Ellen Oppenheim - NY Magazine Day

April 19, 2005

Ellen Oppenheim
Executive VP/Chief Marketing Officer
Magazine Publishers of America

New York Magazine Day
April 19, 2005
New York, NY

Hello everyone, and welcome to the New York Magazine Day lunch!  How exciting to see so many people here today to celebrate magazines, and the best magazine advertising of the past year!

Kudos to the Advertising Club for coming up with such a great theme for the day! Breaking with Convention.

What could be a better topic right now, with advertising in such a time of change? After all, “breaking with convention” is the inspiration for great advertising.

You’ll see many examples of outstanding advertising shortly when we announce the Kelly Award finalists, whose work was judged the most engaging and effective magazine creative of the past year.

You know that great creative is more important than ever, because connecting with consumers is more challenging than ever. Consumers are rejecting the constant barrage of interruptions—now counted at more than 3,000 messages a day!  And they are blocking out advertising that interferes with their media experiences.

This is quite a contrast with how consumers characterize advertising in magazines! Magazines have always given consumers control. Magazines don’t interrupt . . . Magazines are invited into consumers’ lives . . . Magazines are the original on-demand medium that engages consumers through both editorial and advertising. 

Why should you believe this, especially coming from us?  Well, it’s not about us.  It’s about the consumer.

Consumers have stated that magazine advertising is valuable content. In fact, they judge magazine advertising to be part of the “essence” of magazines, according to recent independent research from Starcom. In their study, consumers were asked to pull out pages that best represented the magazines—and 3 out of 10 pages they pulled were ads!

In addition to this compelling evidence, media research firm Dynamic Logic discovered that when comparing magazines, the Internet, and TV, magazine advertising was the most powerful medium to influence purchase intent—nearly 3 to 1 over TV and more than 5 to 1 over the Internet.

When you add in the numerous media mix analyses showing that magazines deliver outstanding ROI . . . Well, the power of magazine advertising to successfully engage consumers comes through loud and clear. Consumer engagement with magazine advertising translates into better ROI for advertisers!

To communicate the increasing body of research about the power of magazine advertising, magazines have joined together to form the Magazine Marketing Coalition. Tying back to today’s theme, the Magazine Marketing Coalition is doing a little of its own breaking with convention by using the future to speak to today’s world!  As part of this effort, Magazine Marketing Coalition magazines are developing hypothetical covers of the future.

You should have a futuristic magazine cover on your chair. Maybe you got Sports Illustrated with its headline, “Hell Freezes Over: Cubs Win World Series!” . . . or Cosmopolitan with “What Your Man’s Pod Says About Him” . . . or BusinessWeek’s “Product Placement While You Sleep: Is It Ethical?”

These covers, which are wrapped around comp copies of magazines, show that the appeal of magazines to engage readers is so great, that even decades into the future, magazines will continue to connect powerfully with consumers.

These are just the first of many covers to come.  Look for new covers and the latest research demonstrating the power of magazines on MPA’s website: www.magazine.org/readon.

And speaking of the power of magazine advertising—let’s get back to the Kelly Awards! Many, many thanks go out to the Kelly sponsors, who make the awards possible. Your support is vital.

Thank you, first of all, Advertising Age/Creativity and Dynamic Logic, our premium sponsors.  And much appreciation to our other sponsors as well: Adweek Magazines and IMS.

Now to Vanessa Reed of Ad Age, a valued friend and partner, who will introduce you to this year’s Kelly Awards finalists.