New ‘Age’ for ad biz

Total overhaul in the works for industry bible

AMID the tsunami of layoffs, cutbacks and resignations currently plaguing the magazine business, it’s an odd time for a magazine to relaunch — let alone entirely rebrand.

But Advertising Age — Crain Communications’ 87-year-old ad industry bible — is doing just that at the kickoff of Advertising Week on Monday.

Next week, Advertising Age officially becomes Ad Age, marking a comprehensive print, digital and brand-extensions overhaul that Editor Brian Braiker says will transform the publication from a mere trade to a bona fide cultural must-read.

“Everything is being redone — a new look, logo, color and palate,” says Braiker, who joined Ad Age in the spring from digital industry site Digiday. “We will still cover agencies and campaigns, but we are widening our reach. Because today everything is a brand, everything touches the broader culture,” he tells our David Kaufman.

While Ad Age’s Web site will be completely redesigned to better reflect its culture-meets-marketing mashup, the print mag will see the most dramatic overhaul.

The first issue on Monday will have a series of covers, including controversy-plagued NBC anchor Megyn Kelly and a trio of Facebookers including Sheryl Sandberg (pictured).

Braiker says the new Ad Age will feature a more contemporary aesthetic and (most crucially) heavier cover stock — a costly investment at time when many mags are reducing frequency (see Teen Vogue) or going digitalonly (Nylon).

But Braiker insists there is plenty of money to be made from print pubs — even those with limited focus and niche audiences like Ad Age.

Graduate growth

There are hotels for gays, millennials, pets — even afternoon trysts— so why not properties focused on the college campus crowd?

That’s the mission behind Graduate Hotels, a 3-year-old boutique brand that develops properties solely in college communities. There are already Graduate hotels in places like in Berkeley, Calif., Madison, Wis., Ann Arbor, Mich., and Oxford, Miss.

But for Graduate founder Weprin, those locations aren’t enough. “Since the inception of the Graduate brand, we’ve had our eyes on the Ivy League market,” he explains to David Kaufman.

And by 2019, Graduate will indeed matriculate with its new property near Yale University in New Haven, Conn. — its first in an Ivy League town.

Pipe scheme heme

Leon Cooperman erman still smarting from his battle with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

“They are — I don’t want to say a criminal enterprise — but they basically abuse their position and they’re very wrong-footed in what they do,” Cooperman said Wednesday at a breakfast hosted by the New York Hedge Fund Roundtable.

In May, Cooperman and his hedge fund Omega Advisors entered into a settlement with the SEC in which he did not admit wrong doing but was nevertheless he forced to pay $4.9 million to settle charges that he used insider information to make trades in Atlas Pipeline Partners in 2010.

The settlement was better than the $10 million fine and five-year ban from the industry the SEC initially offered.

“I told them to go F themselves,” Cooperman said of the SEC’s initial offer, our Car-leton English reports. Cooperman, who has long maintained his innocence, has signed onto Bill Gates’ ’ and Warren Buffett’s Giving Pledge and provides college scholarships to Essex County, NJ, students, said there were better things he could do with the money. “I tell the government, what you guys are costing me, I could send 2,500 kids to college. They didn’t give a damn,” Cooperman said. “They use taxpayer money to fund their peccadillos,” he said.

Panama chat

Panama is open for business — but money launderers need not apply. That was the message of Juan Carlos Varela, president of Panama, speaking with our John Aidan Byrne on Thursday night at a party he hosted at the Four Seasons Hotel in New York, where he sipped on gourmet Panamanian coffee anda feasted on his country’s rich cuisine. Varela said he has been improving the regulatory climate since he assumed office three yearsy ago. Panama took a beating with the leaking in 2016 of 11.5 million legal documents from the law firm Mossack Fonseca, detailing potential money fraud. Varela said it “wasn’t fair” to characterize the documents as the Panama Papers, a term popularized by the media. The controversial documents were held by the Panamanian law firm and purportedly revealed personal financial information of wealthy persons and public officials globally.