Magazine Showcase 2007 : Prints charming & Counting the beat; The magazine market has never been...

Magazines, it seems, are like vege-tables - fresh is best, with newer titles showing much of the growth in the most recent ABC circulation audit.

For every passion and special interest group there's a magazine and it seems there's no end to the available niches.

While ultimately this makes

Research by the Magazine Publishers Association shows consumer spending on magazines is greater than ever. For the year to December 2006, expenditure on magazines in NZ reached $292 million - $256m from retail sales, $36m from subscriptions.

The MPA's John McClintock reports the recent Basket Size survey commissioned by the MPA through ACNielsen has shown 'a grocery basket that includes a magazine has an average retail of $76 compared to an average of $47 for baskets with no magazines'.

Success comes from listening to readers, asking them what they want and giving it to them, say the publishers. And if that means creating an online product, so be it. "Magazine publishers are getting better at creating a new experience online, rather than simply reformatting the magazine," says McClintock. "We are seeing new content and interactivity emerging as the flexibility of the online medium is explored."

Certainly the push by Xtra and other ISPs to get more New Zealanders signed up to broadband has had a dramatic impact on the traffic numbers of many online magazines, and online publishers note agencies are starting to realise the value of online in the mix.

Out of the consumer space, contract publishing continues to grow as a value add for clients unable to be serviced by existing titles, while B2B publishers appear to be mirroring the success of their target sectors, with PR companies now the biggest competitor for most B2B marketing budgets.

Want to know more? Then check out the MPA's Case magazine, a celebration of magazine advertising and how well it works.

Free from www.mpa.org.nz

Finding your niche

There's considerable growth and a much greater appreciation of the unique capacity of magazines to build communities of interest around an idea, product, activity or brand, says John Baker of Jones Publishing.

"If you can dovetail this with great design, writing, photography and production values, the consumer will reward you." That's certainly their experience, says Baker, with an increase in the last 12 months in retail sales and subscriptions, and in advertising revenue, for their Top Gear and Dish titles (Dish is the MPA's Home & Food Magazine of the Year for the second year running).

Niche magazines deliver the audience over and over again, by virtue of the reader going back for more, says Baker. "These are not products that get read once and then disposed of or passed on."

Tania Grieg, publisher of Fitness Life, says their research bears this out. "Eighty-nine percent of Fitness Life readers save back issues and re-read them as a reference. An extended on-sale period [Fitness Life publishes bimonthly] also means the magazine sits around longer."

She says Fitness Life is showing strong growth, particularly in the 25-50+ female market here, and has a growing market in Australia through the likes of Woolworths supermarkets. "With its emphasis on all aspects of living better, Fitness Life is now our best-selling health and fitness title."

With the highest circulation growth for three audits in a row, including a very healthy 62% growth in the latest readership survey, Healthy Food Guide is NZ's fastest-growing consumer magazine. Publisher Kim Mundell says her magazine delivers "an audience of impressive breadth", with 26% of the 169,000 readers under the age of 30.

"Before we launched [in 2005] we assumed it would be read by those who realise they are mortal, so we were delighted to discover we also have an enthusiastic audience of under 30s."

From January, the Healthy Food Guide website, currently being made-over, will be open for advertising. "By integrating print and online advertising, and sampling in our healthy cooking classes, an advertiser will be able to take readers on a journey from awareness to trial and purchase," says Mundell.

Targeting health and fitness is nothing new - New Zealand Fitness has been around 18 years and publisher Lorraine Thomson is looking forward to their 90th issue early next year. Readers and advertisers appreciate the quality and breadth of the writing in NZ Fitness, says Thomson.

"Advertisers want to have their products alongside quality journalism and articles that stack up on the world fitness arena. We are finding our high profile features attract the most favourable reader and advertiser feedback."

SeaSpray has also been around a while - 62 years in fact. And, after a spell in the doldrums, a change in focus from a purely boating magazine to one embracing the marine lifestyle, saw the magazine register an outstanding 29% growth in the recent ABC audit.

Buoyed by that success, co-owner and sales and marketing director Gayle Dickson says her company is about to launch Sport Unleashed, a quality, bimonthly magazine. "Most of the sports magazines being produced in New Zealand are very niche and dedicated to only one sport. Sport Unleashed will appeal to families out there who have a cross-section of interests and would have to purchase multiple magazines, which weighs heavily on tight pockets."

Tu Mai is New Zealand's only indigenous monthly lifestyle magazine. MD and editor Ata Te Kanawa says they have a reputation for being more edgy, contemporary, urbane and modern than their older, more conservative main competitor. Tu Mai is broadening its appeal to include more Polynesian and Asian content, says Te Kanawa and offers advertisers the opportunity to communicate with a market that's largely been ignored. "Polynesians, Maori and Asians are all serious consumers and they value loyalty and respect. Collectively they're a force to be reckoned with."

