Advertising; Atlantic Chief Dons Sales Cap

Advertising; Atlantic Chief Dons Sales Cap
By Philip H. Dougherty
Published: May 27, 1987



THE latest publisher of The Atlantic - and there have been a number in the last few years -is Robert E. L. Johnson, better known to masthead readers as Robin Johnson. He will be 30 years old on July 31.

Fred Drasner, vice chairman of The Atlantic and president and chief executive of its sister publication, U.S. News & World Report, said he has been impressed with the way Robin Johnson ''has cleaned up the circulation'' and now wants to let him have a go at the other income source, advertising. Mr. Drasner, a former tax lawyer, said yesterday that he had interviewed about 200 candidates for the top advertising sales job, and he thinks Mr. Johnson is the one to succeed in organizing the sales effort, something his predecessors failed to do.

In a separate interview, the new publisher outlined some of the plans he has to restore advertising pages to the 130-year-old magazine, which dropped to 457 pages in 1986 from 575 in 1985.

He said that he plans to bring back a couple of programs that have been successful for the magazine in the past. One will be the ''influentials'' program done in cooperation with the Roper Organization.

Influentials, for the sake of this program, are defined as people who do things like vote, write to Congressmen and perform volunteer work. A lot of Atlantic readers (Mr. Johnson calls them ''gold collar workers'') fall into this category, and the magazine will hold seminars in the top five advertising markets to make the local agency people aware of it.

Another revival will be ''the people next door'' research project. It involves studying both the demographics and psychographics of subscriber households and the non-Atlantic households next door. In the past, Mr. Johnson said, such research has shown that Atlantic readers are far more creative as consumers - that is, they spend more inventively for such things as travel and high-priced stereos.

When Mr. Drasner spoke of the new publisher's ''cleaning up'' the circulation, he meant getting more subscribers who are willing to pay the top price. * * *

Mr. Johnson's ideas in this area include a subscription offer as a bill stuffer from the Book-of-the-Month Club and an arrangement to reward National Public Radio contributors of $60 or more with a six-month subscription to the magazine.

As vice president-operations of Atlantic, he has been in charge of everything outside of editorial and advertising while serving as vice president-corporate development of U.S. News & World Report. Morton Zuckerman, the Boston real estate biggie, is chairman of both. Mr. Johnson joined the Zuckerman forces early last year.

As publisher he replaces William Anderson, 39, who will now be vice president, new business and planning. He followed three other men who as either president or publisher have run the magazine briefly since the 30-year-old Harper-Atlantic Sales, national advertising representative for both magazines, was dissolved in the fall of 1981. They were James Glassman, David Auchincloss and Bruce W. Gray.

Each brought different ededentialtto the jo A And Mr. Johnson has collected some impressive ones in a very short time.

He started out on the right foot, being born in Boston (the home of The Atlantic), while his dad was studying for an M.B.A. at Harvard. Johnson the younger, however, went to Princeton where he got his bachelor's degree in engineering in 1979. That naturally led to a job with Ernst & Whinney, the accounting firm, He liked it. ''It was an exercise in different people's problems,'' he remembered.

The direction of his career path was altered by a squash game with Owen Lipstein, who would later be founder-publisher of American Health magazine and was then general manager of Science 80. Mr. Johnson joined the staff of that magazine in Washington and was its business manager in 1981 and the early part of 1982. By that time he had fallen in love with one Wendy Van Cott (now his wife), and not being able to bear the parting, he followed her to New York, where she had entered Columbia's Journalism School. The need for employment led him to the great teacher, Time Inc., where he ended up director of strategic planning for People. This provided him with a rare view of a highly successful property after being in the Magazine Development Group during those exciting days of TV-Cable Week and Picture Week. He loved and still loves the company and its people. The only reason he joined the Zuckerman team, he said, was that he was looking for something a little more entrepreneurial.