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Meet one of Jackson's most influential citizens, learn about the top events that highlight philanthropy, and find out what is happening in the community all in one publication.

Hello, I'm Tom Britt.

On this edition of Tennessee is Talking, the topic is the VIP Jackson Magazine.

Learn how to make sure your favorite business is in the running for the best in Jackson.

Let the conversation begin.

That's so cool.

And then that's when I said that-- The problem with that idea is-- Wow, that was amazing.

Then I came up with a solution.

What was that about?

Here's what I think about it.

Now we're talking.

West Tennessee PBS presents Tennessee is Talking.

Let the conversation begin.

Thanks for joining the discussion here on Tennessee is Talking.

Hello, I'm Tom Britt.

The VIP Jackson Magazine gives a glimpse into the lives of Jackson's most elite.

Here to tell us more is publisher Greg Alexander and editor Chelsea Catherine Croom.

Thank you both for joining us here.

-Thank you for having us.

-Thank you for having us.

I know the Best in Jackson edition of VIP is out now because I've been poking around and voting and looking and go, "Wow, I didn't realize there were so many businesses and that sort of thing going on."

How does it work, the voting, the nominations, and the process that gets it to where you want it to be?

Sure.

It's a two-phase process.

In the month of July, we start a nominations phase.

That's when a person can go to our website and click on the Best in Jackson logo and it takes them to the voting site, the ballot, and you can write in any business that you feel is your favorite in that particular category.

We have over 150 categories in six different groups such as cocktails and cuisine, and health and wellness, entertainment, and services, and then also bridal.

You can write in your favorites or if they're already there, you just click to vote for them.

The top 10 most nominated in that two-and-a-half-week phase moves on to the voting phase which is ongoing through August 31st.

It lasts from August 14th through the 31st.

I looked, so today we're three-quarters of the way through that at this point when we're taping here, and we've had over 140,000 votes cast.

That's from about 10,000 people.

There are 10,000 different e-mail addresses.

There's a lot of energy and a lot of engagement that goes on with this Best in Jackson contest.

Folks are loving it.

Why do you think that sort of thing is so popular amon..

They just love naming things they like.

People love to share their opinions.

People have opinions, and they love to share, and they love to be involved.

They have their favorite businesses around town, places that they like to go eat or take the kids to play, and they want to vote, and they want to become part of it and feel like they've got a say.

They're involved, right, in choosing the one -that they like the best.

-Right, it gets people involved.

They have a say-so, and it's fun, and people are competitive as well.

Yes, I think so.

Two years as publisher, Greg.

How has the magazine evolved in your time, and what do you see for the future?

VIP has been publishing in Jackson for 21 years now, coming up on a 21st anniversary.

It's always been very exciting for each issue to come out.

We've noticed folks anxiously awaiting, and as soon as our vans open up to deliver magazines to all of our racks and businesses, people are almost standing in line.

We can't put them on the racks until people want them from this.

It's always been very popular.

It's always been a great resource for businesses to advertise and showcase what they're doing, and it's been such a good resource to promote all of the charities and the non-profits that is most of our editorial coverage.

Over the last two years, all we've done is ramped up that same thing that VIP has always been.

We have worked a little more diligently on bringing in more local people for spotlights and for profiles, and we added a few features that were not there previously.

Really just a facelift on the magazine overall.

We added something, the very last page inside the magazine, I Am Jackson, where we showcase someone in Jackson who's doing great things for the community.

We added a Give Care Share feature, which highlights a l.. in every issue.

It's just a Q&A with the executive director or the leader of that nonprofit.

We've added a couple of other features.

Our newest is our Recipes feature, where it's someone in the community who enjoys cooking and who likes to cook.

We don't just take pictures of them doing the cooking, but we like for them to tell us the story.

It's their favorite recipe that was passed down from their grandmother or they cook it because their child in college loves it and they ship it to them or whatever.

There's always a story behind the recipes that they share with us.

We also have No Place Like Home, where we're taking our readers into some of the most interesting and most beautiful homes in Jackson.

We just recently did one that was outside the home.

It was the garden, someone who had a wonderful garden, and that was featured in our August issue.

I hope that everyone has seen that.

It was beautiful.

Other features, what else?

We have a feature that we do quarterly called Hashtag Trending.

That is coming up in our September issue.

We're excited about that.

We're really excited about that one.

We took a .. at what we did really well, and that was telling people stories, and we enjoyed telling people stories.

We wanted to do that in a lot of different ways.

We'd been doing that through events for 20 years, but we took a look at how we could really get into the stories of other people in Jackson.

