The evolution of marketing media

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, April 1, 1992 by Williard G. Hadlock

This is a challenging time for the media industry. The current "magazine slump" is really a slump in all broad-based media.

Everyone knows that cable television has hurt the networks. But it is hurting the big consumer magazines, too. Cable is coming closer to being able to do the targeting that only magazines could do before. This narrow-casting could be the biggest single threat facing the magazine industry.

When I turn on ESPN on Saturday morning, I get three straight hours of fishing and hunting shows, all of which carry advertising from the same companies that have traditionally supported magazines such as Field & Stream Midwest Outdoors. On other channels, there are home-building shows with contents that appeal to Sears and Black & Decker - companies that have traditionally advertised in magazines like Family Handyman and Home Mechanix.

One of the strengths of the magazine industry has been its ability to focus on selected groups of consumers - no more and no less. But as television becomes more fragmented and specialized, it poses a great danger to what has been magazines' forte over the years.

We at Leo Burnett rank as the third-largest buyer of magazine space in the world, according to Advertising Age. I am sure that, in 10 years, traditional media buys will be a smaller percentage of our total ad buys than they are today. Because when you get right down to it. The advertiser isn't buying space in a magazine or time on television: He is buying exposure to his customers or potential customers. The broad-based media are not set up to provide the advertiser with precisely the audience that he wants.

Target marketing steals print dollars

Other trends are also challenging publishers. Non-traditional advertising is going to continue to drain revenues from magazines. A number of our clients are getting into this area or have already gotten into it. The airline frequent-flier clubs area perfect example of how direct programs can work successfully. Now hotels are trying to do the same thing. Money that they spend on that is going to be taken out of other kinds of advertising, including magazines.

Other kinds of non-traditional advertising - bulletin boards in health clubs, talking electronic shopping carts, TV in schools and doctors' offices - are going to take a bite out of magazines as well.

I don't know which forms of targeted marketing will fail and which will succeed. But there is no question that marketers are looking for more and better and new and different ways of reaching customers. To the extent that they are successful, magazines and all traditional media will suffer. What we are now seeing may be a permanent shift away from traditional advertising.

To protect their share of the marketing dollar, magazines must stay relevant to their readers. They also must stay ahead of what advertisers are doing and find a way to change with them. Sometimes, in the rush to get advertising dollars, publishers forget that they have to serve their readers first. Magazines neglect their editorial mission, advertisers will not be interested in them at any price. Spending more on editorial is one way to remain important to readers. Spending on research is another. Magazines need to know exactly what it is that interests their subscribers. But editors must do more than sit back and write for their readers: They have to communicate with them.

Survival of the fittest

The pitfall in predicting the future is the tendency to take what is happening today and assume that is going to continue to go that way forever. But it never does. Somewhere, every trend takes a 90-degree turn. So the best prediction I can make about the future is that in 10 years, we will be in a position that nobody predicted.

Still, I think anyone who wants to take his chances forecasting the future in the magazine business should keep an eye on what is happening internationally. In 1985, I spent almost no time dealing with international business. Today, international issues take up almost half my time. At our agency, international billings will probably surpass domestic billings within two years, perhaps sooner.

As international business becomes more important, it will have more and more impact on business practices here. Negotiated rates, for example, are now a fact of life in America. But magazine rates have always been negotiated in some countries, such as France, Spain and the United Kingdom. The United States was doing business one way, and the rest of the world was doing it another way. Lo and behold, we changed to do it the way the rest of the world does it.

So international trends can sometimes be good predictors of what is to come. Certainly, the media industry is in the midst of an evolution, not a revolution, and it will look markedly different 20 years from now. That much we know.