Baja’s Sunny Side Proves Profitable for Regional Magazine

By Tonya Rodrigues/ Staff Writer
November 13-19, 2000

A drive along the coast can do wonders for a clouded state of mind. It can even inspire a career. Such was true for Mayté Rodríguez Cedillo, who owns and publishes BajaTraveler®: Mexico’s Ports of Call. Cedillo operates the annual publication, which has a circulation of 40,000 and sales last year of $325,000, out of her Chula Vista home.

In 1997, Tijuana-born Rodríguez Cedillo had recently returned home from a one-year assignment in Europe and was considering her career path. Before Europe, she left her job at NBC in Los Angeles, where she had worked for over four years.

As she drove along the coast of Ensenada, she was struck by the beauty around her. The road reminded her of the beautiful roads in southern France. At the same time, she recalled the many harsh international news stories that she had seen about visiting Baja California. At that point, Rodríguez-Cedillo decided to educate the world and start a magazine that would focus on the positive side of Mexico’s tourism.

Annual Deadline Approaches

Now, three years later, Rodríguez Cedillo and her publication are heading toward a December deadline. She’s trying to sign the last ads while Masahiko Yamada, the magazine’s art director, continues to design the issue. She’s planning to distribute it the last week of December.

Jorge Gamboa-Patrón, of the Mexican Tourism Board, has watched the fledging magazines evolve. “The magazine is a great tool for promoting Mexico,” Gamboa-Patrón said. “Mayte has a lot of knowledge in tourism, her magazine has a wonderful advertising campaign which includes TV, Radio and Print.”

Roots Dig Into Business

Rodríguez Cedillo recalled the effect her roots had on her business. From the time she was just a kid, Rodríguez Cedillo crossed the border from Tijuana each day to attend school at St. Michael’s Academy in San Diego. After high school at the Academy of Our Lady of Peace, she attended SDSU, where she studied advertising through the university’s journalism department. In High School she was the editor of the schools’ newspaper and in college she collaborated in the schools’ magazine. She worked sales part-time for local a tourist guide where she incremented their section on Baja.

After college, she worked in the TV industry, first at KGTV Channel 10, then at KNBC, the NBC affiliate in Los Angeles where she started as a page. She got a lot of experience during a union strike by writers and production workers.

Her tasks ranged from running cameras for local news and game shows to monitoring the audience for Johnny Carson and Wheel of Fortune, she recalled. At night she attended UCLA where she studied to attain a Master’s Degree in Journalism. At age 29, she had tired of the lifestyle and driving home to San Diego every weekend (for four years) so she took a job as a correspondent in Spain and moved there for a year. She traveled throughout Europe and pondered her future while studying many of the beautiful European publications – and this is where the idea came about promoting Mexico in the same – elegant way.

In early 1997, soon after she made the decision to start the magazine, Rodríguez Cedillo began approaching clients and examining media kits of other publications, looking at what they offered advertisers.

First Edition Budget

A year later, she began production of the first edition of BajaTraveler®. Working out of her parents’ home at the time, Rodríguez Cedillo invested $30.000 of her own savings into the magazine. “It was tough,” she recalled of the learning process. Among her lessons were production and the balance of being a publisher and editor at the same time. Baja Traveler® has two large distributors, one that covers the United States and Canada, and another that covers Mexico. Rodríguez Cedillo supplements the two with her own efforts, sending thousands of copies to Europe, through distribution spots in North America, she said.

Of the 40,000 circulation, 80 percent is in the United States and Canada, 10 per-cent in Mexico and the remaining 10 per cent in Europe, she said. “The magazine’s distribution to high- income consumers, through distribution in upscale hotels and yacht clubs, is particularly important,” Gamboa-Patrón said.

Because the business is small, and her focus of promoting Baja California is clear, she often focuses on the sales side of the business, Rodríguez Cedillo said. With the current annual schedule, editorial work picks up each year in August, with design taking place in September.

Culture Affects Production

Sales and deadlines are particularly difficult with the laid-back Mexican culture, she said. She finds herself making calls upon calls to follow up with clients. “That’s simply a challenge that I have accepted and have to live with,” she said. “Personality, knowledge and persistence is what sells. Advertising Sales may not be the easiest job in the world, but as long as you have a wonderful product it’s not so hard.  And in this case, it’s a ‘win-win’ situation. I’m confident that both travelers and advertisers have a lot to gain in this venture!”

Rodríguez Cedillo travels to tourism trade shows and makes personal trips to all the cities she promotes, she said. “I love visiting the destinations and meeting all the business owners.”

As for dividing the editorial and sales work during production months Rodríguez Cedillo said she cuts her day in two, starting with advertising and ending with writing and editing with the collaboration of her star editors, Pat Tyson and Beth Purcell. Editorially, the magazine’s first two issues have had 30 to 40 articles, Rodríguez Cedillo said. The magazine had 100 pages for the 1999 issue, 148 in last December’s issue and in next month’s issue for 2001.

She’s still calculating the sales total for 2000. This year, elections in Mexico were an additional hurdle for the magazine, she said. “Although profit has exceeded last year’s.” “People aren’t as sure as to what is going to happen,” she said of the potential advertisers. “They hold onto what they have.”

Celebrities Featured

The sunnier side of Baja California tourism remains the focus of BajaTraveler®. Since its inception, one of Rodríguez Cedillo’s main changes is widening the magazine’s original focus on Baia through the Ports’ of Call section.

The upcoming issue features an article on celebrities who frequent Acapulco, such as Keanu Reeves, Ricardo Montalbán, Sandra Bullock and Mariah Carey, Rodríguez Cedillo said.

The positive approach works for advertisers such as Viviana Ibañez, who owns a campground in Tecate.

It also is a way Rodríguez Cedillo affects the country’s tourism, in which 22 million visitors generate $8.2 billion for the country each year, according to Gamboa-Patrón.

“That’s one of the reasons the job that she does is so important,” said Ibañez. Given all of the negative press that has been given to Baja California, I think sometimes al the positive is being forgotten.”

In agreement is Luz Maria Davila director of international relations and special affairs for the city of Tijuana. “Most of the press, including press on this side and press on the other side, is always harping on ‘Oh, the murders,’ Oh, the assaults or the kidnappings,’ ‘It’s not true, it’s just the way that they slant it.”

Detailed Coverage

Davila said BaiaTraveler® offers more thorough coverage than any other publications. “It’s really the only magazine available that has such details of the towns of Baia California. I see a couple of magazines that maybe will have one article on one town in Baja or about the food …but this magazine covers each and every one of the towns.”

Rodríguez Cedillo’s plans for BajaTraveler®‘s future include developing its Web site and possibly producing a television travel show where her clients can have TV exposure as well.

“I’m thankful with the response BajaTraveler® has gotten – and feel blessed by the awards we’ve received,” she said of her magazine. “I hope it continues to get better and it’s around for a very long time.”