The Tragic Demise of Greek Buff Books

I once read that a successful PR department is one that has managed to make the press an extension of its own. As bad as this idea may sound for an independent-minded consumer, I couldn’t help thinking that it now works the other way around. With the Internet obliterating buff books’ editorial relevance, many magazines have shifted their sales focus from their readers, the traditional customers, to the PR departments of the companies whose ad bucks support their survival. In this respect Greek car magazines are hugely successful.

In the last 15 years, Greece went from one car title to almost ten; including franchises of foreign titles (Car, Car and Driver, Auto Motor und Sport, Autocar, Autobild and Top Gear.). Arguably, most of these new car magazines were created by publishing companies for the sole purpose of soaking-up new product advertising. From ’91 to ’02, car sales in Greece tripled. As did the car importers’ ad budgets. This car ad-fuelled hothouse was short-lived. As the Internet ascended, circulation numbers fell, from tens of thousands of copies monthly, to just a few thousand. Selling ads soon became more important than selling magazines; the business plan had no room to accommodate reader demands. The basic concept of a car magazine “providing information while entertaining” went out the window faster than Protestants in Prague.

In the past five years, the Greek new car market has achieved European-levels of saturation. Importers’ ad budgets hit the ceiling and bounced back, decreasing year on year. With less pie left to slice, with pistonheads migrating to electronic info sources in droves, car magazines quickly figured out the fastest (if not only) way to keep the ad bucks flowing: inflate reader circulation numbers. In Greece, there’s no official circulation watchdog. So the car magazines were free to claim an absurdly large, loyal following. [NB: Τhe only limit was/is taxation; magazines pay tax based on how many copies they “sell.”] And so they did.

Depending on a business plan based on greed, editorial prostitution and fraud has turned the vast majority of Greek car magazines into nothing more than a monthly new car catalog. Looking at it from the readers’ perspective, the buff books are filled with pages of glossy shots of cars that look little different from the ads subsidizing their dissemination. There is literally no significant demarcation between the magazine’s copy and a carmaker’s sales brochure or press kit. Editorial quality is completely beside the point.

Content has hit rock bottom so hard that franchised titles are having trouble holding on to their brand identity. Browsing a magazine with its title covered provides no clue as to which publisher’s product your perusing. The word “production” nowadays describes operations starting with the layout and ending with printing.

No wonder there are no big names in Greek automotive journalism. Greek (ex) rally drivers (as in Luxembourgian policemen) with no talent– just “fame”– provide little more than bylines. Clearly, they can’t (or won’t) tell an editorial from an advertorial, a test from a ride. Corporate and editorial is so interconnected that a parade of editorial directors or editors-in-chief are meeting one car exec after the other, seeking to establish a “spirit of cooperation.” During one such a meeting, I heard the words “you give us the car and we will make it a god.” This was a British franchise of a well-known magazine title.

When Greek car magazines were specialized, focused, technical, knowledgeable and decent, imitation was impossible. As soon as they sold their souls and became generic, vague, tedious, clueless and blunt, they sowed the seeds of their own destruction. The laws of evolution tell us that saturation in a segment opens the door to fragmentation. In other words, familiarity breeds contempt.

Bigger publishers, with more publications (including first-rate newspapers) now offer better advertisement deals for car importers. Auto-related editorial is showing up as special sections in media with hundreds of thousands of daily readers, of all sexes, ages, and classes. They offer the same level of “journalism” at a lower price for advertisers, with a huge and more honestly calculated number of readers. At least ten such publications have appeared in the last three years, bulldozing car magazines.

And yet the buff books still can’t wake-up and smell the coffee. They’re still looking for more ads, not more readers. They continue to view the Internet as a sidekick to the print issues or an extra source of advertising space, rather than an opportunity to sharpen their coverage.

Up to this point, no Greek car magazine has gone out of business. But it’s only a matter of time before they start landing on their backs. Like Detroit’s long decline, the Greek car magazines’ slide into obscurity is a sad but inevitable result of their failure to stay true to their customers’ needs with integrity, passion and long-term wisdom. I await their reinvention.