July 29, 2003
Does Anyone Wanna Hear...
...about Advertising?
I doubt it. When I flip through a general-interest magazine like Time or whatever, I skip over the ads as fast as possible. When I read a fairly focused magazine, like ESPN, I'll skip over the beer and car ads, but will stop if I see something that's directly related to football or skateboarding. But, with a specialty magazine like HM or some other music genre magazine, each ad is usually geared directly to my interests, so I certainly gaze at and read the ads. So, I guess in a way, talking about advertising in HM Magazine wouldn't be too boring...
For the past several years, all ad sales have been done in house. Recently we just signed up to take these duties out of the house, so to speak. Longtime friends Bruce Adolph (who runs Christian Musician mag), DeDe Donatelli-Tarrant (who sold ads for CCM for years and years and always lent an ear and gave a word of advice when asked), and Scott Shufford (who used to be one of those rare hip and informed sales reps for Diamante) ... they all joined forces and started The Adolph Agency. I knew it'd be a good deal to work with them, but shortly after they started as a company they signed up a magazine that competes with us a little bit (editorially not much, but ad clients quite a bit) - a nice mag called Seven Ball. Since they sold ads for them, they couldn't work for us. But when that detail changed, the possibility opened up, and we started talking excitedly among ourselves. A month or two ago we signed on and now they are representing us. This brings a great sigh of relief to me, cuz I wasn't enjoying having to write and edit and steer and make administrative decisions and, on top of all that, sell all the ads. I was never much of a fan for multi-tasking. Ask me to quarterback a flag football team and "read" defensive coverages and take the snap, etc. I can handle that kind of focused multi-tasking, but throw me in front of desk and ask me to create, evaluate critically, and sell ad space at the same time. There's worse things to complain about, but I'm happy to be getting back to being Editor/Publisher.
We always close ad space reservations one week before the ad files/materials are due. This gives us time to see how many ads will be in the magazine, which ones are color, black & white, etc. We mail our magazines "Periodical Rate," which goes right behind first class. The cost savings are big, but we are required to have no more than 50% advertising in the magazine to qualify for these rates. If we go over that ratio, it's considered a catalog and can only ship at the "Standard Rate," which used to be called "Third Class." Thus, the # of ads we sell dictates in a large way how many pages of editorial we'll have. We like to have a decent-sized magazine of at least 72-80 pages. This past week the ad sales totals didn't meet our goals/expectations/needs, so we've had to keep the magazine "open," meaning we're still selling ad space. This makes it harder to plan the issue, but with a little mapping and thumbnail sketching, we can get pretty accurate on how the magazine is going to look. So, that's the challenge we're facing today, yesterday, and probably at least part of tomorrow. Hope I didn't bore you too much!
Currently listening to the Freddy vs. Jason soundtrack. Apparently the film is world premiering in Austin, and the film companies are going to stage a camp atmosphere with lots of creepy Nightmare and Friday the 13th fun for the media and fans. I need to get to that premiere! I'm not big on gore and shock horror anymore, but something like this should be fun.
