Mr. Magazine

“I believe magazines will always be there and being strong financially and being a decent size, but not too big gives some companies an advantage in the marketplace… I think trying to figure out this business and what works is challenging and exciting. Putting together a nice group of folks, along with some good strong content, whether it’s editorial or art, and finding out this really helps sales is exciting.” Nick Singh

Withstanding disruption and looking at innovative techniques to move print forward in a digital age is something that Engaged Media is proficient at, especially with Nick Singh at the helm. Nick is President of Engaged Media and his 20-plus years of publishing-industry experience, combined with exemplary leadership skills have driven EM’s continued expansion during unprecedented change in the print-magazine industry over the past decade.

Nick has led EM’s continued expansion globally, increasing EM’s presence in the United States, India and the Philippines over the past 3 years. His primary focuses on leadership development, operational excellence and providing his organization with a clear and concise vision have led to consistent market-share gains for EM.

I spoke with Nick recently about the ever-changing landscape of the magazine media world. From newsstand to distribution, his thoughts were concise and bulleted toward a profitable future for Engaged Media and spot-on advice for the magazine industry at large.

From the gamut of titles that his brand covers, we discussed where the ideas for all the different subject matter came from and if there were any topics Engaged Media shied away from. It was a very compelling conversation.

So, I hope you enjoy this revealing and interesting discussion as I picked the brain of yet another innovative and creative magazine maker of our time and learned quite a bit about the scope and reach of a brand that knows few boundaries as it strives for excellence and expertise in its continued success. Get ready for the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Nick Singh, President, Engaged Media Inc.

But first, the sound-bites:

On the genesis of Engaged Media and how the company separated from its relative, Beckett Media: Long story short, this one owner stepped in and he owns about 30 other companies, non-publishing for the most part, insurance and healthcare, coding and other areas, and he acquired both Beckett and us, we were basically one company. In 2008, we learned how to turn it around as fast as we could because we had to, no more leverage from the banks. So, in 2012 we separated the companies into two different companies because the Beckett model is a very successful model, but it’s in sports collectables.

On whether he thinks the pendulum is swinging back toward making money at the newsstands: We’ve been doing OK; it’s just that last year when Source shut down was probably the biggest hit because there are inefficiencies. I think people are being optimists and I try to stay middle-of-the-road and as close to reality as possible.

On whether he believes the single-copy sales and distribution model should be reinvented: It isn’t a profitable business model for some publishers to be on newsstand, and yet for others like us and our competitors in our segment; we do rely heavily on newsstand. We also do high quality, high-priced items and that means a lot to us, but not everybody has the same business model, so something has to change, yes. And there has to be better efficiencies and a new model. What that is; we don’t know.

On his thoughts on the rising cover prices of bookazines and where he sees the trend heading: Right now we see some $12.99’s working, at least in our categories and from a competitive perspective, we see some folks doing some nice magazines at $9.99. We’re testing some $12.99’s and we’ve been doing $9.99’s for a while. The $12.99’s seem to work, even in Wal-Mart where they try to be the low price leader. I don’t know where this trend will go, what sort of price limitations or ceiling there will be, if any.

On the most pleasant moment he’s had during his career at Engaged Media Inc.: Growing newsstand has been very pleasant for us and growing profitability has also been very pleasant. Since 2012 to 2015 we’ve been able to grow, and not just newsstand, but also with a good editorial team and a good art design team. I think that’s been very pleasant for us, just this level of growth.

On the major stumbling block he’s had to face and how he overcame it: Changing our business model. I think working with our partners; working closely with a lot of our partners and meeting mutually on what works and what doesn’t. The old way that we used to do business was get copies out everywhere and anywhere, where now we kind of selectively pick and choose where we want to be, there are certain chains that we don’t pick or certain areas geographically because we don’t find them profitable.

On the gamut of topics Engaged Media publishes and if there’s one category they won’t touch: Probably the broader entertainment categories; we’ve tried. We’ve dipped into many categories and there are two or three that we might touch, but our secret sauce so to speak is getting quality people and quality editorial and we’ve done some things without quality editorial and we’ve learned. So we will not touch things that we don’t have the expertise in.

On whether or not he has a favorite title from his broad stable of magazines: That’s a great question. No favorites from my side. Our editors of course do and the newsstand team, I’m sure they do as well, and our ad sales team. Our digital online team probably does too, based on which ones are performing the best. But no, I don’t have any favorites in particular.

On what makes him click and tick and motivates him to get out of bed in the mornings: I believe magazines will always be there and being strong financially and being a decent size, but not too big gives some companies an advantage in the marketplace. It’s not easy; I think it’s challenging and that makes it fun. I think trying to figure out this business and what works is challenging and exciting. Putting together a nice group of folks, along with some good strong content, whether it’s editorial or art, and finding out this really helps sales is exciting.

On whether he can ever envision a day where Engaged Media has no print publications: No, I cannot.

On the future of print for Engaged Media: I think the future of print for us is if we’re 95% print today, I would love to see our print growing slightly in the new categories as needed, specific categories that we do have some expertise in and that we think we can do better, faster and cheaper than some other folks, it would be a market share flag and it would be surviving the newsstand.

On how involved he is with the actual ideas for the magazines’ subject matter: We have a very good team, it’s not just me or about me. We facilitate good thinkers, people who are always creative and out there and we get plenty of ideas from these folks. And we put it through the test; whether it’s from our customers, from advertising, from retailers or wholesalers or national distributors; we kick around a lot of ideas. There’s no “one” place where they come from; our advertising sales reps, our editorial team and our newsstand team are all very, very strong.

On what keeps him up at night: Declining margins. (Laughs) If our partners aren’t profitable, then we’re not going to be profitable. I’d love to see this industry turn around or at least stabilize somewhat. I think that’s what keeps me up at night.

And now the lightly edited transcript of the Mr. Magazine™ conversation with Nick Singh, President, Engaged Media Inc.

Samir Husni: You’re one of the bigger players, especially on the newsstands when it comes to single-copy sales, yet you’re one of the best-kept secrets in the industry. Tell me a little about the genesis of Engaged Media and how you moved from Beckett Media and all the sports collecting magazines under that umbrella to the world of Engaged Media and the many titles that you have now.

