Publishing’s (almost) free lunch

‘If I’ve got a choice between putting a client’s advertising into a consumer magazine or a customer magazine, I’d go with the consumer title,” says Virginia Hollis, director at The MediaShop, without hesitation.

More and more clients are getting into the game of having magazines published on their behalf as part of their marketing campaigns. But their confidence in the medium has done little to allay the strong scepticism shown by many media directors, who question the value these titles have as vehicles for third-party advertisers.

Sure, there is a great deal of evidence to prove the value of customer mags as a marketing tool for the commissioning client. Millward Brown, for instance, conducted a survey for the US Custom Publishing Council (CPC), in conjunction with the Association of Publishing Agencies (UK), entitled ‘Effectiveness of Custom Publications: A Study on How Consumers Respond to Custom Publications’.

The survey showed that ’78 percent of consumers think custom publications are a more effective way for companies to tell them about their products or services than other forms of advertising.” Marketing directors who have dealt with customer titles felt the medium was effective at relationship building (92 percent), generating loyalty (88 percent), and client retention (83 percent). (www.custompublishingcouncil.com).

Is There Value for Advertisers?

But do third-party advertisers enjoy the same kind of value from customer titles? There must be some convincing reasons for a brand to, in a sense, bankroll the marketing efforts of another by advertising in its magazine.

And loads of brands, despite the misgivings of many in the advertising industry, are prepared to do just that. While a large number of customer titles will accept no third-party ads, others carry healthy quotas of advertising, sometimes matching, and often outpacing consumer mags on the percentage of ads carried.

It’s almost impossible to determine just how much revenue is being invested in customer titles, since Nielsen Media Research’s AdEx stopped reading customer magazine adspend as far back as 1998 (it was proving too difficult to get hold of copies of these titles). But count the ads in some, and you’ll find that many carry anything from 35 percent to 46 percent advertising. (Although OMD’s managing director, Gordon Muller, calls this clutter ‘proving the point that the bottom line is sometimes more important than editorial integrity.”)

‘The customer publishing industry is growing at a rapid pace in South Africa as it tracks UK growth trends. In the past most customer publications were funded by the client – today, funding is increasingly being provided by advertisers,” says Lloyd Macfarlane, executive director of Picasso Headline, a division of Johncom Media.

Robbie Stammers, new business director of Highbury Monarch, which publishes such custom titles as Equinox (Southern Sun) and Expressions (American Express), explains that some customer titles have detailed databases backing them up, allowing the title to deliver defined demographics with very little wastage.

Some titles also have the added bonus of being able to track transactional behaviour. The Publishing Partnership’s Mark Beare, publishing director of Imagine (Edgars), Clicks Club Card and Icon (Pam Golding Properties), says that many of the retail mags, especially those with club cards or accounts underpinning them, know, for instance, which percentage of readers bought toiletries last week. ‘Some publishers can even show you how advertising in these mags has produced a response at the tills,” he says.

Of course, a good fit is crucial. ‘If you can find a magazine that’ll give you that fit, you’re better off advertising in a customer magazine than in a less-focused consumer one,” says Bridget McCarney, managing director of New Media Publishing, home to titles like Woolworths Taste, A-Plus (Ackermans) and Heart (Heart Foundation). ‘Advertising that fits with the core brand enhances both the client and the third-party advertiser.”

Take Mercedes, which carries advertising for travel, luxury watches, premium liquor brands, luxury luggage, eyewear, top-class hotels, jewellery, and investment houses. Or Heart, which runs health-related advertising for vitamins, SA pork, fruit juice, light beer, and medical service providers. ‘A good fit lets you capitalise on the relationship which readers have with the core brand,” says McCarney.

The surge in advertiser support is clear. ‘In our case, this is borne out by increasing revenue and a growing customer base, where bookings from media buying agencies have soared by 300 percent since 2001,” says Picasso’s Macfarlane.

Lastly, for those few who’re still lured by huge numbers, customer titles deliver the biggest circulations in the business. Compare the top five customer titles with the top five consumer titles (ABC Jan-June 2003):

Customer Magazines

1. Vodaworld Magazine – 827,233

2. Dish (DStv) – 727,618

3. Club Mag (Foschini) – 689,989

4. Together (Jet) – 653,555

5. Edgars Club Imagine – 643,320

Consumer Magazines

1. Huisgenoot – 349,682

2. You – 231,284

3. Sarie – 150,048

4. Rooi Rose – 145,690

5. True Love – 135,972

It’s hard to overlook numbers like that, especially when they come with relatively low ad rates, delivering attractive costs-per-thousands (figures courtesy of The MediaShop, using Jul-Dec 2002 ABC figures):

Circulation:

Fair Lady 79,068

Femina 58,632

Edgars Club Imagine 680,000

Discovery 551,250

Club (Morkels, etc) 380,000

FP FC

Fair Lady R30,190

Femina R27,380

Edgars Club Imagine R37,300

Discovery R34,500

Club (Morkels, etc) R14,880

Cost per thousand

Fair Lady R382

Femina R467

Edgars Club Imagine R55

Discovery R63

Club (Morkels, etc) R39

All this makes for a pretty convincing case for using customer magazines as a channel to market.

There’s Always a ‘But’

But for every silver lining, there’s always a cloud. A cloud you can see brewing over a number of media directors’ heads. And their reservations have got to do with quality – quality of the title, and quality of contact.

‘I think the most important aspect to bear in mind with customer titles is quality,” says Hollis. ‘Femina and Fair Lady will produce in excess of 100 pages per issue, and will provide their readers with a quality read, whereas many ‘club’ magazines produce 36-48 pages of questionable editorial that has often been seen before in other consumer titles. So, if you look at the cost-per-thousand against circulation, the paid-for titles are far more expensive, and that’s correct.”