There's a lot of interesting stuff that our community members have to talk about.

I know you're the editor.

It doesn't magically go together.

-It does not.

-When we look at it, we go, "Wow."

"Ooh, this is good," but it takes a little while to put it all together, doesn't it?

It does.

I feel like we're constantly in production.

Once we send one off to print, we start thinking about the next one, sometimes even before that.

We've got things in the works for several months ahead, and it's a lot of fun putting it together.

It takes a team, for sure, but it does.

It's involved.

Yes, and those deadlines, they make you work harder.

-Absolutely.

-They make time pass by fast.

They really do.

What makes VIP Jackson stand out from the other VIP magazines?

Each of the publications has the same premise, where we're promoting people in the community, connecting people and businesses in the community, but VIP Jackson was first.

It just has so much engagement.

It's so well-liked and so welcomed in all of the homes across not just Jackson but West Tennessee.

That's another thing that is unique about VIP.. We have publications in other areas, but those are not hub cities like Jackson is.

VIP Jackson, that's why we have our community profile in most of our issues where we go into Milan or we go into Lexington or Henderson and showcase their city or their town and community.

We do that for multiple reasons, but because many of those people are coming to Jackson for shopping or for work.

Then also, we do that to showcase the things that they have in their neighborhoods and communities that we may want to know about or reasons that we may go to Henderson for pizza or Milan for strawberries or whatever.

Yes, bringing it all together.

How does VIP work to highlight local nonprofits?

Nonprofits are very important.

I serve on a couple of boards, and we're always looking, we're always searching, trying to get more money to do more with what we have.

You touched on it.

How do you highlight those nonprofits that really grab people and maybe make them want to get involved, or give time, or money, or whatever product?

We're in the fortunate position to be able to sh.. the good news going on in our community.

We love to share the good news that nonprofits are doing with people across the community.

We are fortunate to be able to share those stories in the forms of events, so nonprofits can have events.

We get to share those with everybody.

That helps to raise awareness for the nonprofit that they may not have been able to get before.

We are able to offer them some advertising to share what they're doing with the community.

A lot of people get to learn about those nonprofits through the magazine.

It gives them a chance to get that marketing that they may not have had the opportunity to get if we had not got involved.

Your numbers, if you care to share, these you put out every-- We publish 10 times a year and we print 10,000 copies of each issue.

We probably have more than 40,000 readers per issue.

We're strategic in where we place the magazine, -I understand that.

-so it may be in a medical facility or somewhere where one issue gets looked at 40 times.

There's a lot of sets of eyes on each copy.

I'll go back to something that Chelsea was saying there related to the nonprofits as well.

There's a cost involved in what we do, but we're not charging these nonprofits to cover these events and the charities and all.

The last couple of years, we've taken a look at what the value was that we put back into the community just for covering events and promoting and showcasing the nonprofits.

Just last year, that was over $350,000 of PR that we had put back in kind for all of the different charitable institutions.

Which is very important to them, to keep them before the community and let them know what's going on.

Why does everyone want to be seen in VIP, do you think?

Oh, it's so much fun to be able to scroll through the magazine when it first comes out and to see your picture.

We love to just sit back and watch when we first deliver the maga.. We like to watch people thumb through and see themselves.

Everybody likes to see their picture somewhere.

Most people do, I think and think back to the events that they went to over the past month, and see them with their friends.

It is something special to watch, though, when we see people find themselves or say, "Hey, we know this person."

Everybody seems to love it.

I'm humbled each time that a new issue comes out and a little overwhelmed at the response.

I have seen many times when there's a new issue come out and I take it to a luncheon that I'm attending or somewhere, and everybody grabs it and-- You know what they're doing, they're looking for their pictures.

-Right, they're looking for themselves.

-It's like the old phone book thing when you went to your name first before you did anything.

That's exactly right.

As a matter of fact, Tom, they're going to the table of contents and looking at the events- -That's where I was.

-and flipping to the page to see if they're in there or not because they know their photo was taken.

9 times out of 10, they could be, right?

-That's right.

-Absolutely.

Lots of pictures.

Is there an average number of.. that go into each issue?

I guess it has to do with advertising space and the total number of pages you want, I guess.

For each event spread, we try to put about 12 pictures.

Multiply that by 25 event spreads in the magazine and you get that average.

Also, when you have a feature, of course, like the home features, we do a lot more pictures for those and then the recipes.

It's always fun, again, to see people go through.

If they know the person who's done the recipe or they know the person whose house it is, it's always fun for them to go in and see that.

Yes, that was going to ask.

I thought about this a moment ago.

Is there a certain articles section that people really want to see every time?