Nick Singh: We do try to stay below the radar and fortunately we’re able to test a lot of issues and we do a lot of category analysis. We have an international team; we have roughly around 100 employees, 45 or so here in the U.S. and 45 abroad, from the Philippines to India, from our parent company. So we do have decent backing by a private owner who owns about 30 companies.

Engaged Media started roughly about 10 years ago, even though we didn’t use the name Engaged Media then. We purchased or acquired Beckett Media and about three other companies in southern California. Beckett was and still is in Dallas and we’re in southern California with the acquisition of a few small publishers.

A few of us came from Primedia or TEN – the Enthusiast Network or Source Publishing, whatever you might want to call them today; I still have a lot of friends there. So, about ten years ago we came into this company and it was in a lot of debt. We learned our lessons quite a bit and our new owner; I call him new, but he’s seven years new now, I’ve been here for 10 years running a couple of departments, production and circulation, with the new owner in 2008, because we were in high debt and heavily leveraged, when the market crashed we had to learn how to stand on our two feet and become cash flow positive and get rid of the debt somehow.

Long story short, this one owner stepped in and he owns about 30 other companies, non-publishing for the most part, insurance and healthcare, coding and other areas, and he acquired both Beckett and us, we were basically one company. In 2008, we learned how to turn it around as fast as we could because we had to, no more leverage from the banks.

So, in 2012 we separated the companies into two different companies because the Beckett model is a very successful model, but it’s in sports collectables. It was a great brand and still is and Beckett.com is a good revenue stream and a great business model. It’s a completely different business model from our enthusiast publication side where we have Diesel World, Gun World, hunting magazines with some survivalist elements that seem to be working right now, like American Survival Guide. And we have the Homes category, with Cottages & Bungalows, Romantic Homes and these niche titles that did not fit into the Beckett model, so we’re roughly 90 to 95% of the print business, that’s if we combine the two companies.

But as we separated, we learned quite a few lessons. We learned that using newsstands as 60% of our revenues and then ad sales, subscriptions and the very small digital, which has grown pretty fast, but it’s still only about 1 to 2 % of our total revenue, so we think that there’s a lot of upside in digital. We still learned that on newsstand, we can make a profit if it’s done correctly, but also, if not done correctly, we could lose a lot of money. It’s a high-risk, high-reward business for us. The good thing about newsstand is we can pull out whenever we want; there’s no sub-liability with long-term sub-liabilities or advertisers. It’s not advertising-based-strong like our core publications are in the automotive and outdoor segments. So, it allows us to test a lot of things.

Now we realize that there are many challenges. (Laughs) Last year we took the chance and decided to grow revenues and market shares in newsstand and we were able to fortunately move up to, I’m guessing the top 13 or 14 publishers in newsstand in the country or North America, but with that comes a huge price because when Source shut down our margins tightened up quite a bit. And then TNG (formerly The News Group) picked up a lot of businesses and we’re great partners with TNG, but it’s costing us a lot more. Our revenues are up again this year, hopefully the margins are getting better, but right now they’re tightened for sure. And that’s where we are today.

Samir Husni: Do you think the pendulum is swinging back towards not only hope for the newsstands, but also toward the thinking that there is actual money to be made there?

Nick Singh: We’ve been doing OK; it’s just that last year when Source shut down was probably the biggest hit because there are inefficiencies. I think people are being optimists and I try to stay middle-of-the-road and as close to reality as possible.

Many of the things that we did to grow our revenues, many of those specials, maybe if we did 100 specials; I would say that 50 of them didn’t work; it was probably our worse success rate. The good thing is we’ll never do those 50 again, the 50%.

We’re hearing everything with distribution has been fixed, but looking at Q4 and Q1, efficiencies are still low and the wholesaler wants to charge for efficiencies, but if we were to turn it around the other way and say, hey Mr. and Mrs. Wholesaler, why don’t you completely take over the distribution and increase the efficiencies, but if you lose sell or revenues or lose efficiencies, then maybe you should be responsible for it, right? I don’t see that happening and I don’t think anybody wants to be responsible for that efficiency, although the charges were inefficient. I still inefficiency so far; I haven’t seen any actual numbers that prove that it’s getting better.

Samir Husni: With all the changes that have taken place in our industry from the demise of the Mom and Pop wholesalers to the national distributors becoming just two or three major players and the wholesalers maybe two major players; do you think it’s time to reinvent the single-copy sales and distribution model? Do we need that multifaceted distribution channel?

Nick Singh: I don’t think so. I think yes, we need to change and become more efficient; 21 days to get on sale is a long time and that hasn’t changed since I started in the business in the 1990s. I’ve been doing this for 20-something years and I know you’ve been even longer, since the 1970s. And it still takes 21 days to get on sale.

It isn’t a profitable business model for some publishers to be on newsstand, and yet for others like us and our competitors in our segment; we do rely heavily on newsstand. We also do high quality, high-priced items and that means a lot to us, but not everybody has the same business model, so something has to change, yes. And there has to be better efficiencies and a new model. What that is; we don’t know.

Samir Husni: I’ve noticed also that the cover prices have risen, especially with the so-called bookazines. When we hit $7.99 we were sure people wouldn’t go for that. And then $9.99, now it’s $11.99 and recently I bought some for $13.99. Where do you see the red light being erected; the point where you decide people are just not going to pay $15 for a bookazine?

Nick Singh: Right now we see some $12.99’s working, at least in our categories and from a competitive perspective, we see some folks doing some nice magazines at $9.99. We’re testing some $12.99’s and we’ve been doing $9.99’s for a while. The $12.99’s seem to work, even in Wal-Mart where they try to be the low price leader. I don’t know where this trend will go, what sort of price limitations or ceiling there will be, if any. We haven’t tested anything at $14.99 or $15.99. We think these work pretty well in the bookstores, but not in the other classes of trade so far.

Samir Husni: Since you became president of Engaged Media Inc., what has been the most pleasant moment that you’ve had in your career and why?

Nick Singh: Growing newsstand has been very pleasant for us and growing profitability has also been very pleasant. Since 2012 to 2015 we’ve been able to grow, and not just newsstand, but also with a good editorial team and a good art design team. I think that’s been very pleasant for us, just this level of growth.

