How successful has The Hollywood Reporter's redesign as a semi-consumer magazine to attract consumer advertising -- as CEO Richard Beckmans declared was his intention last year -- been?
Well, recently Beckman fended off rumors that he was being demoted at HR's parent company Prometheus Global Media.
And a look at the latest issue shows just one ad from a non-Hollywood-related product, Suntrust Financial Services, but it's written like a trade ad, beginning "In the film industry..."
So we're not sure how the ad strategy is succeeding, but we gotta say that its lifestyle features, meant to appeal to people who follow the entertainment industry, are unlike anything else
we've ever seen. Consider the piece in HR's latest issue, "Executive Essentials," which tells us that Matthew Weiner shops Brooks Brothers, and "Aaron Sorkin is an Armani fan." It's an
InStyle-like hoot, taking fashion voyeurism several pegs down from the stars to the writer/producers.
Then there's the piece on alternatives to plastic surgery that goes into the most
explicit detail we've seen (and we're fashion/beauty mag aficionados) on how folks from Daniel Craig to Michelle Williams keep looking beyootiful when they've got no time for real plastic surgery
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