Marcel Reichart Blog

FIPP VDZ Digital

An early flight this morning to Berlin and I just arrived at the FIPP VDZ Digital Magazine Media Conference in Berlin. In the second year, international publishers meet here to exchange on how to succeed in the internet. Dr. Burda made opening remarks adressing a number of questions for the industry: how to leverage the brands online and build communities, how to enter the video space, how to develop new digital products and how to collaborate online.

Just now, Patrick McGovern, Founder and CEO of IDG Group, is holding his key note. Whow. Just saying that he is for 50 years in the publishing business, he presents IDG's impressive digital strategy. Already, the company has higher revenues online than in its traditional print operations, and profit margins have increased. I was said the presentation will be on the conference website (good design btw) later and I can only recommend to read this. It shows how IDG associates its brands with social networks and video platforms. He stresses the potential of mobile citing Eric Schmidt of Google seeing in mobile the recreation of the internet. McGovern is also behind a large brain research center located in Boston.

The conference has a drawn attendees from many countries, there is strong Japanes delegation. I will be on a panel this afternoon "Creating and utilising communities on the web".   

Business Week Relaunch

Muss man sich ansehen, den Relaunch der Business Week letzte Woche. Das neue Design orientiert sich deutlich am Internet, zielt auf Reduktion und Klarheit: von Logo und Titel über den Schrifttyp und Satzspiegel, die unterstrichenen Überschriften zu den Ressortübersichten und Autorenportraits. Für mich - ich lese die Business Week lange und gerne - ein anderes Lesegefühl. Was meint Ihr?

Beim SZ Magazin

Gestern war ich eingeladen in die Redaktion des SZ-Magazins zur Heftkritik-Sitzung. Ich bin ein großer Fan des Magazins, daher konnte ich eigentlich nicht viel kritisieren und habe darin auch keine Praxis. Das hatte ich Dominik Wichmann und seiner sehr symphatischer Redaktion gleich gesagt. Wir redeten (bzw. ich gab meinen Eindruck) über die Texte, ihre Aktualität und Tiefe, die Layouts, meine Frage nach dem Titel (siehe hier, 50cents) - es war das Männerheft. Favorit für mich: die Bildstrecke über die New Yorker "Gallerinas" und deren Mode. Gallerinas arbeiten in den angesagten Chelsea-Gallerien. Inszeniert hat die Strecke The Sartorialist, lässig schon an sich. Wir sprachen dann auch darüber, wie Magazine im Netz aussehen, die Trends in den USA und bei uns. Was aus dem Magazin sollte in Internet, was nicht, unterscheiden sich die Leser? Diese Fragen beschäftigen uns aktuell alle in der Branche. Ich wurde, das freut mich, nochmals eingeladen, in einem Jahr wiederzukommen. Gerne!

 

Conde Nast to acquire Social News Site

Condé Nast recently acquired Boston-based Reddit, a social news site that has always played second fiddle to Digg, although Reddit does have an active and loyal userbase. Users praise Reddit for having a very quick load time and no advertising. Like Digg, news stories on Reddit are submitted by users, and other users vote up or down the story. When it gets enough "up" votes, the story appears on the home page. All four Reddit employees will relocate from Boston to Wired's SF office, becoming a part of Wired Digital. Listen also to the interview with the Reddit founders on Techcrunch. Yet another example how big publishers try to go "beyond print" embracing new audiences (Wired will leave Reddit as a standalone site) and within their existing web properties.

US Magazines: a 36.6 bn $ business

The top 300 magazines in the U.S., led by consumer title gains, advanced 5.2% in gross revenue from advertising and circulation to $36.64 billion in 2005 (Ad Age Magazine 300 report). Time Warner's People claimed the top spot at $ 1.37 billion, up 8.1%, as Better Homes & Gardens from Meredith Corp. zipped past two TW stalwarts to claim No. 2 at $971.5 million (up 9.4 %). Time dipped to $944.6 million and Sports Illustrated slipped to No. 4 ($925.7 million).

Consumer Magazines (accounting for 92.2% of Top 300 total revenue) grew 5.7% over 2004; and monthlies drove the list's overall increase. Food publications are among the few magazine genres holding their own or even growing in readership. Like food magazines, travel titles are also showing staying power in the face of Internet competition. More here and here.

Conde Nast lines up magazine web launches

Recently, Condé Nast consumer-parenting magazine Cookie rolled out its new website, splashed with multicolored text and photos and new blogs. Before Cookie, it was Men's Vogue coming out off CondéNet's reassambly line, with Web-only features including an audio interview with novelist James Ellroy and slideshows (and there's a Men's Vogue blog in the works, according to a CondéNast source). Three weeks before that, it was Glamour, which added an interactive feature "in which readers give blogger Alyssa Shelasky's love life the Subservient Chicken treatment."

Still awaiting their turn are titles including Vanity Fair - which is due to relaunch next month - Lucky, Teen Vogue and The New Yorker. Says Sarah Chubb, CondéNet's president: "We are playing in a space that is very aggressive, and things have to change fast." So along with CondéNet, the tech-boom-survivor purveyor of Web sites Avenue A/Razorfish had a hand in the Cookie and Men's Vogue redesigns, and is also working on a planned destination site for teengage girls, launching before year's end.

