All's Not So 'Elle' As This Interview Indicates

This interview last night between CNBC's Maria Bartiromo and Carol Smith, senior vp, chief brand officer of Elle doesn't really tell it like it is in the magazine industry or at Elle. This, despite the fact that in the excerpt above, Smith goes to great pains to explain how these days in the magazine industry, no one talks about "growth" but "market share."

Most of the interview focuses on Elle's cross-platform initiatives, such as its successful (but now ended) partnership with "Project Runway," but, even in the longer version of the interview that aired last night, it skirts some of the more recent data on how Elle is performing in terms of ad pages during the first quarter. On that count, it is faring no better and no worse than its competitors. See below (numbers from Publishers Information Bureau):

The magazine (as opposed to other Elle properties) came into 2009 off a smaller ad dollar base than Vogue, In Style and Cosmopolitan, but its percentage drop in ad dollars was still far more significant than Cosmopolitan's and on a par with In Style and Vogue. In ad pages, it ended 2008 in third place behind Vogue and In Style, but is seeing roughly the same percentage drop in ad pages as its bigger competitors. Elle's owner, Hachette Filippachi, also just instituted an across-the-board pay cut of six percent.

Much of the rationale for the Bartiromo interview seems to have been because of the accolades Smith garnered for last year's performance: being named Executive of the Year by Advertising Age last October, and no. 2 on Adweek's Hot List just last month based on an 11.2 percent gain in ad revenue last year and a 6.6 percent gain in circulation. But, boy, have times changed.

(BTW, if you're wondering who the publisher of Elle is, it's basically Smith. It's just that Hachette doesn't believe in publishers anymore.)