Brands turn the tables on old-school media owners

 

As the boundaries between the customer and consumer titles blur, Michael Barnett discovers that brands are using interactive technology to engage audiences and win the circulation war.

Customer magazines have for some time been challenging consumer titles for newsstand sales and circulation numbers – eight of the top 10 UK magazines by circulation are customer titles, according to the latest National Readership Survey (NRS).

As the line between the two types of magazine becomes increasingly blurred, the content created by many brands now exerts more influence than the content put out by many traditional media owners. Yet as competition between the two becomes ever more fierce, brands need to take care that they match established publishers’ editorial and design expertise.

Although satellite broadcaster Sky announced earlier this month that its self-titled magazine, number one in the NRS rankings, will be scaled back from monthly to quarterly this July and its Sky Sports and Sky Movies magazines will be replaced by email newsletters, the overall trend in consumers gravitating towards customer titles is growing (see Figure Focus, below). Many branded titles are also taking over the internet and publishing on mobile devices.

Virgin is one brand that has effectively become a consumer publisher in its own right. The company has created Virgin Digital Publishing as a subsidiary dedicated to the creation of publications for tablet computers. Its first publication, the monthly iPad title Project, is now four issues old, and includes features and photography on culture, technology, design, fashion and science.

Although Project is editorially independent from the commercial operations of Virgin’s other brands, the influence of the parent company is not entirely absent. In the third issue of the title, for example, US comedian Stephen Colbert posed for photos dressed as Virgin chairman Sir Richard Branson.

Giovanni Donaldson, who founded Virgin’s publishing operation on the strength of the idea for Project, says that unlike other customer publications, this is not intended as an exercise in branding or in boosting sales (see Q&A, below).

He claims it is “just about the magazine” but acknowledges that creating and disseminating editorial content has implications for how Virgin’s other brands are viewed.

Fragmented media and fickle browsing habits mean that traditional customer communications would struggle to hold their attention

Sean King, chief executive of customer publisher Seven – which produces Project – says the expansion of customer publications is just one aspect of brands’ sprawling reach across all content channels. “If a brand has a Facebook page, an app, a magazine or sends out emails then it is a media owner. The big media owners of the future will be brands,” he adds.

Virgin Media’s more conventional customer title, Electric!, is published in print and online by Redwood, independently of Virgin Digital Publishing. Virgin Media director of marketing and CRM Chris Bibby says although these two media channels serve different functions, both help the brand achieve its business objectives.

Print remains unrivalled for the amount of time customers devote to reading, while the internet provides a more interactive platform suited to encouraging direct responses to marketing messages, Bibby says. “Ezines and websites are perfect for offering entertainment such as games, or for driving customers to take action. For us the Electric! ezine is not only a cost-effective way of reaching them but also a different way of providing content in a shorter and more interactive format.”

Redwood chief executive Keith Grainger says the Virgin Media example is typical of what brands want. The need to tailor publications specifically to different media is also a reaction to modern readers’ attitudes towards consuming content. Fragmented media and fickle browsing habits mean that traditional customer communications would struggle to hold their attention.

“The trend is a recognition of their shift from interruption to engagement. In that world, the content is what they engage with,” says Grainger.

It is for this reason that customer publications now so frequently attempt to compete with their consumer counterparts on quality as well as reach. Sainsbury’s Magazine, for example, is positioned as a women’s consumer title, with the editorial split between food and lifestyle.

The food section features products that can be bought in Sainsbury’s, but the fashion section will often mention goods on sale elsewhere – a strategy designed to make sure the title doesn’t come across as a pure sales tool.

Sainsbury’s Magazine publishing director Dorcas Jamieson says: “Because it is a paid-for publication, it is really important that it has that balance, and that it is not just seen as a marketing tool for Sainsbury’s.”

It has also attracted high-profile food writers Jamie Oliver, Nigel Slater and Raymond Blanc – a tactic a growing number of customer titles are using. Specialist and business titles are also being emulated, with customer publications like Fujitsu’s CIO magazine – which is published by Redwood and targeted at a technically minded readership of chief information officers – employing writers with niche expertise.

Redwood’s Grainger notes: “To make that successful, we have had to hire a very specialist editorial team. We did not have people working on, say, Boots’ magazine waiting to do a magazine for Fujitsu.”

Investment in editorial can also extend beyond holding a reader’s attention to generating visible business returns. Mark Jones, editorial director at Cedar Communications, says this is the case with Tesco Magazine – even more so than the brand originally intended.

“Tesco Magazine was explicitly designed as a branding vehicle, a thank you to the supermarket’s customers, but it also drives hundreds of thousands of pounds in extra sales. The magazine would not do that if people did not feel engaged, and that the content was relevant to them,” says Jones.

But it is also the case that brands’ approaches to creating content might not always mean an investment in long-form editorial, or in the process of producing it. The significant strategy shift by Sky of scaling back its customer magazines and opting instead for email newsletters is a signal that is hard to ignore.

The broadcaster’s decision is perhaps an indication that it no longer considers the expense of publishing one monthly and two bimonthly titles worthwhile when the media products being promoted through them are becoming increasingly interactive with more online elements. It is also possible that Sky wants a more visible measure of the response to its customer communications, though it needs to give recipients a compelling reason to open each email.

What is certain, according to Simon Hobbs, managing director at Forward Publishing, is that content creation must show its value to a business. “Companies are demanding a much more demonstrable return on physical publications and also online communications.”

Many brands are convinced they can get that return on investment, but how they achieve this ambition remains an open-ended question.