Custom Publishing Project: MindShare/Time Warner/American Express, The Ticket
Iris Dorbian

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Last year, American Express teamed up with four top Time Warner magazines—Sports Illustrated, People, Entertainment Weekly and Time—to create “The Ticket,” which was the name of a custom 11x17 glossy broadsheet publication that combined the editorial efforts of these brands. The purpose of this month-long effort, which ran from late August 2006 to late September 2006, was to enable card members and prospective customers to experience the unique benefits that New York City had to offer, from Broadway shows to dining at four-star restaurants. The idea was the brainchild of AmEx agency MindShare. “We wanted to find a way to promote what was being done in New York City at that time,” says Steve Piluso, director of strategic planning at MindShare. “We didn’t want to do straight advertising.”

Although Time Warner had a long-running relationship with American Express and had been interested in developing an innovative program with the credit card company, the process of getting several Time Warner magazines to work together to create a single publication, even short-term, was tricky, says Nancy Smith, vice president of global media and sponsorship marketing for American Express. But Time Warner soon embraced the idea and the project was off and running.

As part of the execution, each week, one of the four magazines involved would take the lead in developing the editorial for The Ticket, with input from the other titles. For instance, during the U.S. Open, Sports Illustrated ran a cover story on the tennis tournament; another week, Entertainment Weekly led with an “At The Movies” feature. Each issue included full-page ads for American Express’ “Membership Changes Everything” (MCE) advertising theme.

This effort marked the first time that four Time Warner magazines unified to create a single entity, in this case, a custom publication, for a single advertiser, American Express. No non-Time Warner publications were involved.

The program’s return on investment was impressive: Tickets to all of the events that fell under The Ticket umbrella, were sold-out within a day – sometimes in minutes.

Will this be done again? Piluso says they don’t want to repeat the same thing again so soon. But they wouldn’t mind doing something different and more “impactful” and certainly with the same media partners. “I think this is a great first step. Whatever we do in this type of space will be a progression or an evolution of what we’ve done. We always want to make sure we are doing things that are perceived as innovative and breakthrough within the marketplace so they do get attention.”
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