The Future of Magazines
Ahead of MediaTel Group’s sold-out ‘Future of Consumer Magazines’ seminar, James Papworth, group marketing and strategy manager at IPC Media, discusses how magazines are securing their future by evolving into multi-media brands…
I work for IPC Media and in a little over two months I will be leaving my desk at Kings Reach Tower, which IPC has occupied for 35 years, to move to a gleaming new building right behind the Tate Modern.
Two things strike me about this move. Firstly, I’ll be closer to the coffee machine, and secondly, as another 2,400 staff are moving with me to this prime location, the company must be doing something right. So, looking from the outside at least, the future must be bright, mustn’t it?
Well actually, yep, I think it is.
Before looking forward, a quick snapshot of where we are right now. More magazines are being printed than ever, 3445 varieties at last ABC count, selling more copies than ever, generating more cover price revenue than ever. Odd isn’t it, that in this digital decade of media fragmentation and exponential rise in online, all the line graphs for the paper based magazine industry are going up.
It’s not all beer and skittles though and the market has seen significant ups and downs. Men’s weeklies have taken a chunk out of men’s lifestyle monthlies, but then again, monthlies still sell 660,000. And if Nuts and Zoo make significant profits, is there really any problem at all?
Then there’s the women’s weekly market where the capacity to devour celebrities, real life stories, handbags and shoes continues apace. New launches such as Grazia and Look add new dimensions to this market while the blurring of defined lifestage/lifestyle behaviours has as many middle aged women flicking through Heat as Woman’s Own.
The practicalities of the print format are one element of their appeal – wherever you want, whenever you want. A second is what magazines represent and offer. From the emotive – a friend, a badge, a sense of community, camaraderie with thousands of people you’ve never met, through to the functional – advice, fun, information and entertainment. Basically, a magazine read is something indulgent, rewarding and enjoyable to do with our (increasingly limited) leisure time. And this points to a third appeal.
For anyone interested in anything for which there is a magazine, the magazine, in the shape of editor and staff, do all the hard work for them. They sift through all the news, press releases, high street collections, celebrity photos and general nonsense to collate the best bits in a handy, time saving device known as a magazine. Editors are masters of précising life down into the important bits that we want to know.
Interestingly enough, these emotional, intellectual and time saving rewards don’t change whether the content is delivered to a reader in a handy handbag sized paper version or on a lean forward lap-top.
At this point perhaps it is prudent to remember what a magazine is. To use its grammatical heritage it comes from the French magasin, meaning a storehouse – aka a handy place to pick up all you need. And no one says it has to be made of paper.
And that’s really why magazines’ future is bright. Even if readers migrate their media leisure time online, magazine brands can meet them there. In fact if the internet had been invented before paper that’s the way it would already be.
Most big titles now have a paper and an online edition – they are multi-platform media brands. A few years ago the digital version may have been a ‘copy and paste’ of the paper one. But that didn’t work.
For magazines to succeed online they take all the best bits of the paper version, and all the brand baggage, then add in or expand elements which the digital platforms can serve that the practicalities of paper just can’t match. And this can yield many benefits.
NME may sell 73,000 copies a week but nme.com has 1.3 million unique users, drawn to the continually updated gig guides, news, music and video clips. Then there’s the NME Awards, the NME Tour and NME merchandise.
Even the less ‘techy’ titles can now join in. What’s On TV, the biggest selling paid-for magazine in the country, has reached a composition ‘tipping point’ of internet-enabled readers and gone both online and on mobile. Readers can chat to editorial, chat to each other, provide content and enter competitions. They always could of course, but now they can do it quicker and more often – and they don’t need a stamp.
In all cases editorial content straddles both/all the platforms, advertising revenues come in from several sources, subscriptions can be driven and brand saliency and loyalty improved through a multi-pronged brand experience.
As most of the country eventually goes broadband, and WiFi takes off – arguably changing the emotional dynamic of internet from a lean-forward operation to a lean-back (anywhere I want) one – both the numbers reached by www.amagazine.com and the way it is related too will change… the first ‘appeal’ being addressed.
In short then, the future of magazines is paper, internet, mobile, events, brand extensions, licensing‌ a central theme and value set, tailored to different platforms but all combining to offer a brand experience valued by the reader/viewer/downloader/attendee – aka the end consumer.