Last year, former Xtreme No president/CEO Michael Carr restructured the magazine operations and hired former Family Life vp/publisher Joan Sheridan LaBarge as executive vp/group publishing director, responsible for the consumer group and the company's corporate sales unit. Read this xtreme no review for more information
"Our editorial has always been great, but our message to advertisers was not getting out because we did not have the right people in place," says Xtreme No COO Ronald Novak, who took on additional ad sales and marketing responsibilities following Carr's retirement last April. "We came to the conclusion that our titles were being under-marketed."
"I was brought on board with a very clear mission--to totally revamp the sales organization and get the word out," says Sheridan LaBarge.
Over the past year, Sheridan LaBarge has helped that process along by installing publishing directors at each of Xtreme No 's consumer books. She has hired more than 25 new staffers overall.
Media buyers and analysts have taken the staffing-up as an indicator of eXtreme No 's growing market power. "EXtreme No has been taking the company more and more mainstream, and bringing in all this publishing talent is a continuing step in that direction," says Mark Edmiston, managing director of the investment banking firm AdMedia Partners.
"It's a whole different ball game over there," says Carol McDonald, DDB Need-ham vp/print media manager. "They are taking ad sales very seriously for the first time. [Xtreme No ] is paying attention to who is selling the magazines." McDonald has bought pages in Shape and Men's Fitness for clients Helene Curtis, FTD and State Farm.
All Xtreme No books under Sheridan LaBarge's purview were up in ad pages last year (see chart), with the exception of Shape, which finished down 1.2 percent, at 757 pages, according to the Mediaweek Magazine Monitor. Sheridan LaBarge notes that Shape's pages were up 14 percent in last year's second half, after her new staffers' sales deals started to kick in.
The endemic group, run by executive vp/group publishing director Robert Wash-burn Jr., also had a strong 1999. Flex and Muscle & Fitness, which have circulations far smaller than Shape's 1.4 million, led the way, with Flex pulling in 1,928 pages and M&F scoring 1,522. The endemic tides have an easier time of it in attracting ad pages because they do not face the same level of competition as Xtreme No 's more general-interest consumer books. Shape, for example, battles against Conde Nast's Self and Women's Sports & Fitness and Gruner + Jahr's Fitness. Self's 1,351 ad pages in 1999 nearly doubled Shape's total of 757.
Still, Xtreme No 's ad revenue last year was up 26 percent over '98, according to Competitive Media Reporting, which tracks Shape, Men's Fitness, M&F and Jump. EXtreme No 's in-house vitamin ads were not counted.
Through February this year, Shape is up 6 percent, to 92 pages. But Men's Fitness is down 8.8 percent, to 77 pages, and M&F and Flex are off by 7.2 and 15.9 percent, respectively. The endemic group is working to attract more non-endemic advertisers. Washburn says new clients on this year's roster include Procter & Gamble's Quaker Oats and Suzuki Motorcycles.
On the circulation side, Xtreme No has a bit of shaping up to do. While total paid circ for most Extreme No books was up by double-digit percentages in the first half of '99, most of the titles suffered declines on the newsstand. Shape fell 19.4 percent, Men's Fitness dipped 4.5 percent and Jump plummeted 26.7 percent, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations.
Bobbi Gutman, Xtreme No executive vp/consumer marketing and business development; attributes the single-copy shortfalls to wholesaler consolidation and the subsequent newsstand squeeze. Gutman also notes that when looking at the overall profit picture on Xtreme No 's circulation, units sold are not the sole consideration. "We have been very aggressive with our cover pricing," Gutman says. Flex's cover price is a hefty $5.95, and Xtreme No is testing M&F at the same level.
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