To the PPA Festival to take the temperature of the magazine publishing world, where some things remain the same and some things are constantly changing.
Where are the print publishers?
A panel of young planners expressed concerns over the low levels of interaction they have with (print) publishers compared to the activity of the tech giants in promoting their platforms and ad formats.
“I want the publishing industry to have more prominence and energy, getting out there and sharing the wonderful things we do,” said one, who reported being in regular contact with digital media owners, both in person and via email. “I don’t really get that from publishers,” she said, “but I want that engagement; as a planner, that engagement is incredibly important for both of us.”
Publishers aren’t just absent on a day-to-day basis, they’re also dilatory when it comes to evidence. Those same planners bemoaned the lack of recent research relating to print effectiveness and ROI. They have access to various data sources – TGI, YouGov, Telmar – and case studies, but “the thing that’s missing is more up-to-date research,” said another. “There’s some really great stuff out there but it would be great to have the recent stuff to rely on.”
These aren’t new complaints; almost a decade ago, media agencies were noting how digital platforms invested significantly in proving their case for advertisers to invest with them, and suggesting that print needed to do the same if it wanted to wrest spending back.
The importance of trust
Those young planners understand perfectly well the signalling strength that comes from print, the uniqueness of people having something tangible in their hands, and the trust that magazine brands engender with loyal readers who are often drawn to titles that mirror their own particular passions, from gardening to surfing.
And that was reinforced by stats from the Advertising Association’s Stephen Woodford who highlighted how trust has risen across media channels in the past year, with magazines gaining five percentage points from 28% to 33%. (Interestingly, there’s a generational divide, with younger consumers (18-34) far more likely to trust media of all sorts, while older consumers (55+) are far less likely to do so, and especially digital formats.)
Trust in media channels helps drive trust in the ads they show, but advertisers can help themselves by developing good ads. “Quality of advertising absolutely drives trust, and trust drives business results,” said Woodord. “So it’s not it’s not a luxury to invest in high quality creativity, it’s a commercial imperative that pays back.”
Keeping your audience
Content is obviously key here and ideally it should be unique, should feed a passion and offer proximity to expertise, according to Michael Brunt of HBM Advisory. “Building your audience is not trying to shoehorn readers into some kind of segmentation,” he said, adding for good measure that “demographics are dead”.
As the man who launched The Economist’s Espresso product, he’s an evangelist for newsletters which distill content into a format that can reach a whole new audience that might never consider subscribing to the main product. And that wasn’t inspired by any demographic consideration, he added: “It was the fact that we could see the usage patterns in the data, that people really wanted to get something like that in the morning.”
If that underscores the importance of data, it’s also crucial to understand what you’re measuring and why (eg “quality of read”) – and then considering how to communicate resulting insights to the editorial team, since journalists can’t produce readable copy that simultaneously addresses a multitude of commercial metrics.
Do less and do it better, is effectively Brunt’s mantra. He argued that many publishers produce too much content and much of that may never be read. Across subscription businesses, he reported, “subscribers are happy if they get one useful article a month – it justifies their subscription”.
Agility is everything in social
Social media activity is a necessity in today’s publishing world, with publishers trying to monetise their own audiences on various platforms. But it’s not possible to have a long-term strategy for someone else’s platform, said Adam Clyne, founder of the Coolr social media and influencer marketing agency.
Algorithms change, new platforms emerge (TikTok, for example, has burst on the scene in the past couple of years and there’s no doubt something else bubbling under even now). “You need to know what you’ve done last week, and what you’re going to do in the week ahead, and then if you’ve not done what you thought you were going to do, you might need to revisit the plans,” he said.
