John Baker has helped bring a degree of collegiality and a sense of purpose to the Magazine Publishers Association in his role as chair and he’s riding the content marketing wave as a publisher at Tangible Media. Here’s his take on the year.
Browsing: Tangible
Once again, Nielsen’s latest readership results and the ABC’s circulation numbers don’t make for particularly pleasant reading for the magazine sector, with all weeklies charting declines deemed significant on the same time last year, plenty of other significant declines and a rare few increases. And, perhaps not surprisingly, the MPA and the various publishers are hoping to change the conversation from a one-dimensional discussion about quantity, to a multi-dimensional discussion about the quality of engagement across a number of platforms.
In These Difficult Times, the predictable response from traditional media is to flog their sales staff harder, argue the value of their channels and bitch about US companies that pay no tax and hollow out the industry. But Vincent Heeringa says the smarter option can be summed up in four points.
From NZ Life & Leisure’s Insider’s Guides to NZ Rugby World’s First XV, magazine publishers are creating more one-shots and brand extensions than they perhaps needed to in the past. And following on from the success of the 2011 special issue Everyday Dish, which has sold “heaps”, according to Tangible publisher John Baker, the Dish team has sifted a few more ingredients and moulded it into Baking Dish.
It’s a rather interesting period in the history of magazines and, despite the prevailing belief that shiny new digital toys are killing off paper, the latest readership and circulation numbers have once again showed the market is still in fairly good health in New Zealand.
As we wrote last week, publishers—and other media owners—are being forced to come up with creative solutions to get brands to sign on the dotted line. This means advertorial and brand-funded content is becoming an increasingly important element of the magazine sector’s revenue and the half magazine, half cookbook called Everyday Dish that’s just been released by Tangible in association with LG is a very good example of that evolution.
There is nothing quite like a magazine subscription for a gift idea and at Tangible Media, we have a magazine for everyone on your shopping list. Plus Tangible Media is offering you, the people, a deal. Not only will you be remembered all year for your thoughtfulness and generosity, you’ll also get 40 percent off the retail cover price when you subscribe to one (or perhaps a few) of the many Tangible titles before Monday 9 January.
Print is often seen as the poor cousin of the media mix when it comes to creativity in advertising, especially when compared to some of the tricks now able to be performed in the online realm. But occasionally a publisher shows what can be done with good fashioned old paper and ink and NZ Rugby World has backed up its supreme accolades at the recent Magazine Awards with a very well-timed ‘barndoor’ cover on the August issue featuring our Dear Captain resplendent in Adidas’ new All Blacks jersey.
Anyone who’s had the pleasure of working on a custom publication will understand there are certain promotional objectives that usually need to be met and plenty of hoops that need to be jumped through in an effort to please the client. But Super Liquor has taken a rather unique approach to this concept with its latest marketing initiative, a website called Super 10 that has been created in conjunction with Tangible Media and &Some over several months and aims to “save the world from work” with ten weekly nuggets of online interestingness.
Where there is rugby, there is often beer, as anyone who’s visited the clubrooms after a game anywhere in New Zealand could probably well attest. And Lion and Tangible Media’s NZ Rugby World have joined forces to put out a special collector’s edition that takes an in-depth look at the All Blacks’ tremendous achievements over the past 25 years and is sponsored exclusively by Steinlager to coincide with the 25th anniversary of its support of the All Blacks and the launch of its new ‘We Believe’ campaign.
John Baker
If our office is any guide, there are plenty of bleary-eyed, slow-moving, grease-craving media folk today following the mid-winter Christmas party that is the Magazine Awards last night at the Pullman. And, after 56 awards across 14 categories were handed out, it was a night for the ruggers to celebrate, with Tangible Media’s NZ Rugby World taking home the top two awards of the night, supreme editor of the year for Gregor Paul and supreme magazine of the year.
The soon to be relaunched Idealog magazine has ended its galactic search for a new editor, fixing on a local human whose name many of our dear StopPress readers will already know: NBR’s Hazel Phillips.
The judges have judged and 140 entries from 42 titles and 22 different companies are in the running for a Magazine Award on 23 June at the Pullman Hotel.
It’s been an unusually exciting few months in the world of magazine distribution, and the 2011 tit-for-tat has continued apace, after Netlink re-signed its agreement with Tangible Media, New Zealand’s largest independent magazine publisher.
The first issue of the new high-brow rural title Primary has just been launched and it’s kicked off in style with The Farm 40, a potentially controversial list of the top ten leaders, entrepreneurs, thinkers and up-and-comers in the Kiwi agricultural sector, which was chosen by a panel of experts.
More music media closures? Maybe not. After announcing yesterday that Groove Guide is producing its last issue, it appears several life lines have been tossed towards Tangible Media.
Publisher Vincent Heeringa is tightlipped about who and what and where.
“The announcement has flushed out a number of potential partners and …
…as Image Centre Group fills up some space with a few newbies, The Research Agency appoints an associate director direct from London, Pead PR prints out four new swipe cards, Interbrand adds an exotic foreigner to the mix and Spark PR & Activate wins the Dermalogica account.
The launch of the iPad and the expected ‘tablet revolution’ has put some wind in the sails of publishers who have been beaten down by the internet. But as everyone goes gaga over the new technology, it’s easy to forget that good old-fashioned paper-based magazines are still putting up a very good fight, with the most obvious trend from Nielsen’s latest readership figures and Audit Bureau of Circulation numbers being that Kiwi consumers are still willing to pay for good-quality specialist magazines.
Primary magazine mock-up
The choppy seas of consumer publishing have been well-documented over the past few years. But one of the print sector’s major growth areas is in the field of customer publishing and Tangible Media has just added another title to its growing corporate flock with the launch of Primary magazine, an all-new agricultural business publication that will be distributed to 15,000 high-value customers of PGG Wrightson.
Nothing says Christmas like a magazine subscription (especially if it’s a subscription to Christmas Monthly). And Tangible Media is offering you, the people, a deal. Not only will you be remembered all year for your thoughtfulness and generosity, you’ll also get 40 percent off the retail cover price when you subscribe to one (or perhaps a few) of the many Tangible titles before Saturday 4 December. And as if that deal wasn’t sweet enough, it’s been sweetened even further by Monteith’s, which will be dishing out one dozen of its new premium drop Single Source to ten lucky subscribers.
The almost constantly shifting marcomms sands claim a few more victims, and StopPress is reeling from the staff carnage.
The magazine industry will be feeling somewhat chuffed and maybe a little relieved because, despite predictions to the contrary, in many cases magazine readership and circulation have grown over the last year, according to Nielsen’s year on year comparative results.
The latest Nielsen Media Research data for readership numbers in the 12 months ending March 2010 has been released, and so has the obligatory combination of excessive adjective use, trumpet blowing, chest beating, questions about the research methodology, some oft-times fairly creative use of statistics and, if you look at the image above this paragraph, funny pictures of people with very white teeth who smile when they read.
From left: Julian Andrews, Martin Bell, John Baker, Vincent Heeringa
Actually, that headline is only partially true: HB Media, creators of StopPress, NZ Marketing, Idealog and Good, has joined forces with Tangible Media, which publishes a range of magazines including Dish, NZ Retail and NZ Rugby World. And the new, award-winning media beast is set to become New Zealand’s largest independent publishing company.
Tangible Media has announced the launch of TO, the official magazine of the Tourism Industry Association New Zealand (TIA). The quarterly publication will be sent directly to TIA’s 1,500-plus member tourism operators and to major stakeholders in the industry.