Seven Deadly Sins Of Media Kit Design THE MOST FUN in the Magazine Doctor’s line of work is being asked to take an idea and turn it into a successful magazine. That involves every discipline a publisher must master. Running a close second on the happy-adrenaline scale is developing a new media kit for a forward-thinking, aggressive publisher. It doesn’t matter what type of magazine is involved or the industry it serves, since no two media kits will ever be alike, even when there are six or seven successful publications scrapping for the same readers and ad dollars. Over the years, the Magazine Doctor has arrived at strong viewpoints about media kits that work and those that don’t. These opinions have been validated in two important ways—(1) client appreciation when the media kits provably changed the way an industry viewed the publication (always with a resulting up-surge in ad revenues); and (2) peer approval in the form of five Maggie Awards, certifying these kits as the best of the year against all comers. Every few years when new kits flood ad agencies in the fall, the MagDoc also calls in 100 to 300 from leading magazines. He is always surprised at the number of hugely successful publications that have mediocre kits. They’re a great reminder of the deadly sins producers of media kits commit. Sin Number 1: Failure to Give The Kit a Mission It’s easy to spot a media kit that has no particular role to play in the magazine’s sales and marketing plan. It’s a folder (sometimes embarrassingly clever) with a lot of booklets, info sheets, or other documents stuffed into the pockets. The media buyer can only ask, "Why do these people think I would even care?" So before the first word or the design sketch is put to paper, ask yourself (and the sales director and key salespeople): "What do we want this new media kit to do for us? What simple message about us must it convey (and sell)?" You wouldn’t send a new salesperson out without clear instructions on what he or she is to accomplish. You’d say, "Prove our readers buy more of their products." Or, in the case of a business publication, "Convince them that only our deeply involved readers control the budgets that buy their products." Media kits can perform incredibly difficult sales tasks if they’re designed with an unmistakable purpose. Here are some examples of kits that exceeded publishers’ wildest expectations—because their function was immediately clear to the ad client: A motorcycle enthusiast magazine needed to do two things quickly. First, prove that its readers were the industry’s "best buyers" and heaviest spenders, because they were the most broadly informed about available products; and (2) expand its core market (increase the number of "endemic" advertisers). Those were tough jobs to assign to a media kit. Our solutions: First, we tapped past editorial coverage to prove that the road tests and other product features gave more sophisticated data and better product tests than other publications We featured the road test editors’ use of exclusive testing devices in several dramatic brochures within the kit. To enlarge the scope of the core market, we went to the magazine’s national MRI research figures and compared the buying habits and spending patterns of its own readers with those of several large competing magazines. We found gold and were thus able to lay claim to a huge, unexpected advertising category—pickup trucks, SUVs and vans. The motorcycle magazine’s average reader, it seemed, had about four times as much money invested in the vehicles he used to haul his motorcycles to the boonies, than in the motorcycles themselves. In the year following the introduction of the media it, motorcycle (along with component and accessory) advertising jumped dramatically, along with many new pages of ads for trucks. It won that year’s Maggie Award. A human resources magazine publisher realized that few advertisers or their agencies even knew the scope of a personnel professional’s job. "Can we make that the theme of the media kit?" the publisher asked. "Of course," the Magazine Doctor replied. "Can we ask, ‘Just what does a human resources manager do?’ on the cover?" "You can ask the question and give the answer," replied MagDoc. So that’s how she had the media kit laid out, with the basic question and a hundred or so functions of the personnel professional—all cleverly illustrated on the cover and inside panels. The theme carried throughout the kit. The key to the success: All 100-plus functions have a personnel department budget attached. It won the Maggie. A new on-board magazine for cruise line guests had to convince advertisers that guests didn’t loll in the sun all day, with breaks only to gorge on free food. Our theme: The only thing the cruise guests were really interested in was spending their holiday money on upscale purchases and high-end beverages. We designed an inexpensive one-sheet package that combined the art and film for national ads, individual mailers of the ads, rate cards and a pre-publication media kit. First the MagDoc wrote three full-page ads, which were to appear in succeeding issues of AdWeek, coinciding with the sales staff’s initial contacts. These ads were then printed side-by-side on a single sheet of heavy cover stock. About half of these sheets were cut down as direct mail pieces. One ad could be mailed every 10 days to potential advertisers (coinciding with the ad in AdWeek). The final use: The remaining large sheets were die cut and folded into a three-pocket media kit, which held rate cards for the various cruise line magazines. Its theme started on the cover: "Does Your Marketing Program Take a Vacation Just Because… (open cover) Your Customers Leave on Vacation?" (open to inside) "Frankly, that’s When Your Marketing Dollars Could Be Doing Their Best Work." The three mailers that ad clients had previously seen were in three panels behind the bottom flap, reinforcing the theme. The kit/direct-mail program won the Maggie. A trucking magazine took a giant step backwards, and set out to prove the most basic claim a business publication can make. "We reach the real buyers in your industry," was the kit’s theme. The magazine conducted an expensive "firm audit," under BPA auspices, to prove that their target readers controlled more big-fleet budgets and actually reached the most different owning companies. This contrasted with suspicions that their competitors had many readers with similar titles in the same large companies. The