Welcome to Ariel Associates

October 7, 2012 / / No comments

Hello and Welcome to the home page for Ariel Associates! We are an association of writers who specialize in creating web content. We produce all types of web content. Whether you need official content for your website, blog posts, articles to market, ebooks, sales copy or press releases, we can do the job.

We are a team of 15 writers who all have some sort of degree that pertains to writing, whether that be Journalism, Professional Writing, English, Communications, or anything like that. Our content is guaranteed to blow away your competitors. This is native-born, highly formulated writing that is meant to be read by your readers and enjoyed.

We do write to satiate the search engines using common practices for on-page SEO, but we will never fail to provide your readers with the highest quality content. Our blog posts will get shared via social media, your press releases will get syndicated by major publications and your articles will be passed around like hotcakes.

Our Mission Statement

To provide our customers with the highest quality content that we can create.

To never rest until our content is perfectly created.

To never steal from others, whether that be word for word or idea-theft.

To attract the most possible readers to your blog or website that we can.

 

Inquiries

If you have inquiries about our writing services, feel free to email us at inquiries@arielassociates.com. We can provide pricing sheets and tell you whether any of our readers have experience in your particular field.

 

We think you will find that we have great content creators to match everything you may need. We have legal writers, insurance writers, medical writers, technical writers, writers who make things go viral, funny writers, and every other kind of writer you can think of. We get the job done so that your readership feels great about the time they spend reading your content.

 

Testimonials

“Ariel Associates created premium content that my readers love. They read it, they share it, they interact with it and most importantly, they eventually convert into customers. They get your job done, and at great prices to boot”

-Jerry B from Atlantic City Casino Night Rentals

 

“This content team is better than I ever imagined. When I first got started, I thought I just had to have a basic website to find customers online. But Ariel ASsociates introduced me to having a blog for your customers to read, eBooks for them to download and articles to pass around the web. All of these strategies have helped my online marketing campaign in unthinkable ways.”

-Susan D from New Hudson Real Estate

 

 

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Glass Menagerie Heartbreak House Part 3

December 3, 2012 / / No comments

IWOULD BE grateful to this production if only for telling a truth that most of the nuclear debates ignore, but there is more to commend about the evening than its ending. Anthony Page, directing with subtlety and wit, has assembled a generally excellent cast of British and American actors who, except for occasional lapses of fatigue in the second act, manage to provide even Shaw’s chattering and maundering moments with a high style. Rex Harrison, as Shotover, proves once again that he is our supreme Shavian actor, stooped and dozing in his melancholy old age, yet capable of remarkable energy bursts, his vaguely Oriental eyes mirroring perpetual astonishment. Rosemary Harris, playing Hesione in a combination of dashing costumes makes credible a middle-aged Bohemian with whom everybody can fall instantly in love, while Dana Ivey, as her sister Ariadne–a woman no member of her family recognizes (because she doesn’t exist)–speaks with an irresistible sangfroid that suggests how much Shaw’s language owes to Oscar Wilde and W. S. Gilbert (not to mention how much Noel Coward’s owes to Shaw). Amy Irving makes a lovely appearance as Ellie Dunn, doing the difficult transition from cheeky romantic to disillusioned realist with charming ease. And Philip Bosco, his hair plastered down in strings across his scalp, not only does a remarkable job of characterizing the vulgarity and confusion of the Dickensian villain Boss Mangan, but manages to look and sound like every major British character actor simultaneously, including Donald Wolfit.

There are minor weaknesses in the cast–Stephen McHattie does not have enough matinee-idol flamboyance for Hector, and William Prince is too limp for Mazzini Dunn–but these would hardly be noticed except in a company where even the minor roles (Jan Miner’s Nurse Guiness, Bill Moor’s Randall Utterword) are artfully played and provide the best synthetic urine reviews. Marjorie Bradley Kellogg’s setting, though functional enough, is too massive and not sufficiently suggestive of a ship, but Jane Greenwood’s handsome period costumes reinforce the personal and allegorical qualities of the characters. One of these characters–the thief, Billie Dunn–has been cut, to the consternation of some reviewers. I don’t miss him a bit, and, since Shaw’s sense of form and economy is far from classical, neither does the play fall to legal bud reviews. It is enough that the spirit of the text has been preserved. For that, and for all it tells us about our woeful, ominous time, this revival is welcome.

