TV Guide Inc.

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TV Guide Inc.

7140 S. Lewis Avenue
Tulsa, Oklahoma 74136-5422
USA
Telephone: (918) 488-4000
Fax: (918) 488-4979
Web site: www.tvguide.com

ON THE INSIDE CAMPAIGN

OVERVIEW

Although TV Guide, with a circulation of 9 million and a total readership of 28 million, was ranked in the top three major magazines in 2003, its circulation had dropped 30 percent since 1998. Adding to the aging iconic publication's woes was its loss of advertisers. According to the Publisher Information Bureau/CMR, the number of ad pages sold by the publication had decreased 11 percent in 2002. Reversing the trend of fleeing readers and, subsequently, fleeing advertisers was the goal set by TV Guide's new executive team, which included John Loughlin, president of TV Guide Publishing Group, and Michael Lafavore, the magazine's editor-in-chief.

As part of the revitalization effort the magazine was completely redesigned based on extensive consumer research, and its website was upgraded to better integrate with the publication. To promote its new look TV Guide partnered with Dallas-based ad agency the Richards Group and launched a two-phase marketing campaign aimed at both media buyers and consumers. The "On the Inside" campaign, which began in 2003, had the tagline "We see everything" and an estimated budget of between $20 million and $30 million. Phase one of the campaign was created to alert media buyers of the magazine's new format and included print and outdoor ads. Phase two, targeted at consumers, included three television spots, each portraying a day in the life of a TV Guide reporter on the prowl for a scoop to print in the magazine.

Within two months of the campaign's launch, it was evident it had resonated with the target audiences. The first phase, aimed at media buyers, won a 2004 EFFIE Award and reversed a three-year decline in advertising sales. Phase two's message reached readers and led to a 40 percent jump in newsstand sales in September compared to the prior three months. The upgraded website was also attracting new subscribers, nearly 10,000 each week compared to only several hundred new subscribers a week before the campaign began.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

In 1953 half of the homes in the United States had television sets providing family entertainment with programs that included I Love Lucy, Dragnet, The Adventures of Superman, Candid Camera, and Kraft Television Theatre. To help keep viewers informed of what was on at what time, TV Guide was introduced in April 1953. The magazine quickly became the television viewer's bible, with a circulation of 1.7 million in September of that year. By the mid-1970s TV Guide's circulation had reached more than 19 million.

In 1988 the owner of TV Guide, Walter Annenberg, sold the publication to media conglomerate News Corp., which eventually entered a partnership with Gemstar, a company that made electronic TV-program guides. But the new CEO, Henry Yuen, neglected the aging magazine, focusing the company's energies on technologies such as interactive program guides and TV Guide's website. For five years the magazine did not mail out subscriber solicitation notices, and for 18 months it operated without a publisher. Compounding the magazine's problems were the facts that television was evolving, viewers' needs had changed, and other ways to learn what was on television became available—from newspapers publishing daily or weekly TV listings to TV remote controls that enabled viewers to surf through the channels from the comfort of their chairs. By 2003 the magazine's circulation had dropped to about nine million.

Yuen was forced out in 2002, and changes at the magazine began. John Loughlin, TV Guide Publishing Group's president, brought on board Scott Crystal as executive vice president and publisher and Michael Lafavore as editor-in-chief. The team set to work reinventing TV Guide with completely reworked editorial content. Loughlin said that the goal was to create a magazine that was more than a list of television programs. He told Adweek that the revamped magazine would be "the guide and trusted voice of helping people make decisions about in-home, on-screen entertainment." As TV Guide was undergoing its transformation, the Richards Group was creating the supporting "On the Inside" marketing campaign with the tagline "We see everything."

TARGET MARKET

From 1953, when it was founded, through 1988 TV Guide was successful, reaching a circulation peak of 19 million. But as times and readers' needs changed, the iconic magazine went into a slump. As the publication lost subscribers, dropping to a circulation of 9 million in 2003, it also lost advertisers. When TV Guide began its "On the Inside" marketing campaign in 2003, it had two target audiences: media buyers and consumers.

Phase one of the campaign was aimed directly at media buyers, who purchased advertising space for their clients and had redirected their spending to other publications that included television listings and viewing information in their editorial content. The second phase of the campaign was directed at consumers in an effort to convince them that TV Guide was the magazine to read for all things TV, from program listings to inside scoops on small-screen stars. Lynda Hodge, the Richards Group's art director, said that people had come to believe that only old people read TV Guide, and the consumer portion of the campaign was designed to change that stodgy image. She added that the goal was to show consumers that they could read the magazine for entertainment as well as for TV program listings.

COMPETITION

For years TV Guide had defined TV remotes as its primary competition—because when viewers had remote controls they could more easily find out what shows were on merely by flipping through the channels while seated—but when the magazine reinvented itself, it also was forced to redefine the competition. Clear rivals for ad dollars and readers were other publications that offered entertainment news; other competitors were websites, onscreen listings, and newspapers that ran daily or weekly television program listings. Among the top print rivals were Gannett Company Inc.'s USA Weekend and Wenner Media LLC's Us Weekly.

