cover story / innovations
Look (owned by US retail giant Nord- strom), Amazon, and Saks Fifth Avenue. Of the three, the Saks partnership is
most intriguing, as it keeps the edito- rial flavour of Harper’s while curating must-have lists in a magazine-style lay- out on the new
ShopBazaar.com. Although the idea of transmedia is not new within the advertising world, the move for magazines to act as agencies, to cre- ate extensions of their brand which not only promote but also endorse products without the advertorial disclaimer so com- monly seen in print, is boundary-skirting, if not outright boundary-busting. Some call the phenomenon ‘branded content.’ Magazines and their creators are redefin- ing the medium in the post-blog world. Rather than focusing solely on commen-
tary, reviews, and 1990s-style journalism, magazines are successfully moving into the digital arena by shifting their focus from editor-directed content to user-directed content: forums, Twitter conversations, and Facebook status questions and polls are merely the tip of the proverbial iceberg.
Blending content Consider: in 1995, Jane, a senior in high school, scanned the racks of her local news- stand for a magazine to help her pick the perfect prom dress and paid anywhere from US$6 (a couple of magazines) to $50 (a lot of magazines) for educated opinions. In 2013, Jane logs onto Facebook or
Twitter and sends out a call to her favour- ite mag: “Looking for a hot prom dress, something shiny but not too extravagant (on a budget).” Within 24 hours, every- one from Jane’s friends to the magazine’s trend-monitoring editors are replying to Jane’s call for help; the magazine’s part- nership with one or several of the stores targeting Jane’s demographic helps direct Jane’s purchase toward a brand that suits her needs while also reinforcing the demand for a given product in real time. And this shift toward a blending of
editorial and retail content isn’t limited to social media and internet browsing. In a rather prescient statement made two years ago to The New York Times, Robin Steinberg, an executive at Pub-
INNOVATIONS SNAPSHOT
06 HTML5 and magazines
HTML5 bypasses many of the underlying components that native apps rely on to provide a faster, more fl uid browsing experience. Which means this fi fth generation of HyperText Markup Language, the coding language used to create web pages could mean today’s
native apps quickly become yesterday’s news. ESPN Magazine, The Atlantic Wire and The Economist’s Electionism are all examples of untethtered apps, built exclusively on HTML5 and only available on the web.
fipp.com
US PRINT VS ONLINE ADSPEND (BILLIONS) $57.5
$52.8 $46.5
$32.0 $36.0 $15.3
$20.7
2011 Online adspend
$39.5 $33.8 $15.4 $19.4 2012 $33.8 $15.3 $18.4 2013 $33.1 $15.3 $17.9 2014 Total adspend Magazine adspend * $32.6 $15.2 $17.4 2015
$32.3 $15.3
$17.0 2016 Newspaper adspend
Source: eMarketer. 2011–2016. Online benchmarking projections made against IAB / PwC data, and newspaper adspend projections mdae against NAA data. * print only
licis’ Media Vest said that, “The iPad is bringing sexy back to magazines.” Click and buy that LBD (little black dress).
Getting personal In the March 2012 issue of Harper’s Bazaar, a full-page flier — called an ‘out- sert’ — was personalised with the name of 300,000 of the magazine’s subscrib- ers. The outsert encouraged readers to visit specific Neiman Marcus stores within 50 miles of their homes. A result of a collaboration between Harp-
er’s Bazaar’s parent company Hearst, and HP (Hewlett Packard), this print personalisa- tion method, dubbed ‘Project Match’, was made possible through newly-developed printing technology that enables faster (and higher quality) personalised printing. Harper’s Bazaar’s foray into personalisa- tion is seen as just the beginning of what’s expected to be a widespread print mar- keting shift based on customisation and personalisation. “The digital universe has gotten us used to personalisation. This is just another way that it’s manifested itself,” Targeted Media Inc president Rob Reif told AdAge (sourced within the report). The US is not the only country explor- ing this new advertising approach. French advertising agency Loyalty Expert recent-
$62.0
ly created personalised covers for the 12,000-subscribers of Action Commerciale. Using a positioning strategy called Intel- ligent Marketing, the agency “explores and uses data to drive ultra-personalised mar- keting campaigns, not only on the web but also in print campaigns,” says Loyalty Expert representative Herveline Davis. After sifting through Action Commer-
ciale’s entire subscriber database, Loyalty Expert created a new database containing the business interests and credentials of the 12,000 subscribers. Then, they developed 20 graphic templates, and after merging them with the new, personalised database, deliv- ered 12,000 different copies of the Action Commerciale cover — all printed in-house with a new-generation digital printing press. The personalisation has been an enor- mous success — besides countless enthusiastic phone calls from readers, more than 500 subscribers opted to download their individual ‘collector’s cover’ on Loyalty Expert’s website. Since then, the advertis- ing endeavour was unanimously voted as ‘Best Project’ by the French Professional Press Federation (FNPS), and a multitude of French magazines and publishing agen- cies have approached Loyalty Expert for similar ultra-personalised campaigns. For Davis, this has been one of the most
successful communication projects they have conducted so far, and magazine per- sonalisation has become the new business model for their company. “Considering the number of reactions sparked by these ultra- personalised covers, it is very clear that personalisation is part of the [print media’s]
issue 76_2013 | Magazine World |17
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