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Lynne Segall, THR and Billboard’s publisher/SVP flew from the left coast to claim her honor (she was one of four publishers inducted into min’s Sales Hall of Fame). |
Q&A: Lynne Segall and Janice Min, The Hollywood
Reporter-Billboard Media Group
GUEST BLOG--By Michele Shapiro, Writer, Minonline.com
Recently at min’s Awards for Marketing
& Sales Excellence breakfast, most of the publishing execs who were honored
took the subway, or maybe an Über, to the Yale Club for the event. But Lynne
Segall, THR and Billboard’s publisher/SVP flew from the left coast a day
earlier to claim her honor (she was one of four publishers inducted into min’s
Sales Hall of Fame). Introducing her that morning was Janice Min, co-president
and chief creative officer of both brands.
Min taking the time to be by Segall’s side—on Emmy week
nonetheless—speaks volumes about their close working relationship. It’s clear
from the way they finish the other’s sentences and laugh at each other’s jokes
that they genuinely enjoy one another’s company. When asked what famous couple
best illustrates their relationship, Min is quick to respond. “Brad and
Angelina—the most dazzling and multi-talented pairing in Hollywood,” she says,
before breaking into laughter along with Segall.
Attempting to transform an ailing trade publication that
spent decades trying to play catch up with Variety is no joke, particularly
when it involves uprooting your family and moving them to Los Angeles. As Min
did with Us Weekly, she revived THR, which currently has around 72,000
subscribers including influential players as well as a huge digital footprint (15
million monthly visitors; Billboard, the other publication she oversees, has 13
million). Min wasted no time shutting down the daily and creating a
sought-after and much-discussed weekly with star-caliber covers.
THR‘s blend of lifestyle pieces, news and provocative
features makes it desirable to advertisers both in and outside of the industry.
Which has led to opportunities for Segall and her team that THR‘s former
publishers would never have believed possible. “We’ve had double digit
increases every year in revenue,” she says.
Before hopping a flight back to L.A. to ready themselves for
a weekend of Emmy festivities, Segall and Min sat for an interview in which
they discussed their top priorities and challenges for the year ahead.
min: Janice, you joined THR in July 2010 and Lynn returned
as publisher in 2011. Why at that point did you MinAwardsBreakfast140CJthink it
was the right time to bring her on board?
Janice Min: After doing a crash course in Hollywood quickly,
it became clear I needed a persuasive insider to come on board and lead sales.
Everyone in Hollywood knows Lynne. All businesses are relationship businesses,
but Hollywood in particular is a relationship business. It’s a club. Lynne is
definitely a member of the club. There are legendary stories about how
persistent, persuasive and determined she is as a publisher. Those were things
it was incredibly important to have in order to get the business off the
ground. We developed that spirit quickly on the editorial side, but we needed a
comparable spirit on the business side and she was integral to that.
min: How do you think your personalities complement each
other?
Lynne Segall: When Janice and I first met at the Academy
Awards and I saw what she’d done in terms of reinventing the brand, I
understood her vision. She understood both the lifestyle and business sides of
industry. I could come in and monetize that because I knew how viable it was in
terms of a business.
Min: I respect people in publishing who like and read the
content. Lynne brings a metabolism to the environment that’s akin to mine.
Also, she likes and appreciates news, which is a big part of what we do. The
thing I value in Lynne as a publisher is she’ll absorb the brunt of people who
complain to her about certain stories we do. She doesn’t care. She says, “Gotta
talk to Janice.” That’s a radical shift for anyone who’s worked at a trade.
Because of her love of content, she has a healthy respect for editorial
boundaries.
Segall: I totally know the boundaries. My sales team likes
to complain about certain things. I’m very protective of the content and the
editorial team.
Min: Lynne realizes you lose influence if you do anything
other than the best stories. Our influence in Hollywood has only given her more
tools to sell.
Segall: This week we have hard-hitting story about
Netflix. They’re one of our biggest
clients. It’s fair and balanced. We’re never out do a hatchet job on anyone.
We’re a news organization. That’s what we do.
Min: Lynne and I are fundamentally nice people. There’s a
level of trust to doing business with her. She has no agenda.
min: Given how large THR’s digital footprint is, do you
continue to make the print product a priority, or are you mainly focused on
digital growth?
Min: We find ways to lean into the conversation that’s going
on. We make stories applicable to those not sitting and eating lunch at The
Ivy. Our video presence has exploded this year. There’s a conscious effort. Our
biggest recent success story is that we won a Webby Award for Video. We also
have a TV show on Sundance, “Close Up with The Hollywood Reporter,” that’s now
in its second season; and Facebook Live has been an enormous success for us.
Facebook’s happy with what we’re doing; we’re happy with it, too. When we
decided to go deep into Facebook Live, everyone was on board. We have the
ability to do fun things. Celebrities are constantly dropping by the office.
One day, Jerry Seinfield’s here, another it’s Harvey Weinstein or Amy Schumer.
We’ll include her in a podcast, a print interview, and a Facebook Live chat as
well as a digital interview. We’ve become smarter and faster in many ways.
Segall: When it comes
to our Roundtables [which feature a mix of Hollywood heavyweights both behind
and in front of the camera], we re-edit them several times—once for the
magazine, once for online. Our content is re-purposed and pushed out and we can
sell it in different ways.
Min: We do a lot of this, without radical growth to content
costs, which is ideal. That’s the beauty of digital.
min: Tell us about your most successful events.
MinAwardsBreakfast124CJSegall: We have a lot of power lists.
