Condé promoted Bob Sauerberg, former head of consumer marketing (read: circulation) to its presidency. Bob is one of the good guys of Condé Nast (I don’t mean to damn him with faint praise there … sorry, couldn’t resist); he’s smart, mature, experienced. (I worked with him a good deal when I was at Advance’s parent company and he was at Fairchild; I should add that none of what I’m saying here comes from the slightest contemporary knowledge of the company; haven’t been in the cafeteria for many months.) Bob knows management and consumer marketing. The age of the ad sales guy is over because the age of the ad is over.
The problem is going to be that there is only more competition in content and so trying to suddenly charge more flies in the face of basic economics. The absurdity of the strategy struck me yesterday as Amazon tried to sell me a subscription to Time for 28.8 cents an issue while Time is trying to sell its iPad issues for $4.99 and I see no reason to buy either. In what world do these economics make sense? In their dreams.
“I want to collect income from the consumer,” Townsend told The Times earlier. “An annual magazine subscription may be something like anywhere bet $12 and $24. So I’m currently locked into a model that says I get a buck or two a month. How about I get a buck for a click?”
Dream on.
They’re not wrong that they need to get money from consumers but they’re not going to get it for content. Sorry guys. But as Google schooled the newspaper industry (I’ll substitute appropriate words):
The large profit margins enjoyed in the past were built on an artificial scarcity: Limited choice for advertisers as well as readers. With the Internet, that scarcity has been taken away and replaced by abundance. No will be able to restore revenues to what they were before the emergence of online . It is not a question of analog dollars versus digital dimes, but rather a realistic assessment of how to make money in a world of abundant competitors and consumer choice.
Instead, I suggest they have to get new revenue through commerce — through selling the things they once advertised now that advertisers are deserting them to sell direct. Problem is, that’s hard, as Condé knows best from its experience with Style.com, which started as an attempt to create a high-end store (I worked there then). They created it in partnership with a retailer and the retailer bagged the effort when times got tough in the first bubble; it then became another ad-supported site. But the strategy wasn’t wrong. Problem is, there is no retail expertise in the company.
More recently, Condé should have bought Net-a-Porter but instead luxury conglomerate Richemont snarfed it up. (Disclosure: I spoke at Richemont’s corporate retreat recently.) Condé should buy Gilt to establish new skills, a new relationship with customers, and new revenue. Its content then becomes just added value: the Cinnabon’s in the mall.
A media company going into retail and selling in areas held by former advertisers has precedent: Media News’ Salt Lake City paper became a real estate broker and undersold the entire business in town. The Telegraph, as I like to point out, sells everything from hangers to wine to betting to its readers.
But if Condé and other media companies are going into retail, they need entirely new skills of merchandising and sales, an entirely new financial structure to cope with inventory costs and tight margins, the ability to cope with entirely new competitors and suppliers (that is, former advertisers — but, worse, Amazon), and an entirely new efficiency (forget the cafeteria; they’d be lucky to have a Wal-Mart lunch room with vending machines as a profit center).
They also have to defeat a calcified, entitled culture. For that, I’d suggest they buy Gawker Media to get the incredibly popular competitor Jezebel and to infuse the company with a new culture. Make Nick Denton editorial director and COO and then watch the fun.
I doubt they heard any of this from KcKinsey because in the few encounters I’ve had with them they remix known models rather than invent new ones, which is what is called for here. I’ll bet they proposed cutting some costs (done) and remixing revenue (started) when what’s really needed is a complete restrategizing.
Or maybe I”m wrong. Maybe 4 Times Square will become the world’s lushest mall, with one helluva food court.
Nevermind my advice. The moral of this story remains that advertising is next to fall into the black hole (as a Time Inc. president once dubbed this damned internet thing). Welcome to Bob Garfield’s Chaos Scenario.
Old Spice’s marketing gimmick—a macho guy played with a wink by Isaiah Mustafa—has reached a crescendo on TV and the Web. Tricia Romano on the evolution of black male sex symbols.
From the moment the Old Spice commercial featuring Isaiah Mustafa aired in February America swooned. Who, we wanted to know, was this dashing, tall, dark and handsome figure with impossible abs, a gleaming smile, and a twinkle in his eyes? (Oh, yes, and riding on a horse. One mustn't forget the horse).
Mustafa quickly became a household face—if not name—as the original commercial eventually racked up 13 million views on YouTube.
He's hot enough to make celebrity lesbian Ellen DeGeneres giggle like a school girl when he visited her set, causing her to beg him to recite his Old Spice lines.
Old Spice Guy Hangs Up His Towel
And this week, on the heels of its second installment in the series (featuring Mustafa swan diving into a jacuzzi and landing on a motorcycle), the company invited people to ask questions of "Old Spice Man" on Twitter which Mustafa answered in 30-second clips on YouTube. The result was an instant viral success—the Old Spice YouTube channel was ranked No. 1 on the website. (At least one person wasn’t impressed: Sockington the cat—who has resisted using his popularity for commercial purposes—threw up his paw: “HELLO @OLDSPICE much interest at your viral marketing campaign at sockington hq/litterbox I AM A CAT WITH 68 TIMES MORE FOLLOWERS discuss.”
Sockington’s dissent aside, the success of the Old Spice commercials hinges not only on the clever, almost absurdist imagery and writing, but on Mustafa and his inherent sex appeal.
The Root argued this week in an essay called, "Why The Old Spice Guy Is Good For Black America" that "the success of the Old Spice Guy ... might actually be a sign that being a black man in America is getting slightly easier." Cord Jefferson points out that not so long ago, the black man's role in advertising was as a scary figure to contrast against the white so-called gentlemen; or more recently, as a subservient figure.
I'll go one further than Jefferson: The Old Spice Guy isn't just good for Black America, Mustafa's place in the pop culture pantheon is good for all of America.
As Farai Chideya, former NPR journalist and host of forthcoming radio show, Pop and Politics Radio, explained to me, "You have certain black actors who could sell things, but they usually did them in these nonsexual ways, like Bill Cosby and Jello. Then you had people who were sexual like Billy Dee Williams, who pitched a brand for a black audience," she said. "This is something new where it's for a mainstream, general mixed-race audience."
Caption: Mustafa filmed video responses to some of his lucky Twitter followers, including actress Alyssa Milano.
The choice of a black man as the desired sex object for a national advertising spot aimed at mainstream America, which is to say white America, is particularly perfect right now. It's hard to say whether Mustafa and Old Spice would have paired up 10 or 20 years ago, unless he was a famous star athlete like O.J. Simpson. One could argue that having a handsome black president has softened a lot of people’s ideas of what’s attractive and sexy—Obama’s shaky polls notwithstanding.
Interestingly, Old Spice had another black spokesman before Mustafa: Terry Crews. The hyperactive ad series featured the ex-NFL linebacker topless and yelling in an intense (and funny) way. Chideya says of Crews: "He's not as handsome as Isaiah, but he's also really funny in a way that's more within the black vernacular." Of Mustafa, she says, "This guy is no doubt black, but he's someone who is the modern, urbane, living-in-a-post-racial-Fort Greene kind of a guy."
While Obama braves the fast-moving political tide (we love him, we are irritated and disappointed with him, we loathe him, we love him again), here is this other stunningly handsome, funny black man on our TV, transcending color lines, with—it should be noted—a Muslim name.
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