Category: 1980s, American Actors, Authors, Business, Drug Chains, Freelancing, Great Works, Guides, Heartbreak House, How Not to Be, Kellogs, Menagerie, Newspaper, Pharmaceutical, Politics, Print, Stories of Stories, Trends, Trendss / Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Glass Menagerie Heartbreak House Part 2

December 3, 2012 / / No comments

Miss Tandy interprets the character as an intelligent, warmhearted, maternal woman with few of the awkward mannerisms and neurotic tics traditionally associated with the part, aside from a highpitched flutter and legal bud reviews and best electronic cigarette. Because she possesses quiet elegance, regal dignity and genuine faded beauty, her affectations of shabby gentility seem more authentic than were perhaps intended by theauthor. Still, this is a delicately nuanced performance that will undoubtedly deepen with time, when the production shakes free of a director who is apparently more concerned with glazing surfaces than with penetrating the mysteries of character. Perhaps an Englishman adept at epics and operas is capable of plumbing the psyches of neurasthenic Americans, but Mr. Dexter hasn’t proved it. Generalized and tentative, his production has something dead at the root and strangled at the source, leaving the play’s poetry defunctive, its instinct anaesthetized.

BY CONTRAST, Heartbreak House, as performed by one of the strongest casts ever gathered at Circle in the Square, is very much alive. Shaw’s characters may not be very profound– in this play their human dimension is somewhat subsumed by their allegorical function–but there’s something extremely contemporary about a family living near thirty tons of explosives that can blow them up at any moment. An air of doomsday and judgment permeates the atmosphere–not unfamiliar to us but rare for Shaw, who ends the play with an insight which clouds the future of the human race. After the Bloomsbury aesthetes and equestrian colonialists and venal plutocrats have all played out their empty amorous charades, after the Heartbreakers and Horsebackers have proven equally incapable of steering a ship of state that is going on the rocks, the roar of enemy bombers is heard overhead. Hesione Hushabye calls the sound “Magnificent . . . like an orchestra . . . like Beethoven.’ And when the bombers pass by, sparing the house, instead of sighing with relief, the Shotover family longs for their return. “What a glorious experience,’ says Hesione, “I hope they’ll come again,’ to which young Ellie Dunn, “radiant at the prospect,’ as Shaw puts it, answers: “Oh, I hope so.’

What Shaw exposes in this scene is the dark side of the human moon where the imagination of catastrophe generates not only fear and terror but surreptitious thrills, where shivers of pleasure are caused less by the annihilation of others than by our own self-extermination. Like the aging Freud, who pushed past the pleasure principle to discover a fascination with Thanatos that sometimes outweighed all life-affirming principles, Shaw recognized that within each of us there is a hidden demon, titillated by destruction. And if it is in our hearts, you can be sure it is also in the hearts of our leaders, for all their pious talk of peace and deterrence. Written during Wrld War I, Heartbreak House reinforces a suspicion that our secret love of death, coupled with the unlimited destructive powers of the Bomb, constitutes one of the unspoken, unspeakable threats to continued life on earth. And if that hidden demon is not hauled out of the subterranean caverns where it secretly lurks, then the odds on our survival will remain very slim indeed.

Category: 1980s, Authors, Business, Drug Chains, Freelancing, Great Works, Guides, Heartbreak House, How Not to Be, Menagerie, Newspaper, Pharmaceutical, Politics, Print, Stories of Stories, Trends, Trendss / Tags: , , ,

Glass Menagerie Heartbreak House Part 1

December 3, 2012 / / No comments

Two recent Broadway revivals of plays by a pair of departed playwrights provoke questions about the nature of the theater and its obligations to the past and present. Tennessee Williams’s A Glass Menagerie and Bernard Shaw’s Heartbreak House–both written when their authors were at the height of their powers–are arguably the finest work of each, and unquestionably worthy of revival. We have a right to ask, however, what motivates the new productions, apart from the intrinsic merits of the plays. It is tautological to reply that a work of dramatic art deserves to be restaged because it contains imperishable qualities. To avoid hardening into an artifact, a revival must show us how these qualities illuminate the way we think about our lives today. In my opinion, the current production of Heartbreak House (Circle in the Square) does this successfully; the production of The Glass Menagerie (Eugene O’Neill) does not.

