• by August 12, 2005

IN THE PINK -- First, we have to say that we truly admire the magazine industry's ability to generate awareness on Madison Avenue. Relative to the reach it actually delivers, and given the incredible fragmentation of the print medium, it's amazing to us how much attention magazines get from planners, and how much budget they attract from buyers. It amazed us years ago, when magazines were a considerably less cluttered medium, and when they didn't have to compete with so many new media options. It's especially noteworthy today, when media shops and departments are so time-starved and overworked that they somehow manage to make time to meet with the mag reps. We suspect it may have something to do with the special relationship the Magazine Publishers of America says people have with magazines. And after all, media planners and buyers are people. Aren't they?

Just like the civilian crowd, media pros like to curl up with a good title. Magazines are our guilty pleasures. We make room for them in our lives, even when our lives seem to have run out of room. A magazine we're especially fond of, Media, found as much a year ago, when it conducted what may have been the first media time usage study of media planners and buyers. It showed that Madison Avenue spends a great deal of time with magazines, even after hours when you'd think they'd want to turn off, tune out and drop off of the media grid. So magazines, you've already got our attention.

What we don't understand is the latest trend among magazine publishers of pandering to the egos of advertising executives by placing them on their covers. And no, we don't mean the kind of faux covers you're apt to see pinned up on the walls of most media departments. You know, the ones depicting Zenith's Steve Greenberger as Time's "man of the year," or MediaCom's Adam Herman as Sports Illustrated's "most valuable player." Heck, we don't even mean the faux covers being produced for the magazine industry by Fallon New York. What's that? There is no Fallon New York! Well, excuse our faux pas.

Not the magazine covers we're talking about are the genuine article. The covers, not necessarily the articles. We can't recall the first time we've seen this tactic, but we've noticed it's starting to happen quite a bit lately. On Tuesday, for example, Player magazine announced that Donny Deutsch would grace the cover its fall issue. Before he became a popular CNBC talk show host, Deutsch used to run a pretty well known ad agency.

"Donny Deutsch is a top player," says someone who should know one, Mark Peterson, publisher of the namesake magazine. "He has created an advertising empire worth billions, hosts his own TV show, lives in multimillion-dollar homes, flies in a private helicopter -- and he's only in his forties.

Just in case you haven't gotten enough of Donny lately, Peterson promises to give readers "exclusive photos" of the buff ad celebrity, as well as the inside story on how Deutsch has succeeded in multiple business ventures. We're assuming they include Deutsch Inc., but you wouldn't know it from looking at the agency's recent business roster.

"We know our readers will love a look at the professional and personal life of one of media's leading superstars," says Peterson. Frankly, we'd rather see a little more of Deutsch's media star, Peter Gardiner. But he's already busy appearing in ads for Comcast Spotlight. Player isn't the only pub playing the Madison Avenue card. Pink magazine is going them one better, featuring a bevy of advertising's best in its August/September issue. And this one may even get the attention of an ultra busy, but recently divorced Deutsch for two reasons: 1) It features people who are leading "the Madison Avenue revolution;" and 2) They happen to be women.

That makes sense, because Pink, after all, is a bi-monthly about "women who are redefining what it means to be successful in the 21st century." Thank goodness, at first glance, the pub's name made us a little nervous. And not just because we knew it was about women. And who are these Madison Avenue-altering gals? Well, according to Pink Publisher Genevieve Bos, we'll have to wait until the issue its newsstands to find out. But she did let on that at least one of them - the one gracing the magazine's cover -- is Linda Sawyer, COO of guess which agency. Uh huh, Deutsch. So maybe Donny won't be so interesting in this issue after all.