MADISON AVENUE DISCOVERS THE SELLING POWER OF SCIENCE

by Michael Learmonth

Most people who know Robert Ach know him as “Robby Virus,” bandleader for the San Francisco-based lounge act Project: Pimento. Virus, a tall, wiry fellow with a deep monotone vibrato, plays an electromagnetic instrument called a theremin, and, on occasion, sings. He leads a sizable troupe of young professionals to gigs around the Bay Area, in no small part due to his enormous e-mail distribution list that alerts fans and friends to the next gig. He is what Malcolm Gladwell, in his book The Tipping Point, might call a “connector”-a person who knows everyone and influences others. In sum, Virus is the kind of person advertisers want to reach.

But what most people don’t know about Virus is that he holds a Ph.D. from Yale in biochemistry and a big-time research job at Agilent Technologies, a billion-dollar spin-off from Hewlett-Packard that develops instruments for the life sciences. Virus reads a host of science and tech-related titles, not because he has to but because he loves them. He doesn’t watch much TV, but he’s subscribed to Astronomy since its very first issue in 1973. He also reads Science, New Scientist, and Science News.

“I like learning new things; that’s the key to the scientific personality,” Virus says. For example, though he isn’t an astronomer, he likes to read about black holes-if only for the gallows humor: “You know, in case one comes my way, I’ll know what to do.”

As the advertising recession drones on, one category of magazines is decidedly on the rebound. Science titles enjoyed a stunning first quarter, making publishers giddy from the kind attention they’ve been receiving from Madison Avenue. These magazines have long benefited from having exceptionally passionate readers-readers who are willing to pay, on average, a higher price for subscriptions and newsstand copies than those of most other glossies. But that strong circulation story is now being augmented by advertisers’ recent focus on the sector. The science titles are also enjoying a new relevance in the culture, as business and society turn to science and technology to haul the economy out of recession and address such concerns as terrorism, SARS, cloning, the environment, and genetically altered foods.

The numbers, as always, help tell the story. In the first quarter of 2003, old gearhead standby Popular Science-revitalized under a new editor and with a largely new staff-scored a 55 percent increase in ad dollars over 2002; Scientific American shot up 40 percent; and Wired, whacked hard after the tech bubble burst, came roaring back with a whopping 77 percent revenue increase. Technology Review, in the midst of an international expansion binge, is gasping for oxygen after increasing revenue by 56 percent.

Editorially, science and technology magazines are getting more recognition than they have in years. Of the five magazines nominated this year for a National Magazine Award for tackling a single topic in one issue, three were science and tech books: Popular Science, Scientific American, and Technology Review. Scientific American took the award for “A Matter of Time,” the subject of its September issue, which addressed the theoretical case for time travel. And Disney’s Discover was named a finalist for General Excellence, in the circulation category of one million to two million, for becoming “a must read in an increasingly complex world.”

Popular culture has become infused with science themes, from films like A Beautiful Mind; the forensic TV whodunits “CSI” and “CSI: Miami;” and shows like “BattleBots,” where engineers and physicists get to act out the fantasies they had when they were 12. Science has moved up the list of public concerns, according to the National Science Foundation, now ranking fourth behind crime, health, and sports. “The nation’s conversation is being influenced profoundly now by science,” says Adam Bly, founder and publisher of science-culture start-up Seed.

The science-tech magazine category is, admittedly, splintered, united only by readers and, these days, a fresh prosperity. Wired and Technology Review are black sheep in the group. Having been acquired by Conde Nast in 1998, Wired has a business model of a mass consumer magazine. In a move that would prove prescient, the company tapped Christopher Anderson, a little-known science editor from The Economist and a Ph.D. who began his career at the journal Nature, to reposition the book. “One of the reasons Conde Nast and I found so much common ground was my science background, and the notion that science is more interesting now,” he says.

Technology Review successfully repositioned itself from an MIT alumni magazine into a mass-market title that tracks new technologies the editors expect will impact business and society. “An executive running a company needs to know if there’s a disruptive or transformative technology about to change their business,” says publisher R. Bruce Journey. “If you’re not looking 10 years down the road, you’re not doing your job.”

The pure science titles are spread across the continuum, from the most wonky to the most mass-market. Popular Science is firmly entrenched at the mass end. A host of publications occupy the middle ground, among them Discover, Scientific American, the New Scientist, and Astronomy. At the other end of the spectrum are American Scientist, which enjoyed a 21 percent increase on the newsstand last year, and peer-reviewed pubs like Science and Nature. Inherent in publishing a science title is the task of appealing to the curious lay reader and to the scientist. “It’s a tricky balance,” explains New Scientist features editor Eugenie Samuel. “We shouldn’t have anything that’s cringe-worthy to scientists when we write about something in their field, but we want it to be interesting to the lay person as well.”

