FIPP member profile: Condé Nast world the is enough not
Condé Nast, one of the world’s largest private media owners, has been spearheading innovation throughout its rich history. And in 2014, it’s still full speed ahead for its iconic brands…
The company’s pace started to step-up in the 1990s, at the dawn of the digital era. Jonathan Newhouse, son of the company’s founder (pictured), was named president of Condé Nast International in 1990, and chairman in 1991. Since then, Condé Nast International has launched around 100 magazines, expanding from some 30 magazines in seven markets in the mid-1990s to 126 in 28 markets today. Condé Nast was also the first publishing company to produce an interactive digitised edition for a tablet, Wired, which Steve Jobs famously introduced at a public event in 2010. Newhouse says there’s a lot more to come.
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Condé Nast has been incredibly innovative recently – introducing a wide range of new products and revenue streams. How important are these strands of your business? It’s been a deliberate strategic decision in the last few years to innovate, expanding brands and activities to new fields, which have a relationship to our core business. The Condé Nast College of Fashion and Design is a good example. And it’s flourishing. We’re now looking to expand our involvement in education in other countries. The restaurant business grew out of the magazines established in Russia, with the opening of the Vogue Café in 2002 in Moscow. We have restaurants in several markets: the Vogue Café in Dubai, the Vogue Club in Kiev, a GQ Bar in Dubai, and have further launches on tap in Bangkok, Singapore and Almaty, in Kazakhstan. We are deeply involved in contract publishing and have established in every market a creative studio, enabling advertisers to commission advertising design, digital platforms as well as print products. Other important initiatives include conferences
and events. As people spend hours in front of screens, there has been, conversely, a growing hunger for events, where the brands come to life. An example is the Vogue Festival in London, which drew 2,000 attendees over a weekend. What struck me, is that most of the attendees, women in their 20s, were digital natives who are completely wired into the web, and yet they spent a substantial amount on a ticket to experience the brand in a live way. Condé Nast is a brand driven
company. In the past, magazines were not thought of as brands. My traditional side still finds it a bit odd, referencing magazines in the same way as a detergent or toothpaste, but in the way magazines reach consumers, they are brands in every sense. These new business areas are part of our way forward and what our brands have to do. The distinction we see today between print and digital and other routes to the brand will become less important. As far as readers are concerned, they are experiencing Vogue, whether in print, on a mobile or tablet device. The form in which it is consumed is not paramount. What remains paramount, is the
issue 81_2014 | Magazine World |39
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