Real-World Solution

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Jan 1, 2003

SkiTV

CROSS-PLATFORM SALES

Got snow? Ski magazine has gone multimedia to lure you to the slopes, and hopefully, the newsstand. The magazine teamed up with fellow AOL Time Warner property CNN to produce 90-second TV vignettes on "Mountain Life" - borrowing ideas and content from the magazine and using Ski's extensive library of filmed footage. The short pieces are airing on CNN, Headline News, and the CNN Airport Network and will run through March. "The partnership promotes our sport and our magazine brand, and gives us a cross-platform property to leverage significant advertising," says Andy Clurman, president of the Time4 Media division Mountain Sports Media's. To get Lexus, already an advertiser in Ski, to commit to a bigger schedule as the sole sponsor of the "Mountain Life" series, the magazine and CNN made joint sales calls, Clurman says. The partnership also has positive implications for single-copy sales. Each TV vignette promotes the magazine, with a plug for the specific issue from which the content was derived. And that enhances newsstand sales, Clurman says. Things have already started to snowball. Mountain Sports Media has more broadcast partnerships in the works. This month CNN and Ski magazine will roll out an adventure-travel program, and an instructional series has been developed, according to Clurman.

Musical Subs

CIRCULATION

When the Dave Matthews Band appeared on the October/November 2002 cover of Relix, the magazine's marketing department saw an opportunity to grab new subscribers and generate some cash for a good cause. The jamband magazine, which recently passed the 100,000-circ mark (that's up 400 percent in the past two years), has gained 5,000 subs by partnering with charities tied in with the music scene. DMB promoted the Relix issue by sending out e-mails to its fans and set up a link on its own Web site so fans could subscribe to the magazine. For its half of the deal, Relix is giving 20 percent of the profits from every sub to the Bama Works Foundation, DMB's non-profit, which distributes money to dozens of charities. Relix has gained more than 5,000 new subscribers through similar cross-promotion deals with others bands (Widespread Panic, Grateful Dead) and raised more than $50,000. Associate publisher Kathy Stoddard says the partnership "allows us to get to some people who wouldn't necessarily pick up Relix. When one of their favorite bands creates or selects a charity that is meaningful to them, the fans will go along."

Getting on the A-List

READER RESEARCH

Vanity Fair has discovered a new way to grab some serious demographic info from its readers: bribe 'em. A full-page ad in its December 2002 issue asked readers to visit www.VanityFairA-List.com where you will be asked to register and fill out a survey. Questions range from the ordinary (age and income) to the odd (Are you bicoastal, europhile, bohemian, or modern classic?). From these answers, the marketing department at VF can determine how much time respondents spend with the magazine, the kind of car they drive, and even how much their stock portfolio is worth. To thank it's A-List members, VF has drawings for gift certificates, cash prizes, and tech gadgets. The magazine teamed up with the San Francisco-based online survey company Socratic Technologies to create the site. Socratic vice president Ed Erickson, who also works with Wired and The New Yorker, says the site provides a central meeting place "where [VF] readers could provide ongoing feedback in terms of what they're doing, what their interests are, and what they think about what the magazine is publishing."

Hybrid Help

INCREMENTAL REVENUE

Part magazine for consumers, part catalogue for advertisers, Home Furnishings Now, the latest hybrid from Fairchild Publications, is bringing in pure profit. Mike DeBartolo, vice president and group publisher of Fairchild's b-to-b division says the company has brought in $3 to $5 million in incremental revenue using the formula. By leveraging existing resources - the expertise of its trade-publication editors and parent company Advance Publications' rich database - Fairchild is able to produce the magazines at minimal cost, he says. The new title, a spin-off of HFN that launched last month, follows in the footsteps of Fairchild's Menswear, a consumer magazine sprung from DNR, and InStep, a spin-off of Footwear News. The cross consumer/b-to-b appeal of Home Furnishings Now meant it not only reached 40,000 qualified consumers - identified by the database as having recently moved or gotten married - but also brought in 72 ad pages. "It's been a pretty effective tool for us," DeBartolo says, "[driving] profitable growth without a real sizable investment."