So for us it’s a little bit of a different strategy than maybe other folks because of the growth we’ve seen three years in a row, roughly a 20 to 25% growth rate. Next year, let’s hope that we can sustain that. But what’s really going to make a big difference for us, and the pleasantry may be over, is if the same level of margins aren’t there. Then we’d have to look at other avenues like digital and all those things. But I’m not sure if anybody’s got that figured out yet. My most pleasant moment has been growing newsstand and growing a good company.

Samir Husni: What has been the major stumbling block that you’ve had to face and how did you overcome it?

Nick Singh: Changing our business model. I think working with our partners; working closely with a lot of our partners and meeting mutually on what works and what doesn’t. The old way that we used to do business was get copies out everywhere and anywhere, where now we kind of selectively pick and choose where we want to be, there are certain chains that we don’t pick or certain areas geographically because we don’t find them profitable.

I think that’s been the best change in our business model, even with our subscription base. We don’t go after new subscriptions if it doesn’t make any sense. We don’t do rate-based; we’re a direct response advertiser, so it’s all about if they’re getting direct responses and phone calls to increase our advertiser’s businesses. We like the return-on-investment strategy for us and for our customers at the same time.

Samir Husni: You have quite the stable of magazines. You can go from Flea Market Décor to Young for Kids to Knife Illustrated to Gun World to American Homesteader and then to Fantasy Football; you really run the gamut of topics. Is there one category where you said no, we won’t touch that one?

Nick Singh: Probably the broader entertainment categories; we’ve tried. We’ve dipped into many categories and there are two or three that we might touch, but our secret sauce so to speak is getting quality people and quality editorial and we’ve done some things without quality editorial and we’ve learned. So we will not touch things that we don’t have the expertise in.

Samir Husni: Do you have any favorites from all of the titles that you put out? Would you say this is my firstborn or that you treat all your children equally?

Nick Singh: (Laughs) That’s a great question. No favorites from my side. Our editors of course do and the newsstand team, I’m sure they do as well, and our ad sales team. Our digital online team probably does too, based on which ones are performing the best. But no, I don’t have any favorites in particular.

Samir Husni: If someone dropped in on you at home and you were sitting down with a magazine and relaxing, which one would it be?

Nick Singh: I just walked into an acquisition meeting recently with probably my favorite magazine right now and that’s Fantasy Football.

Samir Husni: I just finished a new book called Inside the Great Minds of Magazine Makers and now I want to get inside your mind, so what makes Nick click and tick and motivates you to get out of bed each morning and say this is going to be a great day?

Nick Singh: I think seeing a couple of new business models that I won’t go into detail about right now, but that we think could be a way out of this thing; it’s mixing in the print magazine, digital and some online assets, whether it’s e-commerce business or other content management businesses, is exciting and motivational.

I believe magazines will always be there and being strong financially and being a decent size, but not too big gives some companies an advantage in the marketplace. It’s not easy; I think it’s challenging and that makes it fun. I think trying to figure out this business and what works is challenging and exciting. Putting together a nice group of folks, along with some good strong content, whether it’s editorial or art, and finding out this really helps sales is exciting.

I don’t think this business will be the same in four or five years and that excites me every day because what do we do? Do we walk out and leave or do we keep improving and doing things better, faster and cheaper? And I think of course the latter is the answer. So that excites me every day, just trying to figure this thing out.

Samir Husni: Can you ever envision a day where Engaged Media has no print publications?

Nich Singh: No, I cannot.

Samir Husni: What do you believe is the future of print for your company?

Nick Singh: I think the future of print for us is if we’re 95% print today, I would love to see our print growing slightly in the new categories as needed, specific categories that we do have some expertise in and that we think we can do better, faster and cheaper than some other folks, it would be a market share flag and it would be surviving the newsstand. I don’t think there will be as many players in five years, but I would like to see that revenue share be more mixed and diverse to probably 50% print.

Samir Husni: How involved are you with bringing in actual ideas to the team? For example, when I look at one of your newest magazines Bugout, or Go Gluten Free or Low Sugar Living; how involved are you in suggesting those trends or ideas? Do you wake up at night and say we should do a magazine about that?

Nick Singh: We have a very good team, it’s not just me or about me. We facilitate good thinkers, people who are always creative and out there and we get plenty of ideas from these folks. And we put it through the test; whether it’s from our customers, from advertising, from retailers or wholesalers or national distributors; we kick around a lot of ideas. There’s no “one” place where they come from; our advertising sales reps, our editorial team and our newsstand team are all very, very strong. We have somebody with 30 years of experience on our newsstand team, Gus Alonzo.

We have ideas coming from everywhere. And what we do is shut down a lot of the ideas or we keep them alive if we think they have legs. We have a few more of that hasn’t been done or somebody is doing it, but we don‘t think they’re doing it well enough in new categories.

So, we measure it and we look out. Bugout was a no-brainer that came from a lot of our advertisers; it’s kind of survivalist-meets-automotive, which makes a lot of sense. We’ll see where that one goes. We keep testing the ones that make a lot of sense to us, but there’s still a lot of risk involved, if we’re able to take the risk and currently we are able to manage risk OK, I would say.

Samir Husni: If I wanted to describe you in one word, would it be Victorian, Romantic or American; I’m just looking at some of the different titles of the magazines that you have. Or would it be Maximum Drive? What word defines Nick?

Nick Singh: Enthusiast.

Samir Husni: My typical last question; what keeps you up at night?

Nick Singh: Declining margins. (Laughs) If our partners aren’t profitable, then we’re not going to be profitable. I’d love to see this industry turn around or at least stabilize somewhat. I think that’s what keeps me up at night.

Samir Husni: Thank you.

“One of the things on one post-it is “create addiction.” And every time I look at content, because my editors will show me and get my opinion or they’ll show me the finished feature; I’ll look at it and ask myself does this piece create addiction or why would someone want to read more? Or would I want to read more next month? So, that’s one of the messages and if the answer is no, it doesn’t create addiction or that it’s boring; we won’t run it. We don’t run things just to run them. It has to have that special spark.” Ana Ureña (on her use of post-it-notes for inspiration)

In a series of Mr. Magazine™ Interviews I’ll be speaking with some of the editors, publishers, CEOs of different magazines and magazine media companies overseas. The first of these interviews is with the editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan Spain, Ana Ureña. Ana joined the magazine in December 2014 and is an open and entertaining person with firm ideas of how to create and maintain that special spark she believes Cosmopolitan the brand has always had.

