Memo to: S.I. Newhouse
From: P.R.
Re: An Easy Solution
Conde Nast Rebranding 2004
By Corey Pein
HERE’S the memo you wanted, Si. You asked what we could do to
make the entire catalogue of Condé Nast Publications (CNP) grow
as fast as Lucky and Gourmet did last year (up 7.1 and 5.4 percent,
respectively). It’s pretty simple. You’ve got eighteen magazines, but
only seven ideas. You’re going to have to focus. Let me explain.Most people would say Gourmet and Bon Appétit are about fine dining. But these magazines really serve a broader niche than wannabe Julia Childs, and feed a more basic impulse. Look deeper. What these magazines are really about is, in a word, gluttony.
Likewise, Lucky and Cargo purport to be about shopping. This is true only on the surface. Lucky and Cargo, like a lot of your magazines, are about greed and envy.
House & Garden: Yes, it’s about making your surroundings more peaceable—but let’s face it Si, lounging around your home is a form of sloth.
Can you see where I’m going with this? Allure and Glamour? Not beauty. Lust.
What you’ve got here is nothing less than the secret to eternal publishing success: The seven deadly sins. Sloth, envy, greed, gluttony, lust, anger, pride. They complement the CNP catalogue almost seamlessly.
Stick to the temptations, and CNP will start raking it in faster than you can say “televangelist.” This is sure-fire, time-tested stuff. Ask the Catholic church (I know you’d rather not, Si). They’ve been talking about sin for 2,000 years! Ask John Milton, St. Augustine, Tommy Aquinas, that Italian fellow, you know… Dante! Of course the Churchies had another agenda entirely. They just wanted to keep people out of Hell. But they understood something very relevant to us: The Seven Deadlies make the ultimate marketing template. Vice is money.
Now I know some short-sighted people inside your company won’t like the idea of re-branding CNP around sin. But our advertisers do it all the time, and to be honest, it’s not that big a change. The first thing we’ve gotta do is eliminate the last vestiges of virtue in your titles. Show me a magazine about humility, chastity or patience and I’ll show you a magazine with no rate base. Can you imagine— Prudence Journal? Moderation Week? Selfless? Who’s going to subscribe to that? Monks?! They don’t even read magazines! Who would you put on the cover, a goddamn nun? Now, get a few Catholic schoolgirls on the cover of Glamour—sorry, Lust—and you’ve got something that’ll fly off the newsstand.
GLUTTONY
There’s no reason to put out two titles—Bon Appétit and Gourmet— when one will do. The trick with Gluttony (or, The New Sybarite?) will be to encourage people’s Goliath appetites while soothing their guilt. Whenever possible, note Sirach 31:27—wine drunken with moderation is the joy of the soul and the heart. Also, the food books lack a reassuring, recognizable face. What about Friar Tuck? He was fat, drunk and totally guiltless—and I don’t think he’s under contract now. The current taglines will not do. “America’s Food and Entertaining Magazine”? Wake me when it’s over! How about “Gluttony is Good!” or “Fat Wallets, Big Appetites”?We need fewer pictures of kitchen implements and more pictures of food. For example, March was Bon Appétit’s “kitchen issue.” This maybe brought some extra revenue from Maytag and Mr. Coffee, but these aren’t the advertisers you really want. Think dainty, costly. Premium brands. Endangered species. The recipes should reflect this. Omelets made of iguana eggs; the meat of a Tibetan antelope fawn sautéed in whale blubber. That kind of thing. Our demographic wants to identify with the likes of Talleyrand and Caligula—not Homer Simpson. Think vats of cream, not cups, and whole pillars of salt, not just “pinches.”
LUST
CNP is too tame, too chaste, too missionary position. Hearst’s Cosmo has 500 ways to please your man. Why can Glamour only muster fifteen? Why does GQ only have a couple of girlie spreads, when Maxim is one long girlie spread? The freakier you get, Si, the better off you are. Clearly, if you can read more about masturbation, sodomy and “other monstrous and bestial manners of copulation” in the “Summa Theologicae” than in most of your magazines, you have a serious problem. (For a saint, Aquinas sure thought a lot about the old in-out.) Solution: one magazine, fewer clothes, more money shots. Think “Naked Lunch.”We’ll never be able to satisfy kinks as quickly as the Internet nerds can dream them up, but that’s OK—everyone will fall for Lust. Guy, girl, gay, straight, bi, doesn’t matter. Look at GQ and Glamour. Except for all the articles and some of the ads, they’re basically the same magazine. Ripped guys and nubile ladies, lounging and making out. Something for everyone. (But you don’t need so much text.)