concept is not glamorous, and could have been unspeakably dull. We designed the media kit as almost all text in short, punchy takes. It started with a broad claim on the cover, reading into inside. Four pockets inside held four hefty booklets, each developing a separate part of the market and coverage story. Because it pounded home one extremely important idea, one that no media buyer would ever be able to forget in the future, it proved a huge financial success. It, too, was a Maggie winner. A media kit for a hotel-room guide broke many standard rules. We looked closely at the advertiser it was to attract, and realized that sophisticated marketing was out. Everything depended on a first impression. The publication, although published in many cities, had few national advertisers, and its local advertisers seldom retained ad agencies. So we were dealing with "amateur advertisers," that is, business owners whose primary function and expertise was not in advertising. Our solution: First, sell the great looks of the hardbound publication and its gorgeous local ads (for furs, liquors, upscale restaurants, etc.). We wanted the advertiser to say, "I want to be in that beautiful book." So the main body of the kit was a gorgeous, foil-embossed, white packaging job for the publication, which also held a booklet and a rate card. The die-cut kit cover would always frame the central object of any city’s cover picture. Only inside did the potential advertiser find the handsome booklet featuring research on the buying patterns of out-of-town guests in their city’s finest hotels. It won the Maggie, perhaps largely due to its spectacular looks. Sin Number 2: You Thought You Were The Subject of the Kit A media kit isn’t just about you, your publishing company, magazine or readers. A media kit package is a bigger challenge to produce than that. The best media kits are developed and written from your advertisers’ point of view. It should appear to be all about them and their daily marketing concerns. If and when you and your publication come into the picture, it is because you represent an ideal solution to their marketing problems. The best kits will begin by addressing the advertisers’ market at length. These kits explore the problems of marketing within that industry and discussions of marketing needs, competitive climate and solutions for reaching buyers. An excellent kit may contain two or three major market studies—at least one of which should be new. These reports may mention the publications serving the field only in passing. Failure to give valid and extensive information about the market is where most media kits fail both the advertiser and the publication. Skimpy marketing coverage is a sure sign the publisher doesn’t care enough, or refuses to invest enough, to put together genuinely excellent marketing package. A magazine publisher who fails to become an authority on his market is not doing his full job. The market is the world a magazine’s advertisers live and compete in. The magazine merely serves this market as an ideal means of bringing target purchasers face-to-face with sellers. Original research on the market can offer a mighty competitive advantage to a publication. But the data should not be raw; instead, it should be carefully interpreted to apply to the needs of the advertisers. Then, once you’ve proved your authority in the marketplace, it’s finally time to tell advertisers why your magazine is their best means of reaching a target segment of buyers. You prove that with the magazine’s reach and frequency, market coverage, loyal readership, big numbers, buying power, and other factors selling the publication’s readership. This is the cart. Your understanding and mastery of the market, and generosity in sharing the data, is the horse. A word on the writing that goes into a media kit: Encourage cribbing. Your designated writer (only one, preferably) should fashion everything in words and phrases that the media buyer can lift intact. You want to make it extremely easy for him/her to recommend heavy advertising in your market segment and to justify including your publication in the year’s ad budget. Sin Number 3: Your Media Kit Shouts ‘Kitchen Sink’ You’ve been producing booklets and interesting mailers all year. You’ve used a half dozen writers and graphic designers, each of whom has produced one or two items that will look great in the new media kit. Every one is a grabber on its own. You then choose the cleverest designer of all to produce a new folder to carry everything, and he finds colors, textures and shapes that would intimidate Mother Nature. "Wow," you say. "Oh, wow," moans your client. Let’s put this simply. A media kit should be cohesive. Every item should be—and look like— an integral part of a single package. There should be logic in the writing style, a single voice, and a clear presentation of ideas and data that will carefully build your case. Throwing in one of everything lying around in the stockroom isn't building a media kit—it’s emptying the trash. Your media kit should be like a well-dressed salesperson. Everything works together. There’s a single style and a single clear "statement." Forget sending in a troupe of clowns to pour out of a tiny car. Sin Number 4: Your Kit Has No Logical Skeleton The best media kit is the best possible leavebehind for a formal sales presentation. The best media kit makes your formal sales presentation to the media buyer or ad director on its own, which occurs later when it’s time to add you publication to the client’s annual ad budget. Your salesperson won’t be on the scene for that decision, so the kit must seal the sale on its own. The best media kit is actually a great sales presentation, too. Therefore, it’s very efficient to produce your new media kit and new stand-up presentation simultaneously. But before you start working on the kit, make a clear outline of the best possible sales presentation. Here’s a simple, clear outline that will always work for your big sales presentation of the year: The market; >clients’ problems and challenges of reaching buyers in the market; >clients’ specific needs in target areas; >magazine’s coverage of one or more of those areas (including the magazine’s means of reaching buyers and proof that it does so, perhaps better than competing magazines or media); >and a demonstration of efficiency of using magazine to give client a return on its ad investment. You see, you’re going from the client’s competitive