Comedy Magazines Getting the Last Laugh
When the stand-up comic suggested a magazine for comedy nightclubs, nobody laughed.
That was a year and a half ago at a New York meeting of the Assn. of Professional Comedians. Now, that comic’s concept is playing at clubs nationwide. Three freebie publications are making the rounds at comedy clubs from Los Angeles to New York.
And why not? Fans leave ballgames with score cards sticking out of their back pockets. Playgoers in a half-dozen cities can grab copies of Playbill before leaving the theater. But about the only thing people were leaving comedy clubs with were laugh-induced bellyaches.
Now, they are also carting away copies of magazines called Rave, Comedy USA and Laugh Factory. The magazines generally feature interviews with big-name comedians like Eddie Murphy and Whoopi Goldberg as well as stories about up-and-coming jokesters. And, ever in search of upscale customers, big-ticket advertisers from car makers to liquor producers have found their way into these new books.
Behind all this is the public’s growing penchant for laughs. Just five years ago, the Los Angeles area had a mere handful of comedy nightclubs. Today, there are nearly 20. Nationwide, there are an estimated 250 comedy clubs and more then 12 million people went to them last year.
Now advertisers are going, too.
“Comedy is the hot thing right now,” said Martin Pazzani, vice president of marketing at Heublein Inc., which imports and produces products such as Smirnoff vodka and Moosehead beer. “When you get people in a social situation, like a comedy club, they’re more conducive to trying products they haven’t tried before.”
That is why Heublein has advertised its Smirnoff vodka in Rave since the magazine’s first issue in June, 1986. After all, the company knows that it is a young, well-to-do audience that frequents comedy clubs. Nissan Motor Co. USA is also a major advertiser in Rave. “Our target audience is at these clubs,” said Joe Opre, director of advertising at Nissan. “What better way can we possibly reach them?”
Still, all is not a barrel of laughs for the publishers of the magazines. Rave has relied heavily on support from its profitable 5-year-old sister publication, Rockbill, which is handed out at rock nightclubs. Rave, which charges about $9,000 for a full-page ad, is distributed monthly at such Los Angeles area comedy spots as the Improv and the Laugh Factory. “It’s not an easy sell,” said Joshua Simons, publisher of Rave Communications. “Some advertisers don’t know what to make of a book that’s given out at comedy clubs.”
Just ask Barry Weintraub. The 26-year-old professional comedian--a regular at Dangerfield’s, a popular comedy spot in New York--is publisher of Comedy USA. It began circulating at comedy clubs shortly before Rave. But it suspended publication for a few months before finally picking up such advertising giants as Miller Brewing and Paramount Pictures.
When Weintraub first approached major advertisers with his magazine’s concept, “they didn’t have a clue what I was talking about,” he said. “Some didn’t even know what a comedy club was--let alone a magazine for comedy clubs.”
The most successful magazine of the lot, Laugh Factory, is handed out at comedy clubs and also sold at newsstands. The magazine, published by a Los Angeles comedy club, also named Laugh Factory, depends mostly on newsstand sales and subscriptions for profits, said publisher Jamie Masada, who is also co-owner of the nightclub.
“This is a good time to get into the comedy business,” said Masada, whose magazine features such major advertisers as Coca-Cola and Anheuser-Busch. “Almost anybody who gets into comedy now can cash in.”
Well, not quite. Laughtrack, a New York-based comedy club magazine, published its first issue in June, 1986. That was also its last issue. No joke.
$1 Billion--for Free
Until now, only three major U.S. advertisers had topped the $1-billion mark in annual advertising expenditures: Procter & Gamble, Philip Morris and RJR Nabisco.
Last week, a fourth surfaced. But it’s not a retailer of any sort--and it doesn’t even pay for its advertising. It’s the Advertising Council.
Actually, all the New York-based non-profit organization’s advertising is donated by ad agencies and the media. And those donations were up a whopping 38% last year, pushing the estimated value of that free advertising time and space past $1 billion, said Edward N. Ney, the council’s newly elected chairman.
What campaigns were the hottest? “Drugs, youth alcoholism and AIDS,” Ney said. “But, given the crisis nature of these three campaigns, we have to do more.”
CD Promo Flies High
Last September, executives at Fidelity Federal Savings & Loan wanted to boost sales of their certificates of deposit. So they offered discount airline tickets to customers who buy special CDs. From its 29 branches in Los Angeles and Orange counties, the S&L; began selling Continental Airlines tickets--good anywhere in the United States--for $89.
Nearly a year later, the program is still going--and there’s good reason. In the first 90 days of the program, the bank amassed 30,000 new accounts and took in $200 million in new deposits. It has also sold 73,000 airline tickets.
Over the first few weeks of the campaign, “people were literally lined up outside the bank, waiting to get their tickets,” said Amy Lynch, Fidelity’s ad manager. Customers are permitted to buy four $89 tickets for every $1,000 they deposit in a CD. Last week, one customer deposited $28,000 at one branch and bought 28 tickets. Said Lynch: “I think they were planning a family reunion.”
Cats and Co-Stars
The cat’s out of the bag at Ralston Purina. The St. Louis-based company is taking precautions to make certain that the human actors it hires to co-star in cat food commercials are not allergic to the feline stars. In fact, during auditions for a recent ad for Tender Vittles cat food, cats were brought in to make certain they were compatible with the actors.
“Some actors weren’t even aware they were allergic until the audition,” said Elaine Herman, a partner in Herman/Lipson Casting of New York. Besides that, she added, “the cats had to like the actors.”
