It was the fitting close to the 2008 American Magazine Conference (AMC) in San Francisco: a trip to the Google campus in Mountain View, CA. The venue was a 45-minute bus ride away from downtown and a light year or two from the present.

The event had the tone of an American college homecoming weekend: grizzled past heroes still strutting with pride from their glory days but, in truth, looking a step or two slower than the current crop of students.

The unspoken sub-themes of the AMC had resonated from session to session. Although the specific references may have been different, in broadest terms, the messages were the same: our time has come, and it may be gone.

The publishing model is at least broken, if not damaged beyond repair. The economy is slamming us, but no one was predicting a return to a cheery magazine future even in a recovery. Editors are no longer charged with bringing brilliance to a page; their new 21st Century role is as curators of community-driven information that lands in their laps in need of distillation and organization.

It's not as if all the messages were so dire. After all, pointed out the Magazine Publishers' Association president/ceo, Nina Link, there were some upsides: loyal audiences attracted by "trusted, filtered content"; brands that assembled "vast communities of people with like-minded interests"; the ability to target audiences and interests; and "readers who take action when they are exposed to an ad."

But, the simple, whispered truth was that digital media does all of that – and much, much more. And unlike print publishing, digital is unfettered by postal-rate increases, paper-cost hikes, and an uncertain metrics system that more and more often leaves advertisers begging for more.

Any number of AMC visitors had been kind enough to mention how much they liked magazines – the long-form depth of reportage, the tactile satisfaction of a publication well written and well designed, the predictability of a great product occupying a predictable spot in a reader's life with each and every issue.

But, as Eric Schmidt, Google chairman/ceo, told us: "The evidence is not good for magazines."

In fact, he added, "the future is not good at all for consumption of print."

Google boss Eric Schmidt addresses AMC delegates
at the search giant's Mountain View campus
(picture: Doug Goodman)

For the publishers and editors in attendance at the Mountain View meeting, there was a glimmer of hope from the Google leader – "Magazines are different and better than newspapers" – but even that touch of optimism was filtered through the filter of Schmidt's digital reality: "Print will become a small component of online businesses put together for people who want to consume that way. But it will be expensive."

As yet, Schmidt volunteered, the worldwide web is not a fully viable alternative to the kind of content delivered by traditional media: "We're co-dependent on content and the internet is a cesspool. We try to get a really good product, but if the quality of content declines, people will not come to digital media."

"Infinite rumors, misinformation, and disinformation – that's what the future of the internet looks like today. We've gone from a world where only a few people could publish select material. Now anyone can publish anything and that's a major shift … And you have to counter it."

To deal with day-by-day misinformation, Schmidt continued, Google has an immediate response team. For the longer term, however, he looked back at a traditional marketing model: brand nourishment and development.

"Celebrities rise and fall," he explained. "Brands cause you to stay. Real brands – as opposed to starlets and crooks – persist. That's the real message of hope … Brand affinity is clearly hard wired. It is so fundamental to human existence that it's not going away."

Brand development at a place like Google, Schmidt told the magazine industry group, "is a process of continuous innovation. We don't know when it's going to occur. Our cycle is bottom and we deal with [change] as it comes. Essentially, we believe that putting more information in the hands of more people is valuable. Google looks to represent the way people want to consume, not how they should."

To that end, Schmidt did identify a window for magazines: "We don't do content. You all create content. It's a natural partnership." Indeed, he added, "the quality of content has never been higher. It's the nature of how people behave that has changed."

And that usage leads back to brands: "Engagement still matters," he said. "Without your help, we're not as successful as we could be."

And, while he did not present any specific course of action, he encouraged his visitors to learn the Google way of doing (and creating) business: "If you want to find out what are the issues people care about, you innovate and make mistakes. That's the only way to do it … On the internet, you can get big very quickly; you also can get bad very quickly. But if you learn from your mistakes, you can provide end-users with value; you can provide advertisers with value."

The AMC session with the Google chairman/ceo was largely a question-and-answer event. And, aside from some of the longer narratives that dealt with meta-media considerations, Schmidt did have some quicker observations on a variety of topics:

• "Customer service is the killer web application. But it needs a perspective of humility."
• "Getting the narrative right [is the way to building audiences]. It's not who gets the most hits but who the best storyteller is."
• With its headlines and brief story précis, "Google News is little more than the 21st century equivalent of an old-fashioned radio-news wrap-up."
• "When I hear about SEO [Search Engine Optimization], I see a red flag. What we try to do is Search Engine Marketing, a way to become relevant to our consumers."
• New technology offers potential for new kinds of advertising that "blow you away." In particular, Schmidt cited Google's Picassa, an application for organizing digital photography enabling users to sort and identify individual photo subjects by their eyes and noses. "It's magic," Schmidt said.
• He questioned the commercial potential of social networking: "People don't buy products in bars."
• People will still read newspapers, but television is "too slow getting information out to consumers."
• "Seven years ago, I had an idea for Google moving into banking, complete with Google bucks. We decided not to do it then and I don't think we're going to try it again."

At the last on-site session of the 2008 American Magazine Conference in San Francisco, Time magazine's Richard Stengel observed that California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger drives a hybrid Hummer-a "great metaphor" for the governor of one in every seven Americans and the world's eighth-largest economy.

Although he identified his state's economic diversity with such strongholds as bio-technology, high technology, farming and entertainment, Schwarzenegger allowed that California state revenues are down $5 billion this year and cautioned that the economy still could collapse "like an avalanche."

 
California State Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger 
with Time magazine's Richard Stengel
(picture: Doug Goodman)

"I always wanted to be a leader," the lapsed Terminator told the magazine audience. "You have to have this in you. You can't learn that. From the time I was 10 years old, I had a vision of coming to America and being the best in something. I didn't know it would be bodybuilding and acting and politics. But the drive and the will to do anything that it takes-if you're meant for that, it's in you."

