Page 10 - Forbes - Asia (October 2019)

FACT & COMMENT
“With all thy getting, get understanding”
A MATCHLESS MAN:
MALCOLM FORBES
BY STEVE FORBES, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
MY FATHER, BORN 100 YEARS AGO last
August, would have been right at home in
this era of social media, a time when what we
call “branding” is more important than ever.
The internet relentlessly commoditizes every-
thing, and unless you have a distinct product
or service, your company will wither. MSF
would have thrived!
Pop’s ballooning, motorcycling, boat-
ing, collecting and entertaining, as well as
his creating and orchestrating memorable
events, all had the goal of making Forbes
synonymous with entrepreneurial success and the good life.
It worked. When he took over the company after his older
brother Bruce’s untimely death from cancer, Forbes was
barely known outside the U.S. business world. By the time
Pop died in 1990, the Forbes name had achieved a power-
fully positive image worldwide that companies many times
our size could only envy. Despite all the upheaval and deep
anxiety the internet has wrought on legacy print companies
like ours, the Forbes brand globally is stronger than ever.
My father knew that the first task of successful brand-
ing is to produce a distinct, first-rate product. That’s why in
1945, when he joined the company his father had started in
1917, after being badly wounded while serving as a machine
gunner during WWII, he immediately focused on upgrad-
ing the magazine’s editorial content. Barely surviving the
Depression, Forbes had limped along during the 1930s and
the war years overshadowed by its competitors. Content
was mostly made up of freelance material of uneven qual-
ity. MSF began the process of hiring a full-time, first-rate
editorial staff, rightly believing that this would dramatically
improve the magazine.
One of MSF’s innovations came in January 1949, when
Forbes introduced what would become its annual report
card on industries and companies, thereby starting the
buildup of its statistical muscle. January had traditionally
been the deadest month of the year for advertising, but with
this issue’s advent it became one of the best.
Pop’s best hire was James Michaels, who became the
publication’s longtime editor and did more than anyone else
to bring about Forbes’ editorial dominance and prominence.
We developed a well-earned reputation for hard-hitting
stories that evaluated companies the way perceptive critics
8 | FORBES ASIA OCTOBER 2019
reviewed stage plays. What made these pieces
ring true was our growing sophistication in
digging into corporate balance sheets in a way
no other publication could. My father, who mi-
cromanaged this company, told me more than
once that Michaels was a genius, and that was
why—unlike with other key people—Pop gave
him a wide berth.
One of my father’s most successful innova-
tions after the war was launching “The Forbes
Investor,” a weekly newsletter that recommend-
ed stocks and analyzed the previous week’s
market news. His boldest move here: pricing the newsletter
at an outlandish $35 a year, a huge amount in an economy
whose nominal GDP was about one eightieth of today’s
(Forbes subscriptions went for $4 a year or less), and with
production costs a small fraction of the magazine’s. The
newsletter was an instant success and provided the capital
to reorganize the company.
With a strengthening product and company balance sheet,
Malcolm set out to make Forbes a company in a class by itself.
MSF did things no traditional CEO would do. He put to-
gether an awesome collection of Fabergé eggs and used them
in ads to hammer home the point that Forbes was to business
what Peter Carl Fabergé was to exquisite jewelry of unpar-
alleled beauty. The eggs were put on display in the lobby
of our old headquarters, an awe-inspiring reminder that
Forbes was different from the usual commercial enterprise.
The eggs and other Fabergé pieces were also a great invest-
ment. Additionally, Pop collected American presidential and
historical letters, manuscripts and memorabilia, toy boats
and toy soldiers, and exhibited them along with the Fabergé
eggs and pieces in a museum open to the public, which he
built and connected to the lobby of the company headquar-
ters. The displays were done in a most unmuseum-like way
that enchanted hundreds of thousands of visitors, especially
children. Pop also acquired exotic properties in the U.S. and
around the world that added yet more glamour to the brand.
To help garner editorial information and advertising
dollars, Malcolm routinely gave elaborate off-the-record
luncheons for CEOs in the brownstone house connected to
our headquarters. A Tiffany-made silver cup, inscribed with
the individual’s name and the luncheon’s date and embossed
on the bottom with a Forbes stag’s head, would subsequent-