Look this fall for a new book from Rodale, about Rodale: Our Roots Grow Deep: The Story of Rodale, by Daniel Gross. As Heidi Rodale notes in the introduction, the project had a long incubation period, beginning with the efforts of her late brother David. The volume has profited from the obvious advantage of having the full cooperation of the Rodale family, including their correspondence and photographs. This is a very rich and personal read.
First, a full disclosure: I spent my formative publishing years at the company.
This is a big book, a heavy book, a coffee-table book. And it is also a very thorough volume covering more than a hundred years of history, from the birth of the founder, J.I. Rodale in 1898 to the current fourth generation Rodale family.
American publishing history has been populated with many well-known family-owned companies, including Weider, Ziff, Cowles, Conde Nast, Hearst, Petersen and others; few still exist as family-owned entities. Rodale does, of course and shares with like-companies a strong focus, deep communication with the reader, and a passion for serving that constituency. Rodale, in a sense, might be said to have deeper roots as it built a publishing empire on two very profound principles: the health of the soil is directly related to the health of the individual and nation. If these ideas are main-stream today, they were positively radical seventy years ago.
This book is not hagiography. Certainly the author presents a compelling narrative of a family company surviving and thriving under personal tragedies and huge changes in the market. But the author (and family) is quite open about the failures, though few, as well as the successes. If the Rodale philosophy is the touchstone of the corporation, at times it has been a doubled-edge sword. In the abstract it might have been a good idea to launch the women’s magazine Spring about twenty years ago, but to do so with restrictions on cosmetic advertising, was probably not the best way to enter the fashion market. Likewise, Organic Style was a beautiful magazine and seemed to get some traction but probably suffered because the notion of organic was too heavy an editorial burden (It was shut down in 2005). When taken out of the farm or garden “organic” best serves as a metaphorical framework rather than an editorial category per se.
The value of a book, even a coffee-table book can be found in the granular detail, the anecdotes, ticks and surprises that make a narrative believable. This volume has those qualities. Founder J.I. Rodale’s early years in New York’s Lower East Side is pure immigrant lore. His musings among the then wild areas of Van Cortland Park in the Bronx prefigured a later interest in gardening. He was also a bit of a gambler, losing $1000 on Wall Street while still in his teens. He would get better and those successes led
him to invest in an electrical supply business and eventually open Rodale Manufacturing. With the onset of the Great Depression, J.I. moved to Allentown, PA to save the business. He had dabbled in writing over the years but now produced his first magazine, The Humorous Scrapbook, a quarterly comprised entirely of reprints in the public domain—for $1 subscription. A publishing empire was born.
Author Daniel Gross notes, this first magazine wasn’t very funny. J.I. continued to publish a variety of magazines experimenting with trim size, printing, and editorial context. He seemed to love digest size magazines, some modeled after Reader’s Digest. Understanding the economics of magazines, even with non-humorous humor magazines, had a profound effect on Rodale publishing in the early years. I recall Bob Rodale singing the praises of digest sized magazines. It took a lot of convincing for him to take Organic Gardening full size in 1988. That was a long incubation period since Organic Gardening and Farming was launched in 1942.
The first one-hundred and fifty pages of this book are full of the gritty, the gutsy, and the offbeat, all marks of a business in the making. J.I. Rodale was not introverted; he conducted correspondence with Albert Einstein, Eddie Albert, and Henri Matisse. But it would be his son Robert Rodale who would preside over the company’s “Coming of Age.”
Hear this quote from a 1972 memo to Rodale executives: “I’m convinced the energy crisis is going to develop in future years and will present unavoidable challenges to industry and individuals.” Or from a 1973 Organic Gardening & Farming column: “We must do more walking, especially around cities and towns, and less riding in automobiles.” He was prophetic in so many ways. And humble. For me it was a walk down memory lane viewing so many photos of Bob in so many settings he loved: in editorial meetings, at the Rodale Research Center, and at the annual clambake. Quaint as these images might seem, it’s important to remember that Rodale was already making waves far beyond Emmaus, Pennsylvania. Twenty-five years ago Bob Rodale spearheaded the Cornucopia project, “an effort to systematically study the U.S. food production system and provide consumers with information on the true costs of food.” In time Rodale would bring the same scrutiny to bear on national health issues. Bob was eager to get the company message out to influential audiences, both to build brands and voice, by running a series of op-ed advertisements in the New York Times. To this man words mattered and mattered a lot. He eschewed the word “sustainable” in favor of “regenerative” or regeneration. This word became the leit motif for the company, profoundly affecting the ways employees were trained, the content of the magazines and the way people spoke. If Bob has had his way he would have copyrighted the word.