Ana’s contention is that Cosmo the brand speaks to all women, from all walks of life and from each and every country of the world. Therefore the content must be translatable to all, from the U.S. to Spain and everything in between and all around.

Our conversation was fun-filled and totally free-spirited, and focused in part on the empowerment of women, something that Ana feels is the most important role Cosmo plays in its audience’s lives. Creating enrichment and positivity with readers using a page-by-page value check is something that she strongly believes in.

Through creativity, such as the Cosmo Pose hashtag promotion she came up with for readers to send in their own Cosmo Power Pose, Ana is bringing fun and vitality to the Spanish arm of the brand.

So, I hope you enjoy this internationally-flavored Mr. Magazine™ interview with a young woman who knows what she wants out of life and is determined to help her readers find their own strength and focus along the way – a conversation with Ana Ureña, Editor-In-Chief, Cosmo Spain.

But first, the sound-bites:

On the difference between Cosmo Spain and its American counterpart: Right now, nothing. (Laughs) No, I’m kidding. I’m a very big fan of the American Cosmo and when I first started at Cosmo in Spain, I did think there was a lot of content that we were missing out on and weren’t using in the same way they were in the American edition. I think that Cosmo as a brand talks to all women, so you could take any content from any Cosmo and it would translate into any country, that’s the beautiful thing about the magazine, because it speaks to all women about women issues and challenges. And it does it in a really fun and happy way.

On using her post-it-note inspiration system: When you came over a couple of months ago a lot of the things that you said about “common sense” really hit home and I didn’t want to forget what I’d learned, so I thought why not put it on a post-it and put it up on the board where I could see it every day when I went into the office and make those points of interest my own.

On the creation of the hashtag Cosmo Pose: When I first walked into the offices I started looking at all the Cosmo covers that had been published over the years in many editions, not just the Spanish one. And I noticed that most of the girls on the covers were in a special pose where they had their hands on their hips, either one or both. And I thought wow; almost all of them are doing that on every cover. I didn’t know why, but I thought it was a fun and interesting concept.

On her newspaper background and whether she has found any difference between newspapers and magazines: Well, the only difference is in newspapers we used to do everything more quickly. (Laughs) The magazine is a monthly so we have more time to think about things. But I think the approach for me is still the same because you still have to think of interesting stories to tell and stories you think the readers are going to want to read and that’s going to enrich their lives.

On the balance between Cosmo Spain’s digital and print presence: I’ve always had Twitter and that’s always been there, that hasn’t changed. So, when I was at the newspaper, I used to Tweet every day about what I was thinking, which was always so interesting. (Laughs) But I have never stopped using Twitter.

On the major stumbling block she’s had to face: The biggest challenge for me has been the lack of time because you never have enough time to finish everything you have to do. When I was working for the newspaper I was working from home because I was freelancing. I could work at 2:00 a.m. in my pajamas, no problem, but here I have to be in the office and I can’t be in the office in my pajamas at 2:00 a.m. because people would think that I’m a crazy lady, so I have to get things done within the work hours.

On her most pleasant moment: My most pleasant moment has definitely been interacting with the readers because they reach out and that’s never happened before. I can tell that they’re reading the magazine; I can tell that they’re reading the website or whatever aspect of Cosmo they’re interested in.

On whether or not the magazine would be transformed into herself if she struck it with a magic wand: No, it would definitely be the whole team. One of the issues that I have personally with magazines is it’s not good if the magazine becomes the editor. The magazine has to be a magazine, it’s the brand. And the brand is Cosmo, it’s definitely not me. But if course I bring a little bit of me to the magazine, but there’s a little bit of me, a little bit of the art director, of the features editor; a little bit of all of us. And that’s what makes it Cosmo.

On what keeps her up at night: I’m usually a really good sleeper. I’m usually so tired by the end of the day that I just knockout and go to sleep. Maybe the problems of the world bother me, but definitely not my job because it’s something that I really like and enjoy.

And now the lightly edited transcript of the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Ana Ureña, Editor-In-Chief, Cosmopolitan Spain.

Samir Husni: You’re the editor of Cosmopolitan in Madrid, Spain. And you have an American and Spanish background. What would you say is the biggest difference between the American Cosmo and the Spanish Cosmo?

Ana Ureña: Right now, nothing. (Laughs) No, I’m kidding. I’m a very big fan of the American Cosmo and when I first started at Cosmo in Spain, I did think there was a lot of content that we were missing out on and weren’t using in the same way they were in the American edition. I think that Cosmo as a brand talks to all women, so you could take any content from any Cosmo and it would translate into any country, that’s the beautiful thing about the magazine, because it speaks to all women about women issues and challenges. And it does it in a really fun and happy way.

When I first started looking at the Spanish Cosmo, it had lost a little bit of its spark, but I found that the American one was filled with a lot of spark and fun and obviously, it’s about that fun, fearless woman. And I think that’s the DNA of the magazine. So, we’re trying to bring all of that excitement and fun back into the Spanish edition.

Samir Husni: Can you tell me a little bit about your philosophy as an editor? I understand that you use post-it-notes for inspiration?

Ana Ureña: I do. As a matter of fact, when you spoke in Spain few months ago a lot of the things that you said about “common sense” really hit home and I didn’t want to forget what I’d learned, so I thought why not put it on a post-it and put it up on the board where I could see it every day when I went into the office and make those points of interest my own.

One of the things on one post-it is “create addiction.” And every time I look at content, because my editors will show me and get my opinion or they’ll show me the finished feature; I’ll look at it and ask myself does this piece create addiction or why would someone want to read more? Or would I want to read more next month? So, that’s one of the messages and if the answer is no, it doesn’t create addiction or that it’s boring; we won’t run it. We don’t run things just to run them. It has to have that special spark.

Another post-it message is “does it make me feel better?” I always want positive articles in the magazine; I don’t want anything negative or anything that would make the reader feel bad about herself when she sees it or when she reads it.

And I also ask myself would I spend money on this magazine to read its content or can I find it on Google for free? And if the answer is that I can find it on Google for free, we don’t run it because there’s no point. We’re not helping the reader at all.

