AIM will take over sales duties for Conde Nast Traveler, Vanity Fair, Gourmet and Architectural Digest from Conde Nast's incumbent sales representative, Mediaworks Matthews Asia. The four titles mainly attract Asia's travel advertising dollar, but AIM executive director Peter Jeffery believes there are opportunities to expand beyond this category. "There's certainly an opportunity to expand beyond travel in markets such as Japan, Korea and China, where there are strong consumer electronics players such as Samsung, which has centralised budgets for corporate campaigns."
Asia-Pacific generates ad sales revenue of about US$2 million for the titles, which Jeffery believes could grow to $4 to $5 million in the next two years as regional economies strengthen and Chinese companies such as Lenovo, following its purchase of IBM's PC business, and Haier begin investing in branding to target US audiences.
In a separate development, regional Chinese language newsweekly YZ also outsourced ad sales for Hong Kong to AIM. The appointment comes amid a growing shortage of experienced ad sales talent in the city.
Terence Tung, YZ's general manager, said he was banking on AIM to not only grow advertising revenue, but also help sharpen marketing of YZ's brand. "We want AIM to help us raise YZ's noise level in our headquarters and across Asia," Tung added.
Jeffery noted that publications were finding it increasingly difficult to build up experienced ad sales teams as the lengthy downturn saw talent leave the industry. "It's a challenge to find people in Hong Kong who are grounded in research and have the experience of working on local as well as regional international publications and in this case with direct experience (senior AIM executives Cordelia Chan and Theresa Ngai worked on YZ in the '90s).
YZ plans to beef up editorial and circulation this year. YZ's deputy GM Ricky Ma said business and finance coverage will be beefed up with greater analysis of China firms planning IPOs in Hong Kong. Ma said the 2004 ABC audit is expected to exceed 70,000 copies and YZ was planning aggressive promotions in Thailand, Indonesia and the Philippines on top of its core Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysian markets.