Lisa Messenger takes a punt with $1.5m launch of ‘the Vanity Fair of business magazines’
Today sees the launch of a major new independent business title with the publication of the 100,000 print run Messenger Collective.
The high-end magazine featuring interviews and profiles of players in the business world comes from marketing and book publishing company The Messenger Group. The company is owned by Lisa Messenger who is also editor of the title.
According to Messenger, the majority of distribution will stay within Australia with additional circulation in 10 other countries including the US, New Zealand, Canada, Germany, Hong Kong, the Netherlands and the UK.
The title – initially bi-monthly – will increase frequency to monthly in 2014. It will be priced at $9.95.
“I’m not interested in being small,” Messenger told Mumbrella. “I’ve had my own business for 11-and-a-half years and I need to take the punt now and create something big and come out of the gates strong.”
“I wanted to be global from the start. It’s important to me that we have fresh content from around the world and become a leader in the entrepreneurial space on a global level.”
Publishing 100,000 copies of the glossy 176-page mag will cost $1.5m to produce the first four issues, said Messenger.
While the publication looked to inspiration from media brands Wired, Fast Company, Monocle and locally BRW and Boss, from a content perspective, Messenger said: “If I was going to be putting out another business title like that it would be going into a relatively niche market. However, I wanted to produce something that was going to appeal to a mass market. So we’ve morphed the business magazines with something like Vanity Fair. It’s highly designed and beautiful. And I’ve done that specifically as I think it will appeal to a whole other side of the market, those people who like magazines with a design aesthetic. Someone who has seen the publication said: ‘It’s like Frankie for grown ups’, which I was really excited by. I have huge admiration for Frankie and what Morrison Media have done with it.”
The title describes itself as “interviewing the people making the greatest impact on the business world, in any given industry; the game changers, the thought leaders, the rule breakers, the style makers. We want to know how and why their business evolved. We want to make entrepreneurialism accessible”. Messenger Collective will be distributed as a newsstand publication and pre-sold to high-end corporate clients. The publication will be available across 3,506 news agencies as well as 685 Coles supermarkets, 44 Newslink stores, Magshop, stationery store Kikki K and online via iSubscribe.
Messenger has pre-sold the magazine to clients such as CommBank, PWC and Qantas as incentives to their high-end customers, a move similar to the distribution of the 400 books published under Messenger Publishing’s banner.
Messenger did not disclose the exact ratio of magazines going to newsstands versus corporates but said she was giving equal effort to both distribution routes.
“It’s a massive investment for me, we’re not a Bauer Media. My arse is on the line to create something that will cut through, and I hope I’ve achieved that,” said Messenger. “Also, we’re not one of those big publishing houses that can cross pollinate across multiple titles. When a new title is coming, they can advertise it in six of their titles so everyone knows it’s coming. I haven’t had that opportunity so I’ve had to think quite laterally about the partnerships I form.”
“We’re a marketing agency that just happens to publish books and magazines so we have some interesting tactics that will happen from this week. [But] from a marketing standpoint it’s multi-pronged. For example, we have 92 stories in the magazine – none of which have been picked up through syndication – on people who have extraordinary social media followings and so we’re capitalising on that.”
The first issue sees interviews with online start-ups Etsy and Kickstarter and Apple Fellow Guy Kawasaki, as well as Dinosaur Designs co-founder Louise Olsen.
Messenger said: “Our audience is the affluential and influential. It’s people who are the big thinkers. It’s one of the reasons PWC is supporting us, they aren’t looking at the multimillionaires.”
Similarly, on the topic of target audience, Messenger said: “A lot of advertising people have asked do I think it’s for men or women and I can say it’s a 70 to 30 female-male skew, but the reality is until it hits the marketplace and we get feedback we just don’t know.”
Former InStyle magazine sales director Tracy Harris is national advertising manager.
The first issue carries 22 ads, which Messenger is ‘pretty pleased’ with. Launch advertisers include CommBank, Audi, Mercedes and PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Messenger said: “Print is the cornerstone of the business, but we’re not only going out in print. We’re going out on tablet from issue one, we have events, we have about 20 extensions we’ll be using the magazine to build off the back of, I won’t say what they are just yet but I think that’s what media has to do these days. You can’t only have a print magazine.”
Colin Delaney
This story first appeared in the weekly edition of Encore available for iPad and Android tablets. Visit encore.com.au for a preview of the app or click below to download.
Thanks for the story guys. Loving your work. Looking forward to the feedback. Its a proud proud day launching this baby thats for sure! Its time for a change xx
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Good Luck Tracy and the extended Messenger Team!
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So excited to have been a part of the team working on this!
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Lisa Messenger is an extraordinary woman and Australian entrepreneur who we can all learn from. I am so excited to be getting the first copy of this new publication soon! Go Lisa & Team at the Messenger Group! 🙂 Orsi
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Congratulations Lisa & all the Messenger team – well done! Can’t wait to see you at the launch party tonight! And of course am dying to get a copy in my hot little hands!
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Good luck Lisa, brave move and I hope it pays off.
I’ll definitely buy the 1st issue.
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Did someone say Launch Party?
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Congratulations Lisa and the team at Messenger! I am SO excited for this magazine. Love your first cover girl too!
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Good luck Lisa & team – exciting times!
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Lisa, the website link in your name seems broken. It takes me to a Crazy Domains page.
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Good luck Lisa – I’m looking forward to seeing and reading your “New Baby”.
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Personally I love seeing moves like this from gutsy business people! I hope it gets the success Lisa and her team deserve! I can’t wait to see the first edition! Good luck!
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Good luck, Lisa. Hope it’s a huge success for you!!
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Love your work Lisa – looks great
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Way to go Lisa! I can’t wait to read it! Is it heading to Canberra…??
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You did say it was going to be large Lisa, full points mate!!
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good luck Lisa – here’s to an Aussie female media mogul. Will this contain advertorial??
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Way to go Lisa (I think we may have worked together at some time). As a magazine editor I love to hear about new magazines coming on to the market. It’s a great industry and needs subscriber and advertiser support. I’ll be looking out for this one.
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Congratulations on your launch Lisa. It’s really exciting to see a new magazine in the market and it looks amazing. I’ll be keeping my eye out for it at my newsagent.
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Thank you everyone for such beautiful positive comments. I have been absolutely humbled and blown away by the response. Its an exciting time and certainly a time for a big change in the media landscape xx L
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Congratulations Lisa, that’s fantastic!
Please let me know if there is anything we can do at ENYA to help you get the word out there! Happy to promote and support.
Great work!
Jeremy
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Wow big news Lisa. Love to grab a copy. Looks right up my alley.
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Congratulations Lisa! looking forward to getting my hands on a copy. Well done on such a massive achievement. As they say… ‘positive things happen to positive people’, so I am sure it’ll be a huge success! It sounds like it already is 😉 Marlies x Paleo Cafe
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Congratulations, Lisa – it’s so good to see this stylish new approach to entrepreneurship – looking forward to seeing my copy in the flesh.
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It’s fantastic to see that most people who commented on this story have put their actual name &/or link.
It’s a shame that commenting anonymously seems to go hand in hand with negativity.
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God luck Tracy Harris and crew. Looks like a good read. Where can I get a copy?
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Congratulations again Lisa, Claire, Tracy et al. I am loving the first issue! I really sense the dawning of a new age of entrepreneurship and I believe your team and this magazine will be amongst the torchbearers ushering in this new age.
“There is a tide in the course of the affairs of men,
Which, when taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.”
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A big congratulations to you again Lisa, this is a new approach for me and I am interested to learn about this. Got to grab a copy.
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