• by Michael Shields , December 16, 2004

Poker and GolfAll In founder Bhu Srinivasan believes that in laying out the possibilities for his new magazine, he can draw a clear parallel to another category that has seen robust growth over the last decade: golf.

"Poker could be this generation's golf," he said. He is betting that just like golf's recent boom in popularity, tons of amateur poker players will be seeking help.

"When you look at Golf Digest, you know you are going to get a bunch of pages analyzing Ernie Ells' swing," he said. "With us, it's going to be 20-plus pages really looking at playing [poker]. We are not just looking at the lifestyle stuff--the froth--but providing a tremendous amount of instruction."

Of course, All In will not ignore the cool, celebrity aspects of the game. There will be stories on top players, plus poker-culture pieces like "poker on Wall Street" or "poker on campus."

Yet with the games' ever-increasing exposure, is poker like golf, or closer to cigars? Cigars were huge in the late 1990s, spawning Cigar Aficionado. Yet the magazine eventually chose to downplay the "Cigar" part of the title once that trend faded.

So is poker a fad?

"I get that question all the time," he said. "But it's not like poker came on overnight. ESPN has been broadcasting it since 1993. The movie "Rounders" came out in 1998. It has been in every Western movie. And college kids have been playing it forever."

As for why poker has been so hot over the last year or so, Srinivasan says that a number of disparate elements of poker have come together at the same time (what he calls the perfect storm of poker).

The lipstick camera made broadcasts more compelling as viewers could see each player's cards. Then there's the reality TV phenomenon and the fact that all these ex-day-traders have been drawn to the game. And perhaps biggest of all, amateur online poker player Chris Moneymaker won the World Series of Poker in 2003.

"Poker has a lot of staying power," said Srinivasan.

Srinivasan says that All In is the perfect place for male-affinity brands like tobacco and cigarettes to target 20- to 30-somethhing males with "lots of disposable income," and adds: "All the major agencies want to hop on early."

Plus, there should be plenty of endemic advertising from destination casinos, most of which have added a significant amount of poker playing space in recent years.

Media Kits With a Kick When the new publisher of Cargo Alan Katz needed to get his magazine's media kit noticed by top executives at key clients this year, he turned to Gillespie Design Inc.

"He said: 'I need to get the president of Sony to open my package. How do I do that?'" said Gillespie Design President Maureen Gillespie.

Gillespie Design specializes in creating standout media kits and direct mail pieces for advertisers and media companies, incorporating the personality of such brands into their product's design.

To get noticed among those generic folder-type media kits that contain endless pages of statistics, Gillespie designed a miniature toolbox for Cargo containing a few small gadgets, including a Leatherman multi-tool device. The box went out to roughly 200 of Cargo's most important clients.

By design, the toolbox captured what Conde Nast was trying to get across about Cargo. "I always ask publishers: 'If you could say only two things about your brand, what would they be?'" said Gillespie.

For Cargo, it was that the magazine was a tool that men would use to make buying decisions.

Gillespie Design, which has been around for 13 years, also produces creative concepts for clients in addition to generating design pieces. When the AARP was relaunching its magazine product two years ago, Gillespie created a tag line from the company's reader research: "Every seven seconds, someone turns 50."

Gillespie's work, which was recently featured in the book "1000 Design Elements," does not come cheap, as individual campaigns are believed to run into the six-figure range. And they do not have an extended usage life. "We never repeat anything," Gillespie said.

But for many clients, the medium is a powerful one. "In this day and age when people get so much mail, how do you get them to notice?" asked Gillespie. "We give sales reps the ammunition to get noticed."

Notes:

-Cosmopolitan will host its first ever Fearless Male Award Luncheon on February 7th.

-Time will name its "Person of the Year" on Sunday morning (the issue comes out on Monday. According to Managing Editor Jim Kelly, Mel Gibson, Michael Moore, Karl Rove, President Bush, and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi are all candidates.

-Business 2.0 has launched a nationwide multimedia marketing campaign to promote the magazine's rate base increase and record advertising revenue growth. The campaign will include direct marketing and an electronic and print campaign, as well as airport dioramas targeted to business travelers.

-Cooking Light's readers are currently being challenged to come up with award-winning dishes utilizing products from sponsors Ronzoni, Healthy Harvest Whole Wheat Pasta Blend, 3-A-Day milk, cheese, or yogurt; Swanson Broths; and/or Hellman's Best Foods as part of the first annual "Ultimate Reader Recipe Contest: Supper Club Edition."