The Business of Magazines

[tarsha]

is wwd owned by Conde Nast?

 

[MissMagAddict]

is wwd owned by Conde Nast?

Yes.

 

[tarsha]

Though he is known for being one of the world’s top male models, Sasha Knezevic is a true Renaissance man. From his days as a professional basketball player to his high-profile career as a model, Sasha has never shied away from new challenges. With his latest venture, the relaunch of 25 Magazine, Sasha enters the intrepid world of fashion publishing and as with everything else, he brings his determination, fearlessness and unique perspective to the table.

Described as “an international magazine with an Austrian soul”, 25 features some of the industry’s premier young talents; the upcoming Spring issue will feature heavy hitters like Juergen Teller, Lachlan Bailey and Victor Demarchelier as well as superstar models, Eniko Mihalik, Sasha Pivovarova, Maryna Linchuk and Abbey Lee Kershaw, just to name a few. With Sasha as editor in chief and supermodel Anja Rubik as fashion director, 25 already boasts the kind of star power most publications dream of, but at its heart is a fresh and youthful point of view. While the official relaunch of 25 doesn’t hit stands until February, a taste of what’s to come can be found in the latest issue, on the eve of its release MDC caught up with Sasha to find out more about this exciting project.

Models.com

 

[montrealm]

^ Anja, looks rather interesting...

 

[sushiclub]

Hi,
Can anybody help me ? I need to know who is the Art Director of Marie Claire Italy.

Thank you!
Joannie

 

[tarsha]

Ask to Diciassette (17). She has many issues of Marie Claire and I think she will tell you.

 

[sushiclub]

Thank you Tarsha!
I will ask her.

 

[tigerrouge]

Ad page talk for 2010 (nypost.com

Fashion mags post March win

January 24 2010

The recovery is underway for the nation's fashion magazines, which many consider a bellwether for the rest of the consumer magazine industry.

"The spring preview issues for March are not as big as the September fall fashion issues, but symbolically it is a very important signal on how the rest of the year can go," said Steve Cohn, editor-in-chief of Media Industry Newsletter. "For many of the magazines, it's their second-biggest issue of the year."

The good news for March is welcome news indeed, as 2009 was devastating. The industry saw 25.6 percent of its ad pages disappear and 18.1 percent of its ad revenue vanish last year, according to the Publishers Information Bureau.

Leading the comeback in March is InStyle, which jumped 33.5 percent from last year to 255 pages, catapulting the title from last in the category in the 2009 to third place, according to the MIN numbers slated to be released tomorrow.

That's a nice bit of revenge for InStyle publisher Connie Anne Phillips, who jumped to the top publisher's job at InStyle in the spring of 2009, after serving in the ranks under Vogue Senior Vice President Tom Florio. Florio recently raided Hearst's Marie Claire to hire Susan Plagemann as his new publisher, responsible for jumpstarting the number-one title in the category.

Speaking of Vogue, it logged 375.4 ad pages in the month, the most in the category -- which worked out to a razor-thin 0.6 percent rise over 2009.
Second-place Harper's Bazaar posted a 4.4 percent jump, to 268 ad pages, while Elle recorded a 4 percent jump, to 261 ad pages, good for a fourth-place March showing.

Only fifth-place title, W, which, like Vogue is part of Condé Nast Publications, is still reeling. It fell 23.4 percent to 157 pages. Publisher Nina Lawrence is insisting their revival will start in April.

 

[Flashbang]

TRENDING UP: After a bruising 2009, advertisers clearly have remained cautious when it comes to spending during the first quarter of the new year — although the numbers are at least heading in the right direction. And some fashion and beauty titles even managed to post significant increases in ad pages over the first three months of last year, a period admittedly weak for most titles. Overall, ad pages rose 2.2 percent during the first quarter versus a decline of 22 percent last year, according to Media Industry Newsletter. Marie Claire led the way, with paging up almost 23 percent to 255 pages versus the first quarter of 2009. InStyle and Lucky posted increases of more than 17 percent, to 512 pages and 237 pages, respectively. Ad pages at Elle rose almost 7 percent to 452. Harper’s Bazaar gained almost 4 percent in paging to 414 and Allure was up slightly, by 1.3 percent, to 217 pages.

As for titles seeing declines, Vogue was off less than 1 percent to 559 pages; Cosmopolitan fell almost 1 percent to 289 pages; O The Oprah Magazine was down 2.7 percent to 297 pages; Glamour declined 4.7 percent to 277 pages; Town & Country declined 13 percent to 214, and W posted a 22 percent decline over last year to 250 pages. Essence fared better than some of its peers, but still declined 4.1 percent to 255 pages. Among health titles, Fitness was the only magazine to post a sizeable increase, up almost 20 percent to 238 pages. At Rodale, Women’s Health was flat compared with last year, with 111 pages. Meanwhile, Self lost 12 pages, or a little more than 5 percent, and Shape fell 4.7 percent, to 295 pages. — Amy Wicks

wwd.com

 

[montrealm]

How bad is that for W...