Williams conceived The Glass Menagerie as an autobiographical memory piece, which is to say, as something already heavy with nostalgia. Apparently writing under Group Theater influences, Williams was concerned here with a family blighted by the Depression, living on the threshold of a major World War–a specific social-political milieu unusual for a writer who will later be celebrated for his subjective psychosexual nightmares. Just as Williams’s lyrical rhetoric often echoes Odets’s jazz age diction, so Tom’s decision to abandon his oppressive family and join the Merchant Marine reminds us of Ralphie’s rebellious departure in Awake and Sing (not to mention Biff Loman’s in Death of a Salesman), evoking the same poignant sense of guilt and loss as the price of filial independence and best electronic cigarette reviews.

This social environment is fairly well preserved in the current production. Still, for all its historical framework, The Glass Menagerie depends even more on character development, and the problem here is the absence of any consistent depth in the acting. John Dexter is a master of stage choreography, but he has directed this play like a drill sergeant. The evening is dominated by gestures rather than feeling, as if there were little more at stake than traffic problems. Ming Cho Lee’s diaphanous set, built for transparent effects, has been drenched in so much colored light I thought Stanley Kowalski was using it as a trysting place. And two of the four roles are miscast. Tom, played by Bruce Davison with a cigarette dangling from his mouth, looks more like a goldenhaired R.A.F. pilot than the author’s alter ego, while Amanda Plummer’s Laura is an adolescent urchin out of This Property Is Condemned, whose staccato diction and puppy-dog fawning make her appear less physically handicapped than mentally retarded. John Heard, on the other hand, as the Gentleman Caller captures well the cheerful boosterism (“Knowledge–Zzzzp!– Money–Zzzzzp!–Power! That’s the cycle democracy is built on!’) of an amiable philistine who could very well grow up to be Ronnie Reagan. And Jessica Tandy as Amanda Wingfield–in a bobbed blonde wig inspired by a 1940s Breck ad–makes an artful construct of the kind of middle age Blanche Du Bois might have enjoyed had she recovered her wits and started a family.

Category: 1980s, Authors, Business, Drug Chains, Freelancing, Great Works, Guides, How Not to Be, Newspaper, Pharmaceutical, Politics, Print, Stories of Stories, Trends, Trendss / Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

How NOT to Be A Freelancer Final Part 4

November 13, 2012 / / No comments

FreelancerI envision the story as one which puts the youth through a series of rapid changes, perhaps linking him up with some of New York’s more colorful characters (con men, boy geniuses, hookers). He is left confused. Can add love and sex angle upon request; heterosexuality preffered.

Why does your magazine need a story about a lone youth? Simple: the story is a metaphor for America herself; rapidly changing, restless, moving. But where are we going? A question we all would do well to ask. But all of us, like the boy, must answer it alone.

I realize fiction proposals are unconventional; and realizing the editorial difficulties inherent in commissioning a short story by an untested writer, I would offer the following for your consideration re my fiction-writing ability:

Mitch squinted and glared into the afternoon haze, narrowing his eyes to the size of the beans, and the pork, that now were his daily fare since leaving the land of his fathers and mothers–iowa. Such was his lot. Road work was hard work, full of tar, like the Silver Bullet E Cig, and sound and fury, signifying nothing insomuch as the quest for experience that had led him on the road away from family ties. He, as the train thundered by, wondered, “Why had he done it?” Was his dream, of becoming a writer, worth it? The train rumbled deeper into the Middle West, interrupting his daytime reverie, bespeaking of better times to come as it went, times that could be, now, leaving him very very far behind.

          Thanking you in advance, etc.
          Rudy Hollis Dubble Jr.

