The Atlantic Redesigns Both Online and in Print (Fishbowl)

The Atlantic, the 150 year old magazine that has managed to make itself relevant online, has a new look! The Atlantic's online relevance is, in our opinion, largely due to its line-up of stellar bloggers (our affinity for Andrew Sullivan is no secret, however, Marc Ambinder is also a staple and anyone not already reading Ta-Nahisi Coates should begin immediately), and apparenly as part of the redesign each has been assigned their own color (Andrew has a shade of blue, Megan McArdle green, Ta-Nehisi silver).In a post on the homepage editor James Bennet explained to readers what other changes they may encounter at both the site and the print magazine.
Per Bennet's announcement post:
graphic designer Michael Bierut and his team at the design firm Pentagram adapted a logo that The Atlantic used for more than 35 years in the middle of the last century.
Navigation on the site remains the same, with one exception. On the navigation bar, we've substituted "Dispatches" for "The Current." As regular visitors have probably noticed, along with the short commentaries we've been doing under the heading "The Current," we've also been doing more and more reported and analytical dispatches on the site, and it seemed sensible to combine them all into one category. "The Current" may return down the road in a different form, as one of several new features we're planning in the coming months.
Next week, when the November issue reaches subscribers, they'll see that we've substantially restructured the magazine. I'll have more to say about that then...But our striking yet familiar nameplate hints at our overall direction. Both on the Web and in print, we set out with this redesign to recommit ourselves to the tradition of The Atlantic as the home for bold, original thinking and writing, while keeping ourselves in sync with a world that needs that kind of work as much as it ever has.

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Think. Again. About perspective too.

Where to start with this one?

a) When the NYT took over the IHT, the IHT had a brand campaign called Think! spelt (with reversed KN) KNIHT! The current campaign for The Atlantic, with a budget estimated at $1.5 million, carries the theme "Think. Again."

The word from the NYT was they hated the Think! campaign, didn't 'get it'. They got in their own agency to do the job for the next brand campaign, a big Madison Avenue global agency. Their work was rubbish. I know, I saw it.

Even the then CEO of the NYT Newspaper (now CEO of the NYT Company), Janet Robinson's personal entreaties to the CEO of their agency and that agency's involvement of creative teams from its entire global network, not just NY, couldn't get their agency to deliver a new brand campaign for the IHT.

So three weeks before production deadlines, the people behind the Think! Campaign - the London boutique agency Bagshawe Associates and myself, then a consultant - were invited to come up with a new campaign. We were given 3 days and delivered a concept the IHT/NYT liked in two. And the entire artwork (outdoor, taxis, magazines, newspapers etc) in 3 weeks.

The Broader Business Perspective we themed it, as the then target was business people. For the first time at the IHT, The Broader Business Perspective helped internalise, at the IHT, what its editors were doing and popped up in numerous speeches given by advertising directors, editors and the publisher: the relevance of a general interest international perspective newspaper for a business readership.

b) After we did this, we were let go - again. The next brand campaign was absolute crap. We now have some motif based on a compass (N,E,S,W) which is about NEWS, which isn't what the IHT is about because news is free and the idea doesn't even work because as much as their copywriters and designers would like to wish it were so, the sun rises in the east and does not set in the south. First thought idea (a compass for a global newspaper - very original, not) allowed all the way through to an actual brand campaign. Umm.

c) This was 2003. Now, in 2008 thinking and perspective seem to be back in vogue, witness this quote from the article below: "If you look at some of the titles that compete with The Economist, their perspective is from the U.S. looking at the world," he [Andrew Robertson, chief executive at BBDO] added, "whereas with The Economist, the focus is the world view." (see article below)

d) In a crisis, like WWII, the NYT kept their news hole as large as ever, even if their advertising dropped off. In this crisis, MSM (especially) needs to market itself as The Atlantic and The Economist are trying to do.

e) The IHT had every opportunity - twice - to own global perspective and the value of thinking which is shorthand for being more than a suit. They blew it.

f) The IHT needs to keep its foot on the pedal, it needs to invest in brand and content, it needs money. Otherwise it, along with the NYT, will die.

