Could you briefly give us background on your magazine titles in East and West Africa?
Naspers always saw sub-Saharan Africa as one of its primary focuses in its investment strategy. The group first entered this market when MultiChoice provided Pay-TV to subscribers. The success of this, combined with the more investment friendly climates in the selected regions we focused on, enticed us to follow suit with print media investments.
To test the market, we launched Kick Off magazine in Nigeria in 2002. This provided us with enough information to formalise an investment strategy. We established East African Magazines (EAM) in 2004 as a joint venture with the Nation Media Group of Kenya. In the same year we launched Drum East Africa and True Love East Africa.
In December 2005, we established Media24 Nigeria, incorporating Kick Off Nigeria and launched True Love West Africa. We also launched a Portuguese magazine in Angola in 2006, called TV24 (Te-ve-vien-ti-quatro).
We have also acquired a 50 percent stake in the Namibian media company Democratic Media Holdings, in 2007. They publish Die Republikein and Allgemeine Zeitung.
All of this means that we are publishers of English, Afrikaans, German and Portuguese publications in the rest of Africa.
How are these titles performing in terms of adspend, circulation and readership? Which title is your most successful in these regions and why does it work, in your opinion?
True Love East Africa is the darling of Kenya and as popular in Nigeria. Both Drum East Africa and True Love East Africa are selling better than our expectations. True Love has an average advertising loading of above 30 percent and Drum is catching up after we re-launched it in November last year as a fortnightly.
Magazines in general attract the smallest advertising share of all media in all our markets in Africa, but in Kenya we are now seeing excellent growth quarter on quarter. The latest readership research in East Africa from Target Group Index shows year-on-year readership of Drum and True Love grew faster than any magazine, with Drum reaching about 35 percent of the adult market and True Love 30 percent.
You have just secured the rights to publish the Idols West Africa magazine. This follows after also publishing the Big Brother Nigeria magazine. How profitable is custom publishing in West Africa?
We are seeing more success with Idols than Big Brother, but BB was a steep learning curve for us. I believe custom publishing can provide huge opportunities in Africa, providing you can deliver in country to the client’s specific needs.
What are the difficulties of launching a publication in a third world country?
In South Africa or the developed world you can fairly easily launch a new magazine if there is an opportunity or gap in the market because there is an existing printing and distribution platform. That does not exist in the rest of Africa. Currently there is no heat set commercial printing plant outside of South Africa in sub-Saharan Africa, which means we have to print in South Africa and export to these markets. Distribution is still not effective and very informal. But this is changing rapidly as we are investing heavily in distribution networks, systems and merchandising. We are also committed to investing in a heat set commercial printing plant in Kenya. This will change the dynamics of the market dramatically and allow us to grow our market share dramatically.
What are the advantages of launching a title in Africa outside South Africa?
We are opening new markets that have not been served by quality, reliable media products. You are providing excellent vehicles for advertisers to reach their target markets. And the readers in Africa are hungry for media products that tell their stories, reflect their lives, culture, people and aspirations.