The world of print
Aug 5, 2020
In their 2019-2023 industry sector forecast, PWC saw a period of stabilisation for print magazines, with the September 2018 surveys indicating that the mass women’s magazines still had loyal following and the reach of the free-to-consumer weeklies of Coles Magazine and Woolworths Fresh magazine continued to be powerful, delivering increased growth 10+% over 2018.
Fast forward to March 2020 magazine print readership survey and as the eye runs down the % change column YOY March 19/March 20 there are some clear standouts:
- AGT up 29.1%
- BH&G up 17.1%
- Elle up 39%
- Freshwater Fishing up 63%
- Harpers Bazaar up 33.1%
- Marie Claire up 16.3%
- Men’s Fitness up 14.4%
- Superfood ideas up 30.8%
- Vogue Living up 56.6%
- And the first survey for the year old Bunnings Magazine sees a readership of 1,170,000.
Food, fashion, fitness, fishing and fiddling around at home the clear category winners.
Source: https://www.roymorgan.com/industries/media/readership/magazine-readership
Jump to July 2020 and after living through COVID for several months we have seen dramatic changes to people’s home, working, social and media consumption routines. Popping into the newsagents/supermarket and picking up the favourite glossy has been hampered by fiscal and social restrictions. The next readership survey June 2020 will be interesting reading to review the impact of these changes in consumer patterns, and in particular the cross-platform 3 months April- June audience surveys.
We have all seen how hard the print sector has been hit by closures, with the most recent being at Bauer. Printing beautiful glossy magazines is expensive. And many suburban and regional Australians are mourning the loss of their letterbox drop/local newsagency pick up community newspaper. But there is good news recently from NewsCorp with The Wentworth Courier, Mosman Daily and North Shore Times returning to print in late July, with favourite writers, regular features and weekly cover stories across the pillars of business, art, entertainment and politics.
Print extends to digital for growth
Overall, the print sector’s ongoing diversification of their platforms and the thrust to capitalise on digital growth continues to accelerate. The digital versions enable us to do much more creatively and with wider scope. Many of the niche titles are performing extremely well and at Paykel Media, our targeting capabilities help our clients to determine the best fit for both brand and consumer.
In looking to reach young adult women for example, taking out a sponsorship with a title on one of their site sections via display banners is a start, but incorporating native articles, utilising magazine titles’ influencers, accessing product review opportunities and generating star ratings, amplifying all assets across not just the title’s social but also your own and tying your valuable production collateral back to your brand’s website and on product packaging not only delivers content at scale and in context, but makes meaningful connections along all points of the consumer journey.
Paykel Media push our print partners to focus on consumer-centric strategies cross-platform, working together to identify those connection points that will drive the consumer-brand relationship deeper and each ad dollar further. Print is an ever-expanding, richly diverse and engaging communication medium. We invite you to give us a call to find out how you can best use this channel in your communication strategies.
