Weider Magazines Bulking Up Circulation Quickly.

SURE, New York is awash in pencil-necked magazines like Cosmo, Architectural Digest and Vanity Fair. But when it comes to bullets, Buicks and brawn, L.A. rules.

The city lost its biggest magazine group when hunting, automotive and outdoors specialist Petersen Publishing was acquired by London-based Emap plc in December 1998. But a newer niche-publishing powerhouse in Woodland Hills is on circulation steroids and is rapidly dominating its readership categories.

Weider Publications Inc. is the home of such titles as Men's Fitness, Muscle & Fitness and Flex. While not all of its magazines are showing explosive growth, its two flagships -- Shape and Men's Fitness -- are among the nation's fastest-growing publications.

According to recently released figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations, total paid circulation for Men's Fitness hit 530,647 for the six-month period ended Dec. 31, a 51.1 percent increase over the like period in 1998. Shape's total circulation hit 1.52 million for the period, a rise of 32.9 percent. And a third Weider title, teen-girl-focused Jump, rose 42 percent over the period to 426,467 -- not at all bad for a magazine that's only two years old.

The latest numbers are just the continuation of a trend; Shape, for example, has grown from around 900,000 readers to 1.5 million in less than four years.

Joan Sheridan, publishing director of the Wieder group that includes Shape, Men's Fitness, Jump and Fit Pregnancy, says that Americans are becoming increasingly obsessed with health and fitness, creating a rising audience for the magazines.

Yet competing titles in the same niche aren't seeing the same gains. Shape's major competitor, Self, had circulation of 1.14 million in the latest period, a gain of only 0.1 percent. And Men's Fitness rival Men's Health actually lost ground, falling 1.1 percent to 1.6 million readers.

In 1997, Weider hired a new circulation director, who completely retooled the company's direct-mail advertising. Sheridan says the titles started showing immediate circulation gains as a result "It really was a matter of just telling people about us," Sheridan said. "To a certain degree, the titles had been under-marketed."

Sticking to Their Guns

If muscle mags aren't your thing, how about hooks and bullets? L.A. has another new title for that crowd: 113-year-old Sports Afield, which is in the process of moving from New York to North Hollywood following its purchase in January by Petersen Publishing founder Robert E. Petersen.

Unlike the Weider titles, Sports Afield is struggling, and has been for some time; the latest ABC figures show circulation of 454,144, a 2.9 percent decline from the six-month period ended Dec. 31, 1998.

Why would Petersen, whose personal fortune is estimated at well over half a billion dollars and who is past retirement age, want to go to all the effort of turning around a struggling hunting magazine?

"I think both he and me have ink in our veins," said Ken Elliott, the new president of Sports Afield who was a top executive at Petersen Publishing for 26 years, most recently as executive publisher of the outdoor group.

Petersen last week bought an 18,000-square-foot building at 11650 Riverside Drive, where the magazine will be housed on the second floor, while a Petersen-owned company that ma shotgun shells called Cartridge Co. locates on the first floor.

Petersen and Elliott have a struggle on their hands. Hearst Corp., which owned Sports Afield before selling it to Petersen, overhauled the venerable magazine last summer in response to declining circulation, putting a new emphasis on outdoor sports like kayaking and mountain biking. Less and less people today are hunting, while the popularity of other outdoor sports is growing.

But Elliott points out that there are still millions of people out there with hunting licenses -- which is why he and Petersen intend to return the magazine to its roots as a pure hunting and fishing title. And the magazine doesn't need more than 500,000 subscribers to be successful; Elliott wants it to be big enough to attract advertisers, but not so big that it prices smaller clients out.

Dodgers Hire an Agency

Bob Daly's first major move as head of the Dodgers was returning President Bob Graziano to the front office. His latest came last week.

The Dodgers have never really advertised very extensively, mainly because they don't really need to -- the team gets so much free media exposure that it's one of the best-known sports brands in the world. Other than the controversial banners hanging from city-owned light posts around L.A. last year, the Dodgers have been content to run with little or no paid media, and haven't had an ad agency since 1995.

That changed last week when the team hired WongDoody, a Seattle-based agency whose West Hollywood branch has been growing exponentially in its two-year existence. From five people a year ago, the office now employs 34 and is already as big as the Seattle headquarters.

The size of the account was not disclosed, but the Dodgers are unlikely to be spending more than a million or two because WongDoody's L.A. office chief Ben Wiener says the agency is not adding any extra staffers to handle the account The campaign will include television, radio, newspapers and billboards in the Southern California market. It will launch in late March.

Wiener says the strategy of the campaign is to connect with people who might not normally consider going to a Dodgers game.

"There's moms and kids out there making a decision about what to do on a Saturday afternoon, and those people need to be reached out to," Wiener said. "When you're just talking to the hardcore Dodgers fan, you're preaching to the choir. The strategy is to remind the casual fan about what they love about going to a Dodger game."

Assistant Managing Editor Dan Turner writes a weekly column on marketing for the Los Angeles Business Journal.