Haymarket gets its own back with Marketing Week deal

Haymarket Media Group has finally triumphed over its bitter enemy Centaur Media with the acquisition of Marketing Week, Creative Review, and the Festival of Marketing nearly 50 years after the former editor of Campaign, Michael Chamberlain, joined forces with two businessmen to set up the rival company.

Marketing Week was launched in March 1978 by Chamberlain, Graham Sherren and Anthony Nares, an entrepreneur who set up Marketing Week Communications Ltd shortly before the launch.

Campaign, which was, and still is, predominantly aimed at the agency market had a cover price and a print circulation of about 5,000. Marketing Week on the other hand was a controlled circulation freebie that was aimed at brand marketers and had a circulation of about 50,000. Consequently, the latter cleaned up with both display and classified advertising from companies aiming to woo marketing chiefs. Campaign could only dream of such riches.

MWC eventually launched Creative Review and was later subsumed into Centaur Communications, a buy-in vehicle run by Sherren and Jocelyn Stevens in 1982.

Nares became managing director of the new organisation – a position he held until his death in a skiing accident in 1996. Chamberlain left Centaur in 1988 to take up a career in consultancy.

By the early 2000s, Centaur had a raft of magazines, events and awards across its marketing, financial and legal divisions, including Precision Marketing, Data Strategy, Design Week, New Media Age, Brand Strategy, Money Marketing, Mortgage Strategy and The Lawyer.

However, nearly all of these magazines are now but a distant memory, due mainly to Centaur’s disastrous failure to adapt when the recruitment advertising market dried up as firms set up their own online hubs. This forced Centaur to look elsewhere for revenue.

First up was the purchase of Econsultancy in 2012, then the Festival of Marketing launched in 2014, while it bought Oystercatchers in 2016. Only the Festival of Marketing has survived, although insiders claim it is suffering, too.

Speculation has been mounting for months over a break-up sale after Mark Ritson and his MiniMBA was offloaded in May and The Lawyer was sold earlier this month.

Even so, Haymarket reckons the venture represents its “strengthened, market-leading position in the marcomms sector, and its continued investment in specialist content”.

The new owner insists Marketing Week, Creative Review, and the Festival of Marketing will sit within Haymarket’s Business Media division, initially remaining operating as a separate business unit alongside other long-established marcomms brands, which include Campaign, Performance Marketing World, PRWeek and its newly launched sister title, In.Comms.

Their long-term future is less clear.

The brands will continue to be led by existing managing director Claire Rance, who will report into HBM’s deputy managing director Donna Murphy, who said: “Today’s news is a testament to our ambition and our commitment to the marcomms industry. We are incredibly excited to work with Claire and the team.

“These brands have a strong heritage, and we look forward to building on their success and welcoming them into the Haymarket fold. Together I am confident we will create truly exciting content and game-changing events for our clients and audiences.”