• by Joe Mandese , June 17, 2005

A year after he sparked an ad industry groundswell focused on issues surrounding one major medium - network TV - Carat CEO David Verklin Thursday triggered a new initiative for another major medium: consumer magazines. Like the first, the second initiative occurred spontaneously and during an annual meeting of the world's largest advertisers. This time Verklin teamed with Meredith Publishing Group President Jack Griffin to create a forum that would organize the myriad of new research initiatives that have suddenly taken root within the publishing industry.

"Let's do it," Verklin said to Griffin, who nodded support during a panel discussion about key Madison Avenue issues confronting the magazine industry at the Association of National Advertisers 2005 Print Advertising Forum in New York.

The impromptu coalition-building was reminiscent to the one Verklin started a little over a year ago during the ANA's 2004 Television Advertising Forum in New York. When panelists bemoaned the state of the upfront network television marketplace - an ongoing issue for marketers and agencies - Verklin recommended an industry-wide group be organized to address and resolve the issues once and for all, and committed Carat's resources to help. That challenge was immediately taken up by the ANA, and the American Association of Advertising Agencies, which subsequently formed NUDG - or the Network Upfront Discussion Group. Following a series of high-level discussions and a summit with most of the major TV networks, NUDG ultimately disbanded, because the group deemed the marketplace to be the best arbiter of issues surrounding he upfront, and that indeed appears to be the case this year (see top story in today's MDN).

Some criticized Verklin - a loquacious and highly visible media agency chief - for grandstanding during last year's ANA forum, and Verklin ultimately faded into the background of NUDG. But the effort was consistent with Verklin's management style and the role of industry catalyst he has carved out for Carat, which now ranks among the biggest media buying shops. In addition to NUDG and Thursday's magazine industry initiative, Verklin is a frequent participant in industry coalitions, and recently hired digital media guru Mitch Oscar to organize the Carat Digital Exchange, an industry-wide think tank designed to jump-start enhanced digital TV advertising applications. The exchange, which held its third meeting at Carat's New York headquarters on Thursday (see related story in today's MDN, invites parties from all sides of the digital TV ad industry, including technology suppliers, content developers, advertisers and even rival agencies to participate.

Verklin said he is backing the effort not out of industry altruism, but because it ultimately will serve Carat's own strategic goal of developing the nascent interactive TV marketplace, which has had decades of fits and false-starts, but has failed to gain the kind of critical mass as a legitimate advertising medium. While a number of industry committees, including some inside the major ad trade associations, discuss digital TV development, Carat was concerned that there was relatively little information sharing about important insights due to competitive issues.

"We're doing this because we want to build a really good digital marketplace that we can use for our clients," Verklin told MDN in a follow-up interview. ""There will be lots of time to beat the heck out of each other once its in place."

A significant difference between the Exchange and other enhanced TV committees is that it isn't simply brain-storming and theory, but is a genuine lab for testing and developing new interactive TV applications for Carat clients. During an earlier meeting, organized by Carat's Oscar, the agency picked the brains of leading tech providers and rival agency executives to develop a local interactive advertising schedule for Carat client Hyundai's local car dealers.

Verklin said it was too early to know exactly how the new magazine industry initiative would work, but he said he and Meredith's Griffin huddled after the panel discussion and have given it the working title of "The Magazine Agents of Change Forum." He said it would mainly focus on organizing about 20 different magazine related research initiatives that have sparked up over the past 12- to 18-months, ranging from the Magazine Publishers of America's reader involvement research to print ad testing systems like Affinity to how Arbitron's and VNU's Project Apollo single-source media and marketing measurement system might impact the way magazines are planned and bought.

While rivals often groan at some of Verklin's high-profile industry outreach efforts, Verklin said he doesn't mind the criticism and sees it as a key differentiating element for Carat. He also said he's not done. Among the ideas he has for other new coalitions are ones for wireless marketing and so-called advergaming that would be modeled on the Carat Digital Exchange approach.