Min: We have Women in Entertainment. It’s a storied event in
Hollywood. It was immortalized on “Entourage.” It’s one of these moments at the
end of the year that the entire town
shuts down for two hours every year for the breakfast. Everybody is
there. One great thing in THR‘s reinvention is we’ve been able to make franchises more glamorous and
newsworthy. We feel it’s our role to drive the conversation around the moment
in Hollywood. I want to be responsive to the conversation going on in the
world.
min: What’s the conversation about now in Hollywood?
Min: There’s a lot of TV discussion now that Netflix is
potentially the new Google or Apple monopoly that changes the way business is
done in Hollywood. It’s both exciting and terrifying. The sands shift under
people, and the winners will figure out how to make it work. The big fear is what Apple did to music, Netflix
will do to Hollywood.
min: Lynne, what have been your greatest successes in terms
of capturing new business or working with ad partners in the past year?
Segall: THR tends to be very industry; the readers all make
a lot of money. We can generate consumer advertising. In our current issue, we
have Bulgari and other luxury advertisers. We go from B2B to more luxury ads.
Luxury used to be 5% of our advertising. Now it’s 30%. What we have that no one
else has is that awards season is a year-round business. It’s a very
significant business. We met with Amazon and for them it’s important to win
awards. Everybody’s competitive. You have new companies like Amazon and Hulu
coming in. They want an awards halo.
Min: One way to distinguish your show is to get an Emmy.
That can make or break the show.
Segall: On the business side, we’ve been really smart. We’ve
figured out where the veins of gold are. How do we go from industry advertising
to non-industry advertising, whether it’s auto, travel, fashion beauty
advertising? Janice has created Stylist issues. A Beauty issue. We bring in the
brands that wouldn’t normally think about advertising [in a B2B]. Pret a
Reporter is a channel she launched a few years ago. Right now we’re working on
a video campaign with Tiffany’s. There’s a lot of things we’re doing where the
limitation is imagination. We’ve grown several categories that we’ve broken in
the last couple years—airlines, fashion, beauty travel, auto.
Min: You can’t underestimate how important the Hollywood
audience is for luxury. In this Instagram culture we live in, fashion and
beauty trends are emanating out of the west coast as much as off the runways.
Segall: Janice created a city magazine for Hollywood. We
have the Top 25 Realtors in the issue this week. We’re able to go after
categories of business that wouldn’t normally advertise with us. She’s created
an environment where all these companies want to talk to our audience. We live
in a bubble in LA. You can go to any restaurant on any night and it’s packed.
In Southern California, entertainment does drive the economy.
Min: Also, in Hollywood, there’s no self-conscious behavior
around conspicuous consumption, which makes it a perfect market for luxury.
Someone said to me there’s a hushed silence that falls over the town when the
issue arrives.
Segall: The covers are very competitive. People will opt to
go with with a THR cover over, say, Entertainment Weekly because they’ll get on
Jimmy Kimmel or Jimmy Fallon. We have a great PR person.
Min: We are leaders not followers. We became the entertainment
voice that sets agenda for everyone else. That has a lot of value for
advertisers.
min: What are your biggest challenges?
Min: Time and
bandwidth. You have to rely on and trust your lieutenants to do things the way
you want the brand t[o be represented].
Some of that is being able to let go. If something’s important to me,
I’ll take the time to make sure it’s good.
Segall: I’ve worked with a lot of editors. Janice is among
the most talented. She touches everything. She’s so involved with every detail.
Min: For the most part.
min: You’re both working on two publications…
Segall: And she has three kids.
Min: THR is the one I spend the most time on by virtue of
geography. I trust Billboard‘s editorial director. I work on the covers all the
time. I run the editorial meetings at THR; I don’t run them at Billboard. Doing
100% at both would be impossible.
min: Janice, you’ve said, “The things I’ve been able to do
here would be pretty hard to do at a legacy media organization.” Can you
elaborate?
Min: Because the company was sold before I came on, there
were no hangups about the way things have been. It was helpful that the brand
was in such decay, no one cared if it survived or died. It gave me a huge
amount of freedom to rethink, blow it up and put it back together. We have an
owner who doesn’t have that publishing legacy. The new owner’s main interest is
success. There weren’t hangups that this isn’t a THR story, or THR doesn’t
carry Cartier ads. There weren’t hand-wringing off-sites where you figure out
what your future is. We just went in and did it.
Segall: In terms of legacy brands on the business side, my
team used to sell a lot of covers. It was a hard thing to get the sales team
not to sell hard covers. Now we do wafer covers that detach, so you can always
see a cover. There were definitely some business legacy things that we had to
get the sales team to rethink.
min: Lynne, are there ad partnerships of which you’re
particularly proud?
Segall: American Airlines has been the official airline of
THR for two years, and they sponsor several of our tentpole events throughout
the year, including the Toronto Film Festival Video Studio and Oscar Nominees
Reception. They also are the launch
sponsor for the new THR Travel Channel on THR.com with custom city guides in
Q4.
min: What are your top priorities for the brand?
Min: More video. I’m optimistic that the sales side will
find ways to monetize it as the demand is very much out there, and more
television—we’ll have more shows on TV.
Segall: We did a custom-published section on Diversity and
Entertainment with a company called AG Capital. I’d like to do more
custom-published content, more special issues. I think in looking at what the
categories are that we don’t have—wealth management, finance—there’s a lot of
people who want to talk to our audience that we haven’t talked to yet. We have some banking clients, but there’s a
lot of opportunity. It’s actually an event when this magazine comes to people’s
offices.
.
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