And the last post-it is “what is the takeaway value for the reader?” Every page has to have takeaway value for our reader. They have to learn something new on every page. Even the contents page, I don’t care, every page has to have something. Maybe a small link to something, or a quote of someone famous or a tip for the day; it just has to have something. The thing about Cosmopolitan, at least for the Spanish edition, is it has two different ways to read it. They can read it very quickly by just reading the titles or the bullet points or they can read it slowly and take in the meat of every article and really enjoy the experience.

Samir Husni: Since you became editor in December 2014, you’ve been introducing even more new and fun things for your audience; for example, I noticed that you have the hashtag Cosmo Pose. Tell me a little bit about that and how you’re putting that into practice.

Ana Ureña: When I first walked into the offices I started looking at all the Cosmo covers that had been published over the years in many editions, not just the Spanish one. And I noticed that most of the girls on the covers were in a special pose where they had their hands on their hips, either one or both. And I thought wow; almost all of them are doing that on every cover. I didn’t know why, but I thought it was a fun and interesting concept.

Then when I was reading a book about body language, there was one pose in the book called the power pose and it was exactly the same as the Cosmo Pose. If you stand with your hands on your hips and you feel powerful, right? The author was saying if you have a job interview, for example, and you’re nervous, go into the bathroom and stand in front of the mirror and do the power pose for a count of 20 and you’ll be able to ace your interview because by doing that pose you’ll begin to feel more powerful.

And I knew that was also the Cosmo Pose and I thought what a great way to empower women; if they practice every morning just doing the Cosmo Pose they will feel better about themselves, which is what Cosmo is all about.

So I started a hashtag called Cosmos Pose and I was encouraging girls to either send us or upload to Instagram or Twitter their Cosmo Poses so we could show the best of our Cosmo communities. I’m hoping people will really get into this and start sending them in because we’re turning 25 this year and we want to do something big with all the Cosmo Poses at the end of the year, like a composite, just something fun.

Samir Husni: My understanding is for the next issue you’re actually giving away a Selfie Stick for someone to use to take their Cosmo Pose?

Ana Ureña: That’s right because sometimes it’s hard to take a selfie of a Cosmo Pose because it’s a very close-up shot and you can’t get your whole body in the picture. But with a Selfie Stick you can actually take a longer distance shot by yourself; you don’t need any help. And you can take the picture and send it to us.

Samir Husni: You came from a newspaper background; how did you make the switch from newspapers to magazines and as a journalist, are you finding any difference between the two?

Ana Ureña: Well, the only difference is in newspapers we used to do everything more quickly. (Laughs) The magazine is a monthly so we have more time to think about things. But I think the approach for me is still the same because you still have to think of interesting stories to tell and stories you think the readers are going to want to read and that’s going to enrich their lives.

When I was in newspapers I used to do a lot of fashion and lifestyle, obviously, but I always used to try and get a human angle to it or something that would pull a reader in. And that’s something that we try to do in Cosmo as well. When we tell a story we always want it to be something with a human side.

Samir Husni: In this digital age where you feel that you have to be in contact with your readers on a second-by-second basis; how are you balancing between your digital presence and your print presence?

Ana Ureña: I’ve always had Twitter and that’s always been there, that hasn’t changed. So, when I was at the newspaper, I used to Tweet every day about what I was thinking, which was always so interesting. (Laughs) But I have never stopped using Twitter. So, the Twitter feed remains a constant and also the Instagram feed.

Samir Husni: What has been the major stumbling block that you’ve had to face since you became editor of Cosmopolitan and how did you overcome it?

Ana Ureña: The biggest challenge for me has been the lack of time because you never have enough time to finish everything you have to do. When I was working for the newspaper I was working from home because I was freelancing. I could work at 2:00 a.m. in my pajamas, no problem, but here I have to be in the office and I can’t be in the office in my pajamas at 2:00 a.m. because people would think that I’m a crazy lady, so I have to get things done within the work hours. And the things that I can take home, I do. But there are some things that I’m still struggling with to get done.

Samir Husni: And what has been your most pleasant moment since you became editor?

Ana Ureña: My most pleasant moment has definitely been interacting with the readers because they reach out and that’s never happened before. I can tell that they’re reading the magazine; I can tell that they’re reading the website or whatever aspect of Cosmo they’re interested in. They ask questions and they reach out to you and that means that someone is out there and someone is listening.

Samir Husni: If I gave you a magic wand that you could strike the magazine with and it would immediately transform itself into a human being, who would that be, Ana?

Ana Ureña: (Laughs) No, it would definitely be the whole team. One of the issues that I have personally with magazines is it’s not good if the magazine becomes the editor. The magazine has to be a magazine, it’s the brand. And the brand is Cosmo, it’s definitely not me. But if course I bring a little bit of me to the magazine, but there’s a little bit of me, a little bit of the art director, of the features editor; a little bit of all of us. And that’s what makes it Cosmo.

Samir Husni: Do you have to be a Cosmo person to work at Cosmo?

Ana Ureña: Definitely. (Laughs) I was a Cosmo girl before I came here. I just realized it.

Samir Husni: What motivates you to get out of bed in the mornings and say it’s going to be a great day?

Ana Ureña: Coffee. (Laughs) Strong coffee.

Samir Husni: (Laughs too) What makes Ana click and tick and gives you that energy from within?

Ana Ureña: I am constantly wondering what’s going to come at me today; the surprise element and I love that. Every day is different.

Samir Husni: My typical last question; what keeps you up at night?

Ana Ureña: (Laughs) I’m usually a really good sleeper. I’m usually so tired by the end of the day that I just knockout and go to sleep. Maybe the problems of the world bother me, but definitely not my job because it’s something that I really like and enjoy.

Samir Husni: Thank you.

And Back In The U.S.A….

Take note of the differences between the two July covers of the American version of Cosmopolitan – one for subscribers and one for the newsstands.

This isn’t the first time a magazine changes the word “sex” that appears on the newsstand edition to the word “fun” or “love” on the subscription cover. Cosmo is taking a page from its sister publication Redbook which used that approach for years a while back.

The newsstands’ cover reads, “WILD SUMMER SEX 8 Surprise Moves From Foreplay to Fireworks!”

