfold insert of 8 pages, 4/4, at 50lb weight will run you a cool $507,660 (pre-haggling) in the regular NYT’s mag.
Play boasts of having 6 million Sunday print/online New York Times readers who have a median HHI of $96,662. They obviously picked a good issue to buy into. We might even thumb through that one and the last time we ran was in a high school lacrosse game. Varsity, bitches. Varsity.

Hey! They’re also Nielsen. With all that data they own, they must be certain that Play is the best buy in town. Hey everybody! Go buy into Play right now. Nielsen couldn’t possibly be shaky on how many people actually read the magazine and absorb the ads. Not. Possible.

Yesterday, Gawker reported that Alison Fahey, AdWeak’s top editor, was being bumped upstairs to the corporate office. If you recall, reportedly Fahey was having a tough time steering the editorial ship. Gawker asserted that Fahey would have nothing to do with editorial any longer. However, smart ad blogger Catherine Taylor has got the real skinny:

“Sabrina Crow, senior vp at Nielsen Business Media, and Fahey’s boss, confirmed to me that Fahey will continue to be involved with the new editor and that Cheyenne Group is handling the search.”

Think you’ve got the right stuff?

It’s Friday. Time to put down the pencil and start thinking about sex. Luckily, Tom Ford is here to help you. Just a note: Tom isn’t into that vanilla sex. He’s more of a put the bridle on and ride me type of guy. Tell us we’re wrong? Dare you.

Copyranter sums up these pieces of print work best:

“…he [Tom Ford] again uses crotch-messaging to dissuade straight men from buying his stylish offerings. The above ad says, ‘If you wear Tom Ford clothing to a party, naked women will viciously grab and twist your cock until you shout out in pain.’”

The print work coming out of BBH London makes us want hug and kiss the creatives. That’s some good stuff above - Hillary endorsing Obama with the tagline, “Imagine the power of Axe.” It doesn’t matter who you’re for. The ad just works. We recently dug their work for Levi’s, as well.

Adcentered also spotted this one and is asking their readers: “Do you think that non-political advertisements can have an effect on an election? Is this a political ad and therefor subject to the same rules that govern political advertisements?”

If you’d like to share your thoughts on those questions, you can do so here.

Most folks in the ad game are so focused on digital (ooh!), mobile (ahh!) and gaming (we wish), that it seems no one has noticed the bloodshed occurring in magazines and how their plight slightly echoes that of the ad industry at large. Gradually, and then suddenly, the whole magazine business is bleeding out on the surgeon’s table.

The Audit Bureau of Circulations released its semi-annual report yesterday, and it ain’t pretty. Good Housekeeping (down 20.7 percent), Playboy (down 10.04 percent), Vanity Fair (down 12.8 percent), Vibe (down 18.8 percent), Marie Claire (down 14.3 percent), and Traditional Home (down 15.6 percent) and that’s the shortlist.

This is where you’re thinking - what about the celeb rags? Once hailed as the saving grace of industry newsstand sales, the every multiplying gossip rags are trending down in single copy sales. People fell 8.49%! Meanwhile, In Touch Weekly (.06%), Us Weekly (2.74%) and OK! (7.13%) showed increases. Some of these pubs need euthanasia. As noted years ago, why should you pay an ever increasing newsstand cost when you can just hop on Dlisted to get Britney gossip for free?

Meanwhile, the newsweeklies stood on opposite sides of the results. Time dropped 19.4 percent in single copy sales. Yet, the Economist was up 12.8% overall with 10.1% in single copy sales and The Week jumped 8.1%.

Right now, some of you are cheering. You’re thinking to yourself - maybe, just maybe America is back on the smart fast track. No. Nope. First off, none of these publications are in the Top 25 for verified circulation numbers or single copy sales, so pipe down. Though,The Economist, has barely been scratched these last few years. In fact, it’s managed to create some smart marketing partnerships (e.g Linkedin) and circ offers (lower prices) that have kept it growing. As well, with the Economist, it’s the content, the brand and a strong web component (which it uses very well to drive subscriptions) that keeps its sales up.

The Week is a news aggregator. It’s Google News in print. It’s news content served up in a (basically) digital format that people can swallow. Bound to succeed in this digital and snack culture era.

Bottom line: People still like print. They always will, but you must have a brand. You must have an ethos that is different than that of your competitors. Do you know the difference between People and Life And Style? We don’t think they do either. You must be savvy with your marketing partnerships and be flexible with offers to consumers.

We’re not saying the magazine industry is an easy ride. Certainly not. We were in the business as a Circulation Director. We know the horrors of watching that renewal rate slide. Interestingly, there are a lot of comparisons one could draw to the ad industry:

- the web shows up and everyone goes into shock with new outlets popping up to satisfy demand (Blogs/Specific Digital Agencies)

- everyone is playing a constant game of catch-up with social media (how can we use Twitter to drive subscriptions/sell our client’s product?)

- success requires that many moving parts are all on the same page and that’s tough to do (editorial/marketing/circulation and for agencies - creative/planning/producers)

- some outlets continually make changes (The Economist/Goodby Silverstein), some outlets don’t (Vanity Fair/McCann) and some acquire what they need (Publicis and Digitas/Condenast and Condenet)

- proving the value of the business becomes a must, ROI is the only thing that counts (for magazines it is to the media buyers, for agencies it is to the client)

Before you get your panties in a bunch, we’re not saying that the ad industry is heading into the same bowels of death the magazine industry is submerged in. Rather, we’re suggesting that advertising might want to take a look at publishing and consider what lessons can be learned. Here’s one - innovate now. Don’t sleep on it. Look at poor Time magazine - down 17.57% in total circulation. That’s no joke.

Over at MarketingProfs, Jim Bonfield has posted a request for folks to poke holes in his company, InstantExpert’s, model for local advertising. Want to help? You can see the whole post here and the dummy version of the company site, here. This is the gist: Read the rest of this entry »

Sorry! So much celebrity today. Here’s another one: Rhianna does milk. She looks mean, don’t she? We dig the Milk Campaign. It’s weathered the years so well. So, unless the Olsen Twins happen to sign onto host Honeyshed, we think this will be it for the rest of the day.