US publishers shed media assets

Last week, two of America's most powerful publishing companies announced plans to shed major assets, to better position their core offering for the future - yet pursuing markedly different paths. Time Warner announced that it was putting 18 of its 50 magazines in the US up for sale, including some of the most venerable special interest titles. The question that lies behind: Can traditional publishing provide the kind of growth required by a public company?

Samir Husni, a professor of journalism at the University of Mississippi (also known as "Mr. Magazine") summed up the sale: "Time is saying they think there's a future for the big general interest magazine, but also predicting the demise of spcial interest titles that are not extremely specialized". According to a recent NYT article, a sale would land nicely on Wall Street, and with earnings of about $1 billion, Time Inc.'s cash flow would also be very attractive to venture capital funds that are shopping for big media plays.

The New York Times Company announced that it plans to sell its Broadcast Media Group, which includes nine network-affiliated television stations and their related properties. "The decision to explore the sale of our broadcast stations is a result of our ongoing analysis of our business portfolio," said Janet L. Robinson, president and CEO of the Times Company. "We believe a divestiture would allow us to sharpen our focus on developing our newspaper and rapidly growing digital businesses, and the synergies between them, thereby increasing the value of our Company for our shareholders."

And where is Time Inc. heading? Last Friday, Ann S. Moore, the company's chief executive, made a presentation to the Time Warner leadership, telling them she planned on building the business around six verticals of interest: sports, entertainment, business, news, health and home. In a phone interview, she was wildly enthusiastic about digital growing perspectives, yet she did not minimize the downsides of the task ahead. "We can't just take all our old magazine people and turn them into multiplatform geniuses [...] I think it may well be true that I have to shrink Time Inc. in order to grow it, but it will grow again".

Traditional media takes big share of online ads

Financial Times covered a detailed report of Veronis Suhler Stevenson on the relative positions of traditional media companies and their online competitors. Contrary to many people's expectations, media companies are holding their own in the digital space. Of the 22 billion dollars expected to be spent on online and mobile advertising in the US, traditional media group's share is forecast to be 37%, up from 23% in 2000. By 2010, internet and mobile advertising is due to reach 44 billion dollars - traditional media companies are expected to capture 17 billion dollars (or nearly 39% of the total).

According to James Rutherfurd, managing director at VSS, "traditional media firms have work hard at finding ways to extend their reach online, and this is paying off". The New York Times and Time Inc. are all making digital expansion a priority. Yet, the FT article says, it's still not clear whether traditional media companies will be able - in the longer term - to make as much money from online audiences as from their traditional audiences. What do you think?

Wie Condé Nast in den USA seine Websites entwickelt

Mehr darüber in diesem News.com Artikel. Offensichtlich setzt Condé Nast in den USA stärker auf  webonly destination sites wie NaturalData.com (aqkuiriert für 25 Mio. $), Epicurious.com und style.com. Die Compagnion-Sites sind zu den Magazin-Brands haben eher Unterstützungsfunktion. Der Aritkel zitiert Experten, die eine großes Potential auch in starken magazine destinations sites sehen. Das ist interessante Frage, die von der Markt– und Portfoliosituation der Marken beeinflusst ist. Any thoughts?

Wolfgang Fellner to launch "Österreich"

Austrian Publisher Wolfgang Fellner recently has been interviewed by Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. He talks about his daily tabloid newspaper project "Österreich" which is supposed to start on 1st September with a circulation of 250,000. "Österreich" targets a new, broader audience of 22-46 year-old urbans and employees using computers with Internet access.

Interesting is how Fellner sees the changing function of print and online media: According to him, the Internet has taken over the role the "old" newspapers once had, with the newspaper becoming a daily magazine which is far more analytical. Newspapers nowadays should increasingly focus on in-depth coverage, providing opinion and orientation as well as usable knowledge for their readers. And "magazines are  like a periodical book, kept shortly and well proportioned." Thus, both print and online together would have a great future when working together. And guess who is Fellners biggest role model? Jürgen Klinsmann - because of his innovative, Californian approach in successfully guiding the German football team through the Worldcup 06.

How Condé Nast expands digital

Having posted a lot on Time Inc. digital moves lately, I now found a New York Times article (via Mediapost) explaining how Condé Nast stepps up its digital activities. The review covers the magazine as well as destination sites, both managed through Condé’s online arm Advance.net.

Leading destination sites are: epicuirous.com and coincierge.com (1.6 mio. vistors) and style.com – the latter two reported to be profitable. Currently, Condé builds up brides.com to better compete with theknot.com. And, “Condé Nast is preparing another new site…for teenage girls. And its new business magazine… will have a large Internet component”.

This also translates into hiring web editors for “all its 29 consumer magazines” and “giving its advertising sales force incentives to sell space simultaneously online and in print” and “the company created an Internet specialist team to handle large corporate ad accounts”

The destination sites have much higher traffic than the magazines sites. However, their value becomes clearer, too: Self.com generated more than 100.000 subscriptions a year for the corresponding fitness magazine. And Vanity Fair could attract more than 350,000 people a day posting videos of the Scarlett Johansson cover shoot its website.

Advance.net Chairman Steve Newhouse explains the goal: "You gain a broader audience and more loyalty from your subscribers if you extend the experience into the Web."