Nearly three months after shedding glossy business magazine Portfolio, publisher Condé Nast has hired external consultants from McKinsey to assist in some serious cost-cutting continuation, Yahoo-style.
First online property to go after the word of the hire got out: Men.Style.com, the media company’s web-only brand for – you guessed it – men.
In a memo that got republished all over the web yesterday, Condé Nast CEO Chuck Townsend told his staff that it is time to “rethink” the entire business, warning that the company must “realign to be a successful business in an emerging economy that is now predicted to be painfully slow in recovering.”
In this environment, it’s indeed not the best choice to keep three men’s fashion titles on the web, as Condé Nast Digital president Sarah Chubb admitted to Advertising Age:
“It didn’t really make sense to do so because lifestyle content from GQ was already the main traffic driver for Men.Style.com. Further, the view among Conde Nast execs is that a unified print-web brand will be an easier sell to brand advertisers.”
After the launch of both sites, Men.Style.com – launched back in 2005 – traffic will refer to GQ.com and the original staffers will move along with it.
According to Condé Nast’s internal numbers, Men.Style.com saw 1.7 million unique visitors last month, up nearly 50% from the same month last year. The umbrella website, Style.com, had 2 million monthly UVs. ComScore paints a different picture, putting Men.Style.com at 386,000 unique visitors and Style.com at 656,000 in June.
Award! Ugliest site ever
@matt, kinda have to agree with you there. The column containing actual content one might want to read seems about 10 pixels wide. I know ads still pay the bills, but the amount of visual cruft can’t possibly shine the best light on the GQ brand.
Alright, so its early and maybe i’m being dense, but if men.style.com draws 1.7 of the tld’s 2 million unique visitors how does cutting it make sense?
Is the reason that style.com in general is under-performing compared to Conde Nast’s other properties?
Obviously.Because in this period of recession companies are under pressure and losing finance position due to fall of economy.
Drop all print today! – Conde please send consulting check care of Jason.
The majority of their revenue comes from their print properties. The web properties have yet to prove themselves to the parent company.
I never heard of this site before. I would have used it if I knew about it.
I always have to laugh when a company that’s scaling back has to hire a consultant to determine who to fire. Yes, I realize there is probably a value-add, but it’s ironic.
Wow, over a 1.5 million click difference between internal and external measurements? How’s that possible?
have you ever paid any attention to the issues with “syndicated research?” these kinds of discrepancies are par for the course.
They had hired outside consultants that also worked for the Iranian government.
Comscore usually trails company’s internal numbers by tons. You can quibble, but it is the measuring stick used by ad agencies.
Peter Gibbons: You’re gonna lay off Samir and Michael?
Bob Slydell: Oh yeah, we’re gonna bring in some entry-level graduates, farm some work out to Singapore, that’s the usual deal.
Bob Porter: Standard operating procedure.
That’s cute, my mens site did close to the same amount of traffic with 1/10 the staff and cost.
Did they really need to pay consultants to come up with the idea to kill one of three men’s fashion titles on the web?
They don’t understand the internet. I saw this a year ago with Portfolio Magazine’s website. Great written content and no clue to making it on the net. Their traffic was terrible. They also don’t seem to recognize that it’s the net that’s killing their print business. They are trying to publish glossy expensive paper magazines on the net and it just doesn’t work. For which I am thankful, because it’s people like me who are displacing them and in 3 years they will be broke and I will have their high quality writers.
How to get best results from the consultant?
If the NASSCOM 2008 IT/BPO report is to be believed, the trend of consultants in the workplace is set to increase as more and more organizations look towards consultants to meet staffing needs on a temporary basis – rather than increase the numbers on the payroll. What’s more, about 5% of the non-permanent workforce is in senior positions; which only goes to show that an increased amount of faith is being reposed in specialists who consult with a number of companies rather than work for just one. Be that as it may, company personnel (especially those supervising consultants, or responsible for the success of their projects) need to be aware of how to get the best out of a consultant, in terms of providing an atmosphere conducive to his or her working as well as being aware of common pitfalls in an assignment’s lifecycle.
Read full article at http://www.cons...tail.do?id=7985
The blog is so coool that everytime I visit, I get a lot of information. In addition to the article I have to say that consulting companies offer low cost solutions for web design, custom programming, hosting, search engine marketing, copywriting and SEO evolved over the years into cost effective packages designed for small to medium size business.
A consultant’s job is to consult. Nothing more, nothing less. It’s that simple. There’s no magic formula or secret that makes one consultant more successful than another one.