Ads on the rise for Ivy league titles

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, Sept 1, 1995 by Chris Beam

A revamped sales approach is scoring high marks for the Ivy League Magazine Network. For the fiscal year ending June 30, the nine-title ILMN saw its ad revenues grow by more than 20 percent, to $1.4 million from $1.1 million.

Laura Freid, executive director of the network and publisher of Harvard Magazine, attributes much of the growth to a bigger salesforce. In the past, the ILMN relied on just one national sales rep, an independent contractor with two sub reps working under him. Then, in August of 1994, the network brought those positions in-house, adding a director of marketing and two more sales reps to the mix. The group also named Freid its first executive director to help focus the sales effort and develop a stronger pitch for advertisers.

For fiscal 1995, the network signed up 22 new advertisers, with Microsoft, Corvette, Toyota and Cunard Cruise Lines leading the way. Boasting a total BPA-audited circulation of 738,000, the ILMN has already booked $600,000 worth of ad contracts so far this fiscal year, says national sales manager Ed Antos. (The cost of running a four-color ad in all nine titles is $36,000.)

Influence peddlers

"People didn't even know they existed before they came out in real force a few years ago," notes Anita McGrath, associate media director at the DDB Needham agency in New York City, which places ads for the Bermuda Department of Tourism with the Ivy League network.

"We used to present our attributes, saying we have great editorial matter, we are intellectual, etc.," says Freid. "But now we are presenting advertisers with the ability to reach the affluent, the influential and the heads of industry--all with the highest personal income--in one media buy."

ILMN represents Harvard, Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth, Princeton, Yale, the University of Pennsylvania, the Harvard Business School and non-Ivy member Stanford (one Ivy school, Columbia, is not part of the network). According to Antos, the magazines' readers have a median net worth of $950,000; half are millionaires.

"These people are bombarded with demands on their money, so they exist within a network of personal endorsements and recommendations," he says. "But they have a lifelong relationship with these magazines, and the relationship is the personal endorsement for the advertisers."

Or, as Hilary Peck, brand manager for The Macallan malt scotch whiskey at Remy Amerique, sees it: "They're open to expanding their minds, so they're probably open to expanding their palates as well."