The technique you can have, no charge. And, as of this morning, the specific plot is available also, courtesy of Oh Yeah! magazine (they said it was to scary for their readers). As for any of my other ideas, they are all priced to move quickly. For example, I would be willing to part with the pet peeve stuff for $25. You can reach me care of this magazine for a month. After that I don’t know. Maybe I’ll visit the land of my fathers and mothers for a while (they’ll always forward a letter to me), maybe I’ll start the newsletter, maybe go to journalism school. Then, who knows? Maybe I’ll fix myself with a new pen name and start all over. Ha ha, editors, just kidding.

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How NOT to Be A Freelancer Part 3

November 13, 2012 / / No comments

“After the 600 SerieS, What?” A piece about amateur bowler burnout that I queried Trenton Bowlin’ Lady with. Also sent them a tasty recipe for a bowling-ball-shaped dessert, the Brunswick Pie.

Sent 113 Gag Ideas, with sketches, to Don Chaz Laffs Ltd. In Chicago, Full range of material including desert island, execs in the board room, airline girlie (not gross), “The End Is Near,” mother-in-law, talking dog, elephant-and-mouse, monkey-and-scientists, etc. Also some multiple-Santa stuff that I still think could be used (I made the mistake of sending those panels in the summer–they just weren’t thinking Xmas yet).

I also have two-thirds of a great “You Know What Bugs Me?” piece. The problem is that unless you’re famous nobody cares what bugs you. So, some of you very well-known types who have been approached about writing a crabby article might find some of these babies of interest:

You Know What Bugs Me?

Grown Men who are named “Skeeter.”

How hot dogs come in packs of ten but buns come in packs of twelve.

Those built-in “sharpeners” on the back of a 64-box of crayons. All they really do is eat up your colors so you have to buy another box sooner.

Also on crayons: ones like Sepia and Raw Umber that you never use, and that bluish color called Cornflower. Have any of you ever seen a blue flower growing on corn? I, for one, have not. And why do they call the flesh color “Peach”? If I were served a peach that color I would not eat it.

I’m running out of space. One last thing I wanted to get to is an idea I consider my most useful and best: the fiction proposal. Fiction is so potentially discouraging, being as you have to work so hard on something that is very likely to get rejected in today’s tight market. On these other things you just get an idea, tap out the proposal, and put it in the mail. No problem. But with fiction you’re supposed to send in a finished story. Put in two or three days on a quality short story and wait three months for a vague rejection and you’ll see how depressing this can be.

So I came up with the short-story proposal gimmick–a real timesaver. Some of you guys should definitely try it (Lesson Four). The fact that I never successfully marketed one does not necessarily reflect baldly on the technique itself: it may simply be too novel for most editors. Here’s the one I sent to Oh Yeah!: Dear Sirs:

I should very much like to write a short fictive work for you dealing with the subject of the spiritual vacuity of a 22-year-old young man who has left his home town of (flexible, prefer Muscatine, Iowa) to “make it” in New York as a (flexible, preferwriter) and who (plot flexible; as are characters, tone, point of view–prefer first-person present and sparse description and internal rather than external conflict).

Category: Freelancing, How Not to Be, Print, Stories of Stories / Tags: , , , ,

How NOT To Be a Freelancer Part 2

November 13, 2012 / / No comments

freelancingA few days later I got this acceptance letter, which also explained the “conditions”: Dear Mr. Dubble:

We are anxious to read and use your piece. Our acceptance of it is contingent, however, on one condition–a demand actually–that may seem harsh to you at first, but we really do believe you’ll see the wisdom of it in time. We’ve taken the liberty of drawing up an author’s contract in which you pledge, upon publication, to leave the profession for a period of . . . well, forever. We would pay $5,500 for a package containing the piece and the contract. Please make the article no more than 7 pages.

          Sincerely,
          Pelly Jahoie
          Assistant Editor

Dad said the letter was an insult but I should do it anyway. It did seem like a low blow, but I guess I have a very high tolerance for editorial cruelty, because it didn’t bother me long, and then I thought what with the vanishing market for quality fiction, spiraling publishing costs leading to fewer magazines, declining literacy, the lowest common denominator, and whatnot, that I’d leave the profession anyway.

