Nicolas Coleridge | Behind the Gloss
The smooth managing director of Condé Nast UK talks to Stephen Brook about working with Tina Brown, why he takes two baths a day - and how a certain rival women's weekly doesn't bother him at all
Two hours with Nicholas Coleridge is like time spent with a particularly diverting glossy - witty, entertaining, anecdote-tastic, you depart with a warm glow but a curious doubt about penetrating the heart of the matter. Lunch was with Gore Vidal; tonight it's drinks at Christie's or Sotheby's, one or the other. Then there is the costing to attend to for the 300th anniversary party next year of Tatler, whose editor, Geordie Greig, has just co-hosted a party with the former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
Coleridge, managing director of Condé Nast UK for 17 years, says that he liked the film The Devil Wears Prada, which many thought parodied the company, "very much", and is frequently asked if it was a true depiction. "I always say yes. Of course it isn't at all like that, but it invests the magazine world with a slight excitement."
He has reason to be cheerful. The company has expanded its volume of lucrative advertising pages in the upmarket sector - it used to trail in third in advertising volume, but has held the No 1 spot for the past two years. But with the looming credit crunch, can the good times last?
It seems very unlikely. There's an old adage that luxury is recession-proof - but the credit crunch promises to be a very different type of downturn. Glamour, the company's most mid-market title, has seen its ad volume drop 10% in the first half of this year. Already Coleridge, the eternal optimist, worries about advertising for top-end US retail, although European luxury houses are holding up. "If we could match 2007 I'd be happy," he says.
Beneath the charm, Coleridge, a former British Press Awards young journalist of the year who was flung in jail briefly in Sri Lanka after reporting on the Tamil Tigers, is a sharp operator. He spots a scrawled reference to the legendary Tina Brown upside down in my notebook across his glass-topped desk. "She was a ballbreaker," he recalls of their time on Tatler from 1979 to 1982, when Brown edited the magazine and it struggled for survival. "She was very inspiring and she was also very ruthless. When I joined I was either No 13 or 14 on staff - three years later I was her deputy because everyone else was axed. It was like being a member of Idi Amin's cabinet. Each day another body was found floating."
Stellar celebrity covers
Coleridge hasn't followed her example, it seems. Condé Nast editors are noted for their longevity: Alexandra Shulman has been editor of Vogue for 16 years, Sarah Miller has edited Condé Nast Traveller for 10, Dylan Jones has run GQ for nine. They are some of the best-known names in the industry. And circulations at the top end continue to grow: GQ enjoys a rising circulation, just, and Vogue has enjoyed its 12th consecutive circulation rise (again, just). "It's to our advantage that they [the editors] personify their magazines," says Coleridge.
The strategy pays. In April, his star editors produced some stellar celebrity covers. Victoria Beckham on Vogue upped sales 10% on last year. Princess Eugenie on Tatler sent circulation soaring 35%. So had the celebrities approved copy and photographs beforehand? "It's very rare for a magazine here to give prior sight of a piece. We do everything we can not to get involved in those kinds of agreements," Coleridge says. Which presumably means that, sometimes, it does happen.
Not all Condé Nast's titles are doing so well - the younger, middle-market magazines launched on Coleridge's watch are faltering. Glamour fell a painful 6.5% year on year, although it still comfortably outsells NatMags' Cosmopolitan by about 90,000. But Condé Nast's Easy Living, down 2% year on year, puts up little resistance to NatMags' mighty Good Housekeeping, more than 260,000 ahead.
The company still, however, achieved a record profit in the UK last year - it is whispered that its margin was a very healthy 20%. Coleridge feels magnanimous towards rivals. "I get on well with [NatMags' chief executive] Duncan Edwards, [the two share a distributor] so I am going to try and avoid my usual snipey remarks." And yet, didn't you once say that everyone at NatMags wanted to work for Condé Nast? "I think that I was stating the obvious there," he laughs.