In a discussion of the 2008 U.S. Presidential election, he said he still supported fellow Republican John McCain ("a year ago, everybody counted him out and he ended up as the party nominee") and Alaskan Governor/vice-presidential contender Sarah Pallin ("After her last debate, I called to congratulate her. I talked about Miss Alaska beating Mr. Universe. She didn't think it was very funny.")

Unlike Ms. Pallin, Schwarzenegger was open with his media audience about his print reading habits: He receives daily briefing papers culled from California and national newspapers. And, "because I like longer stories," Time, U.S. News & World Report, Robb Report ("it's fun"), and Der Spiegel  ("I like to keep up on the news in Germany.

Other incidental nuggets from the Golden State's chief executive:

• Schwarzenegger may not pump the iron he did in his youth, but he still does aerobic exercises five days a week and still works out with weights on a less regular schedule
• The Hollywood candidate he feels most suited for elective office: Clint Eastwood
• Favorite new movie: The Dark Knight

The drumbeats of economic chaos was so loud at the annual American Magazine Conference (AMC) that it almost drummed out the sound of panic that digital media's powerful ability to engage consumers (and deliver instant proof of that contact) is about to make all traditional media obsolete.

On the final day of the 2008 session in San Francisco, the co-sponsoring Magazine Publishers of America (MPA) introduced a powerful tool in the medium's struggle against both the economy and the challenge of new media.

Rex Briggs, ceo, Marketing Evolution, put the best face on the ability of magazines to produce. And he backed up his contention with a Return on Marketing Objectives (ROMO) metric that, he said, demonstrated:

• In tough economic periods-when considerations of brand familiarity and purchase intent at the bottom of the purchase funnel are primary considerations-magazines generate a superior cost per impact (CPI) than either TV or online media.
  
  
• When purchase intent was isolated, magazines were considerably more efficient than either TV or online media.
  
  
• For the top of funnel, where awareness is the primary driver, TV leads in cost efficiency, but magazines register a close second-place choice.
  
  
• From the top of the purchase tunnel through to the bottom, magazines recorded the most favorable, followed by TV.

The findings were based on 38 Marketing Evolution studies (funded by advertisers at a cost between $150,000 and $300,000), with specific breakouts in the automotive, entertainment, electronics, and pharmaceutical industries. The results were consistent across the specific categories through the overall results.

In the survey sample, television was the dominant medium in terms of expenditures, capturing 80 percent of the dollars, as compared to magazine's 15 percent and online media's 5 percent.

To measure efficiency, the ROMO metric sought to examine the number of people affected by each $1,000 invested in a particular medium. Though advertisers' investment in TV was more than five times greater than their dollar commitment to magazines, the ROMO for brand awareness were close (100 people affected for each $1,000 spent on TV; 91 people for the same amount invested in magazines), and magazines scored significantly, according to Marketing Evolution, in brand awareness (187 to 101) and in purchase intent (145 to 100).

The CPI metric measures how much marketers spent "per person influenced," according to an MPA analysis of the data. "These two efficiency measures are different sides of the same ROI coin, i.e., the two numbers are related."

So, it's no surprise that TV was slightly more efficient in brand awareness (TV: $.98; magazines: $1.08), but magazines led in brand familiarity (TV: $2.61; magazines: $1.40), and purchase intent ((TV: $1.77; magazines: $1.23).

On the last day of the 2008 American Magazine Conference (AMC), Michela O'Connor Abrams, the conference chair and president/publisher of Dwell magazine, summarized two days of speaker content: "We have been told by plenty of people--colleagues, industry experts, Washington consultants--that our business has changed. That there's no going back.

"We've been told to embrace curators, that communities of creativity are our future. We love magazines, but the BlackBerry is a media platform that our brands need to show up on. Whatever else they may do, we need to show up. To successfully navigate the waters that we need to navigate, we need to make sure that we capture opportunities." When the economy begins to recover, she added, "the companies that do well will have taken advantage of these times."

O'Connor Abrams suggested that the shifts in perception need to be internal as well as external. At Dwell magazine, she said, "our sales people and marketing people will be brand managers. 'Sales' no longer will be on their business cards. And, as brand managers, they'll travel around the country sitting in front of customers and talking about strategy for these customers….. Everything we do has to be tailored to these customers."

As models for the magazine industry, the AMC chair cited the observations of two Monday speakers. From Sheryl Sandberg, COO, Facebook, she picked up the need to be "faster and more nimble, move faster. They can turn their business on a dime to respond to their different audiences.  They reach out to their communities and listen to them in real time."

And from Paul Saffo, futurist and Stanford University Associate professor, she emphasized the idea that the real-view mirror often offers insight into challenges that lie ahead: "Old ideas are not obsolete; you can dust them off and make them appropriate for today."

There has never been more competition for readers. Magazines that could count on the predictability of year-after-year renewals are finding that readers are time-starved and often feeding at online tables. The message was crisp and clear at any number of forums during the 2008 American Magazine Conference (AMC) in San Francisco: Magazines don't just need readers; they need communities--places where their readers can feel comfort in numbers and in shared interests.

The push model is an anachronism. The new paradigm is pull. And a number of publications have discovered that cause-related marketing can be a powerful driver in audience affinity.

 
Editors on the Cause Marketing panel share their experience
(picture: Doug Goodman)

"Go outside the magazine to identity a worthy organization whose attributes can come back to your brand," counseled David Zinczenko, svp/editor-in-chief of Men's Health, editorial director of Best Life, and moderator of a day three's "Cause Marketing/Edit In Magazines: What's Good For Your Readers... And Your Brand?" discussion. "To start, do it on the cheap. But, over time, turn the enterprise into a profit builder that can bring your magazine's vision to a new generation of readers."

For Men's Health, the cause-related partner was the FitSchools Foundation whose mission is to reform physical education and end childhood obesity, and save a generation. More than 9 million U.S. children are overweight, but fewer than one in 10 schools meets federal exercise requirements.

