Advertising: A Reinvented Condé Nast Traveler Sets a New Course

A Reinvented Condé Nast Traveler Sets a New Course

A TRAVEL magazine is using a campaign to signal an embarkation on a trip of its own to a land that is becoming increasingly popular among print publications, Reinventionstan.

A $1.5 million marketing campaign for the revamped Condé Nast Traveler carries the theme “I am a Traveler.”

The campaign, for Condé Nast Traveler, part of the Condé Nast division of Advance Publications, carries the theme “I am a Traveler” with a subtheme, “Every Journey Begins Here.” The new theme will be personified by achievers in fields like fashion, food, design and the arts, offering confident assertions in this vein: “Travel sparks my imagination. I like to picture the world as a home â€" London is the living room and Rio is the bedroom.”

The campaign, which is being created internally, is part of a revamping of the Condé Nast Traveler brand that includes a changing of the guard atop the business and newsroom sides of the magazine. The budget for the campaign, in print and social media, is estimated at $1.5 million, which includes the value of the ad space in the magazine’s own pages and the pages of Condé Nast siblings that include Architectural Digest, Bon Appétit, The New Yorker and Wired.

Condé Nast Traveler was introduced in 1987 as a self-proclaimed alternative to travel publications that played up fluff and fantasy at the expense of providing well-traveled, well-heeled readers with realistic information about potential destinations. The approach was embodied by a theme, “Truth in Travel,” which has continued to appear on the magazine’s cover each month.

“Truth in Travel” remains “a valuable part of the brand,” said William Wackermann, who in June left the top business-side post at Glamour, another Condé Nast magazine, to become executive vice president and publishing director at Condé Nast Traveler. The theme is, however, emblematic of what he called “the old model, when the travel expert was the editor of the magazine and there was one point of view, of the expert.”

“Today, I don’t think it’s one viewpoint because there are so many experts, especially the travelers themselves,” Mr. Wackermann said, many of them “tastemakers like designers, stylists, chefs” who look for ideas and advice online as well as in print.

“I think our job is to be a filter,” he added. “That doesn’t mean we abandon any of our heritage; we just expand our lens.”

When asked whether the “Truth in Travel” philosophy would be retained as the magazine is made over, Mr. Wackermann deferred to Pilar Guzmán, who last month was named editor in chief. “As Pilar spends more time at the brand, she’ll be discussing her vision of what the magazine should be,” he said.

Audrey Siegel, president at TargetCast TCM in New York, part of the Maxxcom Global Media unit of MDC Partners, said she liked “the new positioning because it’s smart, it’s differentiating.”

“Certainly, in today’s market, when it comes to ‘Truth in Travel,’ that information can be obtained on many, many Web sites, all the reviews and ratings systems,” said Ms. Siegel, whose agency handles media services for travel marketers like Expedia and Hotels.com. “It’s not ownable; you don’t need Condé Nast Traveler for that.”

By contrast, “it’s not a bad idea to raise the level of interest in fine travel, and I think it will be believable from Condé Nast, as they do for fine dining and fine fashion,” she added.

However, “to be successful,” Ms. Siegel said, “it has to be aspirational but achievable and coupled with an effective Web experience where the reader can find e-commerce or a ‘travel concierge.’ ”

Ms. Siegel pointed to the revisions Condé Nast had made at Bon Appétit, among them a new publisher, a new editor in chief and a refocusing that “took the best of the Bon Appétit positioning, offering recipes you’d actually cook and adding coverage of a lifestyle you might aspire to.”

Mr. Wackermann also referred to the changes at Bon Appétit, which began when he was its publishing director. “I can only hope we’ll be as successful as Pam and Adam,” he said, referring to Pamela Drucker Mann, vice president and publisher, and Adam Rapoport, editor in chief. “I’m excited to work with Pilar to reimagine what Condé Nast Traveler can look like.”

The first four people declaring, “I am a Traveler” in the campaign are the fashion designer Nicholas Kunz, the photographer Anne Menke, the chef Seamus Mullen and the interior designer Miles Redd. They all appear with various kinds of balloons, symbolizing the delightful experiences that await travelers.

In addition to appearing in the campaign, Ms. Menke photographed it, making her ad, on a beach in Sayulita, Mexico, perhaps the year’s most stylish selfie.

“This is the first time I ever did that,” Ms. Menke said. “I’m really the worst subject.” A donation that Condé Nast made to the Costa Verde International School, which she and her husband founded, helped overcome her dislike of being in front of a camera, she added.

Condé Nast Traveler plans to formally introduce the campaign at an event on Sept. 18 at Tertulia, a New York restaurant owned by Mr. Mullen. Guests will be asked to bring their passports because five will win trips, leaving the next day. (Coincidentally, Expedia has been sponsoring a Trip-a-Day Giveaway.)

In a Condé Nast touch, the ads include credits for not only Ms. Menke as the photographer but also for some clothing and accessories worn by the subjects. For instance, Mr. Redd wears a Tom Ford dinner jacket, priced at $3,280, and a Zenith watch, at $11,000.

Whoever said “time is money” must have been well traveled.