Modern Athlete Magazine Issue 120, July 2019 | Page 13

A NATURAL FIT
Mike relocated to Australia midway through
2010 and continued to oversee the mag from
there, but the distance and time difference
brought new challenges. Therefore, in 2013
he approached Craig van der Westhuizen,
owner and MD of Peak Timing Events, to
investigate the possibility of the business
joining forces and him taking over the running
of the magazine. Craig says he immediately
saw the synergy between a running magazine
and a running events company. “It was a
natural fit. It made complete sense to be able
to offer my clients a media opportunity, and
having a media side to the eventing business
meant the package was now even more
attractive to future clients.”
During his tenure as General Manager, Craig made several far-reaching changes to
the brand. “We realised early on that relying on a print medium only was ultimately
going to be a failure, so we launched our digi-mag and brought in Roxanne Martin
to drive the migration to the digital platform.” With that added element of providing
advertisers and clients with a still greater reach, it allowed Richard Laskey, who was
tasked with bringing in advertising revenue, to offer his clients better packages,
which also had a positive spin-off on the business. Another big change saw Jen Law
join the business to head up In2Sport, a division focused on the retail side of the
business, including the production of medals, T-shirts and race numbers for events.
grown our digi-
mag circulation
to a far, far bigger
number than most
other titles in this
country, and thus
could make the
shift without losing
the majority of
our readership
overnight, which
would have had a
massive impact on
our ability to sell
advertising in the
mag. Going digital
also allowed us to produce a bigger mag each month.”
Currently, the mag has just over 75,000 subscribers, backed up regular newsletters,
targeted mailers and event digi-mags going out to a similar-sized database. The
Modern Athlete social media pages are also sitting with a high level of readership
and interaction – the Facebook page has just under 19,000 likes, and the Twitter
page has over 18,500 followers – giving the brand a very big database, and a very
attractive space for advertisers and events to market themselves.
“We did need to relook at the distribution model, though,” says Craig. “Sending
the magazines to clubs alone was not going to grow our business indefinitely, and
we had to find a way to tap into the market even more, so we took the decision
to rather not distribute to over 300 clubs nationwide anymore, because the
distribution costs were beginning to become a bit high, and decided to rather hand
our magazine out at races, while aggressively promoting the digi-mag subscription
offer. And it worked, our circulation just kept climbing.” Meanwhile, Modern Athlete continues to drive its #RunClean campaign, one of the
prime drivers behind getting the running community to clean up its act by stopping
littering during running events. “About three years ago, Craig and I were chatting
one weekend after he ran a race in Johannesburg and I did one in Cape Town,”
says Sean. “We were both disgusted by the mess on the roads, made even worse
by a strong wind in Cape Town, and within a few minutes we had come up with the
idea of a campaign to educate runners about the litter problem, and the ways they
can run cleaner. Today the tagline #runclean is widely used in SA running circles
and the campaign has made a hugely positive difference. It is one of Modern
Athlete’s greatest successes, but there is still much work to be done.”
NEW OWNERSHIP, NEW CHAPTER GOOD STORY-TELLING
By the end of 2018, however, Craig was looking to move onto other ventures and
focus more on the eventing side of the business again, so he and Jen offered to sell
the publishing arm of the business to Roxanne, Richard and Sean. “I had achieved
everything I wanted with the publishing side of things, and Rox, Rich and Sean
were pretty much driving everything on that front, so it allowed me to throw more
into my core business, eventing and event timing. So we came to an agreement
and I sold that part of the business to them.” So far, 2019 has been somewhat frenetic for the Modern Athlete team. Besides
the ‘normal workload’ they already had, Rox and Rich have grown the digital side
of the business markedly, bringing in new clients that required more newsletters,
digi-mags and posts, and Sean was chief author of the highly successful coffee
table book celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Two Oceans Marathon. “I have
to admit, it has been quite intense this year, but the feedback from the running
community is as positive as ever,” says Sean.
One of the first decisions the trio made was to go 100% digital with the magazine.
It was not an easy decision, as research had shown that readership of titles tend
to decline massively if not backed up by hard print, and many people, especially
older readers, still prefer a printed magazine as opposed to reading something on
a phone, kindle or computer. “We thought really long about that one, but in the
end it came down to Rands and Cents,” says Sean. “The costs of printing and
distribution were just becoming too steep. The difference is that we had already “We work hard to find good stories and tell them well, while aiming to cover all the
different disciplines and audiences, including track and field, multisport and race
walking, on top of the ‘normal’ road running and trail running content. What makes
that work worthwhile is when readers tell us that they love the mag, read it cover to
cover, and can’t wait for the next edition. We’re proud of the fact that this magazine
hits the proverbial spot with the running community, and we’re really looking
forward to the next 10 years!”
SA’s Biggest Running Publication
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