"We parachuted into Easley, South Carolina, to a school where a 300-pound sixth-grader had fallen through floor in class and the principal needed to lose 30 pounds… We couldn't build them a stadium, but we could ask our partners for equipment and a program that makes fitness fun. For our readers, there was the opportunity to stay engaged through a Web site as we moved to a dozen schools and beyond."

While Zinczenko allowed that there can be "issues" between for-profit institutions and non-profit organizations that demand management, vision, and oversight, such programs are important "even when you don't know how you're going to pay for it."

At Field & Stream, according to Colin Kearns, senior editor, the opportunity for funding was simplified with a program that began an article in the pages of the magazine three years ago. The 1.5 million readers of the 113-year-old title "love to hunt, love to fish," Kearns said. "But they know that if they don't champion grass-roots conservation issues, three's not going to be much left to hunt or fish."

The Heroes series started out as "a fun, entertaining way to approach environmental efforts. I compare it to broccoli: you gotta have it, it's really important, but it's not much fun." To make the subject more appetizing, he continued, "we put some good cheese on top of the broccoli."

And Toyota noticed. When the magazine found Heroes who were cleaning five million tons of trash out of local rivers, the affinity with the Toyota truck brand was a natural one. And, now, each issue of F&S features three Heroes among the magazine's readers-people who've come up with an environmental solution that improves the environment for the children who will inherit it.  Initial winners are rewarded with $1,000 stipends that they can put back into their work. Every year, the magazine's editors and representatives from non-profit groups select six finalists who receive an additional $6,500 and come to New York City for "an awards gala."

And the grand-prize winner gets a truck. (Queried about the propriety of a vehicle with a large environmental footprint as the politically correct prize of an environmental competition, F&S' Kearns had a practical answer: "What's he going to do? Put five tons of river trash in the back seat of a Prius?")

Stacey Morrison, editor-in-chief of Redbook, brought the cause of domestic violence with her when she arrived from Marie Claire, where she'd been executive editor and directed that publication's award-winning advocacy projects.

"Redbook is about relationships," she told the AMC Tuesday morning gathering. "And we try to talk about the 'hard stuff' you need to do in everyday life." Each issue carries some sort of cause-related theme. (On the eve of the American presidential election, the topic is getting out the vote.) And, with a partnership with the Lifetime cable television network, the issue topic connects with potential audiences beyond the pages of the publication.

But domestic violence is a recurring theme-one that's underwritten with a $150,000 contribution from Liz Claiborne. "One out of three women is a victim of domestic abuse," Morrison said. "It's my job to make the unpalatable palatable. It's the kind of thing that people might not want to know about, but that they really need to know. It contextualizes everything Redbook is all about."

As Men's Health's Zinczenko suggested, program management can be difficult. "Sometimes, it's better to go with an organization with a small, low-to-the-ground profile," Morrison volunteered. But even a modest enterprise can have ambitious goals. And, when a board ember of Redbook's charitable partner disagreed with the way the magazine was presenting the charity's message, a series of heated emails almost compromised the program's launch. "We're the professionals in messaging," Morrison explained, "and even though you try to communicate a clear vision as to what you plan to do, sometimes it's necessary to get in there with a strong hand You do what you need to do."

While childhood obesity was the concern of Men's Health, Family Circle reached out to its community of readers with a message that resonated just as strongly with its audience: hungry children. "We were looking for an organization that that made sense for us," Editor-in-Chief Linda Fears explained. "We champion families and children. And we found a perfect partner in Share Our Strength's Great American Bake Sale."

Some 13 million American children--, one out of every six--live below poverty level.
The Share Our Strength organization has used proceeds from bake sales all over the country to provide more than 5.3 million meals to low-income children. "They don't ask people to write a check. They ask them to bake goods and sell them," Fears said. The magazine supports the effort with a series of editorial stories, public-service ads within the pages of the publication, and online coverage at the publication's Web site.

"We do what's good for our brand and for our readers," Fears added. And, in a variation of the if-you-build-it-they-will-come theme, the Food [Cable TV] Network and Domino Sugar also have signed on as co-sponsors for the Great American Bake Sale. Said Fears, "We ended up with several additional advertising pages, but that was never our goal. When you go with your gut to extend the brand, you begin to make a connection with our readers. And, when you get enough traction, the advertisers will follow."

The American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME), along with the Magazine Publishers of America (MPA), is the co-sponsor of the annual American Magazine Conference (AMC).

Aside from participating in an exhaustive exercise in acronyms, ASME was responsible for a large part of the early programming in the second day of the 2008 annual assembly.

A recurrent theme throughout the sessions was the need to move beyond the printed page-to recast "editors " as "curators" in open-ended communities that, in theory, reach readers in a variety of forums and touchpoints.

"What used to be journalism is now called 'content,' David Wiley, Runner's World svp/editor-in-chief and ASME president, told a Tuesday morning AMC audience. "Readers have become 'users' and even 'customers.' The alchemy that takes place in our pages becomes 'brands' that must be extended to new 'platforms.'"

The extension of "content into different platforms," Wiley allowed, is an integral part of an editor's job. "The Web is not our future, it's our present. It's our job to figure out how to do it next week, next month, next year." And, to that end, he added ASME officers will soon present a series of guidelines that will provide a context for multi-platform extensions.

At once, however, it was clear that Wiley was not buying into the idea of passively "curating" instead of actively and selectively  "editing":  "Magazines are still where we do our best work," he said, "where we have our biggest groups of readers and, incidentally, where we make our most money. Through great writing, distinctive design, and iconic photos, magazines engage the world in a way that no other medium can do.

"We are in a period of great opportunity. We need to figure out how to reach our audience, wherever it is. And we need to reach it through print, mobile, or the 3D electronic readers that are coming down the line.

Wiley continued, "We now have more content than ever. How it's created is up for grabs. But, be certain that the best content, the best 'curated' or 'edited' content will win. And that's not going to happen through technology or marketing. That's going to happen by publishers and editors working together."

