Goodbye Numbers Nerd

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Sept 1, 2004 by Susan Thea Posnock

Byline: Susan Thea Posnock

Here's a scenario that most circulators can still only dream about. Two years ago, when John Kerner joined Sports Illustrated as an associate direct-mail manager, he wondered aloud why the magazine was not doing better with college students - the readers who watched ESPN and were flocking to its magazine spin-off. "SI had a goal of increasing brand awareness primarily - and ultimately subscriptions - in the 18-to-24 age range," he recalls.

Kerner ended up heading a task force, which included folks from circulation, sales, editorial and SI's Website, to tackle the problem. "I had this idea to do it as an insert into college newspapers, because the research said college students don't subscribe to many magazines and rarely to weeklies, because of the time and money commitment," he says. "The idea was to come up with something that was free and tailored more to their interests."

The end product, SI on Campus, went out 25 times through college newspapers on 72 campuses (with a total circ of over 1 million) starting in the fall of 2003. The advertising-based pub will return to campus this fall, having attracted several new advertisers such as Frito-Lay, X-Box and Nintendo. According to MRI, SI's 18- to 24-year-old male audience grew 7.6 percent, to 3.5 million from 3.2 million from 2003 to 2004. Kerner has been promoted twice since he started with the magazine in 2002. In July, he was named new business director for SI, overseeing direct mail, online, direct TV, insert cards and commemorative hard-bound editions of the magazine.

Kerner's story is unusual. For starters, he works at Time Inc., where circulation has for many years been treated as a profit center, rather than mere overhead, and where circulators have played a part in hatching new marketing strategies. Time has also led the industry in elevating the circulator from number-crunching geek to "consumer marketer." But the opportunity for circulators to have a major input in marketing plans - and to upgrade their careers - is spreading to other publishing companies. While life remains rough for most in the circulation business, there is opportunity growing out of hard times. From going on sales calls in order to help clients understand a magazine's audience to negotiating marketing partnerships to managing cross-platform strategies, circulators are moving to the forefront of magazine strategy.

At places like Time, the sky's the limit for an ambitious circulator. CEO Ann Moore and other execs rose through the ranks from consumer marketing. Says Shaun Gurl, Kerner's boss at SI and now VP of consumer marketing at American Express Publishing: "The creative person is going to benefit, the person who doesn't just see the job as it's defined now but sees the possibilities."

Clearly, the evolution of the circulator has a lot to do with the difficult position in which magazine publishers find themselves. From controlled-circ trades to the slickest consumer books, the challenge is to deliver a quality audience, maintain ratebases and strategize how to please advertisers. "Because of the softness in advertising, because of the consumer side's need for the P&L to grow, we have become more prominent within our respective companies," says Dave Leckey, senior vice president of consumer marketing at Hachette Filipacchi Magazines. "You're starting to see consumer marketers sitting at the head of the table versus at the back, and at higher level meetings," he says.

CIRCULATION ADVERTISER

Ad sales teams are now more likely to turn to circulators for their expertise in defining the audience and circulators are getting out of the office more to help sales efforts. "I see myself and my peers doing more ad sales calls, because circulation and strategies are being more and more talked about in the buying-and-selling dialogues," Leckey says. The job now entails a lot of public speaking at sales meetings and presentations. "We're being asked to contribute to the overall sales pitch and come up with ideas that build the client relationship." Ad teams are also relying on consumer marketers to deal with the confusion that ABC changes have caused for ad sales, says Brian Wolfe, president of Time Inc. consumer marketing.

Bob Sauerberg, the COO at Fairchild Publications, says that on the consumer side of the company, circulators have become true business partners with ad sales. The publisher's bridal business combines the efforts of business development, ad sales and circulators in developing retail promotions, for example While he says this is happening less on the business-to-business side, circulators are in fact contributing more to creating a quality ad sales pitch.

Circulators are also assuming a different role as publishers look for new ways to find subscribers and revenue. As old sources like stampsheets and direct mail have dried up, publishers have no choice but to look at getting subscribers through partnership marketing. "We're at the dawn of the new era of circ and a lot of it is coming from these piggy-back programs - partnerships," says Kent Brownridge, general manager at Wenner Media. "The extent to which you can do a partnership program is only limited by your imagination and ability and skill in calling people up."