morphing magalogs

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, July 1, 2002

Byline: greg lindsay

In its 280-page summer issue, squeezed between photos of nearly naked adolescent beefcake and product shots of hip-huggers, A&F Quarterly carries eight pages of ads. The house organ of teen clothier Abercrombie & Fitch, A&F Quarterly is where the kids are, so advertisers like Sony, the WB, SoBe beverages, and Trek Bicycles have decided they want to be there as well, the magazine's quasi-catalog status be damned. It's the first time A&F Quarterly has carried ads. The New York Times' Stuart Elliott branded it a "commercially provocative step." In reality, it was old hat.

Started in 1997, the Quarterly is an archetypal "magalog" - a spawn of custom publishing that blends content with commerce. But in the last five years, it's become increasingly difficult to distinguish between magalogs, custom publishing and traditional magazines. A number of custom -published titles, like Crunch - a biannual, ad-carrying mag published by Crunch fitness centers - now borrow the tactics of "real" magazines as a matter of course. They're distributed in retail outlets and newsstands. They sell ad pages to third parties, and even competitors. Sometimes the editorial doesn't even specifically mention the sponsor. As the formula finds more and more success, a greater number of businesses are blurring the lines that used to define the differences.

The funny thing is, traditional magazines like Lucky and In Style are adding to the confusion. Perceived as glossy shopping guides, these magazines have more in common with Complex - the new Marc Ecko magazine - than they do with, say, GQ or Glamour. And, some contend, this adds to the legitimacy of the magalog genre. Here's a look at some of the latest entries.

Complex is the brainchild of Marc Ecko, the streetwear couturier whose ecko unltd. clothes and rhinoceros logo are ubiquitous among Complex's audience - mainly because it 345,000 circ was built around the brand. The magazine's 165,000 paid subscribers are previous ecko customers - they were recruited to purchase the $9.99 subscription via direct mailings that were culled from ecko's databases. And much of the magazine's single-copy sales are generated from its designer's stores.

Ecko will lend a second dose of marketing muscle when it attaches promotional tags touting Complex to a million ecko items, urging buyers to subscribe the moment they check the size on a coat. And the label is using its clout to persuade streetwear retailers like Yellow Rat Bastard (which doesn't sell magazines) to carry 80,000 copies nationwide.

But Complex's editors aren't hawking the ecko clothing line - there's nothing in the first issue (aside from a publisher's note by Ecko himself) to link the two. Ecko merchandise is not visible in editorial spreads that feature wallets, cars and even dogs. And it's absent from the feature well, which highlights interviews with the rapper Nas and "The Sopranos" star Dominic Chianese. Even ecko's ad pages, all four of them, are far outnumbered by its competitors (there are 53 ad pages in the first issue).

Ecko says he is serious about starting a legit magazine, one with real revenues that may just happen to boost sales by fetishizing the hip-hop lifestyle his label caters to. "The magazine is the tip of the iceberg," says Ecko. "The problem other brands have made in trying to do the media play is that they put their brand equity front and center. Big mistake. This is not about ecko the brand. This is about Marc Ecko and an amazingly talented team at Complex Media that just get it - we get the consumer. We are students and anthropologists of culture. Our measuring stick on success is not, and will not be, how many more rhino hoodies we sell. We want to sell magazines. It will be a profit center."

As a business entity, Complex Media is a subsidiary of ecko unltd. The retail company, in this case, vetoed the notion of farming out the magazine production to a custom publisher because it's determined to keep the profits for itself. This product breaks the custom publishing mold, Ecko says, because the objective is not marketing cachet, it's profitability. In partnering with any of the major custom publishers, like Time Inc. or Hearst, Complex would have to share the equity.

Show People, a new title due to debut in September from the broadcast and events giant Clear Channel, is taking a more traditional route. Billed as "the theater lifestyle magazine," Clear Channel has hired Forbes' custom division to produce the magazine. To build circ, Clear Channel is leveraging its database of theater season- ticket holders and is planning to convert these prospects into a paid subscriber base. In this case, according to Forbes Custom Communications Partners president John Caldwell, Forbes is still collecting fees, but Clear Channel is aiming for a profit (which it would also share with Forbes).

Hearst custom publishing director Michael Hurley says these major tweaks to the custom model amount to "contract publishing" - and points to Space Illustrated, the magazine Hearst produced for Space.com. Here, too, the hope was to build a separate profit center. Space Illustrated, however, closed without making a dime.