West Coast Woman ups the ante: a Tampa daily may get more than it bargained for in battle with transplanted magazine publisher

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Nov 1, 1990 by John Masterton

West Coast Woman ups the ante

TAMPA, FLA.--It isn't unusual for a struggling publisher to contact a competitor's top 10 percent of advertisers to pitch business. However, it is unusual to contact the bottom 90 percent in the same program.

That's what West Coast Woman publisher Gene DePoris Jr. did to promote his fledgling local women's service tabloid. He also did it to up the ante in a marketing skirmish between his free distribution title--a biweekly produced on newsprint--and a monthly lifestyle newspaper insert that was introduced by the Tampa Tribune.

Since the 42,000-circulation Sarasota edition of West Coast Woman was launched almost three years ago, DePoris has nurtured it into a "seven-figure publication in a tiny market" of 121,000 households. Hoping to transfer this success to the 1.3 million-household Tampa Bay area, DePoris announced plans for a 100,000 circulation Tampa edition and unveiled a preview issue in June. But a sluggish summer for advertisers forced him to delay launch until September.

Meanwhile, in August, the Tribune introduced the once-a-month Upscale Tampa Bay Saturday magazine insert, claiming distribution of 155,000 and targeting many of the same retail advertisers in DePoris' sights.

David vs. Goliath?

DePoris believes the newspaper giant simply reacted to a threat from a small-fry competitor. Tribune publisher Doyle Harvill says Upscale is only one of several projects in the works at a newspaper trying to change with its market.

DePoris, who moved south six years ago after a 15-year publishing career in New York, bristled when he saw what he describes as the section's minuscule advertising rates. In a letter he faxed to about 250 Tribune advertisers and their agencies, he planted the suggestion that Sunday advertisers were being overcharged by contrasting Upscale's $10 cost per thousand (CPM) with a $25 CPM in the Sunday paper, which has 272,000 circulation in WCW's two-county distribution area. "If the Tribune can turn a profit on such a low CPM, then those paying the much higher CPM on Sundays may want an explanation," DePoris says. "It's very unusual to come into the market so low. I believe they're pricing below cost."

However, DePoris didn't knock the paper's pricing discrepencies in his letter. Instead, he slashed his Tampa Bay edition's original $20 CPM in half to match Upscale's mark and promoted his title as a component in a media buy that would also include the Tribune's lower-priced Upscale section. In essence, he proposed that advertisers could get better market coverage with multiple pages in both Upscale and WCW's Tampa Bay edition. "All for what you would pay for one full-page ad in one Sunday Tribune!" he wrote.

But low pricing is common for new ventures, media buyers point out. "Almost any new publication offers attractive charter rates that are basically giveaways," says Mary Rygiel, vice president and media director for Robinson, Yesawich & Pepperdine (RY&P), an Orlando agency that buys Tampa media for real estate clients. "Even two-for-one is common. Magazines do that all the time."

The Tribune claims that DePoris compared apples with oranges in his rate analysis. For example, in the letter he refers to an open rate seldom used by local retail advertisers; in an accompanying chart, DePoris does cite the much lower contract page rate used by most retailers.

Moreover, notes Tribune advertising director Michael Perricone, DePoris compared a broadsheet Tribune page to the much smaller tabloid page of Upscale and WCW. "A fairer comparison would have been to our Sunday half-page rate," Perricone argues. "An accurate Sunday CPM is $9.42, not $25." However, a magazine executive says comparisons based solely on linage are "outrageous."

Either way, Perricone adds that media buyers often perceive a value difference between a Sunday newspaper's readership and that of an unaudited free publication such as WCW that is distributed in supermarkets and store lobbies.

Still, the market has noticed DePoris (perhaps partly due to the 100 billboards he rented to promote the new edition). "Gene is waging guerrilla warfare," says John Beddoe, publisher of the Tampa Bay Business Journal. "That's good, because competition makes us all better publications. If West Coast Woman doesn't make it, it won't be because of lack of drive."

Media buyers are also taking heed. "His staff is aggressive and it shows," says Rygiel. "The issues I've seen are loaded with advertisers. He's doing a good job seeing that his book is included on ad schedules."