One of the most heavily attended sessions during the MPA, the Association of Magazine Media, conference in San Francisco last week was by Morgan Guenther, the CEO of Next Issue Media, a multipublisher consortium that is about to kick off a big marketing drive for its “all you can eat” magazine stand on iPads.
Now, for $14.99 a month, consumers can get digital editions of 15 popular magazines like weeklies Time, People and The New Yorker, and monthlies such as Better Homes and Gardens, Cosmopolitan, O the Oprah magazine, Vogue and InStyle.
Consumers can pick any 15 titles from a pool of 72 to receive digital versions on their tablets.
Hearst, Condé Nast, Meredith and Time, along with News Corp. (parent company of The Post), are the backers of Next Issue Media. Each company is estimated to have contributed around $5 million to the joint venture since its founding in 2009.
After a number of false starts, Guenther said, the plan now has about 70,000 consumers signed up for trial offers, and about 25,000 are paying customers.
“It’s the Netflix and Hulu model, outside the Apple newsstand,” said Guenther. Full-page print ads are slated to start running in magazines in November issues, and Guenther said the venture will also drop a $1 million direct-marketing campaign. “By the time we get through the Christmas season, we’ll know what type of media and what type of direct response works,” he said.–Keith J. Kelly
Bowling ’em over
Move over Madge!
Most advertising and sales executives believe Beyoncé, who just announced that she’ll serenade the New Orleans crowd at halftime during Super Bowl XLVII on Feb. 3, has enough charm, sexiness and marketing appeal to topple the record-setting 116 million viewers who tuned in to watch Madonna wobble around in fishnets at the Giants-Patriots tilt this year.
And for those lucky enough to secure a highly coveted ad spot? “God Bless the companies that bought media time in the second and third quarter of the game,” a Madison Avenue exec tells On the Money. “They were rewarded for purchasing a spot blindly, not knowing the act, [and now they’re getting] arguably the biggest one on earth.”
Nailing down a 30-second spot for the telecast, which will air on CBS, is expected to beat the average $3.5 million advertisers paid for this year’s title game.
According to our insider, halftime is 95 percent sold, but there’s still an option for advertisers associated with Beyoncé (e.g., L’Oréal, Pepsi) to sync their individual spots with her show.–Joseph Barracato
Double DIP
Paul Singer’s Elliott Associates is not only willing to hold up Argentina — repossessing a ship of that country’s navy in Ghana to collect on loans it bought for pennies on the dollar — but also Uncle Sam.
Despite years of protests that the firm never threatened the feds with a shutdown of General Motors auto-parts supplier Delphi, newly revealed testimony shows that Singer’s firm did exactly that.
Elliott held much of government-owned Delphi’s debt and scuttled a federal plan to sell the business to a private-equity firm because it wanted Delphi for itself.
Singer and other creditors had the legal right to force Delphi into liquidation if they did not like its restructuring plans.
The Nation magazine has a feature this week on Delphi, the hook being that Mitt Romney invested with Singer’s fund, and it includes the following:
Delphi CFO John Sheehan said July 1, 2009, “The DIP [debtor in possession] lenders presented an analysis of the cost to GM if Delphi were unwilling or unable to provide supply to [customer] GM should the DIP lenders exercise certain remedies resulting in a shutdown of Delphi.”
In the end, Uncle Sam caved, abandoning its deal with a PE firm and letting the lenders repossess Delphi.
An Elliott spokesperson said “The notion that Elliott Management Corp threatened any entity with the liquidation of Delphi is ludicrous. In fact, Elliott was firm and consistent in its opposition to the liquidation of Delphi. And Elliott continually insisted that the company be reorganized as a going concern so that it could become the vibrant, successful enterprise that it is today, all while facing demands from other parties pursuing liquidation.” –Josh Kosman
Short-ing Wall St.
What do Wall Streeters wear while taking dips in their infinity pools ?
Many are wearing a brand of swim trunks by two young New Yorkers.
Carl Cunow, a former Steven Alan executive, and Nathan Romano, who worked for a Shanghai trading company to learn the business, invested all their savings and launched their company, Onia, in 2010.
Since then its sales have jumped from $60,000 to $600,000, and they expect to hit the $2 million revenue mark in 2013, targeting New York financial movers and shakers.–Julie Earle-Levine