The exec talks candidly about the effort to mine archives for film and TV projects, weathering an advertising downturn and a commitment to high quality digital video.
You have got to separate what consumers want and what advertisers want, because what we’ve seen on the consumer side is pretty strong demand for print magazines. Print advertising had been in decline — well, it’s actually up for us this year.
We don’t think that it’s a growth business going forward. The vast majority of our readership is on digital rather than print. It’s not true for all brands, and there are brands that have gone out of print and become digital-only brands that have become frankly more successful as digital-only brands — likeHow do you balance the need to have scale and reach through a platform like YouTube versus being able to maximize revenue through your own platforms? YouTube remains a really important platform for us because of the scale of reach that it has. We sell all of our ads on YouTube, so we’re able to sell them at a real premium because we have premium content. So our ad rates on YouTube are considerably higher than what YouTube can charge for their ads on YouTube, because the advertisers know it’s in a brand-safe environment. And then I would add into that, social is becoming a really important distribution area for us in video, whether it’s Instagram or TikTok, where we’re building large audiences. How can you gain a foothold on these new platforms? And how do you stay on top of it, to make sure that you’re you are relevant? TikTok has taken over the world in some respects. We go where audiences expect our brands to be and it’s really clear that TikTok is one of the places that audiences expect to see our brands. And so we’re seeing really, really good success withand other brands on TikTok, but you can’t just say, this is what works on YouTube, let’s put it on TikTok. It is really a different format than what we produce for our websites or for YouTube, and that’s really critical. You need people to understand these platforms, rather than people who just say ‘I’m going to create content and we’re just going to distribute it on all the platforms,’ because that’s not a successful strategy. Condé has iconic, established brands. But over the years, it has also launched new brands [The platform Them launched in 2017], it has acquired brands. Are you thinking of expansion, whether it’s developing new editorial brands or seeking strategic acquisitions? There may be brands that we don’t own that we can look at acquiring, but our bar would be very high. Because there aren’t many brands that are at the stature of our brands. We don’t want to just lower our quality level to say, “We can acquire some audience over here.” That doesn’t really fit into our business model. So we would be quite picky about that. Capabilities are a different area. When I talk about all the areas where we’re investing, we always are looking at, “OK, should we build or should we buy or partner?” And so there could be areas where we look at acquisitions and helping us build capabilities as part of this flywheel that I’m talking about. The tech companies have had disappointing earnings, and folks on the TV side are beginning to prepare for a tougher ad environment. Are you preparing for a potential economic slowdown? Yeah, we, like most companies, are expecting to see a slowdown, and, to a certain extent, we’re seeing it in some aspects of the business. But our biggest advertisers are fashion and luxury houses, and their businesses are very strong. They are not seeing a slowdown. And there are certain markets — like in China, where because of lockdowns, they may have seen a little bit of that, but in general, their businesses are strong, so their advertising business is very strong. So we’re a little bit protected right now in those areas, but in broader-based advertising categories, we’re seeing a bit of slowdown in some of those, and we’re expecting 2023 to be a tougher time. We’re definitely being more cautious in our approach because of that.Photographed By Rick WennerA version of this story first appeared in the Nov. 16 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine.
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