MARQ & Denny Hecker: Death Rattle, Part 403.
By Brian Lambert
"So Tom, how surprised were you that the Strib folded MARQ?"
"The surprise to me was that they started it in the first place. It's been risky for all of us who have had to go up against Mpls./St.Paul."
(Knowing Bartel as I do, whenever I hear the velvety patter of flattery in a line like that I immediately anticipate the impact of the other shoe in the booty.) "Burt Cohen [Mpls./St. Paul's publisher emeritus] may be the only publisher in town who knew what he was going for and how to deliver it editorially."
If you're not familiar with MARQ it's probably because you don't live in the "exclusive" zip codes where the Strib delivered it free of charge. Or, if you did live in coughEdinaWayzataOronoDeephavencough you may have received MARQ, quickly leafed through it and realized it was yet another glossy, wholly-information free "lifestyle magazine" fetishizing the conspicuous lifestyle you were already enjoying ... and dropped it into the recycle bin.
As unimpressed as Bartel is with the Strib's newspaper publishing strategy -- he gleefully retells the story of telling some hapless Strib circulation drone that he was cancelling his subscription because of the latest kneejerk inanity from Katherine Kersten -- he makes the argument that the magazine business is much more about publishing, (i.e. crafting a product for a specific audience), than newspapers, and that, "you have to have an editorial idea" beyond just titillating the already wealthy with more objets de luxe, "and the Strib pretty obviously didn't have one."
"I saw research last year," Bartel said, "that showed that these free luxury publications just weren't being read, and that it gets worse the more affluent the household."
As best I can tell the primary appeal of these things is aspirational fantasy on the part of people who really can't afford the luxe lifestyle displayed within. The truly wealthy pretty much have it figured out where to buy their toys and treats.
Bartel and I commiserated on the worsening economy and I floated my line of thinking that even the upper middle-class, (the lowest demographic rung for the MARQs and Metros of the publishing scene) will almost certainly be moving into "necessity only spending" for the next six months and possibly longer. This would seem to pose a perilous situation if the only thing you're offering your readers are apparitions of goods and services they've made a conscious decision to avoid for the time being.
"Yeah," said Bartel, laughing, "the question that crowd is asking themselves is, 'Do I buy more jewelry or pay off my margin call' ."
"Any good magazine, whether its regional like Mpls./St.Paul or national like Vanity Fair knows what its niche is and serves it well."
(The other foot had to be coming .. real soon.)
"Mpls./St.Paul figured out a long time ago how to take care of their advertisers ... "
Finally! The old Bartel jab about us, his long-time competitor, fellating our clients.
"Uh huh, anywhere else you want to go with that one, Tom?"
"No, that's why I paused and just left it there. But what I'm saying is that is never smart business to go up against an established brand that is doing well, that long ago figured out who it was. This just isn't an infinitely expandable market. We were trying to do something a little different with The Rake. We tried to get advertisers via readers, and it didn't work. We found out the problems were still pretty much the same. I probably should have shut it down two years earlier."
Prior to calling Bartel, his wife and business partner, Kris Henning, had said that the one lesson she took away from their experience with The Rake and the prior iterations of their web business was, "to keep it simple."
There are times when the only thing Bartel lacks is a pocket protector. But you can imagine one as he forsees the possibility that the Age of Twitter "could very well make websites obsolete." Bartel's an early adaptor for that stuff. I'm not. So I didn't bore him with my opinion that the 24/7 wireless connected experience strikes me as a little too OCD for comfort. But it isn't hard to see how individual writers and reporters will soon be franchises unto themselves ... if they can SuperSize fries at McDonald's to re-charge their iPhones.
Later Friday came news that Denny Hecker was closing six of his dealerships, a result -- we're told officially -- of his line of credit via Chrysler's privately held Cerebrus financing drying up. (Two things popped immediately to mind on that one. Hecker's dealership operation is big, but why is he the first of his size in the country to begin collapsing? And how much if any of the suddeness of his problems can be linked to Tom Petters?)
The Hecker meltdown is like pulling out bricks at the bottom of a rickety old chimney. His advertising is a very significant portion of what remains of the Strib and PiPress automotive-based revenues. (TV, even national networks, are seeing serious pullbacks in car advertising). It couldn't possibly come at a worse time.
MARQ's demise -- with anxious eyes trained next on the Strib's much lower-cost vita.mn -- cost a half dozen people their jobs. A full Hecker retreat, paired with the inevitable post-Christmas ad slump, presents a miserable scenario for both papers at the stroke of the new year.
"The surprise to me was that they started it in the first place. It's been risky for all of us who have had to go up against Mpls./St.Paul."
(Knowing Bartel as I do, whenever I hear the velvety patter of flattery in a line like that I immediately anticipate the impact of the other shoe in the booty.) "Burt Cohen [Mpls./St. Paul's publisher emeritus] may be the only publisher in town who knew what he was going for and how to deliver it editorially."
If you're not familiar with MARQ it's probably because you don't live in the "exclusive" zip codes where the Strib delivered it free of charge. Or, if you did live in coughEdinaWayzataOronoDeephavencough you may have received MARQ, quickly leafed through it and realized it was yet another glossy, wholly-information free "lifestyle magazine" fetishizing the conspicuous lifestyle you were already enjoying ... and dropped it into the recycle bin.