Spitzer's "Brain": Magazine Society's 2008 Best-Cover Winner

It was not a good year for former New York governor Eliot Spitzer, whose patronage of a prostitution ring was so startling that it not only deposed him from office but also generated the most frenzied series of email correspondence since internship programs at the White House came under comparable scrutiny.

New York magazine needed to respond to the story, but also do so in a matter that would outdo any other commentary on the titillating topic nearly a full week after its initial disclosure. And, it did so with a cover image that billboarded a full package inside and echoed back to the work of George Lois, whose work for Esquire in the '60s and early '70s set a standard for covers that rarely has been matched in American publications.

What will always be known in U.S. magazine editorial circles as the "Spitzer's Brain" cover dominated the third-annual "Best Cover" competition sponsored by the American Society of Magazine editors, taking in honors for:

• Cover of the Year
  Best News Cover
  Best Coverline

Other honorees were:

• Texas Monthly
  Best Celebrity Cover (and Best Service Cover)

• The New Yorker
  Best Concept Cover

• New York
  Best Leisure-Interest Cover

• New York Look and Vanity Fair
  Top Fashion Cover (tied)

Adweek's 2008 Magazine Brand Icons

While Ad Age had the spotlight for its "A List" of top 10 magazines, rival Adweek checked in with its own registry of performers.

Leading a Top 10 "Brand Leaders" roster was Better Homes and Gardens. Of BH&G, Adweek wrote, "multiplatform branding is a household term. A Wal-Mart deal spawned more than 500 BH&G-branded products (including bedding, dinnerware, and, this fall a line of music CDs), while a deal with Universal Furniture put BH&G furniture in stores nationwide…. Better TV reaches viewers both online and via TV syndication and the signature red-plaid cookbook, after more than 75 years, remains a staple of kitchens everywhere. What will they cook up next?" 

Filling out the Top 10 Brand list were:

• Elle ("continues to strut its stuff with a constellation of brand extensions, from the airwaves to retail chains")
  
  
• Men's Health ("continue[s] to demonstrate how to translate a print powerhouse into a whole universe of products")
  
  
• Real Simple ("a knockout brand plain and, well, simple"), Gourmet ("a smorgasbord of deliciously innovative spinoffs")
  
  
• Martha Stewart Living ("At Martha's place, brand building is certainly a good thing")
  
  
• People ("no other celebrity weekly comes close to the brand dominance of this player")
  
  
• InStyle ("remains one of the most ambitious magazine brands around, putting its name on a vast assortment of print, digital, and TV projects, as well as events"), Entertainment
  
  
• Weekly ("a superstar when it comes to magazine brand proliferation")
  
  
• Cosmopolitan ("the brand's Web site is on fire, with unique users up 32 percent, time spent up 171 percent, and page views up a massive 236 percent").

Stanford Futurist: To See the Future, Look Back

 
Pessimism is the new black," declared Paul Saffo, consulting associate professor, Stanford University, and distinguished visiting scholar, Stanford Media-X research network. His timing for the message could not have been more appropriate: As iPhone users throughout the Grand Ballroom of San Francisco's Westin St. Francis hotel discretely tracked the Dow's 800-point drop, Saffo encouraged his American Magazine Conference audience to "learn to be comfortable with uncertainty unless you arbitrarily want to limit what's ahead."

To manage uncertainty-and to plan for the future-Saffo counseled that business leaders "Look back twice as far as look forward. Rear-view mirrors are terrific forecasting devices. Look for general patterns, not specific events."

To discover the current state of the media business, Saffo flashed back through a half-century of history. The mandate of the industrial revolution, he explained, had been simple: "Make enough stuff cheaply enough to satisfy needs."

At the end of World War II, when companies stopped manufacturing tanks, bombers, and munitions, they discovered they actually could make more than people wanted. The industrial revolution had run its course and the consumer economy was just beginning. And, with the popularization of television "fueling new consumer desires" the consumer-centric drivers lasted into the first decade of the 21st Century. At which time, Saffo offered, yet another revolution was afoot.

"Today, it's not the maker or the consumer who's in charge," the Stanford futurist contended. "We have a new economic animal who does the same things at the same time. They're the new creators, people who create things as they consume. Everybody can publish. Anyone can produce a movie. You don't have to work for a network to produce a TV show."

"We are in the midst of a fundamental change in the information industry," he explained. "Everything is media. But uncertainty is an opportunity if you have the right fame of mind…."

"Today, it's not the maker or the consumer who's in charge," the Stanford futurist contended. "We have a new economic animal who does the same things at the same time. They're the new creators, people who create things as they consume. Everybody can publish. Anyone can produce a movie. You don't have to work for a network to produce a TV show."

"Personal media is your opportunity," Saffo told the magazine audience. "While rest of world catches up to knowledge that media is important, you're at ground zero of the media revolution, the eye of a media-storm hurricane. And that's a lousy place to figure out how the winds blow."

If uncertainty is a given, the reaction to the unknown-especially in periods of upheaval-can shape the future. The music industry, he explained, reacted to the uncertainty of digital media by suing their best customers, terrifying teen-aged boys. And, "they were so busy suing that they missed the ring-tone opportunity."

To plan for the future, Saffo suggested that magazine leaders look back at the recent history of Google: "When you went onto Google, what was the cost of your subscription? Nothing. But you pay before you get your results. You pay for your search string-a powerful piece of information that, when aggregated with all the other search strings, made the Google founders richer than God.

The mixture of participation and creation already has ample precedence with YouTube, blogs, and social networking. But the presence of new media platforms doesn't mean an end for large media organizations.

"We will see media players much bigger than the big players today." The mega-publishers of the future, Saffo continued, will be the enterprises that, like Google, learn to capture the "smallest quantum of information…. and figure out how to harness the power of a single click."