The subscribers’cover reads, “WILD SUMMER FUN 8 Surprise Moves for Hotter Date Nights!”

Gone are the SEX, the foreplay and the fireworks.

So my simple question, what gives? You be the judge and let me know what you think…

“Given what our print circulation is right now and the revenue that comes from it, which to me suggests that there is an audience who wants it, I don’t think it’s anytime soon. My biggest concern is the post office problems at this point. (Laughs) It’s not the audience; we have the audience. We’re doing really well with renewal rates and like I said, I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that we have this dialogue with the consumer that lets us give them what they want.” Scott Omelianuk (on if he can ever envision This Old House without the print component)

From television to print, from digital to an all-new Spanish-speaking television show; This Old House has been binding its many platforms together almost from the beginning to bring its audience the best of what the brand has to offer. The renovation champion of the space is one legacy brand that knows how to adapt to change while continuing to provide outstanding content on each and every platform it masters.

Scott Omelianuk is editor-in-chief of This Old House brand and is a man who knows his way around a hammer himself, since he was working after school as a carpenter’s gopher at the age of 15. I spoke with Scott recently and we talked about the brand in all of its many formats. From the print product to the new TheSnug.com, the mobile-first site that was built on a next generation digital publishing platform, that delivers premium, highly functional sites with sophisticated community participation and native advertising built in, the brand is moving forward to grow its audience with the latest technology and quality print content possible.

TheSnug.com is the first independent website developed by Time Inc. to appeal to millennials and is projected to have a combined social reach of more than 30 million across its partners. It will be driven by community participation and syndicated content with original content, including video, being rolled out in the near future.

It’s an exciting time for This Old House and an exciting time for its Editor-In-Chief, Scott Omelianuk. So I hope you enjoy this interesting interview and if you feel the urge to redo a room in your house, grab a copy of This Old House, I’m sure you’ll find all the help you need between its covers.

But first, the sound-bites:

On whether he’s seeing a change in his audience for the better or worse: Overall our audience has grown pretty significantly over the last couple of years. I’d like to verify these numbers before I actually commit to them of course, but I think MRI put the print audience at 6.6 million and our television audience is up a little bit; our digital audience is growing, particularly on mobile obviously. And the new things that we’ve done have also grown the audience.

On any duplication of the brand’s print and digital audience: Yes, there definitely is and we’ve made a significant effort to do value-added content digitally, things that we can’t get in the print pages, everything from more photos of a house, which we might also include in our tablet edition, to downloadable or printable templates to help with a craft or a DIY project.

On reaching a new audience with a legacy brand like This Old House without removing the word “old” from the title: We’re reaching out with new efforts such as The Snug.com, which is looking at a younger audience and in this case, a female millennial audience, showing them content that comes from This Old House as well as other places, but essentially stripped of its legacy branding. Say, the byline is This Old House, but that’ll be about it. And it’s done in a much more contemporary, mobile-first responsive design, hyper-social interface platform that they’re looking at the content on.

On when there might be a printed issue of The Snug.com: There’s no question that as soon as we started filling the buckets with content on The Snug we realized that there was a print opportunity. When it happens, I’m not so sure. It’s a matter of just making sure the economics word out and I think The Snug’s audience could be a little bit larger before we do that. The plan isn’t immediate, but it’s there.

On being the first legacy brand to utilize user-generated content for a magazine and why they haven’t done it again: We have actually, when I reference the reader remodel contest, that’s also the user-generated issue. The recognition for that was I’m very fortunate to have had a multimedia background before I arrived at This Old House; I worked in magazines at GQ and Esquire and other places. I’ve done web and television work and it was very clear to me that the boundaries we liked and the hierarchy of our industry liked wasn’t nearly as important to the consumer. (Laughs) They didn’t care whether someone on a web team or a print team was producing content for either of those things; they wanted good content period.

On whether he thinks a brand can survive without all of its extensions: The damaging thing for a brand to do is not to look at the new opportunities because you don’t know where the audience is going to go. Every place the audience goes, they do need good content. At a certain point you might decide this or that program or this or that utility, whatever the offering is, doesn’t provide enough of an ROI. And I don’t even mean that financially; I just mean in terms of audience engagement. So, you might let tings drop off at a certain point. But I think to not explore where we’re going with technology at every opportunity is a troubling thing.

On being one of the first legacy brands to integrate their staff and platforms and why others haven’t followed their example: (Laughs) I don’t know. I guess I’m not a good evangelist. (Laughs again) I think that part of what you just said is the answer and that is that we’re the most creative people in the world, right? There’s a difference between being very passionate and very creative about the way you design this feature story. Or you write this 7,000-word profile, which is going to be art when you’re done with it. And having editors who are passionate enough about what you do to help you achieve those things. And then having people who are able to take a step back and look broadly at what’s happening.

On if he can ever envision a day there won’t be a print component of This Old House: Given what our print circulation is right now and the revenue that comes from it, which to me suggests that there is an audience who wants it, I don’t think it’s anytime soon.

On what keeps him up at night: No one likes change and I don’t particularly like it either, but we don’t have a choice. The pace of change that we’re experiencing now is as slow as it will ever be in our lifetimes. It’s about making sure I stay ahead and have that next thing. I want to keep being first for my brand. I want us to keep having those firsts.

And now the lightly edited transcript of the Mr. Magazine™ interview with Scott Omelianuk, Editor-In-Chief, This Old House…

Samir Husni: It’s amazing to see how many of the younger generation are interested in the subject of renovation and see it as more of a challenge and a great experience. Are you seeing a change in the audience with This Old House and the entire brand and if so, is it a change for the better or a change for the worse?

Scott Omelianuk: Overall our audience has grown pretty significantly over the last couple of years. I’d like to verify these numbers before I actually commit to them of course, but I think MRI put the print audience at 6.6 million and our television audience is up a little bit; our digital audience is growing, particularly on mobile obviously. And the new things that we’ve done have also grown the audience.

But I think one of the interesting stories is the amount of attention we receive on social and how that audience is sometimes very different from what you would imagine. We do really well on two opposite ends of what I think the social spectrum is in some respects. One is Google+ where you would think more male, nerdy, tech-savvy kind of people are and we have a really significant resize, I think maybe a 600,000 Goggle+ audience. And then on the opposite end of the scale is Pinterest where we have the same size audience, almost 600,000.

