Newsweek, Meredith Enter Alliance on Ad Marketing
Newsweek magazine on Thursday unveiled a new marketing alliance with Meredith Corp., the publisher of Better Homes and Gardens and other magazines, in an effort to compete better with group advertising packages offered by industry leader Time Warner Inc., whose titles include Time, People, Money and Sports Illustrated.
The deal with Meredith, whose magazines reach mainly women readers, complements a similar arrangement announced last year by Newsweek and Times Mirror Magazines, whose periodicals appeal in large part to men. Times Mirror Magazines, whose parent company publishes the Los Angeles Times, offers such titles as Field & Stream, Golf Magazine, the Sporting News and Popular Science.
“When the call comes from a client seeking a multi-magazine buy, we’ve got a damned full arsenal now,” Newsweek Publisher Peter W. Eldredge said in an interview.
Newsweek, a unit of Washington Post Co., has been losing ground to rival news weekly Time in part because some advertisers prefer the convenience of dealing with--and the discounts offered by--publishers who offer multiple titles. In 1990, Newsweek’s advertising pages fell 7.8% from 1989, while Time magazine’s were essentially flat.
Newsweek and Meredith said their new venture will create “the largest group-magazine buy available,” with combined circulation of nearly 33.6 million. Other Meredith titles include Ladies’ Home Journal, Country Home and Metropolitan Home.
A spokesman for Time’s magazine group, Peter Costiglio, reponded that “in terms of reach and frequency, we are still the leader. No other publisher offers four weekly magazines.”
Separately, Kmart Corp. announced a “multimillion-dollar,” yearlong agreement to place ads in the Newsweek-Times Mirror-Meredith publications. Specific terms were not disclosed, but Eldredge hailed the deal as a major coup for Newsweek because Kmart was a major advertiser in the Time magazine family last year.
The Kmart buy is the first deal announced by the Newsweek-Times Mirror-Meredith alliance, though industry sources said details of other joint purchases by auto makers and tobacco companies will be released in the next several weeks.