Niche magazines deliver the power of a niche audience to advertisers.

"If someone chooses to read a magazine called Healthy Food Guide, we can be very confident they want to buy healthy products, so advertisers get great reach with no wastage," says Kim Mundell.

And John Baker notes there's more collaboration with agencies and advertisers to create promotions that sit comfortably within the environments of a magazine without undermining the overall editorial product. The key, he says, is to be part of the planning process from an early stage. "That said, we often get asked to 'come up with something different' when, in the end, a bloody good ad campaign could do the business."

The mass market

Getting fresh is paying off for ACP Magazines' weekly Woman's Day. Group publisher Debra Millar reports a significant lift in sales since the magazine's recent makeover. "New design, new content and a revamped TVC have all contributed. And it's not just our readers who are loving the changes. Our advertising revenues are up significantly versus last year, which is driving bumper book sizes."

With both top-selling weekly and monthly [Australian Women's Weekly NZ edition] women's magazines in their stable, they deliver reach, says Millar. And they're constantly creating new and exciting opportunities for advertisers. "That's what's so exciting about the magazine medium. It's constantly evolving in response to advertisers' objectives and targets."

NZ Magazines, publishers of golden oldies NZ Woman's Weekly and the Listener, are also upbeat. At 75, NZWW has proved that age is no barrier to readership success, and the Listener scooped this year's Qantas News-stand Magazine of the Year, and Montana Book Awards' review page of the year.

Fairfax Magazines boasts a combined audience of 1.9 million Kiwis, says GM Lynley Belton. Their mass market title TV Guide is the country's largest selling weekly magazine, and it continues to provide a very cost-effective connection with New Zealanders, particularly household shoppers with children.

"Of significant relevance to advertisers is that 60% of TV Guide's primary readers do not buy another magazine, so this is a great way to target this group, given the high level of engagement they have with TV Guide."

Winning the MPA Mass Market Magazine of the Year with New Idea has publisher Pacific Magazines on its toes, says business communications director Collette Gallagher. "We need to be constantly looking at how we can improve and continue producing the best possible product." This will include the launch of the New Idea website through Yahoo!Xtra, before the end of the year she says.

And, when it comes to involving the reader, it's hard to look past That's Life! another Pacific Magazines title. "There is absolutely nothing else on the New Zealand media landscape that connects with its audience as much as That's Life! Our readers provide our content [over 15,000 pieces of correspondence, weekly, from readers]. In every sense it's their magazine," says Gallagher.

Advertising in today's mass market magazines can be as exciting as you want it to be. "The best and most creative responses come from understanding the product, the target audience and the key selling point," says ACP Magazines' Debra Millar. "We involve our editorial teams in brainstorming creative ideas with advertisers and often the best ideas evolve from the editorial teams."

One of the quiet achievers in the niche magazine arena celebrates its 21st this month with over $10,000 in prizes for readers.

Tearaway magazine is unique, says founder-publisher John Francis, in that it's purchased in bulk by secondary schools. "Teachers have been enthusiastic supporters of Tearaway since its inception because, as we say, 'we speak to the head and the heart, not just the hormones'."

Tearaway is the voice of NZ youth, he says. "The magazine is written by its readers. The editor, Alex Clark, is just 19 and in his first year out of high school."

Tearaway's enter-taining, says Francis, with design that reflects current youth tastes. "But we also try to be there at a deeper level, so that readers see it as a mate, sharing and reflecting their interests, loves and aspirations."

And, where the magazine was previously available free outside schools, in a move towards a more-content format, it has recently moved to full retail.

The B2B sector

Interestingly, despite a booming economy the business magazine sector continues with the only business model that seems to work in this market - namely giving your magazine away and looking to advertisers to provide much-needed cashflows.

Some examples? Of NZ Business magazine's latest ABC auit of 8424 copies, 6909 are 'Directed Circulation - Not Requested'. Fairfax Business Media's CIO magazine, while showing a net audited circulation increase of 56% year on year (up to 2817 copies) has, in reality, only boosted its numbers by significantly increasing the number of magazines it gives away in the category of 'Directed Circulation - Requested'.

iStart magazine for its part, gives away almost its entire NZ print run of 7000 copies. "It's always been the way," says iStart md Hayden McCall. "Business executives in New Zealand are relatively easy to target but they've been getting these titles for free for years, so it would be pointless trying to convert them to a paid model.

"The bottom line is you need to provide big business readership for advertisers and the only way to get those numbers in New Zealand is by direct distribution at no charge."