environment to a simple solution (an ad schedule in your publication) to solve some hairy marketing problems. Now, resist throwing in extraneous materials. Profiles of editors? There better be a good reason, and it must contribute to the logic of the presentation. A booklet on the magazine itself—why not just include a copy of the magazine in the final pocket? A reader survey? Hold the raw data. Instead, interpret the important points that apply to the client and his marketing problems in a separate-but-integral booklet. Trade show flyers? If your trade show plays an important part in your client’s annual marketing plan, include an original document about the benefit of the show. Sin Number 5: You Confused Your Ad Client with Your Reader This happens all of the time. The media kit says, in effect, "we are the magazine." The copy is all about what the magazine is doing and its ad sales successes. Sound familiar? Expecting the media buyer or ad director to judge you by the contents and design of the magazine is to miss the point. They’ll occasionally want to make some judgments based on the quality of the editorial and the presence of ads from their competitors. But their interests are far more complex. You’re not selling magazines to advertising clients. You’re selling the purchasing power of a specific body of readers. How you harness that purchasing power and bring it to the advertisers is your most powerful story. It’s sad how few publishers tell it. The Magazine Doctor has been called in to diagnose the problems with a media kit that did nothing more than (1) carry a copy or two of the magazine and (2) described the magazine in detail. You don’t really have to tell advertising agencies about the editorial or technical editor’s column if they can find it in the magazine on their own. [Pity, too, the poor media buyer who has to sit through a salesperson’s presentation that is nothing more than a rehash of an issue of the publication.] The diagnosis is clear. The publisher doesn’t really have a handle on what he has to sell to the advertiser. So the MagDoc repeats: It’s not the magazine. It’s the way the magazine pulls together the collective buying power of its target readers and makes it available to the advertiser. Sin Number 6: You Expect the Client To Organize the Kit You have surely noticed that the Magazine Doctor recommends taking a great deal of time to organize and present the information so the kit to have the greatest impact. You’d be surprised, however, that after all the work that goes into a new media kit, all too often everything is merely stuffed into two available pockets. Perhaps your salespeople know which order to remove and read the material, but the advertising client doesn’t. So what do you do? Arrange the pieces in a multicolor, graduated cascade (sometimes called a waterfall)? In theory cascades should work, with one clearly labeled piece neatly stacked above and behind the other. In practice, however, these are self-defeating. The piece with the least amount of text and illustrations is put in front (because it’s the shortest). The long one, no matter what the content or importance, is in the back. The client knows to stack them in order (if there’s time), but there’s no logic in the order in which the magazine’s sales story is presented. Can you really give the clients all they need to know about the markets your publication serves in the shortest piece? Should your rate card be in the middle? Does anybody willingly read something called: CIRCULATION? And should your ABC or BPA audit report be jammed behind everything with no label at all? Organization is second in importance to content. The publisher must be in charge of it—not the client.] That’s why two-pocket kits and cascades are so hard to use. The MagDoc often opts for four pockets, with flap labels telling the client where to start and how to progress. Sin Number 7: You Let Your Art Director Go Berserk Art directors and graphic designers love nothing better than the opportunity to strut their stuff on the new media kit. Please, Charlie, no more black covers with black, varnished type, or conversely, white covers with white embossed type. If you judged all the media kits that were "made" by the graphic designer and those that were ruined by a designer, the ruined stack would be higher by miles. So the first rule is to bring Charlie the designer in after you know what the kit is to do and have the basic materials in hand. You don’t want your writers adapting the materials to a bizarre concept. You might also tell the designer to read up on the basics of media kit design. You don’t want something that can’t be filed, used on a desktop, or getting covered with fingerprints when handled. The next thing to remember is that you, the publisher, are in charge of the media it. Nobody else. It comes from your budget and you have invested in great materials to present to clients. You made sure the research and text were convincing. That’s your editorial and circulation story it must sell. And you expect a huge return on the total budget. Explain this to Charlie. Maybe twice. The Magazine Doctor always restates to Charlie something every graphic designer heard the first week of art school. Form follows function. Your media kit must function. It must sell advertising and do it convincingly. Tell Charlie that you want to see sketches of a kit that delivers the materials according to the format of your sales presentation (step by step). You might even say you want the kit to start selling your message from the cover right through to the back page of the last insert. Charlie will frown, and you’d better have a hanky handy in case he breaks into tears. Insist on a progress review with Charlie every few days. You must see the directions Charlie is taking. Don’t let him box you in with a weird idea that "is too far along to change." And tell him to start over if there’s no logical connection between his design and the message. Not every magazine art director or graphic artist can design a media kit. That’s why the Magazine Doctor only uses specialists. Great kits can be developed with such stringent restrictions. MagDoc’s crew does it all the time. No two kits are ever alike, or even similar. Each is effective in the marketplace. The designer gets rave reviews. And the publisher reaps a huge return on his investment.

All content ©2000 James P. Hamilton Markets & Management, Inc. Please direct all inquiries to info@magazinedoctor.com