Case study of a publishing house

                                                     Publishing House Case Study

Condé Nast:

·         Founder: Condé Montrose Nast

·         CEO: Charles Townsend

·         President: Robert Sauerberg

·         Chief Marketing officer: Louis Cona

·         Editorial director: Thomas J Wallace

Condé Nast is known for creating a widely used magazine strategy that emphasises magazines are focused on a particular interest or class, which is sometimes known as lifestyle magazines. Many of the magazines published by Condé Nast are fashion magazines, however it still publishes others such as food, home, travel as well as other interests. By 1998, 17 publications of such were included, with an average total of over 13million issues being published every month. S.I Newhouse Jr brought out Fairchild publications, which has now joined the Condé Nast family of publications. 

In September 2009, this publishing house was forced to cut 25% of their budget as they became a failing print media industry that was said to be struggling with a change to a digital business model. As a result on the 5^th of October 2009 Condé Nast revealed 3 of its publications: cookie magazine, modern bride and elegant bride were finishing.

Condé Nast has a subsidiary company called the Condé Nast Digital UK Ltd (Condé Nast Interactive) that operates internet services in the UK. When this interaction division started in 1995 it was one of the 1^st British publishers on the internet with daily updated websites for magazines such as vogue and GC. Their websites now attract over 2.6 million unique users with 46million pages being viewed each month. 250,000 people have subscribed to emails from this publishing house and over 200,000 users are currently able to access the contents on their mobile phones which have now generated more than 3.7 million page views per month.
 It earned lots of press attention, a great relationship with many advertisers due to more sites that followed and made the division become recognised for its well targeted websites that were beautifully designed and of high quality. Their contract division works with a number of clients such as Houser of Fraser, Selfridges, Vertu and Melbourne hotel group to create magazines.  

Whether all adverts are hosted by Condé Nast Interactive or supplied by a third party, they are expected to follow certain requirements such as:  The name of the client must be revealed by the agency at the time of the booking and Condé Nast having an entitlement to refuse or cancel the orders of any mistakes that may leak or fail to be revealed at the time. Condé Nast Interactive is also permitted to carefully reject or exclude an advertisement that was once accepted to run on their website.

Further than the standard advertising formats, Condé Nast Digital UK also helps its clients to communicate their message through custom built advertising solutions. For instance Date capture is used to strengthen follow up communications the message the campaign is trying to get across and also to increase the client’s customer base. Promotions that focus on visual communication of the product are featured through visual communication as to support the brand and/or positioning campaigns. As to engage customers directly with the brand and product, Microsites may also be used to feature customized design and content that include user generated content, blogs, games etc.

These are a few examples of the projects Condé Nast Interactive have created for their advertising partners.

Condé Nast publishes magazines under the headings, Fashion and Lifestyle, Food, Bridal, Golf, Travel, Technology and Culture. Some of the magazine titles include Glamour, Brides, Vanity Fair, GQ, Wired and House &Garden. As these magazines fall under different headings they have many different target audiences. Vogue magazine is a fashion and lifestyle magazine which mainly targets women between the ages of 18-30 that like to embrace fashion and culture as a lifestyle. Some would say it targets those from a middle class and upper class social class as it promotes wealthy lifestyles and costly top designer products; however women from all around are the ones that are primarily targeted. The Brides magazine falls under Bridal magazines is mainly targeted for brides to be.

Wired falls under Technology magazines and is mainly aimed at either men or due to the unisex advertisements found within some of the publications you would think both sexes; however there are no adverts that are just aimed at women. Also as some of the adverts are mostly of high end luxurious goods such as expensive watches and men’s fragrances, this suggests the magazine is mainly aimed at men that are wealthy. As the magazine advertises products that can easily be brought by young professional and elder males, this could have an inspirational effect on those that are not of a high social class therefore increasing Wired’s target audience.

Condé Nast publishes many different types of magazines so that it can attract different types of audiences. Not only will it build a good reputation for Condé Nast but it will also help the magazines attract more target audiences as different magazines will be aimed at different age groups, social classes and gender. This is good because as a publishing house company it gains money from the advertisers that advertise their magazine as well as from the magazines themselves.