Sail to steam, sail to steam.

Can't make the transition without investment.



Magazines get clever with their advertising
By Stuart Elliott
Sunday, October 5, 2008
NEW YORK: A financial crisis, two wars, a presidential election - when there is so much for readers to think about, how do magazines aimed at thoughtful readers attract their attention?
In a new U.S. marketing push, one such magazine, The Economist, is spoofing the game Twister, distributing pizza boxes that improbably bear its name and sponsoring a performance of political satire.
Another such magazine, The Atlantic, plans to advertise on the muffin displays in New York City convenience stores, on restaurant menu boards and on the shampoo shelves of drugstores.
The Atlantic is also producing video clips that show what happens when people on city streets are invited to answer questions like "Is Google making us stupid?" and "Why do presidents lie?" - questions that, to make them stand out, have also been reproduced as neon signs.
In seeking readers and advertisers, publications like The Atlantic and The Economist - alongside competitors like Harper's, Mother Jones, The Nation, The New Republic and The New Yorker - have long tried to make up in cleverness what they lacked in wallet power.
The campaign for The Atlantic, with a budget estimated at $1.5 million, carries the theme "Think. Again." The campaign, which will also include a section of the magazine's Web site (theatlantic.com/thinkagain), is to begin Monday.
The campaign for The Economist is arriving this week in Philadelphia after stopping in eight other markets, including Boston and Washington. The campaign, with an estimated budget of $5 million, carries the theme "Get a world view."
Both campaigns are indicative of the increasingly unusual efforts by the traditional media to catch the wandering eyes of younger readers as well as younger employees of media agencies who help decide where marketers buy ads.
The theory is that they "should be jolted," said Justin Smith, president for consumer media at Atlantic Media in Washington. "We felt there was a great opportunity, right now, to further inspire our readers and advertisers."
His counterpart at The Economist, Paul Rossi, who is based in New York, echoed Smith's decision to seize the moment, fraught as it might be with uncertainty. "I think it's the best possible time" for a campaign, said Rossi, executive vice president and managing director for the Americas at The Economist. "What we have to say has never been more relevant. We write about the world, about connections between business and politics."
The questions appearing in the campaign for The Atlantic are from articles published in the magazine.
The ads are meant to reach media buyers where they eat, buy takeout food and shop. Those are "places where people's brains are most at rest," said Michael Fanuele, managing director for strategy at the magazine's creative agency, Euro RSCG Worldwide in New York, part of Havas.
The video clips, aimed at readers as well as advertisers, will be available on the Think Again section of The Atlantic Web site, and plans call for additional content to be added monthly.
Previews of the clips offer a variety of responses from the passers-by on the streets. On the question "Why do presidents lie?" the replies ranged from "Why do we let them?" to "There'd be more problems if we told the truth."
The neon signs, which also appear in print ads and posters, will decorate events sponsored by The Atlantic and eventually end up at the magazine's offices. "We hope to keep one or two for ourselves," said Jose Cabaco, chief creative officer for North America at Euro RSCG.
Other agencies working on the campaign for The Atlantic are Cleverworks, for media buying, and the Rosen Group, for public relations.
Several agencies are working on the campaign for The Economist: BBDO Worldwide, part of the Omnicom Group, for the creative content; PHD, also part of Omnicom, for media buying; Kinetic, a unit of the WPP Group, for outdoor ads; and Tentpole N.Y. for public relations and events like the satire performance, by the Second City theatrical troupe.
"It's always a good time to read The Economist," said Andrew Robertson, chief executive at BBDO, "but if there ever was a good time to be reading The Economist, it's now."
Originally, the ads run by The Economist in the United States were adapted from a popular campaign for the magazine created in London by the Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO unit of BBDO. Headlines from that campaign - called the "white-on-red campaign" for its color scheme, borrowed from the logo of The Economist - include "Great minds like a think" and Robertson's favorite, "Would you like to sit next to you at dinner?"
The idea behind the British campaign "is that if you read it, you'd be better informed, and therefore more successful," he said, "which evolved into, you'd be better informed, and therefore more interesting."
The new ads with the Twister parody and the like are from the BBDO office in New York, so they will more directly address American sensibilities, Robertson said, and provide "a more specific explanation of what you'll get from reading The Economist."
"If you look at some of the titles that compete with The Economist, their perspective is from the U.S. looking at the world," he added, "whereas with The Economist, the focus is the world view."