 

[loladonna]

I don't know how W survives. I let my subsciption expire after 1 year. I have never seen a magazine with less worthwhile content.

 

[tigerrouge]

Forbes goes on a rant about things we know only too well... (forbes.com

Save The Glossies

21 January 2010

Fashion magazines should go up market, not down.

The end of 2009 inspired a slew of articles and commentary chronicling the demise of high fashion, the media and, naturally, fashion publications. Indeed the glossies are in a bit of a pickle--not only are they struggling with the changing media landscape (many have been slow to adapt to the Web), they are also struggling with the economy, which has eroded their advertising revenue and made looking at $100,000 dresses seem pretty trivial, if not downright immoral.

Yet--isn't that missing the point? Saying you read Vogue for shopping advice or the clothing-under-$500 section is a bit like saying you read Playboy for the articles. Most readers buy Vogue, or really any fashion magazine, for the photographs: sylphs dressed in diaphanous gowns in a verdant forest, saucy girls dressed in Jazz Age finery in Parisian cafes, glamazons posing haughtily in their haute couture.

The "editorial," or fashion spread, is the fashion magazine's saving grace: It is the one thing that Web sites and blogs actually can't replicate; they neither have the money nor the connections to acquire the fashions displayed (which appear in the magazines before they hit stores) or the photographers used. And while street-fashion blogs like The Sartorialist and Garance Dore can teach you a lot about personal style; Vogue can, at its best moments, transport you to another world.

But fashion photography is in a rut, and its descent started long before the financial crisis or blogs or Twitter or any of the other things that are ostensibly killing magazines. The aughts brought us the death of the Big Three of fashion photography: Richard Avedon and Helmut Newton, who both died in 2004, and modernist master Irving Penn, who passed away in the fall of 2009. In their place we have Mario Testino at Vogue, a celebrity photographer who photographs his celebrity friends flatteringly but flatly, and Steven Klein, who shot white Dutch model Lara Stone in blackface for Paris Vogue last year. The art form arguably reached its nadir last December when the Italian magazine Muse, a supposedly fashion-forward publication, ran an 18-page spread featuring a mostly nude Lindsay Lohan engaged in a raunchy threesome with a male and female model--a cynical attempt at hawking a magazine to a celebrity- and sex-addled culture. The adage that sex and celebrity sell is no longer foolproof in an era when you can find plenty of celebrity and sex for free on the Web.

Another problem rampant in fashion editorials nowadays is that they try so hard to cleverly comment on pop culture that they forget to either take a good photograph or show remarkable clothing. Harper's Bazaar, which nurtured such brilliant artists as Avedon and Martin Munkacsi--the first photographer to show models outdoors and in motion--has fallen prey to this mistake frequently. It has produced mediocre editorials centered around the presidential election (the model pretending to be a journalist and interviewing cardboard cut-outs of Hillary Clinton and John Edwards) and celebrity rehab. The rehab spread featured models in big sunglasses and leggings, the sort of thing readers can see in the downmarket gossip magazine In Touch.

What fashion magazines need to do, then, is create collector's items, with photography--and fashion--so astounding and beautiful and innovative that it begs to be seen on the page, to be kept and prized as a possession. That sounds rather lofty, but there's nothing quite like seeing Avedon's iconic space-age cover for Harper's Bazaar--the one with Jean Shrimpton in a hot pink astronaut helmet and a lenticular blinking eye--on paper. Of course there are some photographers doing extraordinary work for these magazines today, including Steven Meisel and the younger duo Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott, who shot a sumptuous, fantastical Little Red Riding Hood editorial for Vogue a few months ago. But there are too few.

And fashion magazines should not shy from being too lofty. In times of crisis, the public often longs for an escape (think of the Busby Berkeley musicals and delirious screwball comedies popular during the Great Depression). It's the same today: People are hungry for fashion photography. Matthieu Humery, vice president of the photography department at Christie's auction house, told me at a recent auction preview that fashion photographs--along with nudes--were the medium's most popular sellers. And the esteemed International Center of Photography in New York just closed a year-long series of exhibitions devoted to fashion, which were, every time I went, swarming with eager, enthusiastic visitors. One of the exhibitions, a retrospective of Richard Avedon's fashion photography, will travel to the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, Fla., in February after a stint at the Detroit Institute of the Arts.

So fashion magazines need to focus on publishing better photography. They can do so by finding and cultivating young talent and by thinking outside the box and hiring other kinds of photographers to shoot fashion, as Paris Vogue did when it hired art-world star Cindy Sherman to photograph Balenciaga's new line in 2007. There are many photographers who have used fashion and clothing in innovative ways in their work--such as Tanya Marcuse, who has shot wigs and jewelry on wax mannequins, and Miyako Ishiuchi, whose series of diaphanous lace slips and old lipstick tubes belonging to her mother were among the most haunting and beautiful images shown during ICP's entire "Year of Fashion".