Notes on the Current Face of Facebook

Where do magazines and digital media overlap? It was with this question on his mind that BusinessWeek Editor-in-Chief Stephen Adler quizzed Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg on the relative merits of print and digital media, their points of distinction, and their areas of overlap.

 
Facebook boss Sheryl Sandberg
(picture: Doug Goodman)

After stints at McKinsey & Co. and the World Bank, which led to a position as chief of staff to Secretary of the Treasury Lawrence Summers from 1999 to 2001, Sandberg joined Google when George W. Bush moved into the White House. As vp/global online sales and operations, she grew a sales staff from four people to 4,000 and, in 2007, oversaw a program that generated some $16.6 billion in revenue. She joined Facebook in March, 2008. 

Some Sandberg highlights from her Monday luncheon interview:

• "I'm a little old fashioned. I read everything for business online; I have Google alerts that let me know wherever Facebook's mentioned and I look at the stuff right away. But I love magazines. I love a magazine like The Economist, where I know what the editorial guidance is, where I'm familiar with how the magazine is laid out, where I know where to find things. Online magazines don't work as well for me."
  
  
• "Online content is effective when it's easy to use-when there are more links and fewer articles, when the reader gets to do the navigation."
  
  
• "People don't dislike ads [on Facebook]. They dislike irrelevant, untargeted ads."
  
  
• "There are 6,700 magazines in North America and about 150 million blogs. Not all content is created equally. The issue is not just online content, but credible online content."
  
  
• "I believe in an open Web. At Google, we viewed success by how quickly people were able to get off, not how long they stayed on."
  
  
• "My long-term dream plan is to give people the technology to connect independent of any particular website, independent of any particular device. Short-term, my goal is to translate our site to make it a completely global. We're in 20 languages now; our goal is 60."
  
  
• "We've learned how to do demand fulfillment. What we still have to master is demand growth."
  
  
• "We recently completed a redesign of Facebook and many of our people were not happy with it. But I'm proud to say that people use our product to protect our product: [A protest blog] is our fifth most-popular Facebook group."

Veteran Democratic Strategist Steve Elmendorf counts the Magazine Publishers of America (MPA) as one of his Elmendorf Strategies clients. And, in a Monday morning presentation at the 2008 American Magazine Conference in San Francisco--co-sponsored by the MPA and the American Society of Magazine Editors--Elmendorf all but presumed an Obama victory in the election four weeks from tomorrow. Moreover, he predicted Democratic gains in the Senate of four to eight seats and, in the House of Representatives, 10 to 20 seats.

Steve Elmendof addresses AMC delegates
(picture: Doug Goodman)

The Democratic lock on the executive and legislative branches of the United States, Elmendorf suggested, is likely to result in the quick Congressional and Presidential endorsement of a series of "politically popular, low-cost" pieces of legislation that will demonstrate good faith in the process of recovery while larger reform plans make their way through legislative channels.

For the magazine industry, Elmendorf cited three specific areas of concern:

• Good News: An Obama presidency likely will result in the passage of a shield law to protect journalists and their use of sources.
  
  
• Bad News: Repeal of the tax deductibility of advertising. Said Elmendorf: "The new government will inherit an enormous deficit-something that already was huge before the addition of the recovery package. To decrease the deficit, it probably will be necessary to reduce taxes. Taxing people or increasing the Social Security tax are not popular alternatives." The alternative, he continued, is the elimination of deductions that stand in the way of revenue growth. "It's a big deal to the magazine industry and a big deal to people who advertise." But, the repeal of the advertising tax deductions does address the politically expedient goal of carrying political popularity without the immediate compromise of tax-payer interests.
  
  
• Bad News: Direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising likely already is not a popular practice in Congress and there's no evidence that a new administration and a new Congress will find any reason to look favorably on it.
  
  
• Who-Knows News: "Policy makers generally do not grapple with the new digital world," Elmendorf explained, "and they have the potential to do wrong thing if they do not know what they're dealing with." Triggers that quickly could set off discussions on digital discussions: privacy breaches.

Larger legislative issues affecting all businesses that also could change the rules of magazine publishing include:

• New Taxes: "Corporations don't vote," Elmendorf told the AMC audience. In search of new tax-revenue streams, Congress will look to companies, not people."
  
  
• Financial Regulations: An Obama presidency, Elmendorf predicted, will result in more taxes on business. "Regulating the entire financial industry," he said, "will be an integral part of the recover program." Specifically, magazine publishers should look for possible restrictions on the ways they can raise capital.

"We are a tough, resilient medium," Nina Link, president/ceo of the Magazine Publishers of America (MPA) told a Monday morning audience at the 2008 American Magazine Conference. "Magazines have seen it all…heck we've reported on it all. War, peace, booms, busts, ups, downs, bubbles, fads, trends...you name it. We've been there."

In her annual "President's Outlook" address on the first full day of the conference at San Francisco's St. Francis Westin Hotel, Link allowed, "We are meeting at a time of unprecedented change and uncertainty. For the world. For the country. For the media. And for magazines.

"2008 has rocked the very foundation of our economy.  The Dow drops.  Anxieties rise.  Credit tightens.  And the uncertainty about the presidential election fuels the volatile business climate."

The industry-specific turmoil, she continued, includes rising paper costs, increased postal fees, and softening advertising budgets, and "an evolving business model, a model where magazine dollars are not going to be exchanged for digital dollars…at least not in the near future."

Link cited "bedrock" generic strengths that, she said, will help the industry weather a difficult and uncertain economy: loyal audiences attracted by "trusted, filtered content"; brands that assemble "vast communities of people with like-minded interests"; the ability to target audiences and interests; and "readers who take action when they are exposed to an ad."

Additionally, the MPA head pointed to a number of legislative, advertising and distribution issues "that individual companies cannot tackle on their own. Together, as an industry, we can address these challenges":

Government Affairs:

• An inflation-based cap of new Postal Reform legislation kept rate increases to 3 percent-as opposed to a 20-percent increase that was a possibility of the previous law.
  
