70,000 Copies of D Go Straight to the Dump

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Oct, 2000 by Matthew Schwartz

The publisher of D pulled an entire issue because of "vulgar" fashion ads that he says would have alienated Dallas-area readers.

Citing a "classic screw-up" between editorial and sales, D publisher and editor in chief Wick Allison killed the entire September issue--already printed and bound--after he spotted two full-page fashion advertisements that he says he found personally offensive. At truly the 11th hour, Allison ordered the trucks that were about to deliver D to post offices and supermarkets to head for a recycling center instead, where all 70,000 copies were subsequently destroyed. The entire issue had to be reprinted, causing late delivery of up to two weeks--and racking up a king-size expense for the Dallas metro magazine.

Allison wouldn't divulge the names of the advertisers--though he did say they were household names--or the contents of the ads he called "vulgar." However, sources say one ad was from Gucci, and apparently showed a man in a very tight pair of pants and a woman next to him in a suggestive pose.

Allison says he received a few complaints from both subscribers and other advertisers about the lateness, but "as soon as I tell them why I did it, they say, 'Never mind.' "Although he would not provide specifics about the expense of killing and reprinting the entire issue, Allison clearly made a costly stand. "I'm still trying to rationalize it," he says. Allison founded D in 1974 and owns the title.

Gene DeWitt, chairman of Optimedia, a New York-based ad agency, says Allison has eaten a lot of cash." He adds: "It's his decision to kill any ad he wants, but if I were an advertiser in the book, I'd be very upset that I wasn't getting the advertising exposure I'd expected. For him to kill 70,000 copies because of an ad he didn't see until the last minute is kind of pathetic."

One of the advertisers replaced its offending ad in the reprinted version with one Allison could live with, but the other, he says, "is going to have to mend its ways" if it wants to place ads in D ever again. Allison insists that had the ads in question run, they would have caused a backlash among Dallas-area consumers.

Standards vary among metro markets, of course. "My guess is that, with D's readers being in the Bible Belt, many of them would have found the ads objectionable," says David Lipson Jr., publisher of Boston and Philadelphia. "People in the Northeast might look at the ad and say, 'Big deal.'"

Lipson says the case is a reminder of the unique bond metro titles share with their readers, compared with national markets. "The beauty of metro books is a very intimate relationship with readers," he says. "They take the stories and the ads very seriously. The name of their city is the cover."

Allison makes no apologies for his actions. "This is my magazine and my community, and to have published those ads would have been offensive to the community," he says.

Allison says miscommunication between the editorial and advertising sides of the magazine was at the root of the problem. "Both have approval of ads, and each had raised questions and thought the other had gotten my approval," he says. "It's more embarrassing than anything else." No one was fired in the ad mix-up, but Allison says he has now put procedures in place "which must be followed to the letter" by both the editorial and sales teams.

Although Allison admits that D is not a "paragon of virtue" --- the August cover featured a woman covered with whipped cream--he says he had to draw the line on the two offending fashion ads: "Everybody knows their own market and quality standards," he says. "If advertisers want to be sleazy, then that's their choice; and if publishers want to take a stand against vulgarity, that's their choice, too."

He says he's received calls from colleagues throughout the country thanking him for his actions.

"Publishers ought to be in the driver's seat," he adds, "but I'm astonished at how so few are."