Too Many Reps
The business of selling advertising has changed an awful lot since I began my career buying the stuff back in 1980's, when buyers liked hearing from our magazine reps. Of course they rarely called. And there weren't nearly so many of them. And the demands of the job were somewhat less onerous. And we wanted to get invited to lunch, golf tournaments, fishing trips and all sorts of parties (this was the real benefit of the job - not the $12,000 salary).
Well today, it's a bit sad and we can empathize with those dreaded telemarketers. We make phone calls that are screened with call display. We leave short messages that don't get returned. So we leave longer detailed messages that don't get listened to. When we do speak to a real person, they are polite but rarely will agree to meet with you, even if they don't really have an understanding of your magazine.
A former publisher met recently with a respected media director and this is what she heard:
Well today, it's a bit sad and we can empathize with those dreaded telemarketers. We make phone calls that are screened with call display. We leave short messages that don't get returned. So we leave longer detailed messages that don't get listened to. When we do speak to a real person, they are polite but rarely will agree to meet with you, even if they don't really have an understanding of your magazine.
A former publisher met recently with a respected media director and this is what she heard:
The other day I had lunch with D and he said he didn't have enough time in the day to see all the magazine reps that want to see him, even though they don't spend that much in magazines to start with! He said there were millions of magazine reps and they all want to meet "all the time". I guess that would reflect the attitude of most media buyers..Ouch!
posted by Reptile at 9:48 PM
3 Comments:
So, is it that the media buyers really are too busy, doing more things than they used to do, or are they just playing golf with reps from tv, radio, outdoor, newspaper...which simply ARE more important to their business....or is this a failing of our industry to make magazines a sexy medium?
The issue is not that we have too many magazines or too many reps. The real issue is that in Canada our media industry is based on unwitting citizenry who pay over a billion dollars per year to Television media operators.
First we give over one billion to the elitist CBC and its cousin Radio Canada. To add insult to injury we then give their little watched news channel a further $50 million per year via our cable bills.
The trough does not end there. Our so call free enterprise entrepreneur broadcasters like their regular cheques in the mail. CTV, Corus, Alliance Atlantis, CHUM and others collectively take over $250 million from all of our cable bills. For this we get sports events we couldn’t care to watch – ever try watching a soccer game with teams called Real and Chelsea – and of course my favourite two fat guys standing in a boat catching the same fish over and over.
For intellectual stimulation we get to see the Second World War again and again. I bet the soldiers don’t see one penny in residuals.
Want to fix your home? Personally I don’t want to see Mike Holmes anywhere near my street. I think he pays people to do a bad job.
Imagine if the magazine world was built on the television model. We would all go to Ottawa (Canadian Magazine Distribution Commission – CMDC for short) to get our automatic printing and distribution license. We would print 8 million copies and then deliver them each month. At the end of the month we would receive a distribution cheque for $2,000,000 from Canada Post – That’s $24 million per year folks based on 25 cents per subscriber. With 8 million subscribers we could easily get another $12 – 20 million in advertising.
For editorial we promised the CMDC that we would print two new stories every month and we would commit to this with each publication. The rest of the magazine would be filled with great stories we had written in previous issues or from other publications.
Do you think that the publishing industry could make money under these conditions?
I agree with anonymous. It is absolutely true. Print media would die a rapid death if it performed in the same way as radio and TV. And, I had the same doubt about Mike Holmes and the fishermen.
Post a Comment
<< Home