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raditional publishing, like the music industry, has felt the full impact of the digital revolution over the last decade. The entire content cycle – from
conception to distribution and consumption – has been radically reshaped by social media, mobile technology and consumers’ own expectations. Between 2011 and 2013, there was a 10 per cent fall in the number of UK print magazines on newsstands. As high profile casualties including Nuts, Zest, Word and More! will attest, it’s tough out there for publishers.
HIGH FREQUENCY BRAND-WIDTH One of the success stories in this sector has been ShortList Media, publishers of the ‘freemium’ titles Stylist and ShortList. The latter currently boasts the biggest circulation of any men’s lifestyle magazine in Britain. Founded in 2007, ShortList Media have married technological innovation and engaging content to create a loyal audience of young urban professionals whose demographic credentials make them highly desirable to advertisers. Co-Founder and Strategy Director Tim Ewington was there in 2007 when the magazine was launched from a borrowed office in London, and remains on board today. With a career stretching back to the early 1990s when he ran R&D projects for EMAP, he happily describes himself as analogue in his
thinking, but ShortList’s digital strategy has brought 150,000 subscribers to their two daily email newsletters: Mr Hyde for men and Emerald Street for women.
“One of the things we’ve been obsessed with is frequency – how often
you talk to people and how you build strong relationships,” says Ewington. “We’ve always had a very regular relationship with people via print but we wanted to think about something we could do daily, which really fitted into people’s lives.”
With 100k subscribers to Emerald Street and 50k to Mr Hyde, the daily emails have slotted into users’
inboxes very neatly. And because this is email, every interaction can be monitored, tracked and reacted to, enabling the
editorial teams to deliver
more of the stuff people actually want.
This, notes Ewington, has
Tim Ewington, Co-Founder & Strategy Director at ShortList Media, talks to Figaro
Digital about the daily email newsletters Emerald Street and Mr Hyde and explains how brands can develop deeper relationships with their audiences
thrown up some valuable – and occasionally unexpected - insight into
readers’ cultural interests. The Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy has proved highly clickable among Stylist’s female readership. But so have articles about cats. The huge popularity of burger- related content among Mr Hyde’s male readership led to the launch of National Burger Day last year and a meaty meet up of readers in Hoxton. All of this information, explains Ewington, makes it easier to tailor more relevant content and deepen the relationship with users.
ARTICLE JON FORTGANG 52 issue 21 july 2014
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