Vogue Editor-in-Chief Anna Wintour’s first big job in her expanded role as the artistic director of Condé Nast will be tackling Brides and Lucky, the publisher’s troubled shopping magazine.
The once red-hot Lucky has bedeviled the company in recent years as the 12-year-old title strives to find a new winning formula in the digital age.
Lucky publisher Marcy Bloom resigned in January after less than 18 months on the job. Instead of appointing a new publisher, the company installed Gillian Gorman Round as general manager, a new title in the company.
In an unusual arrangement, Editor-in-chief Brandon Holley, well-liked at Condé Nast after taking a long walk around the digital world during several years running Shine for Yahoo! — was made to report to the new GM.
Of course. there was talk about “multi-platform offerings” and an e-commerce plan when the company announced the Gorman Round move in January — but so far nothing concrete has materialized.
Perhaps as a defensive move, Holley was apparently one of the first to reach out to Wintour after the long-time editor was given the added duties last month — in part to take up the mantle once borne by aging Chairman S.I. Newhouse, Jr.
Through the first four months of 2013, as most Condé magazines benefitted from growth in the luxury ad market, Lucky fell further, slipping 2.7 percent in ad pages through its April issue to 241.05, according to Media Industry Newsletter.
The decline comes after a 20 percent fall in ad pages in 2012. Circulation, while relatively stable at 1,109,835, relied on 65,424 “verified,” or free copies, to make its rate base guarantee of 1.1 million.
Lucky’s single-copy portion from newsstand sales fell an alarming 31 percent to under 100,000 copies in the second half of 2012, according to the Alliance for Audited Media.
Brides, which lost its editor Anne Fulenwider to Hearst’s Marie Claire in September, is also said to be getting a closer look by Wintour.
Brides was the lone survivor among the three bridal titles that the company once published, including Modern Bride and Elegant Brides, which both folded in 2009.
At the time, the company upped the frequency of Brides to 12 times a year, with the hope that it could scoop up all the ad pages that had once gone to its sister bridal pubs. But that did not happen. Advertisers concentrated on the six- times-a-year rival publications. Total circulation at Brides was flat at 306,000 in the second half of 2012, but the single-copy sales portion fell 41 percent.
Fulenwider was trying to push the magazine beyond traditional weddings with articles ranging from sex to travel. That probably helped her land her next job as editor-in-chief of Marie Claire at Hearst, but it did not appear to help in the bridal market.
Last last year, the company said it was going back to the old formula of six times a year and installed veteran insider Keija Minor as the new editor-in-chief.
Condé Nast CEO Charles Townsend said of Wintour’s new role, “She’s consulting on Lucky and Brides. She’s still in the introductory stage. I wouldn’t call it a project — they are just the people who reached out.”
Time for bonuses
Hoping to avoid a stampede for the exits, Time Warner is contemplating “stay bonuses” to its top execs and managers at Time Inc.
“We’re currently working through these and other considerations to put Time Inc. in the best position to succeed as a separate publicly traded company,” a Time Warner spokesman acknowledged to Ad Age yesterday.
But insiders at Time Inc. said if there are bonuses being contemplated it is news to them. Nothing official has come down from on high, and the search for a successor to CEO Laura Lang has not gotten much attention outside the building yet. Nobody inside is being touted as an early favorite, either.
The periodic Time Inc. top management meetings generally draw about 250 people to headquarters, so one source speculated that bonuses could be extended to that number out of a total staff of 8,000 people.
Any bonuses also have to be written into the restructuring costs that Time Warner would like to hold down.
Time Inc. Chief Revenue Officer Paul Caine spent his last day at Time Inc. on Wednesday. He starts on Friday as the new CEO of Dial Global, which is the radio syndicator for the NCAA basketball playoffs and the Super Bowl. Sources said he was told he was not in the running for the CEO job and that news helped propel him out the door.
Another Time Inc. veteran who won’t be sticking round is senior editor Roya Wolverson, who was overseeing the global business section for Time magazine and its website. She is jumping to Atlantic Media as the new deputy global news editor of Quartz, its fledgling global business site.
She reports to Kevin Delaney, former editor of WSJ.com, who jumped to Quartz March 2012. It has about 20 people around the globe. Delaney said 40 percent of the site’s traffic is international.
kkelly@nypost.com