  
• Direct-to-consumer advertising, the industry's largest health-related sub-category, continues to draw Congressional scrutiny in the face of legislation passed to protect the practice.
  
  
• The MPA and the American Society of Magazine Editors have made "considerable progress" in advancing federal Shield legislation that would protect journalists from having to reveal their confidential sources.
  
  
• "Amid ever-increasing digital initiatives," the MPA is "redoubling its efforts to protect magazines' intellectual property and fight piracy."

Industry Initiatives:

• A new MPA "Under the Influence of Magazines," advertising campaign highlights "independent research [that] shows that magazines lead in purchase intent, online traffic and search…. Magazines are also tops in influencing customers to start a search online. Better than broadcast and cable TV. Better than newspapers. Better than radio. Better than Internet ads and outdoor billboards."
  
  
• Working in partnership with consultant McKinsey & Co., the MPA is working to develop new metrics that "will measure-issue by issue-exposure to the magazine and key demographics such as age, gender, income, ethnicity, and family status." Additionally, the new data will weigh engagement based on issue-by-issue recall measurement of individual ads as well as consumer action driven by magazine advertising.
  
  
• Last month, the MPA and Meijer, a Midwest chain of supercenters, concluded a promotion that gave customers a $2 discount off their next purchase at Meijer when they bought two or more magazines in a single shopping trip. Results: a category-wide sales lift of 9 percent and, for featured titles, incremental sales of more than 50 percent.
  
  
• "Finally, no part of our magazine world is changing more rapidly than digital," Link said.  "This year, for the first time ever, MPA has been charting the growth of our online visitors. In this year's second quarter, the traffic to consumer magazine websites rose 8.5 percent over the same period last year. Consumer magazine sites averaged nearly 70 million unique monthly visitors in the second quarter. Visitors spent 21% more time on magazine websites compared to the second quarter in 2007."

Independent magazines spring from honest wells of innovation in the American publishing business. They're not focused-grouped out of Time Inc. or advertiser-driven extensions from Hearst. They often begin around a kitchen table with an individual and a group of friends who share a passion for an idea and decide to build a larger audience around their shared common point of interest.

The kitchen table in Ben Goldhirsh's house was unlike any other. Bernie, Ben's father, was an MIT engineer (Wikipedia claims he had a hand developing ballistic missiles) with an entrepreneurial tick who enjoyed sailing so much he launched (if you'll pardon the expression) Sail magazine in 1970. In the course of exercising his entrepreneurial muscle, Bernie realized that the publishing industry was missing a trick or two in its coverage of small businesses. So, he sold Sail in 1979 for $10 million and founded Inc., a magazine for that entrepreneurial audience the senior Goldhirsh had discovered with his focus group of one.

About the same time Bernie was birthing Inc., son Ben was born. Bernie's business magazine turned out to be one of the most enduring of independent magazines; father Bernie sold it in 2000, only when his own health issues demanded he put his attention elsewhere.

But, it was clear Ben had learned something from the kitchen-table school of magazine development. Bernie died in 2003, but Ben already had picked up his father's passion for publishing. In 2006, at the age of 26, he published the first issue of Good, a magazine that filled another void in magazine publishing: engagement in social causes.

The title had its critics: One magazine consultant told the New York Times, "This sounds a lot to me like vanity publishing, a bunch of kids sitting around with something they think is a really good idea, and one of them has a lot of money."

Wrong.

Ben's 21st Century vision had been every bit as prescient as his father's instincts three-and-a-half decades earlier. By the time marketers and publishers discovered the empowerment that association with social causes could bring to brand identification, Ben Goldhirsh was already there.

At the opening session of the 2008 American Magazine Conference's annual assembly in San Francisco, Jonathan Greenblatt, Good's ceo, discussed four trends that should ground the authenticity of cause-related marketing-for both a magazine and its advertisers:

• Environmentalism: Mainstream media has recognized that a "green-is-good" focus can lend credibility to products, services, and the media that endorse them.
  
  
• Globalization: For marketers and publishers, 20 years of international commerce pales in the face of what Greenblatt called "Googilization…. Everything is searchable. Google has organized the world's information. It's truly the death of distance."
  
  
• Inequity: Although more people live in urban environments, Greenblatt said, more than "four billion people live on less than $4 a day." And, despite the concentration of populations in cities, inequality is a "profound phenomenon" that deeply affects consumers all over the world. And, in a digital environment, "that information is on your telephone, right in front of you."
  
  
• Uncertainty: "The collapse of financial markets and the scoliosis of government" and affronts to the millennials who want to make the world a better place. Greenblatt translated the trend to marketplace with "a craving for authenticity that has inspired a well of interest in the current election. People want new voices, new strategies, new solutions."

 
Good Magazine ceo Jonathan Greenblatt
(picture: Doug Goodman)

The risk a marketer assumes in missing out on audience authentification, Greenblatt continued, is the immediate and fierce response of a consumer empowered with tools of response far more powerful and immediate than a letter to the editor. For instance, he cited the social outrage over some commercial aspects of Bono's global (red) charitable initiative.

From Gap's efforts to tie into concern over HIV/AIDS (and maybe sell the occasional T-shirt) came the outraged response of an organization that didn't share the same interest in a brand that may have its charitable heart in the right place but also has a tarnished history of hiring under-aged workers in third-world markets:

"Yesterday, companies would underwrite a local orchestra or a little-league team," Greenblatt added, "but there would be no direct connection with the company." A new CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) initiative ends us as a Corporate Spin and Rhetoric nightmare when "food companies espouse healthy products that really don't do anything for your health."

When businesses and social responsibility march in linked step, "an economy of integrity" benefits marketers and consumers alike. As profitable initiatives, Greenblatt cited four "ethical brands": Method Products , the Body Shop's new Lush line , Ethical Homes and Ethos Water --the last a company he started in his son's bedroom (a variation on the magazine kitchen model) that takes a percentage of its net profits to help feed the 1.2 billion people throughout the world who live without  clean water.

