Advertiser thoughtpiece Reinventing thebusiness magazine TOPIC.
Despite the increasingly cluttered media landscape, print media is not just surviving but prospering with the most successful magazine titles attracting an affluent readership and bringing a real freshness and relevance to their coverage and format, writes Kevin Hopkins
Bascobert: Seeing magazine readership go from strength to strength
The past decade has not been easy for magazine publishers. From the deluge of free online information and 24-hour TV news channels, to ubiquitous social media vehicles like Facebook and Twitter, the media environment has grown increasingly frenetic. So too has the recession caused many financially strapped advertisers to pull back, sending the number of ad pages sold in US magazines plummeting by nearly 26% in 2009 alone.
Amid this chaos, one might think that
magazine readers are abandoning print media. In fact, the opposite is true and magazine readership is stronger than ever, growing by 13% in the past 10 years. What’s more, today’s readers have a median household income of more than $64,000—almost 60% higher than that of non-magazine readers. Each quarter, dozens of promising new titles are launched to satisfy their growing needs for information and entertainment.
THE SECRET TO SUCCESS How are successful magazines serving consumers’ needs in today’s publishing environment? More often than not, the secret lies in content and approach.
The winners have brought new energy, relevance and depth to their coverage and format, while those less fortunate have stagnated.
This has been particularly evident in business magazines. Paul Bascobert, president of Bloomberg Businessweek, points out: “While the world is getting more complicated, the sources of information to unravel it have become more simplistic. And so we’ve moved from a world where you could rely on longer, deeper analysis to places where the news is more headline-driven.”
READER ENGAGEMENT What is needed, Bascobert contends, is a “reinvention of the business magazine”. “Bloomberg Businessweek is focusing on core business decisions in helping people to understand the layers and complexity of business. It will continue to be one of the few places you can go to understand industries, to understand companies, to understand trends, and to understand how to take that information back to your own company.” The key to this reinvention, Bascobert says, is not just to provide executives with an opportunity to read
“We’ve moved from a world of longer form, deeper analysis to one where the news is more headline-driven”
and learn, but literally to immerse them in the content and features. While other titles are retrenching, Bloomberg Businessweek is therefore investing. The 26 April relaunch issue showcases an expanded network of 1,700 journalists worldwide; a 20% increase in editorial pages; strengthened commitment to global coverage; improved paper stock; a new business- focused lifestyle section; and 50 issues per year. Unchanged is its commitment to superior content and insights. All this builds on Bascobert’s goal:
to give Bloomberg Businessweek an unprecedented degree of connection to today’s business executive, and to give advertisers powerful opportunities to engage a critical audience. ○
Sources: MRI Fall 2000 and 2009 studies; MPA Handbook 2009/2010; Publisher’s Information Bureau, Jan-Dec 2008-2009
Reinvention of the business title to make it a must-read
4 M&M Q2 2010
www.mandmglobal.com
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