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3 min read
Gary Michelson has spent most of his career in magazines focusing on audience development and subscription growth. After beginning his media career at a professional sports yearbook publisher, Michelson went on to hold roles at several publishers including Readers’ Digest and Condé Nast. He was also part of the team that launched Garden & Gun, a high-end Southern lifestyle magazine based in Charleston, SC. He recently founded Subscription Strategies LLC, a consulting firm that advises media brands on subscriber acquisition, retention and building lifetime value.
In our latest AAM Media Mavens interview, Michelson reflects on his career including how quality content is the foundation for successful brands, why highly engaged audiences will shape magazines’ future and advice for those starting their careers in media.
How did you get started in media?
I was a sales representative for Xerox when a former colleague approached me about an ad sales position with a company that produced yearbooks for professional sports teams. Since it was a small company, we wore many hats, and I ended up working in audience development, primarily traditional newsstand distribution with some focus on developing alternative channels for audience growth.
What are you most proud of in your career and why?
Helping launch and developing the audience at Garden & Gun. The chance to build a great brand from scratch is an opportunity that not everyone gets to experience. Building the consumer marketing infrastructure from the ground up, employing all the best practices I learned up to that point in my career and seeing it all work so successfully gave me an enormous sense of pride and satisfaction.
What makes a great magazine brand?
Great content is the soul and identity of a magazine. It gives the audience development team the opportunity to build and maintain an engaged audience, which the advertising team can monetize.
In what ways has AAM supported your organizations?
AAM has always served as the guardrails for our industry, creating a level playing field for consumer marketers and ensuring that advertisers are getting equitable value for their investment.
If you could give someone starting out in your field one piece of advice, what would it be?
Understand the economics of your business. This doesn’t pertain to just magazines. This is applicable to anybody that’s involved in audience development in a subscription-based business. If you understand all of the costs that go into acquiring and retaining a customer, and the costs associated with fulfilling your product or service and the potential revenue associated with each customer, it will allow you to make better decisions that will improve the profitability of your department and the company as a whole.
Where do you see the industry in 10 years?
You don’t need a crystal ball to see that AI will play a major role in how businesses operate. Its impact will extend beyond content creation to areas such as workflow management, marketing and analytics.
I think print will still have a prominent place, and the magazines most likely to thrive will be those that charge higher subscription prices, serve smaller but highly engaged audiences and can monetize those audiences effectively through integrated advertising programs and by offering additional products and services that align with readers’ interests.
What do you like to do outside of your career?
I enjoy golfing, spending time at the beach, attending sporting events and working on jigsaw puzzles.
