by Louise Marsland’s (@Louise_Marsland) It was with sadness that I learnt today that Media24 has closed down leading business-to-business magazine, AdVantage.
The 20-year-old print brand, started by legendary adman and editor, John Farquhar, pushed the boundaries in both content and advertising 
over the years, winning multiple awards.
The last issue (dated July 2013), went to print today and the June cover, which we display here, has been entered by Ogilvy into the Loeries.
When I was the editor, we redesigned and won awards for writing, design, covers and supplements two years in a row, including the Media24 internal awards for best B2B publication.
Outgoing editor, Danette Breitenbach, said she was “devastated” about the closure of the magazine.
“It is a fabulous product in a wonderful industry and it is very sad for all of us and such a pity it is closing after a legacy of 20 years.”
Media24 will also be closing and restructuring some of the medical titles in its B2B division and a number of staffers have been retrenched.
I have learnt reliably that Media24 has “sold off” the division, which included some custom titles, to New Media publishing, which felt that AdVantage was not a “fit” or in the “strategic interest” of their content business.
As an industry we should be deeply saddened when yet another print publication is closed. When it is a B2B publication with the brand legacy of AdVantage, it is even sadder, but times have changed and many B2B trade publications are moving online to cut out high print, paper and postal costs, to maximise their content resources.
Who can forget the heydays of Loeries at Sun City and the sought after AdVantage Loeries goody bag? Those were the days when the publication racked up R1 million in ad sales and sponsorships alone for that Loeries edition and add-ons.
With the traditional media industry in crisis, advertising spend has been cut radically since the global financial crisis began in 2008 and we all know that the levels of spend have not returned. AdVantage relied on advertising from media owners to survive. The ad agencies, much as they all lined up to be on the cover, hardly ever advertised. And the fact is that when Media24, which dominates the media market, bought AdVantage from Primedia, they no longer advertised in the magazine either and neither would some of their competitor media houses, so AdVantage lost a huge chunk of its potential advertising almost overnight.
It was a no win situation for the dedicated team, which nevertheless, managed to produce a content rich and designer publication that continued to receive accolades and meet its budgets most months by targeting new below-the-line advertisers and producing useful industry guides like the Radio Guide and the Transit Media Guide.
The publication was actually not losing money, but it wasn’t “making enough”, is how one source put it.
This is where I get angry. AdVantage was not just another magazine owned by a big media company. It was a 20-year-old magazine built by dedicated publishers, editors, journalists, designers and salespeople over decades, in partnership with the industry.
It is a legacy that belongs to the media, marketing and advertising communications industry. It helped build many careers, showcasing award winning work, profiling people, producing awards which it gave out to the very media industry which failed it. It made an enormous contribution to this industry, let us not forget that.
And that is what business-to-business media do: they facilitate trade, that is why they were called trade magazines before we got fancy with B2B terminology. They are a professional resource for industry.
AdVantage covers – which were never sold – were the most sought after in the industry. Many of those covers still hang on agency and media owner brag walls.
When the news of its closure broke today, the overwhelming reaction from the industry on social media networks was disbelief and sadness, with a couple of clients actually suggesting a petition and tweet campaign to get Media24 to change their decision.
I’m angry because the faceless accountants and publishers who sit in their towering head office at the big media conglomerates have never understood how special brands like AdVantage are to industries such as ours. Or the value to be obtained from the loyalty engendered by top B2B publications in the same industries that they try to sell advertising in for their glossier and wealthier media brands.That the legacy of the embedded knowledge in the talented teams of such B2B publications is just discarded.
B2B teams who dedicate their craft and specialise in covering their industries in depth love their publications and their industries. Their skills are extraordinary and far superior to many other lofty consumer titles, as B2B staff engage at CEO and director level with clients every day, help sell advertising, come up with innovative brand extensions, take their own pictures, get involved in publication layouts, proof copy, update their own websites, sign their mags off at the printers, and so on.
It is a testimony to the dedication and passion of the AdVantage team that we all offered to try raise the funds to buy the publication when closure was first mooted in 2011 when I was editor, and again last week, when the current team learnt of the latest move to close it.
I was told at the time that Media24 doesn’t buy publications to sell them, they would rather close them down.
And we still question why the media industry is in the state that it is today?
– Louise Marsland was editor-in-chief of AdVantage magazine from January 2009 – February 2012. She produced a model for business-to-business media sustainability in her M Com dissertation (2008) through the University of KwaZulu Natal Leadership School, entitled : ‘Analysing the Role of Business-to-Business Media in South Africa in the Emergence of Communities of Practice’. She has worked as an editor and journalist in the B2B publishing industry for 18 years of her 25 year media career.
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