The value propositions for marketers of such products, he continued, are "richer and more vibrant than anything we're accustomed to. They offer the opportunity to trade up, not just to trade off."

The community of products that surround the publication--including regular inserts into the New York Sunday Times, information cards distributed at Starbucks stores, Good-community events, a variety of Web-related activities that include a dedicated presence on YouTube -"utilize marketing  to inform and inspire customers. And, in doing so, the magazine has moved from an old publishing model (manipulate the consumer) to a new vision (engagement in the vision of the brand). "We're not just talking to a person who takes the magazine out of his mailbox at the end of the month. We're building a participatory group of shareholders."

And, by refining and understanding that audience-by creating a community-Good is confident it has the audience for its first magazine spin-off: Good Business will launch as a "beta issue" 32-page supplement to the November/December 2008 issue. Like its parent publication, Greenblatt said, GB will be bottom-up in its reliance on audience-driven editorial initiatives.

Drawing a series of intersecting PowerPoint circles, Greenblatt positioned Ben Goldhirsh's magazine at the point of overlap of entertainment and relevance; of stimulating and socially conscious; of the New Yorker and Wired magazines; of idealism and pragmatism; of community, engagement, and action. "We're going to the place where magazines need to go-where we can capitalize on our integrity and be an authentic participant in an on-going discussion with our customers. And, in doing so, engage and drive action."

Good magazine is true to its mission in the new ethical economy: By offering their regular readers a chance to apply their subscription fees to a charity of their choice, the bi-monthly magazine has managed to reinforce its authenticity and credibility with its core audience and to "drive trial as we build a community that already was there but needed a voice.… We're creating communities to engage in good."

The result? Some $1 million in circulation revenue turned over to charity. Bryan Welch, publisher and editorial director of Ogden Publications, observed, "This certainly is a different model for our business. They give 100 percent of their circulation revenue to charity. And the irony is that any number of publishers, instead, used to give 100 percent of their circulation revenue to (the subscriber-solicitation  service) American Family Publishing.

San Francisco native Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the United States House of Representatives and, for the last two weeks, the most visible woman in the country, kicked off her key-note address at the 2008 American Magazine Conference (AMC) with a simple question: “So, how was your week?”

Nancy Pelosi delivers her keynote at AMC 2008 
(picture: Doug Goodman)

Back home for the weekend—and, most certainly, bound for a red-eyed return later that same night to Washington, D.C.—she welcomed the 400-plus attendees with an all-out salute to the magazine industry.

When she first agreed to speak to the gathering—co-sponsored by the Magazine Publishers of America (MPA) and American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME)—back in early February, she assumed that discussions about the economy’s effect on advertising would be a topic of interest.  “But I had no idea that we would be in the eye of the storm,” she admitted.

Pelosi was the central figure in the economic-bailout discussions and negotiations that have dominated print, broadcast, and digital news media for two weeks. And the reportage, she commented, offered a sharp contrast to the early days of media when communications and transportation were co-dependent: “The news could travel only as fast as a horse could gallop or a boat could sail.”

The bailout reportage of the current crisis, by contrast, was a series of perpetual updates, no matter what the media. But Pelosi, who “couldn’t wait for the news” when she was growing up, seemed comfortable with the attention. In fact, she saluted the magazine industry for its diligence and integrity:  “Thank you for the information,” she said. “Thank you for the entertainment. Thanks you for the diversion. And thank you for the strengthening of our democracy you all provide.”

3D: coming soon to a theatre near you

Fortune Managing Editor Andy Serwer, in a second keynote session, followed Rep. Pelosi to the stage of the Westin St. Francis hotel’s Grand Ballroom with an interview with Jeffrey Katzenberg, ceo of DreamWorks Animation SKG.

Following the lead of the House Speaker, Katzenbeg quickly established his credentials as a print consumer: “I still have a voracious appetite for magazines—all shapes, types, and forms. I may be so old school that I’m no longer a relevant demographic, but I love being able to read the long-form story. This morning, I found myself reading a couple of essays in Time about the economic situation and you just can’t find that kind of writing anywhere else.”

For his slice of media, Katzenberg predicted an imminent shift in technologies that will be every bit as dramatic and powerful as the change from silent films to talkies or the transformation of movies from black-and-white to color:

“Think about the transformation of the way we deliver sound,” he told Serwer. “We started from vinyl records, moved to eight-track cassettes, to tapes, to CDs and now to digital. A new generation of 3D technology is about to make movies—as we know them—the equivalent of vinyl records.”

This “third great revolution,” he added, is only a short handful of months away.  “The difference between stereoscopic films and flat movies is the tip of a waterfall that will bring tremendous transformations throughout society. And, it’s not a change that will just affect movies. It quickly will change every form of visual device, whether it’s a home TV or a handheld mobile device.”

And, at Serwer’s prodding, he reassured the AMC audience that viewers will not have to don geeky red-and-blue disposable glasses to take in the new media offerings. Italian eyeglass designer Luxotica already has created a new product that will serve its owners as eyeglasses in the harsh light of day and as 3D viewing glasses in the dark of the theater.

“If you go running, you put on sneakers. When you go bowling, you take your personal bowling balls with you. In much the same fashion, it won’t be long before you have your special sunglasses to take to the movie theater.”

The Ad Age A-List 2008

For years, Advertising Age has used the occasion of the MPA Annual Meeting to present its “A List” of magazines that manage to match quantitative measures such as advertising pages, total circulation, subscriptions, and single-copy sales with more qualitative considerations such as editorial quality, innovation, and digital friendliness.

For 2008, the top “A List” performer was the North American edition of The Economist. “What’s the mission for a weekly magazine in 2008?” Ad Age asked. “While other newsweeklies make their columnists names bigger, The Economist relies instead on the value of its content. To be fair, it also has spent a few years adding distribution at chains such as Whole Foods. New subscribers pay more than $100 for a year’s worth of issues.”

