The value of the Forbes brand

David Carr of The New York Times writes about the Forbes brand as it prepares to sell itself.

Carr writes, “The entire category of business magazines has been punished, but Businessweek and Fortune have the benefit of being part of larger, more diversified enterprises, while Forbes has had to go it alone. The magazine doubled down hard on a digital advertising strategy with a lot of click-bait headlines and opened its platform to thousands of contributors, improving traffic but diluting its brand. In the context of the current sale, some saw that strategy as more like lipstick on a pig, a bold effort that fails to hide the fundamental ugliness of the situation.

“If the Forbes brand has been dented, it has hardly been destroyed. The name has always resonated globally, partly because the Forbes 400 ‘rich list’ is fetishized by the wealthy, many of whom will be on the list of the world’s billionaires that comes out Monday. And the Forbes Asia summit remains a popular, profitable event.

“In that context, a buyer from a nascent economy on the rise make sense. The Far East is a place that is not only making much of the world’s goods, the countries there are also manufacturing wealth at an astounding rate. Forbes might be a nice trophy for a foreign buyer as a way of signaling its arrival. It would not be the first time a publication was bought as a multiple of ego rather than earnings.

“But in America, there is a growing disconnect in the narrative of business magazines. The world of titans that Malcolm Forbes once so vividly inhabited has become a lot less sexy. The mix of buffoonery and greed that created the financial meltdown in 2008 dispelled the image of businesspeople as heroes. Forbes’s worldview — ‘Business was originated to produce happiness,’ B. C. Forbes asserted — has been overtaken by the grimness of a new economy, one that still produces billionaires that end up on the Forbes list, but few jobs to go with them.”