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looking right decent
Long goodbye kiss to cigarette and dot.com $s
By Jeff Bercovici
Year 2002 is less than two weeks away but even in these final days of the worst year in recent advertising history uncertainty appears the prevailing mood in the media marketplace.
For all the talk of a quick recovery, there are equally solid explanations for why the recession will be long and deep.
And of course all bets are off in the event of another terrorist attack.
But all that said, publishers of women’s fashion and beauty magazines say the coming year is shaping up a lot better than many would expect.
The first quarter looks rough, and they say the year won't be made any easier by the disappearance--in some cases for good--of dot.com and tobacco advertising.
But publishers tell Media Life that most of the softness they are experiencing has been in categories that are peripheral to their business.
Advertising in their core areas of fashion and beauty has been resilient.
For most titles the biggest losses have been in a category where cutbacks have little to do with the economy: tobacco.
Led by Philip Morris, cigarette makers have been increasingly retreating from magazines in the face of pressure to keep their ads out of the hands of readers under 18 years of age.
Katherine Rizzuto, publisher of Hearst's Marie Claire, says the volume of tobacco advertising in her magazine fell by 80 percent from 2000 to 2001, and other publishers say they’ve taken similarly large hits.
Overall ad pages in Marie Claire were down 1.7 percent through November to 1,478.5, but revenue was up 13.5 percent to $91.5 million, according to the Publishers Information Bureau.
The other category that disappeared in 2001 and won't be coming back next year is dot.com advertising.
InStyle publisher Lynette Harrison says her title lost about 100 pages of dot.com advertising this year.
Thanks to its practice of putting web addresses and 800 numbers alongside photos of products, InStyle attracted more dot.com ads than its competitors, including online fashion retailers like Bluefly and cosmetic merchants such as Beautyjungle.com.
InStyle will finish the year down 7.5 percent in ad pages, with 3,024.1, according to Media Industry Newsletter. Through November, InStyle's revenue was up 4.4 percent to $215.6 million, according to PIB.
Like her counterparts at other magazines, Harrison says 2001 was a strong year for both fashion and beauty advertising, and next year is looking solid, if not quite great.
"The outlook for fashion is revealing itself very slowly, but I'd have to say that we’re cautiously optimistic for 2002," says Harrison.
March and September are the most important issues for fashion magazines, and Harrison says American brands will make a strong showing in her March issue, while European ones will be less in evidence.
Fairchild's W depends more heavily on European luxury brands than does InStyle, and publisher Alyce Alston says W's March issue will likely be off by 5 to 10 percent in pages from the March 2001 issue.
"We have a lot of European brands and most of them have cut their budgets overall," she says.
As for whether things will improve in time for the second half of the year, especially the September issue, says Alston, "It really depends on Christmas sales and first-quarter sales."
W will close the year down 2.8 percent in pages, with 2,123.1, according to MIN. In revenue, it was up 15.9 percent to $117.2 million through November.
Eva Dillon, publisher of Jane, says her combined January/February issue is down about 25 percent from last year, but the March issue will be flat or even slightly up in pages.
"I don't expect us to have a booming year, but I don't expect anyone to have a booming year," says Dillon.
"So far we've done very well with indications from some of our core advertisers that they're not cutting, or if they are, they're not cutting as drastically as we might have thought."
Jane will actually finish the year up in ad pages with 899.1, an 8.9 percent increase from 2000, according to MIN. Jane’s revenue was up 18.4 percent to $30.6 million through November, according to PIB.
Elle’s March issue has carried between 300 and 350 pages of advertising in most recent years, but it will have only about 260 pages in 2002, says publisher Carl Portale. The Hachette-owned title will finish this year down about 16 percent in pages from last year, with 1,913.3, according to MIN.
But Portale sees cause for hope in what comes after March.
"I believe that everybody has put aside their budgets as a kind of slush fund until they see what's going on in the second half," he says. "If things stay the same, if there are no tragic events and there's a good feeling about the economy, I think the second half will be at least respectable."
December 19, 2001 © 2001 Media Life
-Jeff Bercovici is a staff writer for Media Life.
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