Magazines are perfect for ecommerce. Or are they? The major online women’s retailers – like Net-a-Porter, ASOS, HauteLook, TopShop and Groupe Gilt – use content in magazine-like ways. They employ a raft of former editors and, tantalisingly, either collaborate with magazines or advertise in them. They also produce online magazines. And ASOS even publishes a hard copy one, with Net-a-Porter imminently launching an as yet unnamed print title too.
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INNOVATIONS SNAPSHOT
02 social image media
Social image sites such as Pinterest, Tumblr and Instagram are opening up new ways to drive engagements with magazine visual content. But what works on these sites and why? Stand-outs include fi tness magazine Self which launched a standalone site “Self Curate Your Look” allowing users to select and save their own personal “Lookbook” and Pinterest referrals to RealSimple which are now second only to Google.
INNOVATIONS SNAPSHOT
03 future of magazines
The concept demonstrates how future intelligent surrounding, in this case a comfortable armchair, can react while you are reading. Your reading experience will, in this way, be enhanced with sounds and pictures.
INNOVATIONS SNAPSHOT
creating a buzz
A selection of magazines take innovation to the extreme: from tailor-made Covered which customises samples of multiple magazine content into one glossy magazine, to the highly successful Mundo Estranho distinctly targeted at teenagers with a short attention span to Wired and Marie Claire’s use of Near Field Communications which effectively allows contactless transaction direct from the magazine using a smartphone.