Certainly, some customer titles are so dreadful that the marketing directors signing them off should be run out of the industry by a pitchfork-wielding mob. But the days of putting out a sub-standard product are fast ending, according to Marc Blachowitz, MD and CEO of Touchline Media, which publishes Virgin Active’s Fit, and Discovery Health’s Discovery, as well as titles for NOCSA and Bafana Bafana. ‘In the past, publishers have been able to get away with poor quality products, whose glossy pages were mere window dressing to disguise the poor content, layout and design,” he says. ‘Today, however, reputable publishers must, and do follow the same guidelines and adhere to the same standards as they have for their consumer magazines.”

This translates into some beautiful examples of magazine publishing – Icon, the V&A Waterfront’s W, Mercedes, Expressions, Fit, Discovery, Edgars Club Imagine, Heart and Equinox to name a few – with interesting articles and attractive photos, great layout, and a quality look and feel. This, of course, is no guarantee of success, but it can’t hurt. And while no customer title is an Elle or FHM or Femina, for magazines targeting such diverse audiences, and with editorial direction under the firm grip of a client, many do a remarkably good job.

But Do They Read It?

What’s more of a concern then, is the quality of contact. It all boils down to whether a relationship is being forged between the title and the reader, and that all hinges on the ‘free’ issue.

Muller says we live in a media rich environment, where few segments are unreachable. In such an environment, you look at the quality of the relationship, not just the size of the audience. ‘I pay for the certainty that someone is going to read the title, and that the trust they have in the title will run over into the brands advertised within it,” he says. ‘It hasn’t been about big numbers since the 90s! Instead, I want the certainty that the title will penetrate heads, not just reach heads.”

And this certainty is linked to money changing hands. Britta Reid, a media director at MediaCompete, feels that most consumers are time starved. ‘I believe they’re far more likely to devote this precious commodity, and their attention, to publications they pay good money for. My preference would always therefore be for paid publications over customer titles.”

For Hollis, the true test is whether the reader would buy the magazine if it were no longer sent free to them. ‘In all seriousness, I think the answer would be NO. If you buy a title you are likely to read it. If it’s given to you for nothing, you might just chuck it in the bin.” Paying for something is clear proof of engagement.

Muller too makes this distinction, placing a higher value on those customer titles for which people have to pay some kind of fee, as opposed to ‘coming across them by chance”, for instance on the table in their hotel room. ‘In media planning, you’re looking for signs of a meaningful relationship with the title, and subscribing or paying is the most obvious sign,” he says.

Beare admits that the paid-for/free debate is a powerful one, but not necessarily valid anymore. ‘Perceptions of value have been fundamentally changed by the Internet, which has invalidated the notion that the only worthwhile content is paid for. If a title is of a high enough quality, the reader will value it – paid for or not.” This is especially true in the South African context, where a large sector of the population does not have the disposable income to buy a luxury item like a magazine.

But do readers value these titles as they would the carefully-chosen and paid-for consumer title? Muller notes that while the currency may differ, all valued content is ultimately paid for – a much-loved magazine with money, a website with your precious time. Just like email spam, do free mags get through to readers? A comparison of the number of readers per copy is telling (based on AMPS six-month data Jan-June 2003, and ABC Jan-June 2003).

Readers per copy of the top three customer titles (ranked by circulation)

1. Vodaworld – 1.03 RPC

2. Dish/Skottel – 0.68 RPC

3. Foschini Club Mag – 1.64 RPC

Readers per copy of the top three consumer titles (ranked by circulation)

1. Huisgenoot – 6.33

2. You – 9.72

3. Sarie – 6.18

The far lower pass on rate of customer titles such as these sheds some light on their value relative to their consumer cousins. (And low as they are, such figures at least answer, once and for all, the oft-asked question: ‘Do people actually read customer titles?”)

But it’s ultimately a slightly unfair comparison. ‘Clearly, customer magazines are approximating consumer titles, using the same mechanisms to build a relationship, but that relationship is between the client and the reader, rather than the title and the reader. While playing a similar role, we answer to a different master, and so should be judged on how well we advance that client/customer relationship, rather than how we deliver in terms of consumer magazine objectives,” says Beare.

Taking a more direct approach, Macfarlane says: ‘In response to those critics who suggest low readership rates in customer magazines, I have always found that we have been successful in ‘leading the horse to water’. The obvious challenge is to encourage the reader to connect with the content and our strategy involves creating the need rather than simply serving the want, pursuing dependency rather than mere interest is our target.”

Blachowitz, for his part, can envisage the day when a customer title will be able to establish the same kind of emotional bond with the reader as the consumer magazine does. ‘It may be slightly idealistic, but I do think that in time, quality customer titles which are relevant to the reader’s lifestyle, will be able to command similar attention and loyalty.” If, that is, the negative legacy bestowed on the industry by the cowboy customer publishers can be overcome.

‘Weaker publishers will first have to be weeded out, leaving only those who can deliver a sustainable product over an enduring period of time, thus building up a credibility both with the consumer and with the advertising industry,” he says. ‘There has to be accountability, authenticity, honesty, integrity, and sincerity, which by-and-large exists in the consumer publishing industry. This applies to how you deal with both the reader and the advertiser – in the way you package the magazine, the way you provide your numbers, how you scrutinise those numbers, and research your database.”

Once these qualities become more prevalent in this industry, he believes media directors will at last have to start changing their views about this medium.

For the time being though, many media directors and their clients will continue to choose the consumer over the customer title. It is a battle which customer publishers should not be too concerned over. After all, their first duty is to the core client who should be using his own marketing budget to get his message across. Third-party advertisers should be the bonus, not the raison d’etre of customer publishing.

Tags: Megan Chronis