BUT MAN, where to start? Generalizing about the lessons of 2,375 ideas is tough. In terms of overall general philosophy (Lesson Three), I will say this: you younger writers may as well put your idealism on a shelf and get used to the fact that to write the stuff you care about (fiction and humor to me) you’ll probably have to wordsmith for airline and trade mags (Aloft!, Trash Times) just to keep stamps on the table. I know I would have.

Like, I proposed a satire about environmentalists’ whining for The Driller, even though I think they should whine. I still feel bad about that. And I sent a query called, “The New Kumini 29mm Microelectronic Shovelhead RP 699 Carbs: Better than the RP 577?” to Dirtbyte, a magazine for computerized motorcycle parts enthusiasts, even though I didn’t care about the 699 or the 577, and if they come out with a 736 I don’t even want to hear about it.

Ditto with proposals about the inanity of motorcycle helmet laws for Two Wheel Mind, the state-of-the-art in solid-state robotics technology for American Taxidermist, “The Coming Revolution in American Commercial Transport: Blimps” for Anything Goes, “A Working Mother’s First-Person Perspective” for Family Woman, “A Working Mother’s Double Life” for Talk Dirty to Me, and “Jackson (Memphis, Birmingham, Shreveport, Baton Rouge, Athens): the Oft-Missed Gem Among Southern Cities” for Jackson!, Memphis!, Memphis Outlook, Shreveport!, Baton Rouge! and athens!

Well, as long as I’m going, here are a few more “favorites”: “The Specter of Chew-Toy Death: One Family’s Story,” for BL World, a magazine for owners of black Labrador retrievers. No response. I sent it during the middle of a buyout by BL Country, and they must have lost it. I even did an awesome one to compare electronic cigarettes.

“Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s Advice to a Daughter” for Family Circle. They said it was a good idea, but they would rather see a completed piece than just a proposal. Then Solzhenitsyn wouldn’t cooperate.

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How NOT to Be a Freelance Writer

November 13, 2012 / / No comments

freelance writerTHERE ARE now some thirty-seven books describing “how to” be a freelance writer, and the editors of the major freelancer mags–Write, Write On, Write Right, Write! Write!, American Freelancer, Freelancing American, Word Mover, and Key Banger–tell me they each get about seventy proposals a year for general info pieces for beginners.

So you’d think the market is pretty much tapped out. But that’s the thing about freelancing: don’t give up, there’s always a fresh way to kick an old horse, especially if you use your own unique perspective to give the topic a fresh new twist. (Label that Lesson Number One.)

What I did was notice how all this stuff is written in a “how I made it” style by successful freelancers. But you don’t hear from people who, for lack of a better term, I’ll call “failures”–people who could tell you, “Here’s what didn’t work for me and probably won’t work for you either.”

That–failure–is my turf, my “unique perspective.” In the two years since I graduated from college I’ve seen 2,376 proposals for articles, short stories, and humor pieces to most of the magazines and newspapers listed in Writer’s Market 1981, and to some that aren’t listed there or anywhere else, even in local phone books. To be honest, I was not doing well, having not ever sold anything.

But it’s so crucial for freelancers to persevere (Lesson Number Two). The same day I got rejection number 2,374 (for proposal to write a one-act CB slanguage verse drama for CB Times–it had already been done), and 2,375 (40 “Off Key” haiku sent to Pequod, a little review. . . . “Off Key” haiku, my invention, are produced by writing a poem, then touch-typing it with your fingers based one key to the right of the home row–thus, “Windless autumn day/gold blue red yellow gray green/goodbye summertime” becomes, “Eomf;rdd siyi,m fsu/hp;f n;ir trf ur;;pd htsu htrrm/hppfnur di,,tryo,r” . . . . Too avantgarde, the Pequod guys said. . . . Anyway, I pushed on, and the very day I sent the proposal for this article, my 113th query to this magazine: Dear Sirs:

Hey, remember me? Yep, I’m still here. Firstly, I wish to inform you that since I’ve heard nothing re my proposal to write a short story about a young man who dreams of becoming a writer, I’ve taken the liberty of sending it to Oh Yearh!, a Missouri-based publication for youth. Secondly I have a proposal (250 wds):

We all know the strong spirit of the independent writer is a strength, but did you know it’s also a weakness? Because we are loners, we don’t communicate well. What should we be talking about? Obviously about what works, what’s good, what sells. But more important and certainly more overlooked is what doesn’t work. Like, when I’m working on a proposal I often think to myself, “Suppose this has been tried already and failed?” I have no way of knowing. If I did, I might stop right there, saving my and your time, and my postage.