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Times' Web Guy Mike Nizza Moves to The Atlantic (NYO)

About The Lede
In the news business, the opening sentences of a story are referred to as its "lede" -- spelled that way, journalism lore has it, to avoid confusion with the lead typesetting that once dominated newspaper printing presses. Every sentence in a news story, though, has the potential to spiral off in new directions, and that's where The Lede's mission begins.

Times' Web Guy Mike Nizza Moves to The Atlantic
by John Koblin October 2, 2008

Mike Nizza, blogger behind The New York Times' The Lede, is moving over to The Atlantic to do Web projects. Nizza had been a Web producer at The Times since 2000, and was a key player into the growth of nytimes.com. He left the producing ranks in 2007 to became a blogger for the paper's news digest blog after founding blogger Tom Zeller left for National Geographic.
Here's the memo from digital news editor, Jim Roberts:

In a couple of weeks he'll be taking a job with Atlantic Media, which publishes the Atlantic magazine and the National Journal. Mike will be a senior editor and will create and launch new Web sites and online features for the company.
As many of you know, Mike was instrumental in the development of nytimes.com. He started here in 2000 and quickly rose through the ranks of producer and senior producer before becoming an editor in 2006. I first met Mike when he was running the home page early that year and saw immediately what my predecessors had seen
in him: a well-tuned understanding of the news; an unparalleled depth of knowledge of the Web and the many resources it offered; and a quick agility with technology. Mike was instrumental in the site redesign in 2005 and 2006, and his ability to creatively manipulate the coding on the page gave us great flexibility to produce bold designs for the big breaking news stories of the day.
But Mike knew he could contribute more to the report, and when the job of running The Lede blog opened up in the spring of 2007, he was quick to raise his hand. The rest is history.
On Day One, the awful massacre at Virginia Tech occurred, and Mike turned the blog into a gripping, running account of the developing story … for three straight days. Yes, we had used the blog format to provide live coverage of baseball games and for a few hours of a congressional hearing, but Mike's Virginia Tech report blazed a completely new trail and thoroughly complemented the conventional news stories. With his minute-by-minute updates, he presented material from news conferences, eye-witness accounts, blogs and other materials that he sifted from the Web.
The collapse of a bridge in Minneapolis gave Mike another chance to provide users with a deeper and fast-paced approach to a breaking news story, and when Hurricane Ike plowed through the Texas a couple of weeks ago, Mike was at it again, providing an unending stream of posts that culled reports from our own correspondents, from local news sites and a seemingly unending stream of Twitter updates.
But Mike also found ways to fulfill the original promise of The Lede, exploring stories that spiraled off in new directions. He wrote about modern-day pirates, Tasers and outer space. He could be equally comfortable writing about global famine or Rachael Ray.
Mike also kept us in touch with pop culture. Amy Winehouse made frequent appearances in the blog. And it wasn't a surprise to find Keith Richards or Snoop Dogg. Gawker even took approving note of Mike when he made it clear that he was a HUGE (his word) fan of the Wu-Tang Clan. That prompted one Gawker reader to comment:
Wouldn't it be great if they started to credit him as "Fo Shizza Mike Nizza"?
We will miss him.
Jim Roberts

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