Sometimes when you make a mistake, it’s best to bite the bullet and fix it, take your lumps, and move on. That’s what we’re doing this month as we rename DallasCEO magazine D CEO—which is what many have been calling this business publication from the get-go, anyway.
What’s the reasoning behind the switch? you might ask. With your permission, I’ll take a stab at explaining. And it all starts with the letter that comes between “C” and “E” in the alphabet.
The D in D CEO, you prob–ably know, is shorthand for D Magazine, our award-winning, city-magazine sibling. For decades, D, with its bold, red, standalone letter, has been one of the most iconic brands in North Texas publishing. It’s also spawned an array of successful “spinoff” publications, including D Home, D Beauty, and D Weddings.
The latter, interestingly enough, started its life called something else: Dallas Wedding Book. A red D was present but tiny and shoved off into one corner, in part because we didn’t want to mess with the photo of the beautiful model on the cover.
What a mistake that was.
When Dallas Wedding Book hit the newsstand, sales were, well, lackluster. At the same time, brides and advertisers alike were upset. They’d been promised an exciting new publication from the publishers of D Magazine—yet you almost needed a magnifying glass to see the D at all.
Chastened, we took our cue and reacted appropriately, simplifying the name and placing a big red D at the top of the cover, so there would be no mistaking our origins. In no time, D Weddings was outselling every national and regional brides title on the local racks, including those from Martha Stewart and InStyle.
You’d think we would have learned our lesson from that. But if you did, you’d be wrong. When DallasCEO debuted in 2006, its cover lacked any red D at all. Finally, after about eight issues had come and gone, we placed one at the top of the cover, just above the name DallasCEO. As soon as we did, the calls and e-mails started coming in from readers. “Congratulations!” they’d ex–claim. “I see D is putting out a business magazine!” Longtime faithful D readers began flocking to the title, confident that DallasCEO featured the same sort of independent, high-quality journalism found monthly in D Magazine.
Of course, they were right. So with this, our February issue, we’re recognizing that reality in an official way with the name change.
Meantime, D CEO remains essentially the same magazine—newsy and hard-hitting, surprising and useful—albeit with a couple of tweaks. Careful readers will note, for example, that we’ve changed the name of Crayton Webb’s monthly column, aiming to reflect its content more accurately. We’ve also added a regular car review, recognizing the importance top businesspeople place on the vehicles they drive for work and play.
As always, we’d love to hear from you about D CEO: what we’re doing right, what we’re doing wrong, what we could be doing better. But, please, don’t ask us to change the name again.
