Hearst’s Food Network Pub Cashes in on Partner TV Network’s Popularity

Take a multi-platform marketing strategy, couple it with a popular cable TV network brand, and you get a hit consumer magazine. Hearst's Food Network magazine announced on July 21 that it would bump up its rate base to 1 million copies, beginning with the January/February 2010 issue, six months ahead of schedule. The pub, which features recipes, tips and behind-the-scenes looks at Food Network shows, achieved its initial 300,000-book rate base for its November/December 2008 test issue three weeks after hitting newsstands. The June/July launch issue hit 400,000 and the upcoming October book will increase to 900,000.Editor-in-chief Maile Carpenter, named to the post last year before the test book was published, carried over TV/food experience with her from her most recent post as executive editor of Every Day With Rachael Ray. Publishing Executive Inbox talked with Carpenter about how the magazine has succeeded so quickly and the balancing act required to partner with a TV network.Inbox: What are the three key reasons this title has become such an overnight success?Maile Carpenter: 1. The incredible strength of the Food Network brand and its cast of food stars. The magazine entered the market with instant credibility, thanks to the brand.2. The market's need for a new kind of food magazine - one that is accessible, friendly, authoritative and fun, delivered by a trusted source. People are cooking at home now more than ever and the timing was perfect.3. A strong partnership between Hearst and Food Network. We've been on the same page since day one about how the magazine should represent the network.Inbox: How are you growing subscription sales and newsstand sales when so many other major titles are floundering?Carpenter: Research and testing have played a huge role. We have been studying the market for well over a year to put direct mail packages into the right hands and to get the magazine in the right places on the newsstand. And of course editorially we're always looking for ways to stand out on the newsstand with bright, catchy (and tasty!) covers.I think we've found a unique niche, appealing to food lovers and Food Network fans of all ages and culinary abilities. Subscription and newsstands sales are outpacing our expectations: The direct mail response was No. 1 in Hearst history.Inbox: What's your print/digital strategy and your long-term approach to balancing the two?Carpenter: We started off with a huge advantage with this launch in that a powerful Web site already existed for the brand. We've been able to work with foodnetwork.com from the beginning to package stories and to work on reader-interactive pieces. This will continue as we grow.From a circulation standpoint, digital has played an important role as well. Food Network magazine is promoted on foodnetwork.com and on the Web sites of select Hearst titles, and the exposure has helped to bring in 700,000 active paid subscribers-roughly half of them coming from the internet.Inbox: How do you coordinate your editorial efforts with Food Network? Carpenter: The magazine is based at Hearst, but we work extremely closely with Food Network. Many of the recipes in the magazine are developed in Food Network kitchens and all of them (more than 100 in every issue) are tested there. We're so lucky as a new magazine to have a built-in group of food experts who know the brand so well-and who can dream up such amazing recipes. We've received hundreds of letters about the quality of the food in the magazine. We also keep in constant touch with the programming, publicity and marketing departments so we stay on top of on-air trends and know what's going to resonate with Food Network fans six months or more from now.Inbox: How do you see the magazine evolving down the road in conjunction with the network? Carpenter: The great thing about the structure of this magazine is that it's designed to go where the network goes. We intentionally created a very open format. We were careful not to tie multiple columns to existing shows, or to promise any particular star or show in every issue. Because we're flexible, we can introduce new talent at the right time, and can build larger features and packages around big on-air initiatives. Now that we're up and running we'll be able to start getting involved in some of these initiatives early on and plan stories that will add to and interact directly with on-air content.Inbox: Can you explain how your day-to-day job works when it comes to partnering with a cable TV network? How does this compare to your work with Rachael Ray?Carpenter: I watch a lot more TV these days! Part of the fun of the job is that I now have every reason to watch Food Network 24/7. All kidding aside, all of us at the magazine have to pay close attention to everything on the air-the mix of talent, the overall tone, the energy, the language-so we can translate that into print. In the beginning, building a magazine around a network seemed trickier than building one around a person: Rather than capturing a single, distinct voice, we had to bring many voices into every issue and convey the feeling of a network where the stars change from hour to hour. So what seemed like a challenge at the beginning has turned out to be one of our strongest assets: Readers know when they get the magazine that they're going to see the same range of cooking styles and personalities that they see on the air.

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Hearst’s Food Network Pub Cashes in on Partner TV Network’s Popularity

Paul Miller

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