When Campus magazine was first introduced to the market in October 2000, it was the talk of the town. What most people didn t know at this time was that the brains behind this young, colorful magazine and its catchy slogan – The Best Things in Life are Free – was a 21-year-old university student.
Shady Sherif, the founder and managing director of Core Publications started his career in sales at the age of 15. In an attempt to be financially independent from his father, Sherif started job hunting when he was in high school. Relying on Al-Ahram vacancy listings, he landed his first job as a door-to-door salesman in a timeshare company.
Sherif sold everything from encyclopedias to toys to video games before he moved to Hurghada, where he worked as a receptionist in several hotels. By the time he was 17, Sherif had already been exposed to a vast multitude of people, and excelled in selling merchandise – a skill that came in handy only a few years later.
“Being able to sell something is one of the most valuable skills you can ever gain, Sherif said, and you always practice it in your everyday life, whether you want to convince your mother to buy you a new car or an investor to finance your business.
A year later, Sherif knew that Community Times magazine was hiring people to sell advertising space. Realizing that they had already hired, he convinced the chief editor to allow him to work as a freelance sales executive on commission with no basic monthly salary. One year later, he became the sales manager with a team of salespeople working under him.
The inspiration for Campus came to Shady while he was preparing a media plan for a client of Community Times design house, Live Colors. The guy wanted to target young A and B class university students, Shady remembers, realizing that there was no magazine targeting this particular segment, I decided to capture this niche market and start my own business.
Researching youth magazines all over the world, Sherif discovered several magazines in different parts of the world under the name Campus. After thorough research, he realized that there was no mother company nor were there loyalty fees, so he decided to start his own magazine under the same name.
With a lot of passion and perseverance, Sherif sold his motorbike and put all his savings, together with some investment he managed to secure, into this new project. After the first couple of issues, Sherif and his investor had some irreconcilable business disagreements and the investor decided to bail out.
Luckily, Sherif met Hani Mahfouz, another investor, to whom he owes a lot. Mahfouz provided Sherif with office space and covered all his operational expenses, which helped him break even after the third issue.
In a strategic move, Sherif decided to interview Egypt s top businessman Naguib Sawiris for one of the magazine s issues. “I admit that I did not approach Sawiris just for the sake of an interview, Sherif said, I had high hopes that he might like our business idea and offer some kind of support. Sherif was right and it was this interview that guaranteed Campus two annual advertising contracts with MobiNil and Orascom Group.
In a few months, Campus became one of the leading English magazines in Egypt. Not only did it receive media coverage in Egypt s most popular broadcast TV shows like “El Beit Beitak and “Al Qahira Al Youm, but the magazine was able to reach a variety of classes in Egypt’s society, said Sherif.
“I was shocked, and also quite fascinated, when my doorman asked me one day if I ran a magazine, he said, it turns out he saw my photo in one of the Campus issues.
Apart from increasing the magazines readership, being a free publication was also a major selling point for advertisers. “While the best-selling English magazines printed no more than 4,000 copies, we were able to distribute 10,000 copies a month, Sherif said. Advertisers viewed Campus as a better return on investment compared to other magazines.
“Being free means more distribution, it is exactly like the difference between NBC and Showtime, he added. Everybody watches NBC for free and this is why advertisers pay more for it.
To avoid being just another freebie that people collect from coffeehouses, Sherif and his team are quite selective about their distribution points. I do not believe that a Cilantro client will take a Campus issue just to have it, he added.
In 2003, Core publications issued their light pocket-size magazine G-mag for only one pound. In 2005, Sherif was accused of jeopardizing the Arabic language when he introduced Ehna, his latest colloquial Arabic magazine.
Despite all the criticism Ehna spurred when it was first published, the magazine ranked third place in a poll ran by Nogoum FM for the best youth publications in Egypt in 2006. It was later praised by Magdy Al Gallad, editor in chief of Al-Masry Al-Youm, who described Ehna as the “magazine version of his popular daily newspaper.
After all the success, Sherif continues to strive for more. He is now busy putting the final touches on his new creative house called The Mess, working so far on below-the-line advertising campaigns for several clients. Moreover, he is preparing for a brand new television show “Ehna, directed by veteran Egyptian filmmaker Sherif Arafa, to be launched by the beginning of next year.
