Media Life Magazine: Behind the ad falloff at business titles. 2007-Aug-28, by Diego Vasquez (Interview with Steve Greenberger, executive vice president and media director at SLG Advertising)
Meanwhile, Inc. and Fast Company are going up after years of struggle. Why are they finally finding their footing?
It’s got to be the tech area. It’s got to be that advertisers are thinking the decisions for general product purchases may be happening at a younger level at the companies they need to reach.
But Inc. and Fast Company, which went through some pretty bad times, could well see those initial increases fade unless they keep up their marketing.
Keep in mind, too, that you’re talking about 112 ad pages for Fast Company last year versus 120 now. Business Week is 600 pages versus 700 pages, so you can’t look at just the percentages.
I would say if it were at the scale of Business Week, Fast Company would be hurting too. The key seems to be integrating your online properties with your magazines, which is something Forbes has been doing well.
There's been a lot of speculation lately over the future of Business 2.0 magazine. Will it survive? What was its biggest downfall?
Even at a 40 percent dropoff in the second quarter, I still have hopes for that magazine. I’ve thought the editorial is strong. But they need to pump up the marketing. They have to raise awareness levels.
It used to be very top-of-mind, but they’ve kind of quieted down to a hum. They really need to start chomping at the bit to get the message out. It looks like it’s in trouble, but I really feel strongly that's capable of being corrected. They’ve just go to get to it.