As unimpressed as Bartel is with the Strib's newspaper publishing strategy -- he gleefully retells the story of telling some hapless Strib circulation drone that he was cancelling his subscription because of the latest kneejerk inanity from Katherine Kersten -- he makes the argument that the magazine business is much more about publishing, (i.e. crafting a product for a specific audience), than newspapers, and that, "you have to have an editorial idea" beyond just titillating the already wealthy with more objets de luxe, "and the Strib pretty obviously didn't have one."
"I saw research last year," Bartel said, "that showed that these free luxury publications just weren't being read, and that it gets worse the more affluent the household."
As best I can tell the primary appeal of these things is aspirational fantasy on the part of people who really can't afford the luxe lifestyle displayed within. The truly wealthy pretty much have it figured out where to buy their toys and treats.
Bartel and I commiserated on the worsening economy and I floated my line of thinking that even the upper middle-class, (the lowest demographic rung for the MARQs and Metros of the publishing scene) will almost certainly be moving into "necessity only spending" for the next six months and possibly longer. This would seem to pose a perilous situation if the only thing you're offering your readers are apparitions of goods and services they've made a conscious decision to avoid for the time being.
"Yeah," said Bartel, laughing, "the question that crowd is asking themselves is, 'Do I buy more jewelry or pay off my margin call' ."
"Any good magazine, whether its regional like Mpls./St.Paul or national like Vanity Fair knows what its niche is and serves it well."
(The other foot had to be coming .. real soon.)
"Mpls./St.Paul figured out a long time ago how to take care of their advertisers ... "
Finally! The old Bartel jab about us, his long-time competitor, fellating our clients.
"Uh huh, anywhere else you want to go with that one, Tom?"
"No, that's why I paused and just left it there. But what I'm saying is that is never smart business to go up against an established brand that is doing well, that long ago figured out who it was. This just isn't an infinitely expandable market. We were trying to do something a little different with The Rake. We tried to get advertisers via readers, and it didn't work. We found out the problems were still pretty much the same. I probably should have shut it down two years earlier."
Prior to calling Bartel, his wife and business partner, Kris Henning, had said that the one lesson she took away from their experience with The Rake and the prior iterations of their web business was, "to keep it simple."
There are times when the only thing Bartel lacks is a pocket protector. But you can imagine one as he forsees the possibility that the Age of Twitter "could very well make websites obsolete." Bartel's an early adaptor for that stuff. I'm not. So I didn't bore him with my opinion that the 24/7 wireless connected experience strikes me as a little too OCD for comfort. But it isn't hard to see how individual writers and reporters will soon be franchises unto themselves ... if they can SuperSize fries at McDonald's to re-charge their iPhones.
Later Friday came news that Denny Hecker was closing six of his dealerships, a result -- we're told officially -- of his line of credit via Chrysler's privately held Cerebrus financing drying up. (Two things popped immediately to mind on that one. Hecker's dealership operation is big, but why is he the first of his size in the country to begin collapsing? And how much if any of the suddeness of his problems can be linked to Tom Petters?)
The Hecker meltdown is like pulling out bricks at the bottom of a rickety old chimney. His advertising is a very significant portion of what remains of the Strib and PiPress automotive-based revenues. (TV, even national networks, are seeing serious pullbacks in car advertising). It couldn't possibly come at a worse time.
MARQ's demise -- with anxious eyes trained next on the Strib's much lower-cost vita.mn -- cost a half dozen people their jobs. A full Hecker retreat, paired with the inevitable post-Christmas ad slump, presents a miserable scenario for both papers at the stroke of the new year.
© 2008 MSP Communications, Inc. All rights reserved
Lambo:
The trend away from ostentation, while apparently not on the radar at the Big Three Automakers, is dead center in the upper climes of the zeitgeist. The NYT has been chronicling of late. I may bode well for my friend, Robert Sullivan, and his upcoming book, "The Thoreau You Don't Know." His promotional blog posits that: "Being Down is In and Being Up is Out"
This is J.P. Morgan's yacht (there's an old B & W on the blog at http://thethoreauyoudontknow.blogspot.com/2008/11/being-down-is-in-and-being-up-is-out.html), as featured in the New York Times, and parked, I would guess, off the old raggedy shore of Manhattan, well before the term luxury condo was born. According to the Times 'Your Money' section, conspicuous consumption is not so cool anymore.
“There’s a shift to get away from glitz,” Ms. Kaufman said. “I’m almost starting to feel that luxury is a dirty word.”
This isn't the first time glitz has gone uncool. The Times notes:
Conspicuous consumption has gone out of style before, in the recession that followed the 1980s stock market boom; and briefly after Sept. 11, 2001, until spending was recast as patriotic. But for a precedent for such a complete about-face in people’s attitudes toward luxury, you would have to look to the Great Depression. In 1932, wary of insulting the vast number of unemployed Americans, J. P. Morgan Jr. kept his 343-foot yacht, Corsair IV, in the boatyard, Ron Chernow wrote in “The House of Morgan.”
