Vogue Is Grooming Its Image With a New Publicity Campaign
Vogue magazine, arbiter of high fashion for much of this century, is now working on its own image.
Facing competition from other fast-growing fashion magazines, as well as from cable shows and the Internet, Vogue has launched a publicity campaign to remind advertisers and readers of the magazine’s credentials in haute couture.
Vogue’s slogan, “Before It’s in Fashion, It’s in Vogue,” is on 1,800 buses in Manhattan, where it is seen by influential designers and advertising executives. And the magazine is sponsoring concerts and street fairs in such tony enclaves as Beverly Hills to raise its profile among the fashion-conscious.
“Other fashion magazines interpret and cover fashion,” Vogue Publisher Richard Beckman says. “Vogue is as much a catalyst to trends as the designers themselves.”
Indeed, a nod from Vogue and its respected editor, Anna Wintour, goes a long way in helping to determine a designer’s success. Vogue’s interest in two American designers, Michael Kors and Isaac Mizrahi, and French designer John Galliano, helped their careers.
Yet, in the last 10 years, 165 women’s magazines have joined the U.S. market. Fashion shows on CNN, E Entertainment, MTV and VH1, as well as online magazines such as www.ivillage.com and www.women.com, offer women fashion tips and the scoop on rising designers.
And the crowded marketplace has intensified the search for advertising dollars. Ad revenue for Vogue, published by Conde Nast, was flat in 1998, a year when many other women’s magazines had moderate to strong advertising growth.
“There is a lot more competition,” says Patrick McCarthy, chairman of the publisher of Women’s Wear Daily and W, “and the [ad dollars] pie is getting divided a lot more than it used to be.”
Four-year-old Marie Claire, known for its celebrity guest editors and quirky stories that appeal to a young audience, won a place on Adweek magazine’s “Hot List.” At the end of 1998, the magazine’s circulation reached a new high of 840,000, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulation, and its ad revenue increased 20.5%, according to the Magazine Publishers of America. Adweek also cited as hot In Style, a celebrity lifestyle magazine from Time Inc., which incorporates fashion and beauty information, that increased its ad pages 44.7%, its circulation by 21.1% and its ad revenue by 70.9%, according to the MPA.
Beckman took the helm at Vogue about halfway through 1998. At the end of last year, the magazine’s ad pages decreased 3.5%, its ad revenue increased only 0.7% and its circulation rose 5% from 1997, according to the MPA.
And in 1999, the competition is expected to stiffen as other magazines expand their influence and offer greater value to their advertisers through innovative marketing programs.
“The printed page is no longer the printed page,” says Cynthia Lewis, vice president and publisher of Marie Claire, a Hearst Corp. publication. “You have to bring it alive. You have to emote the title of your magazine. Bring in the Internet. Bring in corporate sponsors. Get involved in the entertainment industry.”
Chris Little, president of Meredith Corp., believes that any association a magazine makes with other media must relate to its editorial content. Ladies Home Journal (which increased its 1998 ad revenue by 16%, according to the MPA) is partnering with ABC in a TV special hosted by Barbara Walters on the 100 most important women of the 20th century. For the millennium, Better Homes and Gardens is constructing a virtual 3-D tour of a house on the Web. The actual house in Chapel Hill, N.C., will represent how people would like to live in 2000.
“In the last two years, magazines have expanded the concept of branding in ways people would not have thought of,” Little says.
It used to be that an advertiser would just buy an ad, says McCarthy. Now the ad comes with a party. In order to stay competitive, “magazines have to offer marketing money in exchange for ads.”
Beckman came to Vogue last year from GQ, another Conde Nast magazine, where he succeeded in building advertising revenue. At GQ he was known for creating the GQ Men of the Year Awards, with ceremonies that drew thousands of people. The MPA reported that in 1996, Beckman brought GQ’s ad pages up 12% to 1,558.6, bringing in $11 million more than the previous year, and that in 1997, he increased them by 17% to 1,831, adding $14 million to ad page revenue.
Such hype, however, failed to significantly improve circulation. According to the MPA, GQ’s circulation decreased 1.5% in 1996 and rose 3% in 1997.
At Vogue, Beckman is offering a number of programs to please advertisers, only a few of which resemble his extravagant strategies at GQ. With the help of Wintour, Beckman is creating a millennium collectors issue. He also is offering his advertisers more for their money with street fairs and concerts, as well as participating in hotel room booklets representing their merchandise, storefront displays and “onserts.”
The onserts are mini-magazines, bound separately, wrapped in plastic and placed on top of the main magazine. The onserts include 26 pages on a single subject and 26 pages of images from one advertiser. For example, Giorgio Armani is advertising in the April onsert, which is about music.
“It’s very competitive for print advertisers to break through the clutter [of ad pages in the magazine],” says Peter Connolly, executive vice president of global marketing at Tommy Hilfiger, which is participating in two of Vogue’s onserts. “These booklets have enabled us to stand out.”
Beckman has forged alliances with approximately 100 hotels and various retailers in major cities around the country, with the magazine providing booklets featuring products from the magazine’s advertisers, in 20,000 hotel rooms. Guests will be able to call the concierge and have any of these products delivered via a local retailer by the end of the day.
In the third week of April, Vogue will invade Beverly Hills with a program that demonstrates Beckman’s belief that fashion inspires culture. Combining a street fair with scheduled events, the magazine will sponsor culinary, cinematic, musical, photographic, retail, comedy, dance and fashion shows. Fendi, Christian Dior and Neiman Marcus are some of Vogue’s advertisers that will be represented. In July, Vogue will stage similar events in Manhattan and in October, it will visit Miami.
McCarthy believes that Beckman’s marketing programs for Vogue are not breaking new ground. “He is using Vogue’s long-term power. Vogue is a brand and he is trying to connect people to that brand. He is saying to advertisers, ‘If you spend a certain amount of money with me, I will, with ads and parties, associate your name with Vogue.’ And that’s very clever, because it works.”
For the moment, Beckman’s programs have put Vogue among the leaders in the race for ad dollars among women’s fashion magazines. Media Industry Newsletter reported that in the first quarter of 1999, Vogue’s ad pages increased 16.7% and In Style’s were up 24%. The MPA reported that Vogue’s ad revenue increased 57%, or $2 million, in January 1999 over the same month the previous year, and In Style’s ad revenue increased 89.1%, or $2.4 million, during the same period.
Steven Cohn, editor of Media Industry Newsletter, says, however, that Beckman’s seven months as Vogue’s publisher are not enough to see any lasting results. “He is in a bigger playing field [now] in terms of the women’s magazines.”
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Conde Nast’s Glamour edged sister publication Vogue in advertising revenue in 1998, a growth year for most women’s fashion magazines. Vogue, with flat ad revenue in 1998, recently launched a campaign to polish its image. Here is how Adweek magazine ranked the top women’s fashion magazines by ad revenue.
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1998 ad revenue, % change Magazine in millions from 1997 Publisher Cosmopolitan $214.1 +13.6% Hearst Glamour 150.2 +9.3 Conde Nast Vogue 150.0 +0.7 Conde Nast Elle 105.9 +5.5 Hachette Filipacchi In Style 90.6 +70.9 Time W 87.6 +13.9 Fairchild Harper’s Bazaar 78.3 +6.4 Hearst Mademoiselle 66.5 +5.4 Hearst
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