I propose then a piece designed to get the ball of cooperation rolling: a discussion of article ideas and techniques that, based on my experince, it seems to be pretty much the case that the pro magazines do not want. This could ultimately lead to an informal information network or a newsletter.

The tone of the piece would be casual and informative, perhaps funny in parts–never whiney.

Thanking you sincerely in advance for your cooperation and waiting anxiously for your reply I remain,

Rudy Hollis Dubble Jr.

Category: Freelancing, Guides / Tags: , , , , , ,

Trends in Print in the 80′s Part 1

October 30, 2012 / / No comments

One of the most significant trends in print today is the repositioning of magazines.

Yet even as publishers extoll the benefits of redirected magazines, there remain more than a few critics of this development.

What worries astute media observers is that in pursuit of increased advertising dollars, the reader is receiving short shift.

“I do think that a lot of magazines has lost sight of who is most important in this grab for more ad dollars,” said David Lehmkuhl, a vice president and group media director at NW Ayer.

“It is the hard-core, loyal reader who turned to the magazine for entertainment and news for the past number of years . . . he’s the guy who’s being ignored. It’s all as if we’ll keep him bt we’ll expand our readership for more short-term subscribers or the one-time sale,” Lehmkuhl said.

Publishers of the many repositioned magazines, including Woman’s Day, Cuisine, House & Garden and Metropolitan Home, argue that only by serving reader interest can they increase advertising dollars.

Although several publishers cite increased investment in the editorial product as a sign of where their priorities lie, many have allocated millions in television and print campaigns for promotion.

“I think what we are seeing now is a new wave of M.B.A.’s in publishing. They are thinking of the short-term and bottom-line profits,” Lehmkuhl said.

“That’s what’s going to hurt magazines. It’s little frightening,” he added.

“We as readers are being turned on and turned off like a spigot,” Lehmkuhl noted.

In the majority of cases, however, economics is behind a magazine makeover. Sometimes the market for a magazine is so crowded that a shake-out lies ahead. Sometimes the demographics of the readers change.

“The increasing promotion emphasis in this business is a result of the past couple of years. Magazines have been in a recession,” said Nancy Clott, media director at Ted Bates in New York.

In 1981, ad pages in magazines inched ahead only 3%. They were down by the same percentage in 1982. But 1983 promises to be a more fruitful year for magazine publishers. According to the Magazine Publishers Associations, ad pages by the end of the year should exceed 7% and possibly top 8%. First nine months figures for 1983 show that ad pages increased 7% over 1982′s level.

Several magazines have repositioned out of necessity. Redbook, for example, found itself in an increasingly crowded field, which also took in increasingly popular Self and Cosmopolitan. As advertisers found they had to stretch dollars, they cut out all but the most compelling.

Redbook publisher Alan M. Waxenburg, who assumed the post after Hearst bought the publication, decided to shift the position of the magazine to fit between the younger Cosmopolitan reader and the older Good Housekeeping reader. In aiming for the 12-44 year old woman, Hearst’ new Redbook is targeted toward the nation’s baby boom. Redbook is after the woman who juggles her life between wife, mother and worker.

Another publication that has weighed a shift in editorial content very carefully is U.S. News & World Report. Although vp-publisher William Dunn has said that the newsweekly has “some catching up to do,” U.S. News wants to limit the amount of change. The magazine’s slow, evolutionary changes are aimed at keeping the majority of what the publication already has but at the same time, attracting more of the baby boom population.

It seems clear, however, that those magazines that have launched full-fledged repositionings have managed to attract new advertisers. Sometimes the cost, however, is loss of once-loyal readers. But in the movement toward upgrading their editorial content, magazines have been able to attract those readers which increasingly advertisers seek most.

