The Romano Factor
John Romano
John Romano’s name is synonymous with “no bull-crap,” “candid,” and “hardcore.” He’s worked tirelessly to build up an ironclad reputation in the fitness industry through his work as senior editor of Muscular Development magazine and co-founder of Rx Muscle (see also: Heavy Muscle Radio and Muscle Girls Inc.). He’s been consulted as a steroid expert on HBO, ESPN, and ABC’s 20/20, as well as the movie Bigger, Stronger, Faster. Most recently, John worked as director of Internet media at VPX (and host of Shotgun Radio). In his spare time, he is a contributing author for countless blogs, magazines, and articles, including authoring the Muscle Meals cookbook.
Print
The Status of Fitness Magazines
The traditional newsstand fitness magazine business is a lie…
If you are going to put an ad in a bodybuilding magazine the first thing you’re going to want to know is how many people read it. Among some of the very top titles in the business the answer to that question is, unfortunately, long winded and mostly not true. If a magazine is claiming it is “number one” the theory being hawked is that an ad in that mag will be seen by more people than any other magazine. But is that true? With a digital campaign, ads can drive sales and those sales can be measured and tracked. Google Analytics has metrics that go down to such a granular level that they can tell you what colour socks are predominantly worn between the 5700 and 5900 blocks of Elm Street—valuable info for marketers of socks.
Bodybuilding magazines are virtually the only publications to sell 50–60 ad pages to the same advertiser every month. This turns a 400-page magazine into a catalogue. The bodybuilding genre virtually sits alone among all other publications in its willingness to sacrifice its credibility in favour of such repetitive “blast” advertising, loosely known as “branding.” The theory is that if you can trumpet your message loud and long enough it will be seen by X number of eyeballs (otherwise known as “impressions”), rendering your product the one to which consumers are drawn when the time comes to address a particular need. The more impressions, the better. Coke and Pepsi are perhaps the two most recognizable branding campaigns, generating trillions of impressions annually. But can any of the billions of dollars these two companies spend on generating these impressions be directly related to a sale? Not a single penny. The value is in the number of eyeballs they reach. The same goes for a bodybuilding or fitness Magazine.
In order for a magazine ad to generate an impression, it has to be seen by an eyeball. In order for the eyes to see it, the magazine has to have circulation —the higher the circulation, the more theoretical impressions. Those circulation numbers are what ad reps use to convince advertisers that the $5,000 per page they are spending represents value because it is generating impressions. It probably is; the question is how many? A magazine could claim that it prints 150,000 magazines and that 17.2 people read each issue each month. Well, “printing” 150,000 doesn’t mean you’re “selling” that many, and the majority of the circulation isn’t dentist office waiting rooms. Yet, ad reps will still make such outlandish claims. Unless the magazine is audited by an independent third party, the circulation numbers it gives out are a self serving fairy tale—if you’re not audited, you have something to hide. The auditing, however, is a double-edged sword. Current trends show that the readership is dwindling in favour of more immediate web content. Why pay $8.00 to see Olympia coverage in December when you can see it while it happens online for free? And, with the advent of the iPad, you can still read all about it in the bathroom. It’s a way better deal.
Oddly, this makes the case for free magazine distribution. “Free” is a very effective means to reach consumers. If the reader can get great photography and quality information and have the advertisers pay for it, then “free” might be the future of fitness magazines. Even so, no magazine—free or not—is going to succeed without combining its printed content with a killer website to engage readers as well as extend measurable services to advertisers, to not only sell their products but also learn the habits of their customers. I used to think the Internet was going to kill print, but now it’s more like print can’t survive without the Internet.
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