University Man--Dress Code Suits Many
“I seen me opportunities,” Boss Tweed said, making the case for entrepreneurship, “and I took ‘em.” University Man is a new monthly fashion magazine. It is also the most recent opportunity for successful entrepreneur and neophyte publisher Donald Embinder, who saw a void in the market and the need to fill it.
“No established periodical was addressing the fashion needs of the younger or more casually dressed man,” Embinder said. “I didn’t want to take on GQ directly”--GQ is the leader among men’s fashion magazines--”what they do they do very well. But how do you do a fashion magazine without going head to head with GQ? I thought about it for a year.”
The outcome was the Los Angeles-based University Man, a $3.95, 98-page, Esquire-sized fashion monthly with a dress code: No one is allowed in with a tie and jacket.
“GQ seemed to us to deal with a particular kind of man and attitude. Maturity, affluence, the trappings of career. A very East Coast view and style. Most of us at the magazine were from the East originally and had discovered that the clothing and style that had suited us there weren’t very appropriate when we moved out here to the Southwest,” the 52-year-old publisher said.
“The concept of the West Coast designer taking on New York and Europe was just catching hold,” he added. “In the early ‘60s the surf life style helped California emerge as a style center. Now it was happening again.”
Embinder did time in advertising after graduation from Wharton, then for seven years was in charge of the building program of the Maryland State College system. When some friends told him about a new rage in Paris, the discotheque, he resigned to build the first of four major Eastern dance clubs. Five years ago he sold them, moved to Los Angeles and started to think about publishing.
Becomes Monthly
University Man began life last August expecting to spend its first year as a quarterly. After a second issue in November, however, it went monthly in January, guaranteeing half its 200,000 circulation as paid subscription and newsstand sales.
Although the periodical is attracting an older audience than anticipated (about half its readers are over 30), it delivers an editorial package aimed at the college age. The April issue includes mini-profiles of future celebs like 21 Jump Street’s Johnny Depp, a survey of comedy clubs, a humor piece on weird sports, full-sized portraits of actor Michael Pare and sports agent Leigh Steinberg, service pieces on cars and stereos, and fashion spreads on pajamas, boxer shorts, dress shirts, pants, and shoes. The campus fashion shoot, a regular feature, this month uses models from USC.
Oddly enough, though, for an art-directed magazine, it is singularly unappealing visually. Gratuitous splashes of color abound. The layouts are busy and arbitrary. And the photography is for the most part uninspired. Only seven issues old, University Man has, however, already gone through two creative directors and three editors. Beginning with the current issue, one man, Alfonso Sabelli, will wear three hats as editor-in-chief, creative director and fashion editor. Embinder, who keeps a close eye on both the business and editorial sides of his business, comments that the arrangement “allows less room for disagreement.”
As part of an awards ceremony honoring business responsibility last week in New York City, the Council on Economic Priorities, a corporate watchdog organization, offered a dishonorable mention to the tobacco industry in general and RJR Nabisco Inc., formerly the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., in particular. The council knocked the industry “for dishonorable marketing and lobbying of life-threatening products.” It singled out RJR for what it described as especially egregious marketing practices in the Third World and for publishing a magazine given away free in the nation’s movie theaters.
The magazine in question was Moviegoer, a better-than-average fanzine that until the beginning of 1987 was as ubiquitous in movie lobbies as popcorn. According to council project director Myra Alperson, “with 40% of the nation’s movie-going audience under 21 years old, it seems clear to us that Moviegoer was an attempt to introduce kids to cigarettes.”
Developed Secretly?
Alperson said the research organization was acting on evidence provided by Joe Tye, publisher of Tobacco and Youth Reporter, the journal of the Palo Alto-based Stop Teenage Addiction to Tobacco. He charged the tobacco giant had developed the publication secretly, employing Knoxville-based Whittle Communications, then known as the 13-30 Corp., to do the job.
Tye is a hospital administrator whose nonprofit organization has monitored tobacco marketing efforts in the United States and abroad and the enforcement of laws designed to protect children from cigarettes. “13-30 stood for that company’s targeted audience,” he said. “Moviegoer had flashy articles about young celebrities like Molly Ringwald. The only way you could tell that it was a tobacco industry magazine was that five of its 23 pages were full-page ads for Salems and Camels.”
Articles Reprinted
Tye said Reynolds shut down Moviegoer after articles in Tobacco and Youth Reporter were reprinted widely in other health industry publications. A spokesperson for RJR Nabisco, headquartered in Winston-Salem, said that Moviegoer had been terminated because it no longer fit their long-term marketing plans. She stressed, however, that RJR had an agreement with 13-30 that during youth-oriented movies, the magazine’s display cabinets would be closed and locked.
Whittle marketing vice president Sara Fortune defended single-advertiser magazines. Single-sponsor publications are developed just as any other magazine would be, she said.
“We conceive of a magazine for a given population and then go out and find the advertiser. Right now we are doing such publications as Dental Health Advisor for Procter & Gamble, America for Nissan, and Best of Business for Xerox.”
Moviegoer was a professionally edited and art-directed magazine, surprisingly well-remembered by moviegoers considering that its million copies per issue were available in only 290 of the nation’s 17,000 theaters.
