In a landmark move, Conde Nast throws up a white flag in the face of the recession's effects on its business and hires a consultant group ... on the eve of the announcement of its magazines' September numbers.
Previously, the publishing house known for titles including The New Yorker, Vogue, Vanity Fair and many others had implemented sporadic, cut-as-you-go-deeper-into-debt orders. But then CEO Chuck Townsend issued a sweeping memo to all employee that introduced the most significant effort to date towards long-term adjustment of the Conde Nast business model for financial viability.
Consultant group McKinsey & Company has been hired by the media giant to, according to the memo, "realign Conde Nast to be a successful business in an emerging economy that is now predicted to be painfully slow in recovering." The essential heart of the memo lay in the resignation that, darn, this whole recession thing is really happening.
Again, given the reports on the September figures, we're not surprised by the news (we'll post the latest advertising figures for the September issues today), and we look forward to what these McKinsey peeps come up with -- though our crystal balls are predicting a ramping up of the online business and a few more painful cuts to editors' puffed-up spending accounts.
