Bauer culls 10 per cent of ad team and sells two titles
Magazine publisher Bauer Media has made 30 positions in its advertising department redundant, reports The Australian Financial Review. The comapny has also sold two more titles.
According to the newspaper the cuts represent around 10 per cent of the publisher’s advertising staff of 300 people.
Bauer, whose titles include the Women’s Weekly and Woman’s Day has today seen major double digit falls in circulation for many of its leading titles
Among the worst affected magazines was Zoo Weekly which had a year on year fall of 25.9 per cent and monthly magazines Cleo and Cosmopolitan whose circulation decreased by 17.4 per cent and 17.5 per cent, respectively.
Smart move by Bauer and Future.
Bauer is interested mainly in mainstream mega-titles. It doesn’t understand the needs and niche of technology magazines, and it only tolerates motoring because of the glossy expensive full-page ads, multi-mag campaign buys which land the same ads into the bigger mags and of course Top Gear, which is Bauer’s idea of a motoring magazine, all lifestyle.
They didn’t know what to do with APC and TechLife, both tech mags but very different, too different to merge but produced by the same tiny team so closing one would not do much for cost-efficiencies against the loss of ads across both mags.
Future has a much deeper appreciation for tech, it’s how the company started. ACP and TechLife already syndicate Future content so the fit is good in that regard. I think the magazines will remain but changed quite a bit, here is my prediction, see in 12 months if I am right or not.
* APC will get a revamp designed to bring it more into line with Future’s premium UK-based tech mags. Might ditch ‘APC’ masthead and go back to ‘Australian Personal Computer’ or even adopt one of the UK mastheads with an “incorporating APC” strap, to help give the mag an international footing.
* TechLife is a tougher one. It could get a revamp to align it more closely with Future’s very successful MacLife, but given the title’s utter nosedive in circulation and readership since it was relaunched last year from the old PC User Future could just axe the thing and be done with the ‘distraction’ of a loser title.
Much like Pacific, the biggest mistake was in creating “agency teams” to group sell mags. Group selling mags goes against their strongest selling points of individuality and following.
As a media buyer, we removed spend because we could no longer deal with people that understood individual magazines. It was simply too risky and we couldn’t back up our choices. We rely on sales people to provide insight.
Now that this TV group sales model has proven flawed for mags, the agency selling teams are removed, head count lost, leaving the magazine sales teams under resourced. Again, as a planner/buyer, I’m left without adequate justification to place ads. It’s frustrating because the medium, in my opinions, deserves better.
People are not reading magazine and papers like they use to. Take a trip on a bus or train and its all smart phones and tablets.
@EH – excellent points made, but active acquisition medias are in decline because they cost money to purchase. Unlike digital, radio, FTA, just sayin…
I think we might be missing the point here, and that’s that a lot of people lost their jobs. And that’s a side that’s not really mentioned with the whole decline in magazines. It’s not just the editorial teams being laid off, but the industry’s decline has huge implications on ad sales staff, photographers, hair and make-up artists, studios, the printers, distributors, marketers, even newsagents too. A lot of people on this site like to gloat about print’s decline but there’s a very real human aspect to it too which I am sure is not really being taken-up by the digital side of the business.
It’s a long way from the hey-day of APC and PC User in the mid-90s when they had ABC Circ of 100,000+ copies each. *sigh*
It’s also an indictment on the lack of digital strategy from ACP – apcmag.com was at one stage in the 10 most visited Web sites in Australia, but when ninemsn was created in 1997, there was no strategy for existing Web sites at all – instead of having a fast-growing integrated property, they allowed it to simply limp along and wither on the vine.
I hope Future do a good job of respecting a genuine heritage title in the AU marketplace. I agree with Jack B Nimble that Tech Life might need to be put out of its misery…