Among those who remained solvent in the Depression, there was “a widespread sense that you don’t flaunt your success,” said David E. Kyvig, the author of “Daily Life in the United States, 1920-1940: How Americans Lived Through the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression.”
People laughed at Thoreau and his buddies when, in the 1840s and 1850s, they talked about how some people were racing to build second houses when a lot of people were being kicked out of one. In 1857, when the U.S. economy was crashing, when banks began to fail, the ones that remained solvent suspended currency payments and we headed into what would later be known as the Depression of 1857, Thoreau wrote his friend H.G.O. Blake:
The merchants and company have long laughed at transcendentalism, higher laws, etc., crying ‘None of your moonshine,’ as if they were anchored to something not only definite, but sure and permanent. If there was any institution which was presumed to rest on a solid and secure basis, and more than any other represented this boasted common sense, prudence and practical talent, it was the bank; and now those very banks are found to be mere reeds shaken by the wind. Scarcely one in the land has kept its promise…. Not merely the Brook Farm and Fourierite communities, but now the community generally has failed. But there is the moonshine still, serene, beneficent, and unchanged. Hard times, I say, have this value, among others, that they show us what such promises are worth,—where the sure banks are.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/16/fashion/16consumption.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink
LAMBERT: We are entering an era that is going to challenge the resourcefulness of a culture that has prided itself on resourcefulness, but often defined it as an easy line of credit. If de-glitzing this culture means resources turning toward infrastructure and education instead of Swarovski crystal there will be an upside to shake down.
Posted by: Jim Leinfelder on November 23, 2008 at 4:45 PM
Several Weeks ago the nation's largest Chevrolet dealer (13 stores in the Southeast) closed its doors. Denny closing about half of his stores isn't the first and won't be the last. The car dealership business is as bad as its ever been. Any dealer that is highly leveraged is in trouble.
LAMBERT: I can remember a discussion within the past couple years that the Big three had to figure out a way to drastically reduce the number of franchise dealerships they were working with, but that them doing so proactively meant brutal litigation with their dealer networks. THAT problem will be solved, at least. Now, if they're serious about competing with Honda and Toyota, lets see them lay a 100,000 mile bumper-to-bumper warranty on everything they sell.
Posted by: Rick Ryan on November 23, 2008 at 6:35 PM
They've discovered a way to charge your iPhone on fries? Which app is that?
Sorry, dude, just playin'. I think I get your joke: bloggers love Mcdonalds.
Or maybe you meant, in the future, writers are going to be broke. Wow. Visionary.
Ah, I'm just pulling your ancient leg. You know us hyperactive cyberpunks...we do it all for the LULZ, in 140-characters or less.
LAMBERT: Don't make me come over there.
Posted by: Stevemarsh on November 24, 2008 at 12:31 AM
"And the beat goes on..."
Outside Slows Go
http://www.foliomag.com/2008/outside-slows-go-time-inc-folds-spanish-si
Posted by: jim Leinfelder on November 24, 2008 at 9:32 AM
Changing banks, Anselmo jumping ship, trading law suits like Pokemon cards, looks like the Hecker House of Cars has acquired a "d" and the wind is picking up. Next to go is all the property he's been buying up on credit for the last ten years and his posse will be a one man band. Living the American Dream on other people's money is good while it lasts but the free fall always ends with a thud.
LAMBERT: Although close associates have been assured Petters has nothing to do with Hecker's collapse, I remain intensely skeptical.
Posted by: Rich on November 24, 2008 at 10:13 PM
About MnSpeak and The Rake combining: That's not surprising. Many were skeptical all along about the Bartels' insistence that the two were to be kept separate.
It's disappointing that just about all of the blogosphere's reaction to MnSpeak's changes have been about matters like the new visual format, and some technical aspects. Surprising, because when the Strib's printed version recently underwent a costly and unimpressive visual makeover, everyone howled about what a waste that was, because the Strib's obvious #1 problem was, and is, dramatically declining quality of content. The same is true about MnSpeak -- especially the quality of the readers' comments....which is what makes or breaks a site like MnSpeak. So the current makeover and technical tweaking has been like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
The number and diversity of people commenting has greatly narrowed. Most of those who are still contributing comments, plus the occasional original post, don't have much to say that's interesting, and they tend to be boringly predictable in their commenting patterns.
LAMBERT: I'm not a regular reader of MnSpeak. I've got my own trolls to deal with. But keeping an interactive site fresh isn't easy. We live in a restless age with literally billions of alternatives.
Posted by: Rocky on November 25, 2008 at 4:06 PM
BL - I've got my own trolls to deal with.
Its my birthday today by the way. Big one, ends in a 0. I usually thank, in this order, God, James J. Hill, and Lyndon Johnson for their role in my serendipity.
Things are not so serendipitous lately, as noted. My vacation home in Nininger is on hold again. Damn the luck. (Panic of 1857 joke).
We're getting infrastructure, it seems, and thats wise. We'll skuffle through this year and things will be OK.
LAMBERT: Always the cock-eyed optimist, aren't you 108?
Posted by: 108 on November 25, 2008 at 6:53 PM