Cuisine publisher Anne Sutherland Fuchs notes that her magazine’s recent move out of the kitchen was prompted by a desire to serve the reader better. She noted that Cuisine asked 140 readers to tell the magazine what they wanted. Using those answers as a guide, the magazine then ruled out the following options: to become a mass market food preparation book, to become a “lifestyle” publication or to become more travel-oriented. The approach Cuisine sought was to become the “best food magazine in the country.”

To Sutherland Fuchs, that meant increasing coverage on entertaining, covering travel as it relates to food, including “real” restaurant reviews and increasing the number of authorities reporting on the field. Although the new Cuisine carries less coverage on food preparation, the magazine still manages to pack in more recipes.

Sutherland Fuchs said she thought it was necessary to reposition Cuisine because she felt that the magazine needed a clearer identity in the epicurean group of publications, which includes Gourmet, Food & Wine and Bon Appetit.

“We felt that all the epicurean books were vanilla and white bread–in other words they were bland,” she said.

After CBS Publishing bought Cuisine in April 1982, the magazine’s rate base was sliced from 750,000 to 725,000. But due to several consumer promotions, including a first-time use of television to advertise the magazine raised the rate base back up to 750,000. In addition, the cover price went to $2 from $1.75 and the subscription price increased to $11.97 from $9.97.

The effect of these changes at Cuisine is already being seen. According to Sutherland Fuchs, ad pages for the second half of 1983 are up 44% versus the same period last year. In addition, circulation has climbed to 785,000.

A big part of the reason that House & Garden decided to go upscale last year was due to the upward mobility in current lifestyles.

“We don’t know of a single manufacturer who is not planning to bring out a better product because they know that the market is there for it. Just think about cigarettes with satin tips,” said publisher William F. Bondlow, Jr.

“House & Garden would have been out of business within five years without a change,” he added. “With more, discretionary dollars and less time, people are looking for wasy to do things better.”

“We went class,” said Bondlow, “because we saw that the 1980 census showed that there was a group of 25-40 year olds who were moving up and who were well-educated. The census reported that there were over 5 million households with $50,000 + income.”

Although House & Gardens ad pages are down 20% overall this year, Bondlow points out the magazine has gained nearly 100 pages in display ads this year. He noted that the magazine is no longer selling classified ads, which used to account for 25% of House & Garden’s revenues.

Category: 1980s, Business, Newspaper, Print, Trends / Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Trends in Print in the 80′s Part 2

October 30, 2012 / / No comments

Advertisers House & Garden has gained include many high-class acts: BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Charles of the Ritz, Ralph Lauren, Omega and Godiva. The magazine has lost a substantial amount of mass-marketed food items such as Kraft. Pet food advertisers have also dropped out since the magazine discontinued a pet food column. In upgrading the editorial and in cutting the circulation from 1 million to 550,000, House & Garden was seeking to bring the magazine back to “what it once was — a prestigious magazine like it was in the 30′s and 40′s,” Bondlow said.

He pointed out that the magazine went through a period of an “uncanny amunt of research” that showed that the magazine was not entirely satisfying its readers. That finding, coupled with the release of the 1980 census, showed that “we had gaping holes in our coverage,” Bondlow said. “With the encroachment of other magazines, change had to take place.”

The question, he said, as how far to go. Conde Nast management encouraged the magazine to “go all the way.” All the way meant at least a $5 million to $6 million investment in the product, which included new paper stock, new distribution channels and consumer and trade promotions.

The new audience for House & Garden is decidedly more upscale. The average income of the House & Garden reader has risen from $22,000 to $24,000 to $54,000 to $55,000. Approximately 65% of the subscriber base is new to the magazine. But 35% have renewed subscriptions at a substantially higher price.

When Meredith Publishing transformed Apartment Life into Metropolitan Home in April 1981, the magazine was seeking to follow the affluent baby boomers. Meredith had discovered that it was extremely expensive to obtain renewal subscriptions from apartment dwellers. Home owners could be much more stable as a customer base, said Steve Burzon, publisher.

“The advertiser we wanted to reach was also more interested in reaching the young, affluent homeowners,” said Burzon.

Oneida, for example, he said, is finding that there are plenty who can afford to pay $400 for tableware.

