SELLING ADVERTISING IS A FLIRTY, tough business way beyond the macho sexiness it was freighted with on Mad Men, which, unironically enough, opened with an establishing shot of the Time & Life Building in midtown. This was where I worked with Mark Ford, who was then the president of Sports Illustrated and sometimes referred to himself in the third person as “the sales donkey”—a bit of self-mockery that underlined rather than undercut his instincts as a salesman. His cell-phone ringtone was Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire,” and he sold his ass off over boardroom tables, rounds of golf and thousands of drinks.
“It’s a relationship business,” he’d say. Or, if he was negotiating, “It’s not my first rodeo.” We’d talk almost every day. Once, on an agency call in Chicago to introduce the iPad edition of SI when all we had was a simulation video and a bunch of jargon about “enhanced usability,” one of the agency guys whom Ford knew well because he ran lots of automotive business interrupted, wanting to know “How much?” Apple hadn’t even released the first iPad yet.
“For what?” Ford said.
“You tell me.”
Ford came up with something he called an “Innovation Partnership.” SI would share iPad research and development for a year and discount a package of advertising pages in the magazine on top of that. The guy cocked his head to suggest he wanted a hard number.
“A million bucks,” Ford said. A glance at me. A cagey smile. He knew everyone in the room. “We’re six months ahead of everyone on this.”
“We can work this out,” the account guy said, and we all went downstairs for some drinks.
TOP EDITORS ALL STRADDLE the line between editorial independence and publishing imperatives to get the money—call it the separation of “church and state” if you want to sound naïve. I went on sales calls whenever I was asked. Getting the editor to show up has always been a hoop some advertisers put magazine publishers through.
I liked the client dinners my various publishers hosted at expensive restaurants. They knew the maître d’s. Good wine in private rooms, with extra waiters. It seemed effortless. Even the lowest sales assistant or advertising associate was eager to pick up checks (to be expensed, of course). This was not true of the SI editors, who always expected me to buy (understandable, but the entitlement was cloying). I would hear editors berate “ad guys”—as they were called everywhere I worked—for not reading every word of their magazines, but so what? Neither did most of the editors.
The publishing side of any editor’s job expanded with the need for new editorial features to sell advertising against: Father’s Day supplements, roundups of new consumer electronic products for your “media room,” and guides to the best places to stay or eat or whatever. To resist was professional suicide, but when editors came through with a new idea, most publishers were deferential and grateful—a posture that has stiffened in the current era of editorial-looking “native” advertising, when what used to be called “advertorials” are sold as “premium content.” I don’t mean Innovation Partnerships that take advantage of new technology; I mean advertiser-approved marketing material disguised as journalism—like joke taxidermy.
It takes great determination to sell advertising—print, digital or a combination—whether it’s advertorial or not. There’s a constant rate negotiation. Rate cards based on circulation and traffic, with their printed CPMs (cost for every thousand customers), are just a place to start. Advertising clients and their advertising agencies push back on everything.
Every publisher I worked with had a compulsive work ethic. They ordered up market analyses and demographic studies and constantly refined their presentations to appeal to whomever they were calling on that day—and then negotiated like wolverines. Some might dispute this, but selling a $350,000 page required more than getting one-on-one with a client with an ounce of coke, a fifth of Cuervo Gold and a couple of Rolling Stones tickets.
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