Brewster's Blue Print

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, April, 2001 by Michael Kaplan

The other three overhauls have been no less complete. Looking at the new issue of Homestyle, Brewster says, "In the home category it was clear that every other magazine was printed on better paper than Homestyle was. Yet you're competing for advertising, particularly the endemic advertising, with presentation. There was no way that magazine could be competitive." The paper quality has been upgraded, the cover and logo have been contemporized, and the design of the magazine is streamlined.

With William Li, the former associate publisher of House & Garden, now on board, Homestyle hopes to attract endemic and luxury advertising rather than the do-it-yourself operations that had previously been its bread and butter. The title produces about $38 million in ad revenue annually, well behind such juggernauts as Good Housekeeping and Better Homes and Gardens, which are at $288 million and $471 million, respectively.

Fitness, meanwhile, which competes against Health and Self, has been tweaked to exude an aspirational edge. Previously, the magazine was a nuts-and-bolts guide to staying in shape, to developing fiat abs and increasing stamina. Brewster has modernized the look and, more important, dressed up the models and text. Brewster says that Fitness is now attracting apparel and fragrance advertising, which it previously had a hard time luring.

Child, a parenting title that G J had acquired from New York Times Publishing, required an improvement that would be far more than cosmetic. "Child was competing in a service category against Parents and Parenting," says Brewster, who brought in Miriam Arond to be the magazine's new editor. "It became clear that we didn't need a third service-magazine in the parenting arena--especially when we already had the number-two magazine. We needed a parent lifestyle magazine that talked about apparel, child development and travel, rather than comparisons of diapers."

But Brewster has been careful to keep from making this title and the others too upscale--particularly in the manner of Hearst's now defunct Offspring. "The broad brushstroke, which I think is inaccurate, would be to say that we are taking the magazines upscale," says Brewster, who employed precisely that strategy for American Express. "But it's not upscale so much as updated. These are very broadbased magazines that have been modernized in terms of their look and pacing and subject matter."

The same can be said for Gruner Jahr USA, with its recent acquisition of Fast Company. While some in the publishing world say that Brewster overpaid for the magazine (G J paid $340 million upfront, with another $150 million to follow if the title hits certain performance targets) and bought it at the worst possible time (just as the NASDAQ tanked), no buyer's remorse appears to be in evidence. Besides the fact that EC combines with Inc. to give G J USA a broader presence on the newsstand, Brewster believes that the publication's growth is far from over. While industry observers like to say that ad pages were down for January, Brewster points out that last January's issue was a double while this year's is a single. Furthermore, he put through a 33 percent price increase for pages, based on circulation growth, and emphasizes that ad revenues have not fallen. "I'll bet anybody that we will run more ad pages this year than last year--and they'll run at 33 percent higher prices," he says.