Month / July 2014

by Magdiaries

Advertising trust

Technology creates commercial opportunities.

Media buyers now have to create personas and presences for their brands across a broad media landscape. But advertising budgets haven’t expanded alongside the ever growing range of platforms that publishers sell into.

More than ever, sales teams need to build close relationships with their commercial partners. Successful advertising starts with a trusting partnership; campaigns must complement the quality that we strive for elsewhere in our publications.

No one builds a commercially successful publication on last minute offers. That might achieve short-term success, but ultimately it only damages the trust we work so hard to build.

Richard Hodson | Publisher, Texere Publishing



Grub Street Journal
by Magdiaries

I’d like to teach the world to sing

Brilliant adverts make the audience want to interact; sometimes they make you want to sing.

Successful magazines attract advertising. Successful advertising enthrals readers. This healthy, symbiotic relationship makes the publishing world go round.

Flat, static ads lifted from print and dumped in touchable, interactive digital magazines do not allure. They give the impression the brand does not care. They disenchant.

Playful, insightful ads add to the audience experience. They bring pages to life. They make the brand relevant. They intrigue. They feed the symbiotic relationship.

When advertisers and publishers get this, magazines of the future will sing.

And so will I.

Gerrie Hawes | Director of Planning and Strategy, Dwell Agency



Grub Street Journal
by Magdiaries

Woman’s Weekly is monthly?

I was a ‘know it all’ UK publisher. Then I went to a FIPP Congress.

I learned that Women’s Weekly in Australia is monthly; that editorial offices in Singapore are organised by Feng Shui, not workflow models; that international magazines are priced according to weight in South Africa; and was amazed that Manure Management from Canada found so much to write about.

I was forced to think afresh, to look differently at why we do what we do.

Our industry is truly global, and meeting new people, sharing experiences and knowledge, can only strengthen our ability to meet future challenges.

Chris Llewellyn | CEO, FIPP, the worldwide magazine media association



Grub Street Journal
by Magdiaries

It’s worth the effort

Working in magazines feels like fighting a tide of assumptions.

Assumptions that it’s only a matter of time before digital sweeps everything away.

Assumptions that decline is inevitable.

Assumptions that doing something new is madness.

Assumptions that are wrong.

It’s hard to keep your chin up sometimes against the flow of doom.

It’s hard to persuade people that new magazines can make money.

It’s hard to sell the future of print in a digital world.

But when we succeed, and we make something new, something readers love, something which we are proud of – it’s worth the effort.

Stuart Anderton | Former Chief Information Officer, Future

 



Grub Street Journal
by Magdiaries

I’m feeling lucky

I worry.

I worry about late payment and non-payment.

I worry about industry friends who aren’t valued enough, about the talent that’s lost when headcounts are cut.

I worry about thinning walls between advertising and editorial, about writers who don’t need paid because someone else is picking up their tab, about slideshows and pop-ups and weird tricks for flat bellies.

But I still feel lucky.

Lucky to be a freelancer, the perfect role for the imperfect; lucky to have been mentored by passionate, talented people; lucky to love my job as much today as when I started, sixteen years ago.

Gary Marshall | Freelance writer



Grub Street Journal