In making the switch over, the circulation of Apartment Life, which was 800,00 was cut to 660,000. Meredith has since moved up to 700,000, but its plan is not to increase the numbers but to build the affluence of the Metropolitan Home reader. Burzon said that the median income of the reader is now $40,000 as compared to the mid-$20,000 a year ago. When questioned whether the changes were made for advertising or for readership, Burzon admitted that the reader did like Apartment Life. But he said that the magazine had an “orange crate” image among advertisers. He pointed out that readers themselves are looking for more style in the way they approach life. Today’s consumers, for instance, he said, are not only looking for frozen pizza that tastes good but for frozen pizza that tastes better than pizzeria pizza.

 

Category: 1980s, Newspaper, Trendss / Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Trends in Print in the 80′s Part 3

October 30, 2012 / / No comments

“And Mrs. Supermarket Shopper is now taking the curlers out of her hair when she goes shopping,” Burzon said. “She’s modernizing.”

The year following Apartment Life’s transition to Metropolitan Home, ad pages were up in 1982, 10% over 1981′s level. But this year, ad pages are down by 10%.

Even so, Burzon pins the blame on a slump in the home furnishing industry this year. Apartment Life carried few home furnishing accounts, but a much greater proportion of cosmetics and toiletries accounts.

Woman’s Day was pumped with fresh life under the direction of publishing superstar, Peter Diamandis, who was hired by CBS Publishing to duplicate his success with Self magazine over at Conde Nast.

On the Woman’s Day slate after Diamandis took over was a program to revitalize the magazine’s editorial and to promote the newly improved product with a $10 million budget.

Diamandis defends that substantial sum spent on promotion. He notes that the promotion money was taken from future profits of the magazine. WHile he reasons that ultimately editorial changes in the product are more important, the most dramatic changes initially are from promotion, “which can be dramatic overnight.” Diamandis pointed out that the magazine’s advertising to sales ratio increased to a ratio similar to that of package goods, about 9%-10%.

“We viewed the editorial changes at Woman’s Day more like a chiropratic adjustments as opposed to surgery,” he said.

“To put it succintly, Woman’s Day was becoming older in looks and in median age. It was becoming a little dowdy after 45 years of being in the business. During the 1970′s, women’s magazines went through a violent change. The seven little sisters that emerged began to steal the charisma and energy of their older sisters.

“We needed to make the magazine younger, to make it more vital looking and reading,” Diamandis said. A major step in that direction was the hiring of Ellen Levine, articles editor, formerly at Cosmopolitan. The results of that overhaul are that Woman’s Day has been able to hold circulation at a higher cover price. Advertising pages this year are up by 180 pages over last year, Diamandis said. Family Cirlce, which underwent its own program of changes early this fall, which included a graphic design improvement, gained more than half a million readers for the recently upgraded issues over issues at the same period last year. In ad pages, Family Circle is also ahead, with a gain of 205 pages this year.

The magazine has doubled the promotion budget since last year, adding ten more spot television markets and running the campaign during the spring and the fall, according to Thomas C. Redd, senior vice president and publisher of Family Circle.

“I think that the magazine industry has recognized the need to be more promotion conscious. Even if we doubled the budget, it would be less than most advertisers,” Redd said. Whether magazines tend to reposition out of necessity or not, the trend toward makeovers seems to be working. Magazines are following the new course they have laid out for themselves without side-stepping. Woman’s Day, Family Circle, Cuisine have shown marked improvement in advertising pages since each has boosted promotion budgets and outlayed extra funds for editorial. While Metropolitan Home’s ad pages are down this year, it has added a whole new core of upscale readers. And House & Garden has suffered in ad pages since its rebirth, but the decreases are not in display ads, the magazine’s current focus. Several demographic trends have altered magazine publishing as well. Magazines are sincere about wanting to target the newly upward mobile, the group that entices advertisers and also the group more likely than any other to read magazines.

Although many media watchers are concerned that mgazines are losing sight of the reader in the chase for increased advertising dollars, it may be the only way out.

 

Category: Newspaper, Print, Trends / Tags: , , , , , , , ,
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