Expanding the Export Business

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

Byline: John T. Cabell

This year, Oprah is headed to South Africa and Martha Stewart is off to Japan. Cosmo is adding Latvian and Kazakhstan to its international sisterhood, and Good Housekeeping is making the trip to China. As the advertising dry spell continues in the domestic market, publishers are stretching their global legs and tapping markets in the six other continents.

Most of these blue-chip brands enter foreign markets under license deals or via a joint venture with suitable local partners. But this approach is often limited to big publishers, or at least ones with highly desirable properties. (It also assumes that the magazine format is the best way to enter new markets, which may not be true.) In today's climate, where both advertising and circulation revenue have tanked and costs have been cut to the bone, all publishers should be looking for alternative revenue sources. The international arena is often overlooked, but it offers many nontraditional opportunities. The attraction? Many of these sources are highly profitable and simple to administer.

Now, my overriding advice to publishers is to be media- and delivery-neutral. What works here as a monthly magazine may find a natural beginning as a weekly newspaper column in Brazil, or as branded Web content in Germany, or extend into branded merchandise in Japan. There will be exceptional circumstances, of course; typically, these will be a function of such things as brand values and the contractual limits of content usage. But I enthusiastically encourage you to leverage your valuable assets - brand, content, know-how and advertiser relationships - in new ways with international partners.

What follows are some examples of "new" approaches to doing business overseas. Some of these are starting points, while others are extensions of existing international magazine businesses. Some are tried and proven (at least by some), while others may work only in select territories or at particular times. What they share is a way for you to use your considerable non-cash resources to generate high-margin revenue.

syndication

This is the most basic way for magazines to generate additional revenue. Most American publishers work with syndication agencies (e.g., The New York Times Syndicate, Los Angeles Times Syndicate), which, through their international networks of agents and offices, sell foreign rights for their clients' content to foreign magazines, newspapers and Web sites.

branded specials

Many successful American niche magazines could not succeed today as stand-alone foreign periodicals. Yet there may be enough of a market to aggregate a year's worth of your magazine's content into special editions or annuals. These could be sold on newsstands or offered as premiums to complementary local titles. As some publishers practice here in the United States, this method could also be used as a "test" for the longer-term viability of the title in the market. Transworld - a division of Time4 Media - publishes three of their youth sports titles in Japan this way.

magazine combinations

Related to the Specials notion, some stateside publishers work with local media groups to create products for their markets from two or more of their portfolio's titles. Again, this is an issue of local-market scale: An American surfing magazine may be too limiting for South Africa, but a local title that incorporates surfing with other extreme sports could very well reach critical circulation mass. Future Publishing - the world's leading video game and leisure computing publisher - has frequently been successful with this combo-approach. (If you try this, ensure that you are able to secure the local trademark, whatever it may be.)

branded supplements/special sections

As alluded to earlier, overseas magazine and newspaper publishers may find your brand and content desirable within the confines of their existing properties. And it may be less costly for them to strike a deal with you than to develop their own content. As with other examples, this is a great way to test a brand and concept, and it could serve as a launching pad for the rollout of your magazine. Britain's Time Out Group runs their International Agenda as a weekly column in Spain's El Pais newspaper; they also have a branded English-language section in Hachette Filipacchi's weekly Paris guide, Pariscope.

branded web/electronic content

New media are ravenous for content. This industry's investment capital has favored the technology over the content side of the business. With open delivery channels and identified end-users, the need now is for reputable content to feed the demand pipeline. Much of this content comes from magazine publishers, and is, of course, re-purposed for each unique distribution format.

It's likely that you already have a content licensing or partnership deal with a domestic Web site; you should next look to do similar deals with foreign-language sites. In addition, you should look into the hot new format in many overseas markets (e.g., Japan, Israel, Finland): "portable wireless," with content such as news, entertainment listings and classified ads distributed via devices such as mobile phones and PDAs.