If you haven’t noticed, [Jane editor] Jane Pratt has been putting out a pretty sexy book over at [CNP sister company] Fairchild. Her February issue had almost everything we’re looking for: wet T-shirts and short shorts, drunken come-hither looks, ambiguous sexual orientation, columns on emergency contraception, ads for “personal massagers” and trips to “hedonism resorts.” Hot! It’d be easy enough to bring her to CNP, but you need someone with real skin mag experience who can take it to the next level. Given his financial troubles lately, Bob Guccione Sr. might be receptive to an offer.
There is some concern about distribution, but, provided you avoid bestiality, I’m sure we can call in a few favors in Congress. As for the prudes at Wal-Mart, they’ll shut up once they see what happens to newsstand sales. If you print it, they will come.
GREED
Let’s clear this up now—greed is about money more than it’s about stuff. It’s not enough to assume greediness. You’ve got to promote it. You’ve got to be a preacher for The Market. Except for the odd personal finance feature, your magazines only deal in dollar signs when they’re naming the price of a Prada handbag or an Armani suit. The New Yorker runs “The Financial Page” every week—but I swear that every time I read the thing, it’s condemning corporate executives for being too greedy. Wrong! People don’t want moralizing. They want to feel good!I’m going to throw a name at you. Walter E. Williams. He writes for Townhall.com and Creators Syndicate. He did a fantastic piece called “The Virtue of Greed” for Capitalism Magazine a few years ago—“Unfortunately, many people are naive enough to believe that it’s compassion, concern and ‘feeling another’s pain’ that’s the superior human motivation.” That’s exactly the tone that we want. Get this guy!
Despite Currency’s failure, I’m confident you can build a monopoly on avarice. [Currency was Condé Nast’s short-lived personal finance magazine, mailed to subscribers as an “outsert” for a time in 1998— Ed.] This time, rethink the financial magazine entirely. Forget the small investor. The magazine should appeal to the richest of the rich. I mean, we want guys who think Robb Report is for people who ride the bus to work. I picture a small-circulation publication targeting the global capitalist; articles on the latest in union busting and currency speculation, test-runs of private jets, investment opportunities in the new colonies, you get the idea… You can hit up offshore reinsurance firms, the Chinese government and Prince Bandar for ad dollars. As for the editorial side, I know someone with great expertise, who’d really be able to speak the reader’s language.
Are you busy, Si?
ENVY
You and I know the millions of people who read your magazines are, in the main, miserable saps. The subscribers to Architectural Digest leave the magazine on veneered coffee tables. Ugh! The women who pick up Bride’s for advice on what to wear to their fairytale “castle wedding” (try a “silk-satin ball gown with a corset bodice”) will be spinsters for life. The best most GQ-men can get is a new fourbladed razor, not a $1,200 suede jacket by Nicole Farhi—and they will never seduce Kylie Minogue, Angelina Jolie or, hell, David Sedaris. Luckily for us, the losers are also suckers.Of all your titles, Lucky (again!) brings in the most green from envy. No space-wasting articles on how you should feel good about your body, no “12 ways to be happier this minute” like in Glamour. (Cindi Leive is a sweetie, which is why she must go.) Just page after glossy page of costly product—“new stuff you don’t want to live without.” We have every reason to think Cargo [the recently-launched shopping magazine for men] will be just as successful. Did you know they’re selling pantyhose for guys now? If you hype the male nail polish thing, you could expand the Maybelline account. We want a nation of neurotic, spend-happy and androgynous metrosexuals. Consider a new tagline. Marketing got good results with this: “Think you’re good enough?”
All the magazines that don’t have a single sinful strength—Allure, Architectural Digest, Bride’s, Vanity Fair, Vogue—should be stripped for parts to use in the two envy mags. Otherwise, treat Lucky and Cargo with a light hand. Why mess with what works?