Is it just that picture?

Is it the recipes?

I know when I was doing TV and we always did a cooking show, 9 times out of 10, we'll get off the air, the phones ring, go, "I missed the recipe.

Can you read it to me?"

[laughter] That is really the section right now that is getting so much steam, people are loving.

Especially coming into fall, you're always looking for easy.

Especially now, with school starting too -Football, and that tailgating whatever.

-you need something easy to cook.

You need to not be able to think about it.

You can open up the magazine, see what somebody's cooking -and go for it.

-Jump right in.

That looks good.

Let's do it.

Yes, that's for sure.

VIP seems to be everywhere all the time.

How do you achieve this?

I know you don't probably have a gigantic staff to cover all the events that you cover.

-We do have a good team right now.

-Absolutely.

We're able to send people to things going on.

Inevitably, on a weekend in Jackson, there are 10 different things going on.

There's always something to do.

We are a little bit strategic about what we can cover these days.

We send our team out to all of those different events.

Sometimes photographers cover four different events in a night and our photographers love to be out with people anyway.

They're people who were going to these events anyway and wanted to take pictures and represent VIP.

We're able to be at everything through the help of a lot of people, a great team.

There are so many events.

We can't cover everything, but we cover what we can.

We don't know about everything.

We always ask and request that people invite us to your events.

We may not can come, but we certainly would try and we want to know about it at least.

Yes.

This next question here, I know I was involved in decision-making process and choosing stories and things to go on air, you into the magazine.

How do you choose the person to highlight in the I am Jackson article?

We keep a running list of folks that have been recommended to us and folks that our staff has determined, hey, this is someone who's really doing something in the community.

We need to notice them, get to know them.

It might be someone who's a second or third-generation Jacksonian, or it might be somebody who is rather new to Jackson, but they came in and started doing some good stuff.

We have a hard time choosing from our long list sometimes of who that will be, but we do try to match that person to whatever our special section might be or whatever the season might be.

VIP Jackson has been here for 20 years plus now.

You're growing, you're going.

Where do you see it going from here?

I was just in a conversation earlier today, where someone was talking about print is coming back.

As far as we're concerned, print never left.

Our magazines have consistently been popular.

I think VIP was social media before social media was in the space.

We're going to continue doing exactly what we do.

We will continue keeping up with trends in the industry.

We will continue to keep the magazine fresh.

We brought in these new features and sections over the last two years.

We have a new one in the works now that we'll hopefully launch later this year.

Then we will try to do new and interesting things as we go into each season.

I'm sure people come to you and say, "You need to do this," or you need to do that, right?

Do you get good suggestions that way sometimes?

We do, and we love suggestions.

We want everyone's opinion to help make the magazine better and to keep it evolving.

That's how you grow.

This new feature that we're working on, it was a Saturday and I was working in the yard and I received a phone call from a friend.

He said, "Hey, I think you should do this."

Then he went on to talk and he said, "I'll even allow myself to be the first one featured in it."

We're working on that right now.

I know, after you do edition after edition, sometimes it is hard to freshen it up a little bit and move it along a little bit.

I guess that's a constant process, isn't it?

Yes.

It's fun to be able to talk about different people doing different things.

There's no shortage of events going on in the community.

To be able to talk about those and then the people behind those, to telling the stories, of course.

There's always a story to tell.

Keeping it fresh, speaking of that, one challenge is the cover.

We always want people on the cover, of course.

Our covers are mostly organic.

They come from the events that our photographers are covering.

As those photos are submitted, our team just pulls photos that they think, "Oh, wow, the color is good.

The lighting is good.

-The orientation is good."

-Framing is good, everything.

They stick that into a possibilities folder, but we're always looking for something unique and different.

We have a current cover that actually was a staged cover.

We do that a couple of times a year.

It was medic.. because it was our health and beauty issues where we stood on the golf course at the country club with the clubhouse in the background.

It ended up being a beautiful cover because it was different from anything that we had done in a very long time, if ever.

We try to always look for something that is unique and different.

Was that a logistical nightmare to get that many medical professionals together?

You would think it was, but-- -Not really?

-Not really.

Well, they all wanted to be on the cover.

I understand.

You understand their schedules and this and that and what's going on.

They show up.

When we say they're going to be on the cover, they show up.

All right.

Do you have a lot of requests for medical coverage type of things?

I know everybody's talking about health and beauty and getting healthy and different things.

We do.

Yes, absolutely.

In fact, I just attended something this week for West Tennessee Healthcare, where they're launching a new campaign.

