By Paul Pannone

The battle of the bridal books that made top Newz last week has suddenly turned lopsided. Since the Executive Director of Communication, Michelle Panzer and Lori Silver, Associate Publisher of BRIDES magazine, tag-teamed  Jim Duhe of Bridal Guide in a series of exchanges, the Conde’ Nast portion of the battle has fallen silent, while an unlikely Codger,Duhe, goes digital.

Big smiles from both Lori Silver representing BRIDES magazine and Jim Duhe, spokesperson for Bridal Guide. It’s Silver’s turn to respond, as Duhe campaigns on Facebook.

Duhe called out BRIDES on eWedNewz saying:

Dear Ms.Panzer –

“I’m calling you out. You are either dishonest or inexcusably uninformed. No effort was made to “cherry pick” data. Engaged readers are the lifeblood of bridal magazines. Engaged women purchase bridal gowns. Women who are not engaged don’t buy bridal gowns. It’s that simple. To divert attention away from this very basic fact is dishonest. To claim that a bridal magazine’s engaged audience is less important than its total audience is delusional.

No one at Bridal Guide is rattled by the constant changes or the revolving door of publishers and editors at Brides. To replace a respected and knowledgeable Editor-in-Chief with a person who has no bridal experience — to replace the replacement within a year — doesn’t document stability at Brides. It strengthens Bridal Guide’s position as a bridal industry authority.

Bi-polar changes in the Brides publication cycle — switching from bi-monthly to monthly and then back to bi-monthly publication within a couple of years — demonstrates as basic lack of understanding of the needs of the engaged women and the needs advertisers that sell bridal gowns.

Bridal Guides management and publication have been stable for many years. The Bridal Guide editorial staff has decades of bridal specific experience. The Bridal Guide editorial product always has been and will be targeted to our core audience: engaged women. Perhaps that explains why Bridal Guide’s pass along readership has been superior to Brides for the past twenty-five years.

There is no way for you or the Brides sales team to explain the dramatic difference between the Bridal Guide and Brides engaged audience without being dishonest on some level. It would be fascinating to read your public explanation of this phenomenon. Why is Bridal Guide’s honesty considered a breach of ethics?”

The he said, she said continued as Lori silver picked up the battle from Panzer. In direct response to Duhe, Silver cited her own set of  numbers saying:

 ”And now I am calling you out Jim… unless men are now buying and/or wearing wedding dresses your argument doesn’t hold water. BRIDES reaches MORE engaged WOMEN.

BRIDES engaged women:
913,000

Bridal Guide engaged women:
905,000

Source: GFK MRI
Fall 2012

If this isn’t clear, allow me to fascinate you and explain this phenomenon – the numbers pulled by Bridal Guide include men.

Lori Silver

Associate Publisher, BRIDES

According to Duhe a private message sent to Silver to discuss inclusion of men in her statement was left unanswered. Duhe told eWedNewz he doesn’t think there will be any more responses from either Panzer or Silver, claiming victory on all counts.

Additional allegations from the coverage by anonymous sources say the quality of paper used by BRIDES since announcing enhancements to the magazine nearly a year ago is not up to standards put forth by the magazine to its advertisers. No response was given to our communication with Silver and Panzer questioning the allegations about the paper. An automated reply says Panzer is on vacation.

In unprecedented fashion in the bridal business, eWedNewz learned Duhe took to Facebook writing the following statement to his friends on his wall:

 To My Friends In The Bridal Business . . .

If you missed the battle between Conde Nast/Brides and me in the eWedNewZ story, you missed an epic battle of biblical proportions. It’s a classic David vs Goliath confrontation. The folks at Conde Nast — the internationally renowned publishers of Vogue — probably are dumbfounded that Jimmy Duhe from LaPlace, LA had the audacity to not only challenge their ethics and authority but to win. Clearly, the God of Israelites is on my side.

There’s a lot that I wanted to say to Brides that wasn’t covered in the eWedNewZ story. For example, I’m curious about how Brides manages to sustain a consistent Total Circulation in spite of the fact that newsstand sales have plummeted to nearly 40% below Bridal Guide’s newsstand sales. It’s my opinion that their subscriptions couldn’t climb at the same rate as their newsstand failure without either divine intervention or very creative human manipulation. Since God is on my side, the latter seems far more plausible than the former.

The new MRI data proves that Brides subscriptions aren’t reaching the target audience of engaged readers. Can anyone tell me who in their right mind buys a bridal magazine without any intention of getting married. I can’t. Only Conde Nast can and I seriously doubt that the answer will be integrious.

Have I gone off the deep end? I’m sure that you guys have an opinion. I’d love to hear it — even (or especially) if it supports Brides. Sometimes I feel like a voice crying out in the wilderness.

 

eWedNewz watches the replies on Duhe’s Facebook accounts. We welcome any and all thoughts on this story.

eWedNewz

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2013