SLOTH
In a sense, your whole company is about sloth. If you’re reading magazines, you’re not working. Your sluggard consumers know this. And they shouldn’t have to apologize! Laze will combine the best of Condé Nast Traveler and House & Garden. It will celebrate sloth in any situation—in the living room on an overpriced davenport, on a beach chair in the Baltics, on the patio imagining what a garden might look like. The venue doesn’t really matter, with one exception: Laze must never, ever mention work, not even to complain about it. You can’t have guilt, Protestant or otherwise, coming in to spoil the reader’s pretend good time. Sloth should be treated not as a reward for work, but as an occupation in itself. We want grasshoppers, not ants. Ants are too busy to plan trips they’ll never take and buy upholstery for rooms that they’ll never remodel—but idle grasshopper hands flip through your magazines and linger on the ads.Article ideas: palm fronds as fans, beer hats (not just for frat boys any more), the virtues of sweat pants. Your patio: Heaven on Earth? What fruity cocktails go best with a weekend of TiVo? Keep the photo department under strict guidelines. It’s important that servants of any sort (doormen, waiters, valets) look cheery, like they’re enjoying themselves as much as you are—like they’re on vacation too, just volunteering. No party poopers. Beaches, boardwalks, etc., should be empty, except for the happy couple, who should be reclining. (Skipping into the waves is OK.) Under no circumstances should any children or dogs appear in any living room, dining room or walkway. (Messes! Work!) When it comes to laziness, television has a natural advantage. But we can top it, with a little creativity. You know those ads in Vogue with the perfume in the envelope? I see the same thing, but more soporific. An opiate? Knockout gas? Who makes that stuff?
ANGER
Your publications too often turn the other cheek. The women’s books are the worst offenders, always promoting reconciliation and wellness and all that crap. In the same issue, Glamour had “How to get along with anyone at work” and Alanis Morissette (screaming chick, remember?) explaining how she got over her “anger at men.” No! No!Do you know how many people listen to Rush Limbaugh? Twenty million. Every week. I know the word makes you nervous, Si, but there couldn’t be a better time to launch a magazine devoted to Anger— what with the election and the war and all. You don’t want to blow it. But where’s the new Hun? Where are the fair Christian maidens, torn to pieces by Arab heathens? What happened to Jeffrey Goldberg’s philippics?
The problem isn’t that your magazines are staffed by lefties, it’s that they’re staffed by limp-wristed lefties. Now, there’s some promise at Vanity Fair. [Editor] Graydon Carter is only smoldering now, but he looks like he could really erupt. (Seriously, what is it with him and Bloomberg?) That Christopher Hitchens is a real keeper. “Picknose control freak”— love it! And who else could pen a 100-page screed against Mother fucking Teresa and continue to write for money? Incredible.
Now, we don’t want any analysis. This is not a debating society. We want name-calling. We want Limbaugh, if we can get him. My recommendation: move Graydon, Goldberg and Hitchens to Anger. Hire [National Review columnist] David Frum. Give him whatever he wants. Pilot issue cover: Ann Coulter and Michael Moore in a fistfight—“Point Counter Point.” Teasers: “Neocons Have Little Dicks,” and “The Real Liberal Agenda—Cannibalism.”
PRIDE
Everybody knows the meek aren’t inheriting shit. Where would we be otherwise?Every CNP book is a tribute to egotism. That’s great for your bottom line—pride is the source of all sins. God said don’t eat the apple, and look what they did. You know why? Because Adam and Eve thought they were hot stuff and didn’t have to listen. And who understands their own splendor better than the people at Condé Nast? GQ, Vanity Fair (no explanation necessary) and Vogue are all about how amazing the people inside the magazine are—which is fine, because it encourages envy. On the other hand, Allure, Glamour and especially Self (“You At Your Best”) deal more with the reader’s own importance—also a profitable tack, but not the grand blasphemy we need.
You need to publish something so prideful its existence is an affront to God. And I think it could be Wired. Look at everything they’ve promised over the years. Information revolution. Infinite knowledge. Human cloning. Sounds like a Tower of Babel to me! Double their budget, and if I were you, I’d take a second look at the Nasdaq.
Loose Ends
I’ll start calling prospects tomorrow. Still trying to figure out whether we need goat’s blood or sheep’s blood (apparently this is a very important distinction) to use in the summoning ritual, so I sent an intern out to pick up a few of each. We’ll also need a dozen virgins (interns won’t help us there—ha!) and several shoots of hemlock before the full moon. Our contact is a guy named Klaus or Faust or something. He says he can guarantee success. I’ve got Legal drawing up the papers.Oh, I forgot to mention, Si—I couldn’t find a place for The New Yorker. It’s just too damn virtuous, and it’ll have to go.
Hope all this helps. I’ll call on Monday.
Esto perpetue,
—CP cc: file
REBRANDING SUMMARY:
Allure—Lust/Pride
Architectural Digest—Envy
Bon Appétit—Gluttony
Bride’s—Envy
Cargo—Envy/Greed
Condé Nast Traveler—Sloth
Glamour—Lust
Gourmet—Gluttony
GQ—Lust/Envy/Pride
House & Garden—Sloth
Lucky—Envy/Greed
Modern Bride—Envy
The New Yorker—Axe it!
Self—Envy/Pride
Teen Vogue—Lust/Envy
Vanity Fair—Anger/Pride
Vogue—Envy/Pride
Wired—Pride 