PMB, SHME MB
PMB 2006 will arrive on March 30. Big deal.
Nothing much changes from year to year and by the time you see it the data is as stale as a week-old croissant (it covers a period starting 2-1/2 years prior to release and as of today, some data in PMB 2005 is actually 3-1/2 years old). Well actually everything changes just a wee bit, and thus every media kit, promotion piece and sales letter is immediately obsolete keeping those research managers employed for another year.
There was a time when being in PMB really meant something. Your magazine was "worthy" and automatically considered for media plans. The data was actually used to make decisions and being in the study meant your magazine had a shot. Mind you, the flip side was that bad numbers could be the death knell.
By the mid-90s the writing was on the wall and PMB began lobbying the industry to embark on a major methodology change. The move to recent-reading methodology was necessary as the through-the-book method had clearly hit the wall. The study had become cumbersome and as more magazines joined, reported readership of existing PMB publications began to tumble.
But just as clutter expands to fill the space of a bigger home, the new method opened the floodgates to a pile of marginal magazines and today being in PMB no longer has cachet. Not when PMB 2006 will introduce the likes of City Parent, Forever Young, Vervegirl, What’s Cooking, What's Up Kids Family, Adorable, Ricardo, Summum and Jobboom. What are the criteria for becoming a member other than having printed words on paper and cash in the bank?!
In my humble opinion, being measured in PMB is simply a way to avoid getting blown off by media planners that have to dump 1,000 magazines from the list in one fell swoop. That's why the successful magazine Cottage Life reluctantly joined – Al's gang was tired of hearing from planners that it wasn't being considered because it wasn't in PMB. Fat lot of good joining did – its ad pages have actually declined since the release of PMB 2005 despite strong audience numbers. Looks like those wily planners found another reason to blow off Cottage Life. The same thing happened to Inside Entertainment which received surprisingly good numbers only to go on and lose advertising pages. Yet PMB coughs up a one- reader-per-copy fur ball called Toro and the magazine flourishes. Why? Because PMB is no longer all-mighty.
Rather, PMB is something akin to a circulation audit – a necessary but nearly useless sales tool. Without it forget about getting on many plans. With it, well they'll just have to come up with a different excuse to blow you off.
Nothing much changes from year to year and by the time you see it the data is as stale as a week-old croissant (it covers a period starting 2-1/2 years prior to release and as of today, some data in PMB 2005 is actually 3-1/2 years old). Well actually everything changes just a wee bit, and thus every media kit, promotion piece and sales letter is immediately obsolete keeping those research managers employed for another year.
There was a time when being in PMB really meant something. Your magazine was "worthy" and automatically considered for media plans. The data was actually used to make decisions and being in the study meant your magazine had a shot. Mind you, the flip side was that bad numbers could be the death knell.
By the mid-90s the writing was on the wall and PMB began lobbying the industry to embark on a major methodology change. The move to recent-reading methodology was necessary as the through-the-book method had clearly hit the wall. The study had become cumbersome and as more magazines joined, reported readership of existing PMB publications began to tumble.
But just as clutter expands to fill the space of a bigger home, the new method opened the floodgates to a pile of marginal magazines and today being in PMB no longer has cachet. Not when PMB 2006 will introduce the likes of City Parent, Forever Young, Vervegirl, What’s Cooking, What's Up Kids Family, Adorable, Ricardo, Summum and Jobboom. What are the criteria for becoming a member other than having printed words on paper and cash in the bank?!
In my humble opinion, being measured in PMB is simply a way to avoid getting blown off by media planners that have to dump 1,000 magazines from the list in one fell swoop. That's why the successful magazine Cottage Life reluctantly joined – Al's gang was tired of hearing from planners that it wasn't being considered because it wasn't in PMB. Fat lot of good joining did – its ad pages have actually declined since the release of PMB 2005 despite strong audience numbers. Looks like those wily planners found another reason to blow off Cottage Life. The same thing happened to Inside Entertainment which received surprisingly good numbers only to go on and lose advertising pages. Yet PMB coughs up a one- reader-per-copy fur ball called Toro and the magazine flourishes. Why? Because PMB is no longer all-mighty.
Rather, PMB is something akin to a circulation audit – a necessary but nearly useless sales tool. Without it forget about getting on many plans. With it, well they'll just have to come up with a different excuse to blow you off.
posted by Reptile at 7:31 PM
4 Comments:
Hi Reptile:
Having worked with a host of media surveys from radio, television and newspaper, PMB still provides by far the most comprehensive and accessible analysis of demographics, psychographics, product usage and media habits of Canadian consumers.
And much as I share the pain of all magazine reps out there tyring to deal with an explosion of competitors while magazine budgets dwindle, be careful dissing magazines like Ricardo- this one has earned its stripes in Quebec over three years of publishing. And now that it is poised to launch an English edition, I would love to see Ricardo give the fat cat "Food and Drink" a run for the money.
Did I ever say that PMB was not the greatest? For the record, it is truly a yummy media survey run by the finest people with a dedicated group of volunteers from all sectors of the industry contributing countless hours to ensure its continued credibility, value and improvement.
My points were that it's annual release is no longer a red letter day on everybody's calendar and that if you are a new magazine to the study, I wouldn't sit by your fax machine to watch the insertion orders pour in.
As for Ricardo, it wasn't singled out for dissing - the entire group of new magazines in PMB 2006 are not exactly on top of the unaided-recall heap. But since you raised it - what's so special about Ricardo and why can't I find a website? From what I can find, it's the name of a French TV personality with a toothy grin and a cooking show. So I look to CARD and see a 2004 sworn statement that the magazine has a paid circulation of 48,000 with 41,000 being single copy sales. I don't buy it (No pun intended).
Oh so nostalgic about the "good old days" of PMB. Let's all go back in time and have it like it used to be -- wouldn't that be fun.
Let's only measure the top 10 TV channels, top 10 radio stations and the top 10 magazines. Then, we will know which media is truely "worthy".
Get off your soapbox and get to work.
As someone who rode a magazine over a cliff (Quest) directly as the result of PMB (somehow Quest 'lost' a quarter of a million readers from one year to the next)I am sympathetic to reptile's view. We somehow don't believe the numbers but live or die by them and, now, even with the numbers, agencies are finding ways to blow us off. But what is the alternative? Without provable data, magazines might be ignored altogether. I wish I could believe that agencies will make their decisions based on the editorial as well as abstract audience data. But I don't.
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