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— Backstory —
"The problem is not that so much power was concentrated but that concentration in and of itself isn't power," he posited in a white paper entitled "When Big Is Bad." Not even Edmiston's tour of duty on America Online Inc.'s board could quiet this early yet eloquent distinction between media synergy and media efficiency. Now, on leaving his perch of the past decade as managing director of New York investment boutique AdMedia Partners Inc. -- having previously donated the "E" as a co-founder of Jordan Edmiston Group Inc. -- the 65-year-old is awash in optimism. "You've got to remember it took television 15 years to settle down as a medium," the former president and CEO of Newsweek Inc., not to mention a former chairman of the Magazine Publishers of America, offers as a parallel to the Internet-induced disruption that has his peers cowering in fear. "And though other media had to shrink to accommodate TV's 30% market share, those who survived went on to prosper for the next 30 years."
Guess what? The Internet's 15 years of disruption are just about up. Edmiston, after noting Internet usage in the U.K. is twice that in the U.S., expects the new medium's share to stabilize around 20%. "That means 80% for the rest of us," he says, "which I suspect will go to those most adept at using the multiplatform model being developed by B2B." Not that the model is perfect. But it is already informing such long-standing clients of Edmiston, in his investment banker capacity, as Bonnier Corp. Among the magazine publisher's 50 enthusiast titles are Field & Stream and Outdoor Life. These brands, Edmiston says, lend themselves to extensions in books, video, even weather reports. "Why not own the Shot Show, too?" he says of the premier exhibition for the shooting, hunting and outdoor trade. "Those who succeed in media will be doing this sort of thing. The good news is there'll be fewer of them fighting it out." Edmiston expects publishers to prepare for such fights -- just as soon as M&A regains its footing -- by "reshuffling their portfolios." This suggests the recent sale of five titles by Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S. Inc. is but a precursor. "The multiplatform approach requires a tight corporate focus," he says, "a commitment to go deeper and deeper in terms of meeting and anticipating customer needs." Such commitments, in turn, will force media companies to distinguish primary brands from what Edmiston calls "outliers." Hearst Corp.'s magazines may be chock-a-block with female titles like Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, Harper's Bazaar, Marie Claire, Redbook and Seventeen. But let's not forget its two male titles: Esquire and Popular Mechanics. "I've no knowledge either way," Edmiston says, "but I wouldn't be surprised if Hearst ultimately defined itself as strictly a women's magazine company." Failure to focus could leave publishers as vulnerable to newcomers as the bridal books were to Knot Inc. Company co-founder David Liu didn't even enter the field until 1996 -- an upstart confronting an armada of mature glossies funded and assembled by Condé Nast Publications Inc. But Liu's business plan to launch an online destination that would reinvent the $70 billion wedding industry soon proved a winner. "He customized everything for brides-to-be -- online reminders on when to get the ring, when to book the hall, when to send out invites," Edmiston says. The approach worked so well that The Knot begat The Nest, to assist newlyweds in building a home, which begat The Bump, to see them through pregnancy. Now Liu's upstart has 8 times the circulation of the bridal magazines combined. Don't expect online upstarts to win all media contests, however. The Internet's real prowess, in fact, is as a direct marketer. As such, Edmiston explains, it's undermining older forms of direct marketing more than it's challenging traditional media. "I hate it when an ad pops up on my computer screen," he says. "It disrupts my use of the Internet." Yet it's quite all right when Edmiston's eyes alight on just such an ad in that medium-in-transition he has maaged, consolidated, helped reinvent and made into an impossibly productive and textured career. That would be magazines. Richard Morgan covers media for The Deal. |
Twenty minutes into a valedictory interview with Mark M. Edmiston, the magazine world's consummate player-banker hyphenate, one still wonders why he chose the end of June to make his exit. Edmiston's mind, after all, continues to flash insights as keen and contrarian as his six-year-old denouncement of the merger behind AOL Time Warner Inc. 
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