Consumer Marketing or Bust!...Time Inc.: bust :- /

Check this out:

TO: Time Inc. Consumer Marketing and Sales
FROM: Brian Wolfe
RE: Reorganization

"I’d like to provide further detail regarding our new Consumer Marketing & Sales organization. These changes were driven both by the current economic landscape, as well as the opportunity to be more focused on activities that drive our bottom line.

Each of our magazine and digital properties will be assigned to a brand leader, who will set strategic direction for our consumer activities and manage the P&L for their respective magazines. Their focus will include net paid and rate base planning, research, relationships with edit and ad sales, audience development, branding, and newsstand. Titles that already have substantial partnership volume will maintain partnership sales/operations teams; the balance of partnership activities will be managed by Synapse. Each brand leader (VP) will manage a ‘group’ of magazines, which align with the 3 different business units that Ann Moore detailed in her memo 2 weeks ago. Consumer Marketing activities for all U.S. Time Inc. magazines will now be managed in New York."

For the entire internal memo, visit Peter Kafka's Media Memo.

So, as you may or may not know (I'm guessing 'non'), to work specifically in consumer marketing has been my goal since last year.

(Nerdiness to take over in 5, 4, 3, 2...1)

Because of a senior project I did for a strategic newspaper management course, I fell in love with consumer research and distribution planning. ESRI's Community Tapestry became my real-life version of The Sims 2 (I mean, look at this). And conducting surveys to find out how people interact with the daily paper was fun. It was way more exciting than reporting had ever been to me because I was focusing on my real passion - which is not content, but rather the means (media) to receive the content. I know it sounds dorky (and I'm aware of the fact that it is :o ) but I just really love media, and learning how people react to and interact with it...

Okay, enough of that. Back to my original point - if there ever was one. My junior year I'd planned to intern at Time Warner and meet the people who ran the Logan Associates Program at Time Inc., so that I could increase my chance of getting into that after graduation. However, the program was cut before I had a chance to apply. My senior year I made it to final interviews for Gannett's Talent Development Program in circulation (1 of 3 for that position, I was told), and wasn't accepted :- ( Both of these programs would've given me a leg-up on the whole consumer marketing world. And both accepted people prior to graduating. However, after one graduates and still has no job (like me ;- ) they may begin to set aside goals for a while and start to pursue the positions that companies are hiring for and not the ones they really want...So, for now at least, I'm in marketing - at this level, no in-depth audience research for me. But, I will keep trying to land a position in the specific area of media sales and marketing that I'd like - just definitely not at Time Inc., 'cause they're not hiring a newbie like me any time soon.