But what about award-winning journalism, you ask? Shouldn't that make a difference? Apparently not.

Witness Unlimited magazine, which approaching its 100th issue has won more MPA awards than any other business magazine in NZ - and yet still over half its audited distribution of 7416 copies falls into the 'Directed Circulation - Requested (or Not Requested)' category.

And for business publishers the biggest competitors aren't necessarily other magazines. Attend any meeting of magazine people in this sector, and the bogeyman of the public relations consultant is the current topic du jour.

While it's understandable that companies like Telecom and Microsoft can make a case for having PR staff, McCall says the number of organisations which have bypassed traditional marketing altogether, and hired PR firms defies logic. "It's remarkable the number of executives who are petrified of talking to the media.

"The tech institutes are churning out very few journalism graduates and hundreds of public relations consultants every year, so the consultants are really competing neck and neck with publishers for marketing budgets. The great irony though, is that we have media vehicles, and they don't."

Despite this iStart still has growth on its mind, launching an iStart Australia website and an Australian issue of iStart magazine in November - a move triggered by the harsh reality of global business.

"As larger businesses move to centralised management, there has been a lot of moving of marketing budgets to Australian management," says McCall. "New Zealand spends have typically been slashed as a result and for us it's a case of staying with our clients and offering them an Australasian presence."

Contract publishing

Of course one way to keep clients is to give them their own magazine (think Air NZ in-flight magazine Kia Ora, published by ACP).

At Adrenaline Publishing, publisher Cathy Parker says 'contract' publishing is a part of her company's business she plans to grow.

But why would an organisation opt for a contract magazine instead of just placing advertising in an existing title? Having just secured the contract to produce BeautyNZ for the Association of Beauty Therapists, Parker says it's all about adding value.

"Advertising in a mag that reaches your target is often purely a branding exercise," she says, "to attract new buyers and get your message in front of existing ones. The contract-published magazine is usually a value add for your clients because if your magazine is well done you're giving them a useful product that they get some enjoyment out of and a feelgood factor.

"You're saying, 'hey we value your business and we're giving you this great product' so it's a value add rather than a straight marketing message" (so that's why Air NZ cabin crew urge me to take my copy of Kia Ora). Delivering editorial integrity and thus reader 'value' is something an experienced publisher is always going to be better at, says Parker.

The online space

And what of online magazines? During 2006 Telecom's ISP division Xtra was under immense government pressure to upgrade users from dial-up to broadband.

The double-edged sword for Xtra, however, was that in order to inspire people to make the shift, they had to promote broadband as something worth having, which brought about the over-promising XtraOrdinaries campaign.

Alas Telecom's struggling network couldn't live up to the promise and hilarity ensued. Nonetheless, the tens of thousands of new broadband users were at least able to surf the web without engaging their phone and the upshot of that has been some large increases in traffic to a range of online magazines (see chart on P14).

Says Nielsen//NetRatings' Tony Boyte: "Once you have access to the internet without interfering with a phone line, then you start to see quite rapid online traffic growth. That's the trend we're seeing overseas and that's what's happening here now."

So what can online magazines offer that physical ones can't? At Destinations Media, publisher Bruce Laybourn says the spring edition of Destinations is the first with digital delivery outnumbering its print delivery (at around 50,000 digital copies) and interactivity is the name of the game.

"There's a range of features in the digital editions," he says, "like audio, embedded TVCs, telephone connection via Skype for North American readers, direct links to advertiser websites, blogging and podcasting."

While NetRatings figures show niche titles like grownups.co.nz, kidspot.co.nz and runwayre

porter.com have all shown significant growth year on year, one online publisher has literally rocketed from nowhere to monthly numbers most real-world magazines would kill to achieve.

So what's driving www.throng.co.nz? Founder Regan Cunliffe explains his site's success: "We launched a website called idolblog.com which was the unofficial fan site for NZ Idol back in 2003.We found that when Idol was off air people still stuck around on the site, but they want to talk about other TV shows.

"Obviously the niche thing had worked, so we thought why not put up something that was a one-stop shop for everything on TV." Launched in November 2006 throng.co.nz now has around 110,000 unique browsers a month - putting it 2nd only to NZGirl in the online magazine figures supplied by NetRatings.

"The [TV] networks want people to go to their sites," says Cunliffe, "but from the viewer's perspective, what's the best scenario for them? Do you want to go to five different sites to look up information or is it easier to go to one place where you have absolutely everything available?"

The potential for interactivity that the internet presents is something that Cunliffe is keen to promote, although he says many agencies are only scoring a 'could do better' in this area. "My feeling is that for TV and radio the viewers and numbers are all going down - and the internet is going up.

"Quite frankly, if they [ad agencies] want to keep making the sweet money that they've been making, then it's time for them to actually start doing some work."