To me, the exciting thing about that is it proves the value of the content that we’re doing and that’s what it all comes back to is creating content that consumers want, whether they buy a subscription or they’re going to find us on social media and then find their way back to one of our digital properties.

Samir Husni: Do you see any duplication between the print and digital audiences?

Scott Omelianuk: Yes, there definitely is and we’ve made a significant effort to do value-added content digitally, things that we can’t get in the print pages, everything from more photos of a house, which we might also include in our tablet edition, to downloadable or printable templates to help with a craft or a DIY project.

In that respect, we really make an effort to drive back and forth between the two platforms; most of our large franchises are in both print and digital, such as our reader remodel contest. In print, you can use your Smartphone with a Blippar app on it to enter the sweepstakes or you can go to the website and enter that way. So these are all things that we’ve made an effort to do to keep the audience in both places.

Now a huge amount of our online traffic comes from Search regardless. And those folks we presume to be new to the brand and if we can make them repeat customers, that’s great. I think that’s one of the reasons that the footprint has grown a little bit is because people search for a problem and they actually find good content that’s trustworthy and vetted for them and they know that they can come back to us next time.

Samir Husni: How are you benefiting from the power of the brand, while at the same time having to respond to some people who might say how can you have a powerful brand today with the word “old” in it?

Scott Omelianuk: (Laughs) Well, there’s no question that the greatest strength, which is this very recognizable name that started with the television show 35 years ago and has people watching it today with their children who watched it themselves with their parents, which in some cases gives us three generations of viewers; there’s no question that “old” is a little bit of a liability, but we’ve done a number of things I think to minimize the impact.

One is not to be embarrassed by it; that is who we are. We fully know that not all of our readership, viewers or online users live in old houses. And so the content we present to them I would describe as Americana and that might be the kind of thing you imagine in a 100-year-old farmhouse, but would also be something in a newly-constructed cottage somewhere.

We try to remove age or remove any date at all from any of the content we present. We always talk about new technology. The story of the home really matches to the story of broader technology, in many ways.

We have a Smart Home issue, our second, coming out in September. I don’t think anyone wants to live in a museum, so for us we want to take these houses, houses that are of quality; houses that were nicely made, and make them useful for people who live in them today.

That’s one thing. Another is reaching out with new efforts like we are with The Snug.com and that is looking at a younger audience and in this case, a female millennial audience, showing them content that comes from This Old House as well as other places, but essentially stripped of its legacy branding. Say, the byline is This Old House, but that’ll be about it. And it’s done in a much more contemporary, mobile-first responsive design, hyper-social interface platform that they’re looking at the content on.

So, again it comes back to what I said about social; it’s the content that’s really what’s valuable, not a particular delivery. All of the deliveries are valuable.

At The Snug.com we see us reaching a much younger audience, a much more female audience; our general audience by the way is about 50/50, male/female. The Snug.com is more female and younger. And it echoes a little bit of something that we see when we run things like the user-generated contest, which is that the most active group of people generally for us is on the younger side of our median and that makes sense, right? You’re buying your first house or you’re upgrading to your second house that’s big enough for the family or just whatever. So you’ve not really settled in yet or thought about downsizing. You’re not doing any of those things; you’re much more active in the space.

So even though we have readers who span from 18 to 80, I think the most active portion of our audience is the younger half.

Samir Husni: When are we going to see the first printed issue of Snug?

Scott Omelianuk: (Laughs) When we set about creating The Snug.com our first intention was to put a stake in the ground for reaching a millennial audience in a way that we could extend the franchise basically beyond that particular content. So, you could imagine that there would be a Snug Table and that would be about entertaining or food or cooking, or a Snug Buddy would be about pets; a Snug Dollar might be a finance site that you could extend this franchise into an ecosystem but move traffic back and forth across it and provide a broad ad opportunity.

There’s no question that as soon as we started filling the buckets with content on The Snug we realized that there was a print opportunity. When it happens, I’m not so sure. It’s a matter of just making sure the economics word out and I think The Snug’s audience could be a little bit larger before we do that. The plan isn’t immediate, but it’s there.

I think the really interesting thing about The Snug is the engagement of the audience. We’ve been live for four full months and in that first four months we’ve registered 13,000 contributors of all stripes: blogger, individuals, brands, and altogether they’ve contributed more than 40,000 pieces of content to the platform. And that’s pretty astonishing to me and really exciting.

We’re building on that. We want to make sure that the platform is a stable and viable entity basically, but then I do think that there’s an opportunity for a slick SIP model for the content on there.

Samir Husni: You were one of the early legacy magazines that adapted to user-generated content; you published, if I’m not mistaken, the very first user-generated content magazine in the states.

Scott Omelianuk: Yes, that’s true.

Samir Husni: Why haven’t you done it again?

Scott Omelianuk: We have actually, when I reference the reader remodel contest, that’s also the user-generated issue. The recognition for that was I’m very fortunate to have had a multimedia background before I arrived at This Old House; I worked in magazines at GQ and Esquire and other places. I’ve done web and television work and it was very clear to me that the boundaries we liked and the hierarchy of our industry liked wasn’t nearly as important to the consumer. (Laughs) They didn’t care whether someone on a web team or a print team was producing content for either of those things; they wanted good content period.

So, very early on I tried to integrate the staff of This Old House so that there were no significant silos between who was contributing content to what platform. And as we did that, one of the responsibilities was to participate in the TOH.com community and we realized what a vibrant community we had and how much good information users were exchanging. That’s when we decided that it was valuable and that we should take advantage of it and use the content in print. And we did that; it was Ad Age’s idea of the year, I think it was 2008.

And we’ve done it every year since and it’s been a little bit different, but I think the thing that’s really terrific about having done it is every year it creates an ongoing multi-month, as we ask users to upload content; we create sort of a dialogue between the editors and those people. I think we have a profound understanding of who our consumer is in a way that a lot of other places don’t because they’re showing us what they’ve done; they’re showing us how we may have influenced or inspired them in their own projects. They’re calling and telling us or mailing and telling us what their challenges have been or what their proudest moments are.

And we include those and not just in the user-created issue, which is a sort of wholesale slab of that content, but in every issue there are two or three stories that had their genesis in conversations with our consumer.

