As Dawn Alford, Tesco Magazine’s editor, described in the Independent last week, her publication is now the UK’s top women’s mag with a circulation of 5.65m people. That’s pretty impressive – and congratulations are certainly in order, both for Tesco, and for her and Cedar (the custom pub agency that produces it).
This points to an overall trend which is causing excitement and fear across the magazine publishing industry, depending on which side of the publisher/brand fence one sits. In a magazine market that has just received some undeniably poor circulation statistics, customer publishing is bucking the trend with 16% circulation growth over the last 6 months – with a third of the top 100 magazines being custom publications.
Whether through digital or print channels, more brands are realising that they can get a lot of bang for their buck by going straight to their audience, rather than the classic “buy loads of ads in a consumer magazine”. Custom publications create persistent communication with the audience, and what’s better, the brand owns the relationship.
As brands build these direct communication channels with their audiences, the major mass-market publications will have to fight to maintain their relevance as the interface between brands and their customers. Although there will always be a very significant role for media providers that are ‘independent’ and provide access to a large audience of potential customers, custom publishing is starting to eat away at the edges of the traditional media. Its production has a strong business model, ROI is directly tracked, and it isn’t wholly dependent on the slowing ad market.
As digital marketing, advertising, branded content, and custom publishing are all starting to overlap, especially in the digital medium, there will be many interesting opportunities for brands to speak with their customers, and potential customers, directly.