Catering for a different audience

• What’s on TV always runs a soap cover

• Radio Times can be much more flexible, sometimes running radio covers

• What’s on TV attracts cheap ads

• Radio Times’ more upmarket readership can command top prices for car ads

What’s on TV has six pages of soap coverage. Radio Times has one

Listings pages reflect the different audiences

A brief look at another market

• The home interest market• Living etc.– 30-35. Women. BC1. First home. Income tight

but keen to spend it on home. Funky taste. Use Ikea, Habitat. Circulation: 90,000

• Elle Decoration– 30-40. Women. ABC1. First or second home.

Some spare income. Home as a key interest. Conran, Fired Earth, small independents

– Circulation: 58,000

• Two magazines aimed at young home-builders with some spare cash. But one feels sophisticated and exclusive, one is relaxed and affordable

Two sets of readers, two very different types of ad

Elle Deco readers like cool, calm escapes

Living etc’s core audience wants something they can identify with

Elle Deco readers like their product pages to look like old oil paintings

In contrast, Living etc readers like it light and practical

Audiences and brand values

• All magazines have a list of core brand values

• Designed to reflect the reader

• These values inform everything in the magazine– Editorial tone, design, use of pictures,

advertising

Each magazine has a well defined brand personality

• Wedding – Real brides, real

advice, real weddings– Your day, your way– Friendly, warm, a

shared experience– Indulgent but

accessible– Feelgood, exciting, a

celebration

Each magazine has a well defined brand personality

• Wallpaper*– Mature– Elitist– Extravagant– Slightly aloof/arrogant– Well travelled– Successful– Affluent

Building a reader profile

• Trend in magazines is to use research data to produce a tight description of one typical reader

• Helps editorial focus on heartland readership

• Helps to personalise data–Makes it real

Part of a real reader profile

• Gorgeous magazine is aimed at ABC1 women aged between 30 and 45 who feel they are in between magazines. They’ve outgrown the ‘how to have 20 orgasms a night’ type feature but can’t quite bring themselves to buy more grown-up magazines which they feel are aimed at their mothers.

• These busy women cover a wide demographic – married or single with or without kids – and the content of Gorgeous has to reflect this, from features on careers to coping with kids, the hot new facial to the latest gardening gadget, strappy sandals to the state of the health service, pensions to botox at Boots. They want to live a great life and with over 47% being the main wage earner they have high disposable income in order to do so.

Maintaining magazine audiences

• Regular (annual) focus group research for major titles

• Reader panels• Web forums• Reader events• Readers’ letters and emails• Constant refreshment of editorial

offering to meet changing needs

Good Housekeeping reader panel

Golf monthly online forum

Golf monthly online forum

Using audience research to change an ailing magazine• The men’s monthly market in freefall

• Bauer research FHM readers in 2009

• Spring 2010 relaunch with significant changes– Less t and b–More ‘useful’– Less laddish

Editorial refreshment to meet changing audience needs

• We wanted to create a magazine that is not just a directory of stuff. Too many lifestyle magazines have contents pages that read like shopping brochures. We reorganised FHM to provide real services for men even in this mobile broadband age. Access captures the banter of a great night down the pub with your mates. Filter cuts through the release clutter to present just the 20 things that matter each month. And Upgrade is crammed with practical advice on everything from style to fitness to sex.– Editor Colin Kennedy

Measuring magazine audiences• ABC (Audit Bureau of Circulation)

– how many copies sold– ABCe - website traffic

• unique users and page impressions

• NRS (National Readership survey– how many people read the magazine over time

• QRS (Quality of Reading Survey)– Measures the value of reading. Eg how long spent reading, how

many pages read

• TGI (Target Group Index) – Lifestyle. Eg purchasing habits

• Dunnhumby data– Gathered from supermarket point of sale

Ongoing market research

• Large magazine publishers conduct wide-ranging consumer research into changing social habits

• Often results in consumer insight research (see ipcmedia.com)– An aid to advertising sales– Helps formulate new launch ideas– Often means that magazine publishers have a

unique grasp of changing social landscape

Measuring magazine audiences

Fresh audience data– Helps editorial fine-tune the magazine– Gives advertising sales team

ammunition to sell space– Helps publishing team to identify new

launch opportunities• AND THE WHOLE PROCESS STARTS UP

AGAIN…

Magazines as a media

• 77% of adults (82% women,71%men) read a consumer magazine

• 99% of business decision makers read a business magazine to keep up to date with their business

• 81% of ABC1s read a magazine• The average paid-for magazine is read for 54

minutes• Only TV listings magazines have a readership

profile that mirrors the national average, reflecting the highly targeted nature of the magazine medium

Key points• Magazines are targeted at carefully defined

groups• These can be defined demographically, but

also be lifestyle, life-stage and attitudes• Each magazine is aimed at a specific and

carefully articulated group. Similar looking magazines will have a slightly different target

• Magazines have a dual audience - readers and advertisers

• Constant research results in editorial fine-tuning and often triggers launch ideas

How online changes the nature of the audience

• Online magazines can target an even more tightly defined audience - the individual

• Once an individual reader’s tastes and preferences can be established, online editorial can service his/her needs with a range of offerings

• This becomes a big advantage for advertisers, who can focus on relationships, not reach

The new magazine audience

• The magazine audience of the future will not be a crude group of like-minded people of similar social class

• But a collection of individuals who can be offered a bespoke service of entertainment, information and advice

• Watch this space!

Media audiences

Magazines