Retail Media Spotlight : Customer Magazines

What are customer magazines? In the UK the industry body defines them as:

“Customer magazines are magazines published by companies or organisations for their customers/members.

They provide an effective and sophisticated form of marketing communication with millions of readers enjoying well-targeted editorial and responding positively to the "soft sell" that a customer magazine allows.

While customer magazines are recognised by consumers as marketing collateral Henley Centre research shows that they are treated differently because 'they give as well as take'.”

www.APA.co.uk

Do customer magazines work? Contract publishers will say YES!
But what does work mean?

Industry research offers the following metrics as indicative of success:

Retail magazine readers research (across 8 titles)

• Average retail magazine read time = 23 mins

• 62% keep the magazine for over a week

• 24% are more positive toward the brand

• 51% have bought a featured product/service

(Source: APA Advantage Study 07)

In the UK this last week there were two stories: the first noted that all the ad-funded customer magazines were losing money; then there was the announcement that Morrisons are launching their own bi-monthly magazine that would be offered free to customers in-store.

That ad-funded magazines lose money would not be disputed by anyone so why invest in them. (Received wisdom suggests that a typical publication might be losing a couple of millions dollars on a print run of several million per issue– for the sake of argument that’s working out at less than 10p or 20 cents a copy.) Well if that’s the case and consumer feedback is positive then perhaps it’s money well worth investing.

Of course, not all customer magazines are free. In the UK both Sainsbury’s and Waitrose have a cover price. There is an argument from media agencies that this makes the magazine more valued - a spurious argument that is if the APA research results are taken at face value – clearly even the free ones are appreciated by readers.

What would Baba Shiv make of this cover price issue?

Graham Thomas