Rounding out the top 10 were:

• Women’s Health (“perhaps the most intuitive spinoff in magazines”)
  
  
• Elle (“a magazine with a major business behind it”)
  
  
• Every Day with Rachel Ray (“a mission premised on real life keeps winning readers”)
  
  
• National Geographic (“maintained impressive circulation and matched last year’s ad pages…. Two of its top-five-selling issues ever appeared in 2008”)
  
  
• Fast Company (awards include honors for excellence in business/financial journalism and both its Web site and Fast Company.TV are growing)
  
  
• New York (“quality of the feature well, standout columnists and neat approaches to old staples”)
  
  
• People Style Watch (“don’t overlook this celebrity style spinoff…. September’s issue clocked 78.1 ad pages, up 73.6 over September ’07”)
  
  
• House Beautiful (“any title that can increase ad pages by 12.8 percent and newsstand copies by 9.2 percent in a winner”)
  
  
• Condé Nast Traveler (“on a tear for a while.”).

Ad Age also named Chris Johns, National Geographic editor-in-chief (“unassuming and thoughtful in ways most magazine editors are not”) the editor of the year and Elle Publisher Carol A. Smith (“She recognized a lot quicker than a lot of other publishers that magazines are brands,” one large beauty advertiser told Ad Age) executive of the year.

Geoffrey Precourt, US Editor of WARC Online, previews the American Magazine Conference, looking at the current climate facing publishers, and some of the topics under discussion.

Whatever the formal program says, the number one topic at this year's American Magazine Conference will be the economy.

The event, jointly sponsored by the Magazine Publishers of America (MPA) and the American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME), takes place as publishers struggle to slow the accelerating decline in US magazine advertising revenue.

You can't help it if a trade organization looks for a warm ray of sunshine in a long, cold storm: "Food, Retail and Travel Post First-Half Ad Gains," the press release from MPA read on July 10, 2008.

But you had to get into the text of the story to discover that categories in decline over the same period included Automotive (-21.3%); Toiletries & Cosmetics (-11.1%); Home Furnishings and Supplies (-14.1%); Apparel & Accessories (-4.1%); Direct Response Companies (-10.3%); Financial, Insurance & Real Estate (-5.1%); Drugs & Remedies (-13.2%); and Technology (-17.5%). And the amount of those gainers? Food: 6.9%; Retail; 2.3%; and Travel: 0.5%.

When all the revenue numbers from all the categories had been tallied, the Publishers Information Bureau reported that half-year industry decline – in comparison with 2007 performance – was 3.1% and that second-quarter revenues had dropped 4.7%.

At the time, Ellen Oppenheim, the MPA's evp/cmo, explained, "The magazine ad trend this year is similar to the last two drop-offs – in the early 1990s and earlier part of this decade – when PIB revenue and pages declined, but later rebounded as the ad market picked up."

But that was before economic chaos at the end of September saw the bottom fall out of American economic markets. And, as American publishers and editors began to assemble in San Francisco for this year's conference, the prospect of a rebound seemed distant at best.

In a welcoming letter to AMC attendees, Michela O'Connor Abrams, president/publisher of DWELL magazine and conference chair, wrote, "This AMC is perhaps more important than any in the past. A blinding glimpse of the obvious perhaps, but don't we need each other now more than ever? Our brands and the communities they serve are being challenged on many fronts – economically and technologically to name two.

"At the past four AMCs we have discussed the power of print and the brands that were born in print and translate across platforms. We are smart enough to know what we have at stake, and in the current economy these stakes are higher than ever…. During our working sessions, we'll be all business. No B.S. No "been there, done that" sessions."

If overall recovery remains the key to unlocking the revenue quandary, the Sunday evening schedule for the annual MPA assembly offered a mixture of hope, celebration, and resignation. Even while Congress was working around the clock to come up with a bi-partisan bailout, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was scheduled for a 15-minute Key Note Kickoff Sunday evening.

And, whatever her news, a California wine-tasting dinner featuring some the state's finest vineyards promised to satisfy magazine people who found their glasses either half full (we've bottomed out) or half empty (we've not seen anything yet).

The real working sessions of the 2008 AMC seemed to be split between:

• "Topics That Will Never Go Away" ("How Independents Can Change, Adapt and Grow With the Times"; "Make Every Dollar Work for Growth in a Tough Economy"; "Tackle Your Toughest Challenges: Audience Development, Monetization And Budgets"; "Best Cover Competition"; "What Makes Great Magazine Ads?"; "The Hard Sell In A Soft Economy: How Publishers Can Fight For More Ad Dollars").
• "It's Now Or Never" ("Reshaping The Model For Magazines"; "Retail 2013"; "Jumpstart Your Website"; "New Uses For User-Generated Content"; "Find New Tools to Enhance Your Online Presence, Attract Advertising and Engage Your Audience"; "Monetizing Beyond The Ad Page"; "The Art Of Innovation" and "The Most Innovative Thing I've Done This Year").
• "Relentlessly Optimistic" ("Why Magazines Are A Must-Have Medium For Advertisers").

The AMC assembly also will use some of its senior ASME editorial voices to investigate the shape of the next generation of magazines. Right after Rep. Pelosi leaves the stage on Sunday evening, Fortune Managing Editor Andy Serwer and Jeffrey Katzenberg, CEO and Director, DreamWorks Animation SKG, will discuss how mainstream media can survive in the digital age.

And, at a Monday luncheon seminar, BusinessWeek Editor-in-Chief Steve Adler is scheduled to ask Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook COO, how the social network boosted its revenue, monetized its huge audience base, broadened the company's global footprint and – perhaps most importantly to the AMC audience – what magazines can learn from those various processes.

And, of course, California would be just another West Coast state were it not for its celebrities. The formal sessions will close on Tuesday morning as Time magazine Managing Editor Richard Stengel interviews Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. And, for those who stay for the afternoon, there's a guided tour of Google, the biggest celebrity of all.