With responsibility for the strategic direction of the publishing company’s traditional and interactive media, Stephen Lacy provides insight into media mix, budgets, and so on.

Stephen Lacy is president of Meredith Corporation Publishing Group. Meredith Corporation is a media and marketing company with businesses centering on magazine and book publishing, television broadcasting, integrated marketing, and interactive media. The Meredith Publishing Group includes more than 20 magazine brands, including Better Homes and Gardens, Ladies' Home Journal and American Baby. Additionally, Meredith has an extensive Internet presence, with sites for its major magazines and television stations, and strategic alliances with major Internet destinations such as MSN and AOL. BHG.com, LHJ.com and American Baby.com reach more than 6.5 million net unique visitors per month. Together, Meredith media properties reach more than 75 million Americans each month. Lacy is responsible for the strategic direction of the company’s magazine, book and brand licensing operations, along with the company's interactive media, integrated marketing, database and information systems operations.

Lacy will speak 9:30 a.m. Tuesday, May 6th, at the iMedia Summit at Camelback Inn, Scottsdale, Arizona.

iMedia Connection: When do you see advertising in general picking up on a sustained level?

Lacy: Certainly, advertising is stronger than it was a year ago. We’ve been performing well, but I believe the most upside will likely occur closer to calendar 2004.

iMedia Connection: And do you see the role of the Internet expanding, as well? How?

Lacy: We have always believed that adding the Internet component to the mix of media in the buy is the right thing to do and appropriate for marketers. It takes time to get to that point, however, as evidenced by the history of cable and other new media. We have seen a significant pick up in packaged goods, home and pharmaceutical advertising in our own Internet business. We expect that growth trend to continue. Over time, I’m confident that online advertising will be a meaningful component of most buys. I don’t know the time frame or the amount, but it is certainly an effective way to approach the consumer.

iMedia Connection: Are you noticing an increased role for the Internet in your client’s marketing mix?

Lacy: Absolutely. Almost without exception most RFPs, whether direct, print or even television, include a request for an Internet component. That was not happening five years ago.

iMedia Connection: What role should interactive play in the media mix?

Lacy: That’s specific marketer by marketer, but I’m confident it will, in fact, grow as the percent of users continues to increase year over year. It’s inevitable, as consumers change the way they spend their time, and as more people gain access to high-speed Internet connections.

iMedia Connection: How much money should one spend in the online world vs. the offline world?

Lacy: This varies, depending on the individual marketer. For example, the Better Homes and Gardens Website has a tremendous concentration of traffic around our recipe center. This generally occurs in the afternoon, as people at work figure out what they’re going to cook for dinner. It makes sense for related advertisers to buy into those particular venues. We have the ability with the Internet not only to report on the actual media usage, but we also have the ability to know when it happens. That’s not the case with other media such as print. Being in partnership with the market and understanding what the consumer is doing allows that particular media mix to be determined.

We at Meredith are very good at creating custom marketing programs for clients. In many instances we can marry advertising in our magazines with on-air broadcast and the Internet. We can enhance that program with a customized consumer piece poly-bagged with Better Homes and Gardens in certain regions. That mix can be very effective at inspiring the customer to take action. As an example, we have used this type of program in the automotive industry to drive consumers into the showroom for test drives. It’s a multi-platform approach that includes an Internet component.

iMedia Connection: Is there enough collaboration between online and offline media planning folks to determine what a realistic budget is to accomplish the roles for each set of media?

Lacy: Certainly this is an evolutionary process. We’re making progress, but as an industry, we’re not where we need to be in that regard. At Meredith, our group sales operations sell across our offline properties, and they bring the online component into the mix on a regular basis, depending on the needs of the clients. It’s a model that works well for us. Hopefully, the industry as a whole will evolve to a similar approach as time passes.

iMedia Connection: What do you think offers the most potential: online advertising in the forms of banners, skyscrapers, etc, or online advertising in the form of sponsorships, e-mail marketing, etc.?

Lacy: I believe the needs of marketers dictate the use of various forms of online advertising. A banner ad may work for one client, while a sponsorship or skyscraper ad may work best for another. At Meredith, we’re always looking for new, impactful units that will be the most effective based on the needs of our clients. We’re in the business of offering customized solutions to marketers’ problems, and we sell our online services in that way.

iMedia Connection: Who’s leading the charge at the moment in terms of creating truly integrated organizations? Clients, agencies, publishers?
Lacy: At this point, in most cases an insightful client leads the charge. Often, however, a media company may want to bring its full set of assets to bear, and is willing to work across the various individual business units that exist.

iMedia Communications: How exactly does Meredith's integrated marketing business use the company's extensive resources to create complete end-to-end marketing communications programs that build enduring relationships between consumers and clients?

Lacy: First, we make sure we have a clear understanding of the product development and marketing strategy of an individual company, and we do that in several ways. One way is through off-site sessions where the client updates us on current marketing challenges. We may also bring our editors together to exchange consumer insights with the client in a roundtable format. The next step is to discuss how we can use our portfolio of assets to help move the client’s strategy forward. This usually includes components such as group advertising buys in specific magazine titles, Internet marketing, custom magazine and book publishing projects, and database marketing/direct mail.

iMedia Communications: I know Meredith's consumer database is one of the company's most valued resources. How important is one-to-one marketing to your marketing and advertising clients?

Lacy: We have certain customers who know the exact names and addresses of their individual consumers. Then we have customers who have compiled very little data about their consumers. We offer a number of options to marketers in each case. For example, a particular company may be trying to persuade a group of consumers to take action in a region. We can overlay our database onto theirs and find people who look like their existing customers. That allows us to increase the number of people who take action, and we measure that very clearly. With an average of 300 pieces of information per person on our database, we can also find individual interests that help the marketer pinpoint the best prospects. If a client does not have an established database, we can easily pull prospect lists based on criteria they provide. These searches allow us (or the client) to create very targeted direct mail campaigns.

An interesting fact that illustrates my point involves the automotive industry. Through our own research, we’ve learned that women who own mini vans generally are interested in gardening. So we can find gardeners in our database, and assume they would probably be interested in test driving a mini-van. That allows us to send out a targeted mailing to those prospects, driving them into their local dealer. We implemented this program for a major automotive client, and had great success with it. In a nutshell, it’s really Meredith’s proprietary database that improves the quantity of prospects and the quality of the marketer’s list.

iMedia Connection: What are your thoughts on wireless? Broadband?

Lacy: Clearly, these technologies improve the consumer interface with online media, and we think that’s a positive. However, in terms of development of these technologies, I believe we’re still back where the Internet was in 1996 and 1997. But it’s definitely the future, and for our business it’s a positive. A great example is our Diet Planner on BHG.com. Using this technology, dieters could always keep their data with them through their PDA. Then, as they eat during the day, they could enter data on calories, fat, etc. It’s just one example, but it demonstrates a wonderful potential application of this technology. I believe it will take off slowly like the Internet did, and then there will be a certain point where it really takes off, much like cable TV and the Internet.

iMedia Connection: Without giving too much away, could you give us a glimpse of what you plan to talk about at the upcoming iMedia Summit?

Lacy: My overall responsibility is to run a major media company that approaches advertisers and consumers using a variety of media platforms. Of interest may be how we see consumption habits evolving and how we see the media approach to reaching those consumers changing over time – basically, the handful of things that keep me up at night thinking about how to mold this company to take advantage of these major opportunities in the future.