Conde Nast International’s CEO gave a rallying call to magazine publishers congregated at todays FIPP conference.
Newhouse said ‘the future is golden’ and dismissed ‘naysayers’ fortelling the end of the print industry.
Listen to Newhouse’s full speech below:
[audio:http://www.journalism.co.uk/sounds/newhouse.mp3]At today’s FIPP World Magazine Congress Google’s UK MD Matt Brittin told publishers to use real-time data to monitor consumer trends and looking to the world of e-commerce for examples.
Listen to the full audio of Brittin’s address below:
[audio:http://www.journalism.co.uk/sounds/brittin.mp3]Yesterday, the first panel at the 37th FIPP World Magazine Congress, which looked at the economic situation for the magazine market, had acknowledged e-readers as significant, but not as a direct threat and a show of hands from the audience indicated their limited uptake.
In fact, despite gloomy advertising revenue predictions, time was devoted to preserving and celebrating print, and pointing out that magazines did not necessarily face the same catastrophic fate as their newspaper counterparts. Much was made of the ‘feel’ of the printed product by several of the speakers, for instance.
But magazines are investing in digital editions – so what do they look like?
In yesterday’s session entitled ‘Digital Editions: Opportunity or Blind Alley?’ President (Europe and Latin America) of Zinio Global, Joan Solà, emphasised the importance of structural change, ‘a major change, moving from analogue into digital’: “If the publishing industry adopts the right measures to make structural change to industry, it will avoid getting caught in the middle of the ropes,” he said.
We’re moving from a system with a big ‘logistic cost,’ he said. “We all know that paper, printing and distribution has an impact, an environmental impact. In the US 35 million trees have to be cut down each year.”
We ‘move to a new scheme in which content can be delivered in new forms,’ Solà said.
Kevin Madden, publishing director for digital publishing at Dennis Publishing, is not convinced a digital product will replace the role of magazines:
“Ultimately the web is a dipping medium, but I don’t ascribe any loyalty to the sites I visit.”
Publishers should cater for this ‘dipping audience’, whilst also providing a ‘feast’ for those who want it, he said.
Managing director at Menzies Digital, Sarah Clegg outlined her vision for the digital product, in her case, as she has told Journalism.co.uk in the past – includes digital editions of 140 magazine titles, with a look to e-paper developments for the future.
“Slowly the tide is turning,” she began. “In a lot of cases we [the digital product] are still the outcast,” she said. But, she emphasised, ‘the media landscape has changed, and it’s changing at the rights of knots’.
‘How are you tapping into that child of today – who is reading electronic media?’ she asked, using as an example her 13 year old niece, who picks up a range of digital tools on a daily basis.
“We know consumer habits are changing, people are choosing when they want to consume and when they want to consume. Everybody is after their instant fix,” she said.
“These aren’t questions anymore: there’s a market to take advantage of,” she added.
“They present an opportunity, along with economic necessity. We must find a place in the digital publishing model – I don’t think we’ve had our day,” she said.
Clegg wants to see lower prices for the digital product and more cooperation from publishers. She was aggrieved she said, to discover that having negotiated a 25 per cent discount for digital subscriptions, the publisher had offered a 60 per cent reduction on the print edition.
Another annoyance is that on one of their publications, it takes eight clicks to get through to digital edition, she said.
“Publishers should adapt and cater for the consumer – it [the digital edition] is not for everyone but it’s for someone,” she said.
“I think we’re heading towards a golden era for publishing,” she added, optimistically.
Following Clegg, Mark Payton, digital editorial director for Haymarket Consumer Media, described how his company has a contract with Menzies Digital and he’s ‘very keen for it to work.’
Recent digital innovations at Haymarket include:
“I no longer have colleagues around talking about web 2.0 – it has become the web,” Payton said.
There aren’t enough ad dollars on the planet for everyone, Stevie Spring, chief executive of Future, said, in her opening remarks for yesterday’s session at the 37th FIPP World Magazine Congress that looked at ‘what advertisers want’.
Magazines are ‘all having to fight much much harder to grow our share of media spend,’ she added. So, she asked, just ‘what the hell’ did advertisers want from magazines?
Nikolas Talonpoika, worldwide media director for the Gucci Group said that he thinks online will see a decrease in advertising spend from the luxury sector.
Magazines are still the most important part of the Gucci Group’s print advertising spend, Talonpoika told delegates.
While acknowledging that this year is tough and ‘lots of titles will disappear this year, Talonpoika was optimistic for the role that print magazines will continue to play.
Unilever’s CMO, Simon Clift said that for his company the ‘lion’s share’ of advertising is in television, and only 13 per cent of its overall advertising budget is spent in print – but said the magazines accounted for 90 per cent of that print spend.
Clift said that his company – which, with its £41 billion turnover, is seeing three quarters of its growth in developing and emerging markets – is thinking about different ways to promote its products via print.
For example, one Greek newspaper was once printed entirely on aromatised paper for one particular washing product campaign.
Clift said that consumers were not beginning to ‘define the agenda’ and that Unilever was looking for new ways to promote brands via editorial or advertorial content.
Clift argued that these methods ‘can build integrity rather than compromise it,’ he argued. Joking that advertising was something editors have to put up with, he said advertisers don’t want to see a publication damaged by the advertising. ‘A successful parasite doesn’t kill its host,’ he quipped.
It was about creating interesting content, he said ‘whether it comes from an editor or an advertiser’ “When those things [editorial and advertising] are parallel it magnifies and develops our message,” he said.
Dove is the Unilever brand which is most advertised in magazines, and a product which is an example of a cross-media promotion: online, in magazines and on television.
In the previous session, Maurice Lévy, chairman and CEO of the Publicis Groupe, spoke of the world ‘the ad agencies have to live in now, where a couple of words on a search engine page is sometimes considered by our client as more effective than a wonderful TV spot.’
Newspapers and magazines could not expect to retain their share in the advertising market, despite analysts’ more optimistic predictions for 2011, he said.
“We have to change and we do change each day. You have to adapt yourself to this new world,” he said.
“It’s not yet time for obituaries,” he claimed. “I’m a little bit shocked when I see print media forever discussing their own death,”
“Please always remember the small guy in the digital world – Bill Gates. He repeated loud and clear ‘content is king’ (…) and you [the magazine industry] own it.'”
“Would you go as often on the internet, if you could not find newspapers and your favourite magazines online?” he asked. “I don’t think print media is dead, quite the contrary,” Lévy added.
“Think what semantic can do when combined with marketing. Now is time to innovate.”
“You have to look at this as an opportunity to leverage new opportunities with the strength of your brand and your audiences,” he said.
As reported over on the Journalism.co.uk main site, leading industry figures shared their hopes for the magazine market at the FIPP World Magazine Congress 2009 this morning.
But they were hopes in the context of an economic downturn. William Kerr, chairman of board for the Meredith Group joked that ‘being 12 per cent down is the new up’.
Each of the panel looking at ‘riding the storm’ shared their fears for the magazine industry: