IT looks like Details Editor-in- Chief Dan Peres and Publisher Steve DeLuca mixed up editorial and advertorial and managed to tick off the New England Patriots and their superstar quarterback, Tom Brady, in the process.
In what some observers are calling a bait-and-switch, the magazine is offering visitors to its Web site a high-roller’s weekend in Las Vegas when it had previously offered a round trip for two to a Patriots game.
“I was extremely shocked and disappointed when I went to the Web site and there was no mention of Tom Brady or the Patriots,” said New York City p.r. man, Richard Valvo, who said he planned to enter the contest on behalf of a nephew. “No formal announcement was ever made about the change.”
Details’ September issue, now on newsstands, features Brady on the cover as well as an interview and photo shoot.
Also in the issue is a five-page ad insert from razor company Gillette that is an invite to participate a contest to “win a VIP trip to a Patriots home game at Gillette Stadium” in Foxboro, Mass. The invite, also featuring an image of Brady, directs readers to visit the Web address Details.com/go/patriots.
While the contest details don’t specifically say that Brady will be on hand, many were left with that impression.
“It implies that you would meet him,” Valvo claimed.
The matter has left the folks at Details somewhat red-faced.
“Details did not gain all the necessary approvals for the sweepstakes,” said a spokeswoman. “When we realized our mistake, we offered a new promotion with an equivalent prize value in substitution.”
The spokeswoman also said that despite the picture, Brady was never part of the package.
“As the promotional page shows, no meet and greet with our cover subject was ever mentioned,” she said.
Not OK!
Richard Desmond‘s struggling US edition of OK! continues to reel.
OK!, which on Monday reported dismal news stand sales, also took the drastic measure of chop ping its rate base, or the circulation level it guar antees to advertisers, to 800,000 — and making the change retroactive to the July 1 issue.
Retroactive rate-base reductions are rare. However, the move could be seen as a way to lessen the hit the mag could suffer if the Audit Bureau of Circulations shows it failed to measure up to its rate-base promise.
When that happens, a magazine publisher has to issue “make good” ads that are either free or heavily discounted. In rare instances, a publisher may even offer refunds to advertisers.
In the most recent ABC statements released Monday, the auditing agency showed celebrity weeklies in general were hard hit, but OK!’s beating was particularly bloody. Its newsstand sales were down 20.4 percent in the first half of the year.
Making matter worse for OK!, the magazine uses a European style of selling in which circulation, rather than advertising, is the profit driver.
Publisher Lori Burgess downplayed the implications of the lower rate base.
“We are confident of exceeding the new rate base and have adopted a position of under-promising and over-delivering to our advertisers,” she said, adding that the mag’s ad pages are up 15 percent this year.
Desmond, who owns OK! through media company Northern + Shell, has lost an estimated $100 million-plus on the US version since it was launched four years ago. Last year, the US mag lost $23.4 million.
Freedom
Freedom Communications, the California-based owner of the Orange County Register and 29 other daily newspapers, became the latest publishing company to fall into bankruptcy.
The Irvine, Calif.- based company had been expected to file for Chapter 11 sometime this week as it struggled to stay afloat amid a sharp decline in print advertising revenue and a debt load of more than $1 billion.
Private-equity firms The Blackstone Group and Providence Equity Partners own stakes in Freedom of 27 percent and 18 percent, respectively.
The company, which claimed in its filing that it had assets of as much as $1 billion, said the filing fol lowed an agreement reached between it and a majority of its lenders.
Freedom joins newspaper companies Tribune Co. and Journal Register Co., among others, that have filed for bankruptcy amid a severe slump in advertising revenue.
New body
Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia yesterday announced that Alexandra Postman was named editor-in-chief of Body + Soul magazine.
Concurrent with her arrival, Body + Soul is moving its offices from Watertown, Mass., to MSLO’s offices in New York.
Postman had been executive editor at Elle, and replaces Alanna Fincke, who will remain in Massachusetts but will continue to contribute to the magazine.
keith.kelly@nypost.com