Clare Cook

Putting a face to a magazine

Chris Brogan's post about putting a face to a brand is really interesting for magazines - as well as consumables.

Here you have a tea company putting a face to its products. Why? So that there is some common identity. You may recognise something in someone here that might make you want to identify with the brand too.





I know I am not the bluest of blue sky thinkers but this is a no-brainer in terms of magazines raising their profiles. Magazines to whom their readers are everything, remember.

Let the reader of new! magazine be revealed. Let the reader of GQ be revealed. Let the reader of Porn Today... well, OK, maybe not everyone!

Search terms - fascinating magazine result

AFTER Google Insights for Search came to my attention from @markyp, it is my new toy.

And a five minute play (if I am doing it right) to look at the situation for magazines turned up some fantastic results!

Put in the search term 'magzines online'(note the deliberate error) and the majority of searches for these terms are in.... Pakistan, clocking up 100% of clicks. Could the arch rival to India be interested in rivalling the epic increase in consumer titles launched there? India accounted for 30% traffic - with no other country ranking any evidence of these two terms together.

It's a sweeping what if, but what if?

Change the spelling and this is what you see:

Regional interest  for magazines online

1. Ghana 100 2. Trinidad and Tobago 52 3. Nigeria 50 4. Kenya 47 5. Pakistan 38 6. Sri Lanka 33 7. India 31 8. Lebanon 27 9. South Africa 24 10. United Arab Emirates 23

Search terms related to magazines online

Top searches
1. online magazine 100 2. free online magazines 50 3. free magazines 50 4. online news magazines 15 5. online fashion magazines 10 6. fashion magazines 10 7. buy magazines online 10 New!

Rising searches
1. gossip magazines +130% 2. telugu online magazines +80% 3. read magazines online +80% 4. view magazines online +70% 5. online gun magazines +70% 6. best online magazines +70% 7. online travel magazines +60% 8. knitting magazines online +60% 9. gossip magazines online +60% 10. travel magazines +40% New!

Magazines and twitter

Tim Holmes is doing a study that is well worth a look: How magazines use Twitter.

It's food for thought fo me as I consider a small (but perfectly formed) quantitive study over the next few weeks as to how the highest print circulation consumer titles are embracing digital - to try to see where the innovation lies.

Click this space!

Magazines should be physical

ECHOING a thought I have had for a while now, comes the notion that magazines will have to think of themselves as brands first and magazines second.

Consider the idea that a magazine such as Glamour - would actually be a coffee shop.

That way it would become a physical entity as well as a paper product.

Hear me out: Mike over at The Fourth Estate has sort of fleshed out a similar notion in his post about finance

3. Physical Outlets Will Become More Important
Given the growth of online and mobile channels, investing in branch networks may seem counterintuitive. But curiously, as branches become less important for transactions, they will become more important as branding and consumer engagement channels.

In retail circles, the Apple store has become a cliché for design innovation but the Finance sector is catching on. ING Direct were early pioneers with their café branch concept, while more recently Barclays have piloted Microsoft Surface technology in their redesigned UK flagship. Barclay’s Surface program allows customers to manipulate digital content with their hands and access information about banking products with simple gestures.

If magazines actually 'become' the experience, then user engaagement would be more acute, and advertisers would want to latch on to these new readers who wanted to live and breathe the ethos if the mag...

It's like second life, in real life.