Fashion magazines should take note. At the end of the day, they will stay in business not by selling us clothes or by feeding us something we've seen hundreds of times before, but by allowing our imaginations to take flight. The Internet can give us runway pictures and analysis faster than any print publication ever could, but it hasn't yet figured out a way to capture the experience of a great fashion editorial. If magazines were smart, they'd hold on to that.

 

[montrealm]

^ I think it is somewhat a biased interpretation on fashion photography, it may present a reality but its not all of it. I see alot of critics in this article toward magazines who are trying to capture social phenomenons and integrating it to fashion (Vogue Italia & co.) , thats just my point of view.

 

[michyed]

Urgent question! Does anybody have any idea how much magazines typically spend on purchasing photos (from places like getty images... etc) per issue?

 

[audreyh]

Urgent question! Does anybody have any idea how much magazines typically spend on purchasing photos (from places like getty images... etc) per issue?

I know that one image from catwalking.com etc and other image banks is usually around £70, but God knows how much money is spent in total. Sorry I can't help anymore, but I'm sure someone will jump in with the answer!

 

[iluvjeisa]

Thank you tigerrouge for bringing in this voice of reason. Isn't it obvious, really? Where is she, Driana Vreeland II ?

 

[tigerrouge]

Media Guardian reports (guardian.co.uk

Handbags at dawn between Vogue and Harper's Bazaar on eve of ABCs

3 February 2010

First salvo in what looks like being a bitter round of circulation results

Magazine circulation results for the second half of 2009 are out next week and Vogue has declared war on its rival Harper's Bazaar. The Condé Nast magazine has issued an extraordinary release, ostensibly to announce that has a new issue out with Alexa Chung on the cover, but really to trash its National Magazine Company rival's forthcoming circulation increase.

Stephen Quinn, Vogue publishing director, does his best to scorn Harper's Bazaar's figures, even though they haven't been released:

"Fashion upstart Harper's Bazaar dances with the fishes by offering value packs at UK news stands to bolster sales. This packaging of inappropriate titles such as She and Coast with Harper's Bazaar, bundled in plastic bags, will allow Bazaar to boost their numbers in the forthcoming ABCs. Without these inappropriate value packs to boost sales, the ABC posted by Bazaar would show a greatly reduced total.

"It is reasonable to question such tactics as the headline number could be taken as showing legitimate growth amongst upscale consumers, when in reality the Bazaar audience is dragged downmarket in the process, hardly what upmarket advertisers would expect."
​

And just in case you hadn't got the message, this:

"Vogue is the market leader and fashion bible. We sell 210,000 copies. Our readership is a massive 1.3 million."
​

Vogue's March issue has 241 ad pages, 15 more than last year, a sign of improving fortunes after a tough year, says Quinn, and newsstand sales (taken to be a sign of a magazine's health in a crowded market) are up 5%.But he might be sailing close to the wind by talking about his circulation figures ahead of the strict ABC embargo of midday on 11 February.

 

[Miss Dalloway]

Thats pretty pathetic from Quinn, like seriously, but i guess its not surprising at all.

 

[tigerrouge]

A lot of talk about 'inappropriate value packs' but not much being said by Mr Quinn about the cut-price tokens that Conde Nast runs in the Daily Mail to boost sales figures of issues about to be pulled from the shelves, knocked down to a price of £1.

 

[MissMagAddict]

^More from wwd.com

ALL BUNDLED UP: The knives — albeit relatively blunt ones — are out, ahead of the release of the latest British ABC figures on Feb. 11. In a colorful letter to ad agencies and brands, British Vogue publisher Stephen Quinn has accused rival NatMags of inflating the circulation figures of British Harper’s Bazaar by bundling it with mass market, less-sophisticated sister titles She and Coast.

“Fashion upstart Harper’s Bazaar dances with the fishes by offering value packs at U.K. newsstands to bolster sales,” Quinn writes. “This packaging of inappropriate titles such as She and Coast with Harper’s Bazaar…will allow Bazaar to boost their numbers in the forthcoming ABCs. Without these inappropriate value packs…the ABC posted by Bazaar would show a greatly reduced total.

“It is reasonable to question such tactics, as the headline number could be taken as showing legitimate growth amongst upscale consumers when, in reality, the Bazaar audience is dragged down-market in the process,” he added in the letter.

Tess Macleod-Smith, NatMag’s Luxury Group Publishing director, shot back with the following statement: “It is good to see that Vogue is so threatened by the success of Harper’s Bazaar. Their claims are factually incorrect. Magazine multipacks are an effective marketing tool used industrywide that allows Harper’s Bazaar to reach a wider audience of similar profile. Harper’s Bazaar subscriptions are at their highest level ever, posting its 14th consecutive ABC increase.” Numbers are due next week for the period from July to December 2009.

A spokesman for Pringle, one of Bazaar’s luxury advertisers, said the brand was not concerned about the polybagging strategy. “For us, there are only two criteria for advertising: The quality of the writing, and that of the fashion shoots. Many titles use special forms of promotional packaging, and we fully support Harper’s Bazaar,” he said, adding that if Vogue decided to adopt a similar strategy, “it would not be a problem for us.”