Talkback: Real value beneath the gloss

Heith Mackay-Cruise

In the past 12 months an unprecedented number of new magazines have hit New Zealand's newsstands, canvassing everything from motorhomes to men's grooming. Popular brands have relaunched in bigger, bolder, glossier formats, and the latest figures show healthy increases in readership and circulation for some of the country's best-known titles.

Does this fly in the face of society's move to embrace all things digital? With broadband creeping into our homes and workplaces, TVs in our lounges and bedrooms, and third-generation cellphone networks transmitting news to our pockets and purses, shouldn't print be making an exit from the media mix? Have magazines outlived their time?

Hardly. Far from readying for departure, magazines are benefiting from developments across the media sector, and stand to be a stronger component of the future media mix.

The internet is a prime example. No longer simply extensions of print titles, magazine websites are taking advantage of the web's interactive capabilities. Online, features ranging from recipe and mixed-drink databases to virtual changing rooms are boosting magazine offerings, contributing to subscription growth.

Importantly, indications are that the success of magazine-website products depends significantly on the magazine component. As well as magazines moving online, popular websites have initiated print editions in response to demand.

As an advertising medium, magazines also stand to benefit from technologies affecting other media that will allow consumers to cut ads from their diet. Satellite radio offers listeners a real alternative to local networks - ad-free. In television, personal video-recorders, recently introduced in New Zealand by Sky, allow viewers to fast-forward ads.

But underpinning the magazine market's successful evolution is a more traditional strength. New titles launched in the past year have responded to social trends as diverse as rising property prices, record sales in men's cosmetics, lifestyle block sales and interest in international fashion, highlighting the unique ability of magazines to engage with communities and subcultures on a personal level.

While the internet has similar strengths in terms of its ability to connect people, it is not able to do so in a way that is as familiar and intimate - people don't tend to curl up on their couch, or in their bath with a laptop. This is why the web has extended, but not replaced, magazines.

The intrinsically involving quality of magazines will continue to be the medium's strength. With media consumption becoming increasingly fragmented, growing value is being placed on engagement in addition to reach.

In the US, research to create a metric for consumer engagement has been endorsed by advertising giants like Procter & Gamble, Ford and Masterfoods. The research aims to factor engagement into return on media investment, providing a fuller picture than ratings, hits, circulation and readership alone.

With previous studies finding consumers spend 90 per cent of their time paying full attention to magazines, compared with only 54 per cent for TV, and that advertising in magazines is seen as less intrusive than in other media, magazines are in an enviable position.

The upshot is that magazines will continue to remain a highly competitive media product. New titles can and should be expected, and as New Zealand's largest magazine publisher ACP Media will continue with initiatives to grow the market. Magazines are not simply a medium for today; they take a competitive advantage into tomorrow.

* Heith Mackay-Cruise is CEO of ACP Media.