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People like reading about people. Issues matter, organizations matter, but people—that’s what everyone wants to read about.
In terms of readership and revenue, this magazine accelerated when we internalized this fact. (To be fair, my father has been saying this for years, but like any father’s son, I ignored it for a long time.) I recently looked back at our original issues—of which I am very proud and think contain some of our best journalism—and realized that we didn’t have a person on the cover until a year into our now three-year existence.
That was an error. It’s easy to profile organizations; it’s more interesting to profile individuals. The same central message can be expressed, but the lens through which that message passes matters. The image on the cover, rendered correctly, signals this intention; the words within the cover story, written richly, reward the reader.
Our inaugural coverperson was Putnam Investments’ Bob Reynolds in the summer of 2010. We then had the New York Times’ Andrew Ross Sorkin. Then, finally, we put asset allocators on the cover: Texas Teacher’s Britt Harris, Ontario Teachers’ Neil Petroff, APG’s Angelien Kemna, Swiss Re’s David Blumer, AustralianSuper’s Mark Delaney, and The Hewlett Foundation’s Laurie Hoagland all graced the cover of our October 2010 issue. Since then, almost invariably, we’ve had these six’s peers on the cover, culminating this October with the Power Issue, which had 100 asset owners up front.
But as with Putnam’s Reynolds, on rare occasions we have put asset managers on the cover. I’ve been an outspoken critic of this practice in general—I think that established magazines in this and other industries, whether they admit it or not, all-too-often bow to advertising pressure and put paying sponsors on the cover. But even I can be flexible. (Note: Many ex-girlfriends may disagree with this last statement.) On last year’s final cover, we painted Bridgewater Associates’ Ray Dalio and asked whether he was the Steve Jobs of investing. This year, we asked whether Guggenheim Partners’ Scott Minerd is ready to join the likes of Dalio and PIMCO’s Bill Gross in the upper echelons of this business.
“Oh please don’t tell me you’re painting him as a weightlifter,” Minerd’s public relations chief pleaded with me when I was describing our designer’s vision for this cover. I assured her we weren’t. But I did tell her that within the pages of the article I would be discussing more than his fixed-income track record—specifically, his decades-long passion for bodybuilding and esoteric American art. Like Dalio’s meditation and Principles, the more interesting—and telling, perhaps—information is not how these men decide which way bond spreads or the US economy will go. It’s what they do in their rare spare time, and how that inflects their work. So what you see on the cover, and hopefully within the pages of the cover story, is a vivid look at a man who may soon be one of the most well-known investors on earth.
This is our 21st magazine. If you exclude the 40 people on the cover of the Forty Under Forty issue and the 100 faces gracing the Power 100, 17 individuals have been featured on page one. (Interestingly, a few have been on more than once; one has even been on it three times due to his inclusion on both lists.) Scott Minerd is number 18—that is, as the cover suggests, if you count Gods as men.
—Kip McDaniel, Editor-in-Chief, aiCIO