While I get excited about any news regarding an upswing for magazine ad sales, an article in today’s Wall Street Journal reaffirms the fact that magazines have to get creative when it comes to their products. So far, as a reader, I think that efforts to step things up have been pretty unimpressive and generally off the mark. Starting stories in the print version and then trying to coax readers online for the conclusion is not the solution; nor am I a fan of teasers for b-roll or behind-the-scenes footage available exclusively online. And for me, special merchandising sections rife with advertiser products are a dead-giveaway. The most notable change in the format of fashion magazines in the past ten years is the unabashed incorporation of celebrities as cover subjects. Any other attempt to lure readers into traversing media platforms or to reinvent the product formula have flat lined. WSJ writes:
Many marketers remain “very cautious about the print medium,” says Steve Farella, president and chief executive of TargetCast tcm, which helps companies decide where and how to allocate their marketing budgets…
While all signs suggest the ad-spending freefall has hit a bottom, prognosticators also remain leery of print media.
Mr. Farella said that to rebound, print-media companies need to give advertisers fresh reasons to be excited about their prospects.
How is it that we still have not solved this riddle? People love magazines. People are consumed with celebrities. Celebrity fashion is a quintessential part of the zeitgeist now — just look at the opening pages of UsWeekly where fashion coverage has seemingly quadrupled! The celebrity/fashion paradigm is here to stay, so one question remains: Who is going to be the lucky chump who figures out how to spin all of this into gold?
