REINVENTED BETTER HOMES SATES IDEA-HUNGRY READERS; HOMING IN: New team figures out how to serve a massive base across platforms: 'Talk about the brand vs. just the magazine,' with advertisers involved from start.(Special Report: Magazines: The A-List)(Better Homes and Gardens)

Advertising Age, October, 2007 by Ives, Nat

Byline: NAT IVES

If you're a 20-something media buyer renting a place in Manhattan, the odds are decent that you don't spend much time thinking about, say, Better Homes and Gardens. For one thing, most of you don't live in big homes with cultivated gardens.

The thing is, you aren't far from the spot in which the magazine's own top staffers found themselves last year. Time Inc. veteran Andy Sareyan was named Better Homes' president in February 2006-and was essentially a blank slate on the magazine. "All I knew about Better Homes was that it was big,'' he says.

Jan Studin, who'd been publisher at Parents, was brought over as VP-publisher a month later. At least the new editor in chief as of July 2006, Gayle Goodson Butler, had a real background...