USA Weekend was an entertainment and lifestyle magazine that was distributed through newspapers. In 2003 the publication reported a circulation of more than 23 million. Also in 2003, however, advertising agency executives and other publications, including TV Guide, were questioning the accuracy of those huge circulation numbers. Under debate was whether research methods credited the total circulation of the newspapers carrying USA Weekend as the total circulation of the magazine itself. It was also questioned whether or not USA Weekend was a true magazine or simply a weekly newspaper supplement. To answer the question a poll of readers was conducted through an industry-wide initiative led by Parade magazine, with the results showing that most people perceived USA Weekend as a magazine rather than a newspaper supplement.

CLASSIC TV PROGRAMMING NOW OFFERED ON DVD

With a 50-year history of covering television, TV Guide in 2004 began using its authority on television shows to release favorite programming on DVD. TV Guide -branded DVDs began to be sold that year by Genius Products, Inc. DVD titles would be released in collections with six hours of programming. Categories included comedies, Westerns, and detectives. Besides the television episodes, each DVD featured related trivia questions, commentary by the TV Guide editors who had selected the specific episodes, and a subscription offer to TV Guide magazine.

As advertisers and other publications debated the accuracy of USA Weekend's circulation numbers and whether it was a magazine or newspaper supplement, Us Weekly was named the 2004 Magazine of the Year by Advertising Age. In announcing its award, Advertising Age described Us Weekly as a "cultural reference point" that had connected with younger, affluent women readers and in the process attracted advertisers. The first six months of 2004 saw Us Weekly's newsstand sales climb 47.3 percent, and its ad pages increased 25.2 percent from the same period the previous year. Mediamark Research reported that the median household income of the magazine's female readers was higher than readers of both Vanity Fair and In Style.

MARKETING STRATEGY

The 2003 "On the Inside" campaign was TV Guide's first consumer marketing effort in more than 10 years. With an overall budget of between $20 million and $30 million, it far surpassed the $250,000 the publication had budgeted in 2002 for advertising. Loughlin told Adweek, "It's a fair characterization to say that for several years, there's been virtually no media spend." In addition, for the previous two years the publication had no advertising agency. The first step in TV Guide's reinvention was making changes to the magazine itself. It added more pages of editorial content, which featured up-to-the minute stories about television celebrities, behind-the-scenes reports, and detailed recommendations about programming. Lafavore said that the magazine's editorial content had been adjusted to reflect the changing attitudes of viewers and the cultural role of television. The new campaign was designed to inform media buyers and consumers of the changes and lure them back to the magazine.

For the first phase of the campaign the Richards Group designed outdoor and print ads as teasers for media buyers. Signs that appeared in magazines and on billboards, buses, and buildings featured slogans that made tongue-in-cheek references to the television industry in general, such as "Like everyone else, we're having a little work done," "New look, new style, new attitude. Soon we'll be dating models half our age," and "We're back from rehab and ready to party." In addition, the magazine flew 250 advertisers to Los Angeles for a post-Emmy Awards party, the first ever hosted by the magazine.

Phase two of the campaign targeted consumers with the tagline "You miss nothing, because we see everything," which was shortened to "We see everything." The campaign included television spots, radio commercials, and print ads that emphasized the point that readers would not miss anything if they read TV Guide, because the publication's team of reporters were always working to get the inside story for its readers. The advertisements used humor to send their message. One spot, titled "Make Up Artist," showed a male reporter dressed in drag and posing as Average Joe star Kathy Griffin's makeup artist to get the scoop on a script she was working on. Griffin caught on to the scheme, and the reporter was kicked out the door. Another spot, "Wired," showed an aggressive reporter slipping a bug onto NYPD Blue actor Gordon Clapp just before he filmed a scene of the show. The bug trashed the film equipment and, once again, the sly reporter was caught and given the boot.

Rod Underhill of the Richards Group said that the publication's marketing push was more than a campaign; rather, it was helping TV Guide recreate itself as a brand. "The world is confused about what is TV Guide," he told Adweek. "The brand itself doesn't carry any baggage, it doesn't have a lot of negatives. It's just suffering from neglect."

OUTCOME

In September, six weeks after the launch of its redesigned publication and the accompanying "On the Inside" campaign, TV Guide reported a 40 percent jump in newsstand sales. That month's sales averaged 850,000, which included a 250,000 increase over the number of issues sold in each of the previous three months. In addition the publication's website, which had been redesigned in conjunction with the magazine, was adding as many as 10,000 new subscribers each week, compared with only hundreds per week previously. The new subscribers also tended to be younger—31-years-old on average versus 41—and more affluent. During an interview with Media Industry Newsletter, Loughlin said, "In a magazine used to seeing year-over-year newsstand drops of 20 percent to 30 percent this is progress."

Media buyers responded favorably to the campaign as well. According to Business Wire, ad pages in TV Guide's feature-well—the center of a magazine where the longer articles were published—jumped 71 percent in September compared with September of the previous year, and all available ad space had been sold. A report in the Wall Street Journal stated that the magazine's September issue had 102.4 ad pages, the most it had sold since 1996, and that for the first time in six consecutive years ad revenue inched up rather than declined.

Further indication of the campaign's success was its win of a 2004 Bronze EFFIE from the New York American Marketing Association. The award was presented for the "TV Guide Color Bar" print ad that was used in phase one of the campaign, which was directed at media buyers.