Mass-market magazines were, broadly speaking, in a bad place through the Internet bubble, but for the science and tech publications, the advertising is storming back. It’s not too hard to figure out why. A major reason is the readership: It’s educated, affluent, and influential. These are people who teach at universities, run private labs, or work in technology, venture capital, pharmaceuticals, and bioscience companies. You might not be able to sell them designer shoes, but you can sell them a PDA or a Prius. “I think the rap on these magazines in the past was that they were too tech and too difficult to understand; the readers are geeks and nerds and not people like you and me,” says Eric McClure, partner at media agency Oasis. “They’ve been underserved. Yes, professionally they might be researchers, but they’re also consumers. We think they’re early adopters who, through their consumption habits, help to influence the larger market.”

McClure is targeting the readers of Popular Science, Scientific American, Discover, and Tech Review with the kind of message that he believes will resonate strongest with the sci-mag set. It’s a Toyota campaign, not to sell a particular model, but to propagate the notion that Toyota as a company is innovative in its efforts to boost performance, improve gas mileage, enhance safety, and reduce emissions. “If it stimulates them intellectually, they’ll talk to their friends, family, and peers, and spread the word,” says McClure.

As business-to-business advertisers return, the tech and science category is positioned to benefit early. Before the Internet bubble, the science and tech titles were sopping up a lot of the b-to-b advertising that ultimately wound up in the so-called “new economy” business magazines. Now that most of those are gone, corporate advertising and, especially, tech advertising seem to be gravitating back. The tentative return of tech has been a boon for Wired, which experienced a 43 percent increase in ad pages through April. Intel recently sponsored Wired’s “Unwired” supplement, Hewlett-Packard sponsored a 10-page poster in April, and Microsoft bought more pages in the first half of 2003 than ever before.

Does this mean tech advertising is back? Hardly. Overall, it’s down nine percent through April, according to Publishers Information Bureau. That’s down from 2002, a year when most thought it couldn’t sink any lower. So what’s going on? Wired and the other science magazines are gaining ground at the expense of business titles, according to McClure. Despite their best efforts to put a rosy spin on things, the business magazines are obligated to cover what is a pretty dismal business environment. Not so for the sci/tech books. Wired, with its optimistic view of the future, has proven to be a relatively safe haven for advertisers who’d rather not be positioned next to, say, a story on corporate fraud or SARS.

But there’s another reason science titles are emerging from the advertising recession in fighting trim: They were not as dependent on advertising for revenue in the first place. The science magazines have always charged more to their readers, who are less sensitive to price increases. Take American Scientist, for example. Last fall, associate publisher Kate Miller raised the publication’s cover price from $3.95 to $4.59. The result? Newsstand sales shot up 21 percent. Discover, which has had uncharacteristically flat ad sales this year, is increasing its subscription price from $19.95 to $24.95 in order to winnow down the rate base from more than a million to 850,000. At a $4.99 cover price, circulation increased 32 percent in 2002. “These magazines are tough to do because they have no endemic advertising,” says Discover editor Stephen Petranek, “but our circ[ulation] story helps us to weather the bad times.”

Five years ago, the economic health of the pure-science magazines began and ended with circulation. “The real science magazines have incredibly strong circulation propositions, but they had never found a way to be incredibly viable on the advertising side,” says Denise Anderman, Pop Sci’s publishing director and a former publisher of Scientific American. But this is changing. Toyota, Subaru, Apple, GE, Johnnie Walker, and Microsoft are all buying a significant number of pages in the science books. Five years ago, Anderman recalls, it was tough to make a case to the average media buyer. “I was proselytizing,” she explains. Now the proposition for advertisers is far clearer.

The environment seems so strong for science titles that two brand-new ones are exploring the waters. Former Red Herring editor Jason Pontin just launched Acumen Journal of Sciences, a business magazine for the biosciences. The first issue has 10 pages of ads, but the model is decidedly circulation-based, with a yearly subscription priced at $150. “I think the market will support it,” Pontin says. “The business argument is, ‘I don’t believe the tech revolution is over,’ but the nexus of interest, the area of white heat, no longer is computer science. It’s centered on pharmaceuticals, biotech, bio defense, agriculture, and some aspects of nanotechnology.”

For Bly’s Seed, the vision is even more ambitious. Seed Group is capitalized at a level sufficient to build “the first global science media company,” Bly boasts, on the model of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. He expects a 250,000 ratebase in 2004 for his mass-market magazine, and Seed books and television projects are in the works. Scientific ideas are “capturing the culture unlike anything in the market right now,” he says. “A new generation of young professionals are passionate about science and culture.”

These new books join the most venerable titles in the business. Scientific American, founded in 1845, is the oldest continually published magazine in the country. Its first issue included stories on rail cars capable of “30 to 40 miles per hour” and a “Morse’s Telegraph” link between Washington and Baltimore. Popular Science turns 131 this year; American Scientist, 90. These magazines are known for their staying power; soon they may be known for their economic prowess as well.

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“The New Rage of Science,” Folio: magazine, June 1, 2003. © PRIMEDIA Business Magazines & Media Inc.

Michael Learmonth is a senior associate writer at Folio: magazine.