And that means starting a "two-way conversation" with site users he says. "At the moment we've been using the banner option, but one of the things we really want to do is create an environment for advertisers to actually interact with the community, rather than just put up a banner and hope someone clicks on it."

Of all the online magazine players, NZGirl has the biggest numbers (at 188,849 unique browsers a month) but after eight years in business, publisher Jenene Freer says it's only been since the arrival of NetRatings that things have started to turn a corner.

"I am eating my words here but I think it [NetRatings] has been incredibly important to the growth of the industry over the last 18 months. In the beginning I had some serious doubts about how they count their data and I still do, but at the end of the day if every site is measured the same way then it doesn't really matter."

Freer says NZGirl has endured an "extraordinarily hard" eight years. "It's been frustrating," she says. "In the beginning it seemed like a fairly easy proposition. If you get the numbers [visiting your site] you should be able to get the advertising. In theory that's the way it should work, but unfortunately it's not."

Freer says even now she can think of at least five multinational organisations that are "still saying 'oh-yeah, online advertising isn't for our brand'. It is frustrating beyond belief; at times you want to reach across the boardroom table and shake them [laughs]."

At the Interactive Advertising Bureau, sales manager Deborah Davenport agrees with Freer, saying that although the internet has long been the most measurable medium around, it's never been given its due until the arrival of numbers from NetRatings and more recently PricewaterhouseCoopers.

"Online was 1% of NZ media spend for years but in saying that it's never been measured correctly. So the IAB has been working with Price- waterhouseCoopers and they've come up with a figure of 57 million for the first half of 2007, which equates to about 5% spend. So it looks like a major jump - but really it's just because it's finally being measured properly."

NO.1 in the world

NZ foodies know a good thing when they see it. And now, one of their favourite magazines has been recognised as the best food magazine in the world.

Cuisine was awarded a Gold Ladle at Le Cordon Bleu World Food Media Awards in Adelaide last month, an honour Fairfax Magazines gm Lynley Belton says is a truly outstanding achievement given the intense competition faced from leading food magazines around the world.

"The awards are held every two years and have established themselves as the world's leading premier food publishing event. A win in this competition is regarded as lifting an Oscar!"

In winning, Cuisine beat out publications such as Gourmet Traveller and Vogue Entertaining & Travel. And Cuisine is in stellar company. The 24 winners included Nigella Lawson and Rick Stein.

Counting the beat

Earlier this year three of NZ's best b2b publishers merged. Profile Publishing, Marketplace Press and Review Publishing became 3media Group, a name managing director Reg Birchfield says is also indicative of the three major spheres in which they operate - b2b magazines (a total of 16 monthly and alternate-monthly titles), online (14 websites), and events.

"We run some of New Zealand's most significant industry events including the Deloitte/Management magazine Top 200 Awards, the Marketing Magazine Marketing Awards, and the Fairfax AdMedia Agency of the Year Awards," he says.

The advertising market has responded well to 3media, says Birchfield. "Advertising and sponsorship sales against last year in the three merged enterprises are up by a very healthy percentage." And, he says, the group will be creating new opportunities for advertisers across titles and media activities.

With the addition of NZ Pharmacy magazine to the stable, 3media is already growing. Health is a new sector for the company, and Birchfield says they will be looking at other sectors that offer growth and editorial opportunities. "We see trade magazines working hand-in-hand with associated websites, online news services, events, and even narrowband broadcasting opportunities."

The next generation is about complementary print and online, says Birchfield. "And online and b2b make very successful bed partners. Their audience is looking for both the news and spontaneity of online delivery plus the considered, analytic and interpretive content that fits nicely in a well-designed and well-informed b2b magazine."

Merging three long-establed businesses and their entrenched cultures was never going to be a cakewalk, he says.

" What has been surprising has been the speed with which we have integrated our systems and processes for turning out magazines and so far we haven't missed a beat.

"Because we had virtually no duplication in titles or activities we have been able to keep focused on making everything work better and the efficiencies and savings in some areas have been dramatic.

"We are starting to roll out sector email newsletters and new websites will begin to emerge early in the new year. We have used our existing database and online experiences to create new products, such as a new online Agencies & Clients directory and, soon, a new apparel industry directory.

"We may well start some new titles but we will also be on the lookout for existing titles that might benefit from joining our stable. We now have some pretty good systems and some outstanding people here with lots of specialist b2b knowledge and market understanding.

"The b2b market isn't really cluttered at all. There might be lots of titles, but they all serve different communities of interest.

"However, I see some deaths too. Some titles in the market aren't doing so well and are not delivering new solutions for advertisers or new and different content for readers - in print or online. We expect to capitalise on this transition."