Marketing partnerships

Marketing partnerships: extortion or opportunity? Publishers question whether they give up too much when advertisers ask for added value.

Publication:
Folio: the Magazine for Magazine Management
Publish date:
December 1, 1989
Author:
Love, Barbara

NAPLES, FIA.-"Marketing partnerships" is the latest buzzword to set publishers on edge. is it just rate negotiating in disguise? Is it the same as added value or what used to be called merchandising? Is it a dirty word? A profit opportunity?

And what business are publishers in, anyway?

A lively discussion at the American Magazine Conference yielded this much: Publishers today, more and more, must deal with advertisers who would rather spend their cash on promotions than straight magazine pages.

Many, for example, want publishers to create special events and other marketing blitzes. "By thinking this way, we move from publishing into show business," said Steve Burzon, publisher of Metropolitan Home. Moreover, marketing partnerships could mean "an attack on a magazine's profitability. By the 1990s, we may wish that advertisers only asked for a few percentage points off the rate card. "

Still, he stressed, value-added business could generate more income and possibly "signal a positive change for magazines' welfare."

Statistics, he noted, show that 72 percent of the average advertiser's budget now goes to promotion; only 28 percent goes to media. "Let's look at it not as taking away from the revenue base, but adding to it. Faced with this pile of lemons, let's make lemonade."

Marketing partnerships, said Nancy Smith, director of media services, Young & Rubicam, "may combine a magazine and a client's clout. There may be a fear someone will lose, but I believe there is something in it for everyone. We need to change our mindsets from buyer and seller to partners, and that may be the toughest challenge."

The whole discussion angered Owen lipstein, president, publisher and CEO, American Health. "The business of a magazine publisher is to put out a great magazine by an editor on fire. 1. don't think it's the job of publishers to get into partnerships selling products.

"We should resist doing marketing on the terms they ask," he added. "I'd love some pressure to make the story better, get better writers, pay more for editorial. "

"Magazines should stick to their excellent editorial and not get involved with things like embroidered hats and mugs," added Paul Benjou, executive director, Gaynor Media/Group One Inc. "Consider the event a window of opportunity, but don't just jump out the window."

Most marketing events don't even work, Benjou said. "We estimate that close to 70 percent of all merchandising efforts don't come to fruition, and 70 percent of those that do are only marginally effective. Everyone hears about the successful promotions; no one hears about the ones that bomb. What we have here is lost opportunities for magazines and advertisers."

Jack Kliger, publisher of Glamour, added that "magazines can't be the only ones to spend money on these efforts. Agencies have to propose that the advertiser spend money too. That's a partnership.

"If partnership is just a way for media people to show advertisers they can get something off of publishers' scalps, we're not talking partnership; we're talking extortion."

Smith told publishers, "If you just sit around talking about definitions, you are going to get beaten to the punch by broadcasters. Networks are accelerating their efforts to get promotion dollars and these guys are moving in with a lot of money."

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