Of course, West Tennessee Healthcare has so many different places in West Tennessee that we have events and things that we cover.

We also have the Jackson Clinic as a big supporter, who we cover things for.

We showcase them in the magazine in our People and Places section.

We showcase any of their new providers that are entering the market.

You're exactly right.

Medical is such a big space -in Jackson because again-- -And West Tennessee.

And West Tennessee because we are the hub city where all of these smaller town, smaller communities in West Tennessee-- West Tennessee Healthcare is the biggest employer -in West Tennessee.

-It is.

Everywhere trying to treat people -and help people out, right?

-Certainly.

We're so fortunate in this community to have good healthcare, so we love to share that story as well and to be able to partner with West Tennessee Health Care and the Jackson Clinic to promote what they've got going on.

I'll also mention, this is not health care related, but we have our back cover.

Roberts Jewelers is on our back cover, and Janet Silver, who's the owner of Roberts, has been in that space since the very beginning of VIP.

-Oh, really?

-It was the very first advertiser.

That's quite unusual, isn't it, for someone to stay .. She's been successful in that space with her ads, and in fact, people call her and say, "I want that third bracelet down.

Please wrap it up, and we'll be by to pick it up."

She has to make sure she has whatever she advertises in-house.

You were talking about print a moment ago, and I still like to read.

I still like to hold something.

Smell the ink and that..

This has to be a terribly expensive piece to publish because it's slick, it's good grade, it's good everything in it.

It is.

The type of paper we use is a little bit hard to find.

We're oversized.

It's tabloid size, it's described.

It's printed on a web press.

There's not a lot of printers that can do that, first of all.

We have to find that place that can do it.

Then also, many of the paper mills in the last five years have decided that they can make more money with brown paper because there's such a demand for brown paper because Amazon and all the other shippers,- Not may people do this kind of slip work again.

they didn't want to print white paper anymore.

They said, "Well, we'll keep printing this coated white paper for you, but we're going to charge a premium for it."

Our print costs have gone up substantially in the last three to five years.

It's a great publication.

-Very slick, good-looking publication.

-Thank you.

If someone wants to find out more about VIP, what should they do?

How should they go about it?

If they want to share something with you and talk with you about it, what is the procedure that needs to happen?

The easiest way is to email us at info@vipjackson.com.

Boy, that was not the answer I was looking for.

It was so short.

[laughter] Are you looking to expand anymore?

I know the area you cover right now is pretty big, but I guess there's always places you could go.

Sure.

We are always looking for new opportunities, new places.

We publish VIP Jackson, and we also publish VIP Pickwick.

We publish Pickwick five times a year.

We don't work out of the same office for these, but I also publish VIP Destin and VIP Pensacola on the Gulf Coast.

Our plate's pretty full.

There are lots of deadlines and lots of moving parts, but we are certainly looking for communities that have a need for a product like VIP.

Especially to be able to feature them in our community profiles, our VIP guide to each of those communities.

If there's a community that's not being featured, we would love to know about that.

We would love to know the interest there.

Yes.

I've learned things about communities from reading and looking at the pictures- -Me too.

-and hearing people react about things.

I grew up here.

I've worked here all my life, and I went, "Wow, I didn't know that."

That particular feature in the magazine, the community profile, it's evolved over the last two years.

It's now called VIP's Guide, and our current issue is VIP's Guide to Lexington, and it looks different.

Historically, it's been all of this copy about the history of the city and all, but we decided our readers have read that.

They've seen that.

Let's take this another direction, and it's short, bulleted lists, and quotes from community leaders such as the mayor or the chamber directors, and we've gotten a lot of positive feedback, and we feel like people are noticing more things in those communities because of the way that we're abbreviating some of it.

With your reputation and with your product that you put out, I'm sure people do not turn you down if you ask to talk with them, do they?

People like to see us coming.

It's not like we are trying to sell them insurance or something when we come in.

They like to see the magazine, and people want to be in it.

They know that it's going to be nice and positive, and people are going to enjoy it, and they're going to smile, and photos will sell your community, right?

We're promoting positive things in the community, ..

Which is very important, I think, in the world -that we live in today -Absolutely.

We agree.

to be positive.

Thank you both for stopping by today.

It was good to talk with you and learn more about VIP, how it's put together, how you work it, how you get it out every time that you publish.

I know it's a great undertaking to do that, but thank you for what you do.

Appreciate that.

-Thank you, Tom.

-Thank you for having us.

Sadly, our time has come to an end, this edition of Tennessee is Talking.

We want to thank Greg Alexander and Chelsea Catherine Croom for stopping by and telling us about the VIP magazine in Jackson.

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