Author Gross observes that Bob Rodale was more of a strategic thinker than his father, and this seems true enough. The son put for-profit flesh on the Rodale philosophy. His interest in exercise moved Rodale to purchase Bicycling Magazine and spawned a network of active sports magazines and a network for advertisers. He was forever pushing the boundaries within his own company. When the early Book Division was not moving fast enough for him, he created a short-lived Fast Access Books to publish books he wanted when he wanted them. At executive meetings he would often raise the impossible and perhaps the unthinkable, such as could the company thrive without advertising dollars. For a few years he opened the pages of Organic Gardening to some of the best poets in the country. He was an editor, first and foremost. He was the consummate voyager, taking his principles and vision to China, India and Russia. In the latter he was killed in a traffic accident, hours after toasting the signing of a joint venture agreement for publication of Novii Fermer, a farming magazine that would address the needs of new farmers in this post-Communist nation.
This is a family book and couldn’t fully recount the deep contributions to the company’s germinal growth made by Bob Teufel, Rodale President for a long time. He managed the Bicycling acquisition and was instrumental in acquiring Runner’s World and Backpacker and developing the Rodale Active Network. Twenty years ago Rodale was heavily dependent on direct-response ads in Prevention and Organic Gardening. The addition of these sports magazines and the launch of Men’s Health, which Teufel championed over some opposition, changed the business proposition and attracted display advertising. That was Rodale’s coming of business age.
A sub-text of the Rodale success, often shrouded by a powerful operating philosophy, is the fact that it is a very savvy direct-response company. Anyone who has spent any time at the company had better learn at least a little about the lifetime value of the customer
and even regression analysis. Teufel was the architect of much of this and surrounded himself with a very strong marketing team, including John Griffin and Pat Corpora.
As noted, Bob Rodale talked a lot about regeneration, in both the personal and collective sense. I think he would be proud of the company’s ability to reshape itself and grow. Our Roots Grow Deep shows a list of international editions for Rodale, led by Men’s Health with thirty-six editions and the fast-growing and hot Women’s Health with a dozen. Runner’s World and Prevention also have a strong international presence. Rodale has figured out how to do international very well. And all this in about fourteen years when the first real international edition—Men’s Health—was launched in the U.K.
The last chapter of this book is entitled “Growing into Whole Life,” which seems a fitting coda—though not an ending—to describe a company sure of itself and pursuing a big brand and big book strategy into the future. Who hasn’t heard of The South Beach Diet and An Inconvenient Truth? CEO Steve Murphy, when he joined the company in 2000, “encouraged employees to re-imagine their customers and the business, to view Rodale as not simply as a publisher of books and magazines.” He notes that “We are in the business of building communities of people who are drawn to our editorial voice, who get value from it, and who want a relationship with that voice.” This strategic insight was aided by Rodale reorganizing along subject rather than department lines. This reorganization not only provided Rodale with more customer touch points but positions itself better for the digital age.
At corporate officer retreats Bob Rodale was routinely asked what would happen to the company if something happened to him. His answer was always the same: “I have every confidence in Ardie” (his wife). Bob proved prescient here too. Mrs. Rodale, unbowed by illness and family tragedies, has continued to be a source of strength, advocacy and inspiration to the company. She got her current title—Chief Inspiration Officer—the old fashioned way: she earned it.
Gross writes that “In its seventh decade, and under its third generation of family leadership, Rodale is neither complacent nor comfortable with power. Despite all the successes and growth, the company has never succumbed to a sense of entitlement.”
Now that is a success story worth savoring.
Charles McCullagh
(According to Heidi Rodale the book is available now online at either www.ourrootsgrowdeep.com or www.rodalestore.com. It will be available in bookstores March 31, 2009. Price: $50).
