Bob Sauerberg’s field promotion to president of Condé Nast was a surprise— and yet, after watching him in action with CEO Chuck Townsend a few weeks ago, it isn’t much of a shock. True, Townsend didn’t give any hint that his own job was about to be split as he stood outside a meeting room in the publisher’s Times Square headquarters explaining how Gourmet Live was part of a new consumer-centric strategy.

But Sauerberg, then the group president of consumer marketing, came off as the go-to guy for putting consumers, not advertisers, at the center of Condé Nast’s business. (David Carey, who left a few days later to run Hearst’s magazine unit, was at the same event but in the background.) As the company escalates its digital R&D efforts, it’s been up to Sauerberg to connect those dots to success in the short term—and to the long-term strategy of making more money directly from consumers who feel passionate about Conde’s niches and brands. The results from the first months of iPad apps show some of the efforts literally are paying off: through June, users paid for 182,000 downloads of Wired, GQ and Vanity Fair.

As Sauerberg stressed when we spoke soon after his promotion was made public, it’s still a very small business but it’s an example of what he has to accomplish as president of Condé Nast. Some excerpts from the interview:

—Conde DNA: Asked to explain concisely how Condé Nast was going to deliver on this strategy, Sauerberg replied: “Our DNA at Condé Nast is content in how we start the cultural conversation in everything we do. We are now going to get organized to develop our content and our brands in a way that starts with the foundation of the magazine but also extends into other platforms and in a way that develops a more balanced revenue stream for us.” He admitted ruefully, “That’s a mouthful.”

But how is Condé Nast going to get users to continue to pay more digital access than they do for print? How do they get past blow-card pricing? “You start with creating content experiences that people really value and you make it easy for them to consume and to buy. I think that’s the foundation of all of this.” The R&D process is a big part of that. “We’re trying to understand what it takes to move the needle with them. You don’t want to rush through that. For example, in the digital app market, we’ve been in this for a very short period of time and the pricing for magazines developed over decades of consumer behavior, knowledge and history.”

Sauerberg thinks they can mix beauty, usability and passion to produce the kind of value users will pay more to get. “We think they’ll pay for it and we think they’ll pay nicely for it.”

—Short & long: The short term is more of a piecemeal approach. “In the short term, you’re going to see a lot of people developing strategies and interesting things on each of the things that get developed in the marketplace.”  Longer term—and I say looking two-three years out, we get people who are interested in the whole brand and they want as much as they can get.”

Condé Nast, which hasn’t been shy of late about killing magazines, isn’t shying away from them, either. That’s because consumers are telling them they want the magazine, says Sauerberg. “They really want the magazine and hey also are going to want other digital things, other experiences that get them information about what they can do to feed their frenzy for this brand.” 
 
—Accentuate the premium: “We want to revalue the relationship. Our business is based on creating incredible engagement in the special interest area that we publish. We want to take that engagement and continue to try to increase it and revalue the consumer proposition. We want to do that with our magazines and our websites and our digital applications.”

CN still needs advertisers to make it all work. “We have content and content experiences and other things that are going to be highly valued by consumers and as a result of that will be highly valued by advertisers. We’re a premium maker and our goal is to maintain that and accentuate it.”

—Apps will be good business: After an initial flurry, CN corporate is leaving it to the publications to announce individual stats. But Sauerberg said the numbers continue to be encouraging. “It is important. We continue to be very, very satisfied with both sales and engagement levels in this new platform and we think our brands are going to do really brilliantly. It will be a good business for us,” he said, adding, “But it’s still very small. There’s not many iPads out there yet and we have a lot of things that we’re learning.”

Sauerberg says to expect more innovation—but avoided direct examples of what Condé Nast will do in the coming months to underscore this shift. “I don’t want to go there right now. I’d like a little time. This is really like day zero. Monday’s day one.”

• More Changes At Condé Nast: Sauerberg Promoted to President
• Video Interview: Conde Nast’s Bob Sauerberg On Wired For iPad, Take Two
• Conde Nast Does Last-Minute Pivot On Wired App Pricing