How annoying, then, that the magazine lauded by the Periodical Publishers' Association as a "media icon of our times" was Bauer Consumer Media's glossy fashion title Grazia - a weekly. It sells more copies in one week than Vogue manages in a month. Coleridge praises it as a "fantastic success" and admits he wanted to buy it last year before Bauer did. But it isn't all admiration; its circulation has "hit a glass ceiling", he says, noting that outside of London Grazia is price-cutting - he sees the local TV adverts at his weekend home in Worcestershire.
Condé Nast won't launch a weekly against Grazia, says Coleridge. It would only contemplate a more upmarket rival, but that would be less profitable. While in Italy and Germany the company launched Vanity Fair as a weekly - a success in Italy but not in Germany - the "much breezier" weekly VF won't be seen here. Stand by, says Coleridge, for falls in women's weekly magazines. "There may simply be too many. You do not feel any shame, after reading a weekly, leaving it on the tube seat."
After a spate of launches over the past five years (Look, First, In the Know, Love It!, Grazia, Pick Me Up, Nuts, Zoo) the magazine industry seems to have lost its enthusiasm for risking new products. But not Condé Nast. "I would be very surprised if we didn't launch something next year, and quite surprised if we didn't launch something the year after as well," Coleridge says. "We are quite advanced in our planning." Those launches will occur "irrespective" of the advertising downturn, of which "we haven't seen any real evidence in our upmarket titles".
So what will he launch? Neat freak that he is, Coleridge admits to have tidied away evidence before our arrival. He skilfully bats away attempts to press him, but expect something upmarket and niche. Something, perhaps, like the technology glossy Wired, or possibly Portfolio, the US business magazine that launched last year with a budget reported to be an eye-watering $100m-plus. (When Condé Nast and the Financial Times launched the UK glossy title Business in 1986, it was killed by the 1991 recession.)
Completely obsessed
But you have to wonder if people really want more monthly magazines, if they don't want weeklies. Who has the time to read it all? Coleridge says he takes two baths a day. "I have a bath in the morning and in the evening. I have a lot of magazines to read."
Most readers, however, are surely more likely to be found using a laptop than in the tub? Coleridge defends his company against accusations that it doesn't have a digital strategy. For many years, magazine sites were dismissed as little more than subscription sites. Condé Nast was a digital pioneer, "like the Guardian", he says, online for 13 years with a staff of about 40 in London and profitable for the past five.
Indeed, Vogue.com attracts about 1.3 million unique users a month and has just relaunched, expanding its fashion show reporting, so readers can expect all 250 pieces from the Chanel runway uploaded online with a "loved it, darling!" commentary within an hour of the show.
Coleridge believes magazine conferences are "completely obsessed" by digital, even though the revenue is not there. "The percentage of advertising that comes into magazines dwarfs it and is still growing." Digital revenues at the company might be growing at 40% a year, but they account for just 7% of total revenues.
With Coleridge also a vice president of Condé Nast International, and India a particular area of responsibility - "such fun" - he spends a lot of time on his BlackBerry. "My wife won't allow me, but if she's away I will sleep with it in my left hand. If I see the red light flashing my curiosity gets the better of me and I can't not answer it."
Vogue India, which launched last year, will break even in its first full year. GQ India, all Bollywood stars, cricketers and playboys, launches in September with a print run of 40,000. Condé Nast stole a march on rivals by gaining sole ownership of its Indian subsidiary and has seen growth in Russia and China. "In the long run I am backing India. It's a democracy and a very sophisticated democracy."
But start talking about the economic downturn and the good cheer drops. It is only at this point that Coleridge reveals that he is "always cautious". The very words jar with the bravado on display for the last two hours. Maybe it is a brief peep at the private Coleridge. "I have been braced for a downturn for more than five years now and each year I have thought, 'it can't go on this good forever'." He is about to find out if he is right.
Curriculum Vitae
Age 51
Education Eton College and Trinity College, Cambridge
Career
1979-82 associate editor of Tatler
1982-86 columnist for the Evening Standard
1986-89 editor, Harper's & Queen
1989-91 editorial director, Condé Nast
1991-present managing director, Condé Nast UK
1999-present vice president, Condé Nast International
2005-present special responsibility for Condé Nast, India
