A Mirror Image

So, the year two thousand and nine approaches it’s end and another decade looms. At this time of year with rain lashing the windows and darkness closing in around four o’clock in the afternoon I always feel drawn to look back rather than forward. There will be time to think about new horizons after the New Year celebrations. In reflective mood I realised that forty years had passed since I had my biggest break in the publishing business. In 1969 the “Daily Mirror” was planning to launch it’s own colour magazine. It was to be distributed on Fridays free with every copy of the paper. That meant a circulation level of over five million copies a week….yes five million! (Have you ever seen five million of anything in one place…it’s pretty impressive). After many interviews and meetings in the Mirror Building at High Holborn I was appointed Advertisement Sales Controller of the new title. I could hardly believe it then and even now it is still a source of wonder.
I had joined “Woman’s Own” as an advertisement sales representative a few years before and subsequently promoted to Advertisement Manager of a magazine called “Tit-Bits”. It was the oldest title in the Magazine Division of what was then IPC having been launched by George Newnes & Co in 1881. In it’s early days it had been highly successful and well regarded. Authors like P G Woodehouse, Rider Haggard, Asimov, Christopher Priest and others as well known published short stories and articles on matters of the day, but the title had now degenerated from being a weekly collection of tit-bits of news and short stories, and having a profitable circulation level, to a rather unattractive old style journal in which few advertisers wanted to place their messages. My appointment was part of a planned re-launch, replacing it’s dowdy monotone production with colour and generally up-dating it’s style and content. The plan went well and the title recovered some of it’s former standing.
 
I took up my new position in August 1969 and moved from Long Acre to the Mirror Building in High Holborn. The contrast between the Magazine and Newspaper Divisions of IPC was stark and dramatic. The air and sense of urgency and importance, the edginess of everyone. The arrogance of those employed by the biggest selling newspaper in the world was evident from the moment you entered the building, everyone I spoke to gave the impression of being an expert on everyone else’s job. Nothing was impossible, anything was just a phone call away. But the biggest difference was the attitude of the unions. In the Magazine Division problems between management and unions were rare and when they did surface problems were resolved quickly and amicably. Here it was a battleground. Don’t use the photocopier, it is a NATSOPA job, don’t complain about the toilets being grubby, you may offend the union member whose job it was to clean them. Don’t criticize anyone’s work unless there is an FOC present. Copies of the magazine mustn’t be seen in the Mirror Building in case it upset one union FOC or another. Privately I couldn’t believe that union leaders could be so blind, so greedy, and so unscrupulous. Nor could I understand those who elected these avaricious people to lead them To me the only reason anyone would follow them would be out of curiosity! Everyone wanted a payment of some sort because of the magazine launch, whether they were asked to do more work or not. It reached the absurd point where some workers in the Mirror Building who had no connection with the operation at all demanded and were granted a “Non-Involvement” payment. They were actually paid for not being involved!!!
 
The newcomers to the Mirror Building in High Holborn were not welcome. At every turn there was someone with a gripe about the magazine project. Even the Advertisement Department, on the surface friendly and helpful, were in reality anything but. Despite all these obstacles and problems a superb sales team was assembled, (Many of whom later went on to become senior directors of other media houses), marketing plans formulated and strategies devised. The launch presentations in London and Manchester were a huge success and the title first appeared on the first of October 1969.
They say that the best laid plans of mice and men…. Well, despite meticulous planning and enormous work rates by all concerned, the title was not a success; mostly because the financial structure of the project was wrong from the start. To make matters worse the advertising market was in a steep decline and was not able to support the title to the budgeted level and of course the costs of production and distribution moved irresistibly upwards due to the outrageous claims made from every section of the company. The outcome was inevitable and is now history. In April 1970 the successful takeover bid for IPC made by Reed sealed the fate of the magazine and it was closed in July. Later Graham Cleverley wrote a book called the “The Fleet Street Disaster.” It devotes an important and insightful section to “The Mirror Magazine”, not very flattering but very accurate in it’s assessment of the project as part of the overall scene at that time. It’s worth a read.
 
Though the overall project failed, the lessons learned were invaluable. Certainly in the advertisement department the structures, marketing disciplines and sales techniques created and established to run the Magazine were recognised as being more modern and effective and led to merging the sales forces of all the titles in the newspaper division into a single, group sales, operation. Oddly enough though I was appointed the Group Sales Controller, I had then, and have still now, grave doubts about the wisdom of that merger. To me a sales force works best when it has a clear objective and sharply defined targets. Any salesman with a range of products to sell will first offer the most popular or the easiest item with which to obtain an order. That will certainly benefit the strongest product but equally it will without doubt damage the weaker items. The new structure was to an acceptable degree, made to work in the Advertisement Department but I am sure that it didn’t help in the Circulation area. There competition between titles is absolutely necessary, or rather it was, I’m not so sure that it would matter so much now given that the Sunday papers are seen to be in the shops late on Saturday evening!
 
I left the Mirror Group in 1979 as Circulation Sales Director with an attachment for newspapers that is still with me. I know I performed my best work there and I think of those years with warmth and affection, they were the most productive and rewarding of my career. They certainly don’t seem like a forty year old memory.