So I believe that binds them more tightly to us. It also allows us to give them the kind of content that they want even better. It’s something that I would encourage everyone to do, particularly as research dollars get tighter and tighter, it’s just a really great way to have a dialogue with your consumer and create content. And it’s almost a little distasteful to say consumer at that point, because really what you’ve done is created a community with them. And that’s really important and that’s something that magazine media, whether it’s print or not, can do really well with, if we keep that in mind.

And to be perfectly frank, that’s what we’ve done in extending the idea of home improvement to this all new Spanish-language television show. The stuff we learned such as the emotional connections of the home, the importance of creating this safe place for people and a comfortable place.

We’ve extended to the Hispanic market now and so instead of being purely DIY kind of content on “SOS: Salva Mi Casa” there are family stories as well because; the fact of the matter is that’s why we do these things anyway.

Now we might not go back and change the flagship This Old House show from what it is, but we have new opportunities with new audiences on new platforms to do that, to recognize our ongoing realization of how people interact with our content. So, when you see “SOS: Salva Mi Casa” on Telemundo, you don’t have to speak Spanish to recognize it. You will see that there’s a family component, an emotional component, something really strong and primal about making the simplest improvements to the house that make a huge difference to people.

Samir Husni: Television and magazines have been with us for a long time, magazines longer than television. We now have social media and digital; do you think a brand can survive if we lose any of the brand extensions?

Scott Omelianuk: I honestly think, I don’t know about losing, but I think you have to take the opportunity. Whenever a new platform comes out and people start talking about it, we have a discussion here at our brand about how we might take advantage of it.

We had a Tumblr best-of pick in 2014 for This Old Apartment Tumblr, which actually influenced our creation of The Snug, because it performed so well for itself. We’re also talking about Meerkat and Periscope now; who knows what’s next. We’re talking about how to reinvent the tablet edition of the magazine, so that maybe it’s not the same linear experience that the print edition of the magazine is, even if it has the same content because I want to take advantage of the habits and native technology that’s in the tablet, more than I want to recreate a print edition.

The damaging thing for a brand to do is not to look at the new opportunities because you don’t know where the audience is going to go. Every place the audience goes, they do need good content. At a certain point you might decide this or that program or this or that utility, whatever the offering is, doesn’t provide enough of an ROI. And I don’t even mean that financially; I just mean in terms of audience engagement. So, you might let tings drop off at a certain point. But I think to not explore where we’re going with technology at every opportunity is a troubling thing.

And I do think that for us television is really important because it’s a very cost-effective way of creating digital video. You basically have assets that are paid for and then exploited again digitally at low cost. Whenever we can get the opportunity to create a new television show it allows us to augment our video library, which is already quite large and does really well for us. I think we total about a million plays a month in video and that’s not so bad.

Samir Husni: With the whole integrated staff and integrated creation of what you’ve done; your brand was one of the first to learn that print and digital can and do work together and complement each other very well. Why do you think it took the industry at least five years, six years now, to learn that? To go from print is dead to print is in decline to, who knows five years from now, maybe it will be the power of print again. If we are the most creative people on the face of the earth, why did it take us so long to learn that the two integrated is the only thing that makes sense? Why didn’t people learn from your example?

Scott Omelianuk: (Laughs) I don’t know. I guess I’m not a good evangelist. (Laughs again) I think that part of what you just said is the answer and that is that we’re the most creative people in the world, right? There’s a difference between being very passionate and very creative about the way you design this feature story. Or you write this 7,000-word profile, which is going to be art when you’re done with it. And having editors who are passionate enough about what you do to help you achieve those things. And then having people who are able to take a step back and look broadly at what’s happening.

But then you’re running a business too, so it becomes the founder’s dilemma. You see that the audience is changing and that they might be going in this direction, but you’re making your money here. So how do you find the time to band with the resources or investments to carve out and move when the vast majority of revenue is coming from that other spot.

I think we benefit from the fact that we’re a mid-sized brand and when we dip into a new technology, it’s not devastating to our bottom line. We don’t risk a lot by taking the time to explore that new opportunity.

It’s actually quite hard for people to get out of their swing lanes and take a broader look and to not just be afraid because no one likes change. Or to not be afraid because you don’t know what these things are going to do to the P&L. And to not be afraid because it just might be a waste of time and you’ll embarrass yourself. You know, there are things we’ve done that we stopped doing because we thought they were going to be great, but didn’t work. And that’s OK, but it all depends on the stage you’re on I think. If you’re on a quieter stage you can get away with more, I guess. (Laughs)

I really think that’s the answer and again, I was fortunate in that I had for better or worse a career experience, and I think it was ultimately for the better, where I bounced between a couple of different jobs in media. And that allowed me to see the connections between the people who might have been in one place at a time, and they couldn’t see them. And that made it a little easier.

Samir Husni: Being this, and as much as I hate the phrase I’m going to use it, this multimedia practitioner, do you envision a day when we will not have a print edition from This Old House?

Scott Omelianuk: Given what our print circulation is right now and the revenue that comes from it, which to me suggests that there is an audience who wants it, I don’t think it’s anytime soon. My biggest concern is the post office problems at this point. (Laughs) It’s not the audience; we have the audience. We’re doing really well with renewal rates and like I said, I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that we have this dialogue with the consumer that lets us give them what they want.

I think we’ll be in print for some time; I don’t know about forever, because to say that is just foolish. Given our financials for now, there will be a print edition of This Old House continued, yes. And maybe Snug too, at least quarterly. (Laughs)

Samir Husni: My typical last question; what keeps you up at night?

Scott Omelianuk: (Laughs) I have a four-year-old that doesn’t always sleep. So, that’s one thing. Just thinking about what’s next and having the bandwidth to do all of the exciting things that are coming and trying to be there when they are.

No one likes change and I don’t particularly like it either, but we don’t have a choice. The pace of change that we’re experiencing now is as slow as it will ever be in our lifetimes. It’s about making sure I stay ahead and have that next thing. I want to keep being first for my brand. I want us to keep having those firsts. And that’s what makes it exciting and that’s what makes it exciting for people to come to work here. And why I get the opportunity to talk to people like you.

Samir Husni: Thank you.