ELITE PUBLISHING FARCES IN PRIVATE EYE MAGAZINE

ELITE PUBLISHING/OSKAR KEYSELL

ELITE FARCES

DAVID CRACKNELL, former political editor of the Sunday Times, recently set up up his own PR consultancy, Big Tent Communications, which offers clients "innovative, bespoke solutions to their communications needs". And what could be more innovative or bespoke than the sudden rush of online press releases from Big Tent on behalf of a contract publisher named Oskar Keysell?

"Oskar Keysell/Elite Publishing announce 2009 British and Irish Lions Rugby Tour Magazine," it trumpted on 28 March. Two days later, came another thrillling bulletin: "Oskar Keysell/Elite Publishing announce BUPA Teddies Nurseries Parents Magazine."

Not very newsworthy, given that Elite has been publishing the magazine for a couple of years, but it does achieve one purpose. Anyone thinking of doing buisness with Keysell (pictured) will now find these PR puffs at the top of the list if they do an online search, and may miss a little item that has been shunted down the Google pecking order: a court report about Keysell's drug-bust last December. He tried to hide his cocaine and ecstacy in a bush after being stopped by PC Knacker in the Kings Road, Chelsea, but to no avail.
Does David Cracknell know what he has taken on? Besides his drug habit, Keysell also has a habit of using the company's money to pay his personal debts and subsidise his chaotic love-life, in which good-time girls from Brazil loom large. (Some of them display their charms in nude photos on his desktop computer in Elite's seedy offices, above platform one of Paddington Station). His long-suffering partner in the business, Warren Hayward has banned him from withdrawing cash or taking company credit cards out of the office.

Keysell's cavalier attitude is also evident in some of his business practices. Last summer, for example, Elite was looking for advertisers in the launch issue of Elixir, a glossy mag devoted to "Beauty, wellness and anti-ageing" which promised an initital print-run of 250,000. DaySoft, the contact lens company, agreed to buy a full-page ad. Fraser Hendry of DaySoft was surprised soon afterwards to see an onine press release giving Elixir's circulation as 100,000. He wrote to Oskar Keysell. "The distribution is now back to 250k," Keysell reassured him on 6 October, when the mag appeared.

Hendry was still puzzled. The advert seemed to have elicited no response, wheras even an unsuccessful ad would normally be expected to "register at least low level customer orders." He asked for some proof that 250,000 copies were printed. He never got it, but eventually - after much wrangling - received a "proportionate refund" on the basis that the print-run had been reduced to 100,000.

"I am pretty sure the distribution was much lower," he says, "from the conversion rate we got."

He's right: the EYE has evidence that only 5,000 copies of Elixir were distributed, even though advertisers had shelled out for a mag with sales of 100,000 or even 250,000.

An aberration? Perhaps not. Something similar happened with Buying Abroad, a foreign property supplement produced by Elite that was distributed with the Sunday Telegraph in May and September last year. According to the Media Pack which Elite used to lure in advertisers, Buying Abroad would reach "a readership of 1.2m within London and the South". Glenda Watson of Kruger Real Estate, one of the advertisers who succombed, urged her friends and clients in London and the South East to buy the paper on 11 May, the date of the first insert. Not one of them could find Buying Abroad. And no wonder: Elite had in fact printed only 100,000 copies.

A few months later Elite published another Sunday Telegraph insert, a guide to "essential solutions providers" titled Business Minds. "The Sunday Telegraph is one of the most trusted and respected titled in the Sunday market with 1.8m readers," Elite told potential advertisers. "Business Minds will attract a high degree of interest from this business specific audience. Readership will be to 1.8m nationally via a split run on 21 September."

When some advertisers later complained to Oskar Keysell that the supplement hadn't been in their copy of the paper, he insisted that the phrase "split run" made it clear that not every Telegraph reader would receive the insert. He wisely omitted to mention how many copies had actually been printed: again, a mere 100,000. How this can be reconcilled with his promise of a readership "to 1.8m" is hard to fathom.

Still, Elite must be a pretty reputable outfit: it also arranges the ad sales and production of National Geographic, a thrice-yearly magazine distributed to British readers of the National Geographic. "The audience is the most important factor," the Elite web site boasts, "and this is the key to the sure success of this initiative." But it's not a success in which Elite will share for much longer: the next issue, due in June, will be the final one to emerge from Oskar Keysell's eyrie at Paddington Station.

"That will be the last bit of business we do with Elite," says David Middis, UK sales director of National Geographic. "Our contract with them is now finished." Why? "There were various reasons."

Last November, the Eye has learned, Middis complained to Elite about the dodgy methods used by Keysell's salespersons in flogging adverts for the magazine. Might this by any chance be related to his termination of the contract? "I'd rather not comment on that," he says.