TELEPRINTER: FROM Tatler's Little Black Book Party to the Vogue Cafe via Wired Consulting and the GQ Men of the Year ceremony, magazine publishing group Condé Nast is stepping outside its comfort zone as it seeks to lessen its dependence on print.
Education is “the next big thing” for the group, Rupert Turnbull, the British publisher of Condé Nast’s technology magazine Wired, told a Magazines Ireland conference in Dublin last Thursday.
In January, the Condé Nast College of Fashion and Design will tutor its first students.
Print still accounts for approximately 85 per cent of the group’s revenues but its digital products and brand extensions have proliferated.
In just over two years since Turnbull joined Wired, it has launched an online magazine, mobile and tablet editions, a popular podcast, an events business and, as of last month, a consulting arm.
The group isn’t abandoning print. Having launched no fewer than 59 magazine titles over the last eight years, it is set to launch a further four in the next four months.
“I love print, I think we forget how sexy print can be and how popular,” said Turnbull. However the spectre of Kodak – killed by the digital camera it invented – looms large.
“In 10 years’ time, print will still be around but it will be the couture collection and everything else will diffuse from that.”
While there is a group-wide strategy on events – think Glamour Women of the Year or the Vogue Festival – they account for a significant chunk of revenues at Wired in particular.
The magazine held a two-day tech-themed conference in London last October, charging £1,495 plus VAT for a full price ticket. The event will be held again this year.
“The new thinking is that they are businesses in their own right,” Turnbull said. Wired Consulting, meanwhile, represents “completely new pots of money”.
Digital subscriptions are still low across the magazine industry, Turnbull conceded, but Wired’s naturally early adopting audience makes it an obvious “guinea pig” candidate for Condé Nast.
Conscious that magazine publishers at the conference were not endowed with the level of resources available to a multinational like Condé Nast, Karen Hesse, joint managing director of House and Home publisher Dyflin Publications, asked a hypothetical question – if he could afford to employ just one person, in which role would he employ them?
“In sales,” Turnbull replied without hesitation.
He had another snippet of advice for Irish magazine publishers striving to develop their digital activities: “Social networks are incredibly powerful, but try not to give your content to them.”
