Magazine Week

Its good to see that Magazine Week, which we blogged earlier in the year, is coming to fruition. I like the 10 amazing facts about magazines.

Jeremy Leslie blogs that the YouTube video produced in support makes him weep. He is right. The idea of a YouTube video is good, but this promo is cringe-making, and way too self-regarding. Magazine Week needs an altruistic, engaging, or 'other regarding' aspect if it is to make a similar impact to World Book Day.

Magazine Week Web Site

The Magazine Week web site is up, but it is clearly still in stealth mode, so it would not be fair to make any definite judgement. As yet no sign of a break-the-mould proposition..... such as World Book Day's free book token for every schoolchild.

Magazine Week (4)

Joel Rickett, who writes for The Bookseller, gave me a helpful run-down on why World Book Day has been such a success for UK book publishing and bookselling. Right at the heart of its success has been the 'incredibly potent voucher scheme' which puts a £1 book token in the hands of millions of children each year. This focus was a masterstroke because, from the off, it secured the goodwill of parents and teachers. Joel points out that there is now a very effective team, with a degree of operational independence, running the event, and the PR has been very strong, led by the prominent publishers and orchestrated by Liz Sich at Colman Getty. The PR has been very effective, but it does not always work (the attempts to focus on adult readers have been less successful than the school-targetted projects) and it is key to success to keep ringing the changes. Each year there is a fresh angle. Joel points out that the local PR has also been very effective, with author appearances at hundreds of bookshops up and down the country.

So far this informal inquiry has four take home messages for the first Magazine Week: (1) focus on a core, other-directed (generous or altruistic), activity which is at the heart of the week:- whatever it is, it must not be too obviously a 'retail gimmick'; (2) make sure that a good PR firm is in the planning -- with a modest but adequate budget; (3) if at first you do not succeed, then try, and try, and try again..... and (4) encourage the good and the great who lead the industry (the likes of Nicholas Coleridge, Duncan Edwards, Peter Phippen and Sylvia Auton) to become involved and committed. Such a quartet could be the consumer magazine industry's riposte to Gail Rebuck, Tim Hely-Hutchinson and Nigel Newton, mentioned in the last post.

Magazine Week (3)

More on the lessons that can be learned from World Book Day.

Its a striking tribute to the success of WBD that it has gathered support from all sectors of the book trade: publishers, authors, shops and retail, libraries and schools and of course the consumers. Everybody has been pushing and the Booksellers Association has been in the lead. I asked Tim Godfray, ceo of the BA, about their involvement and in his words the promotion has been 'without question an amazingly successful' exercise. The BA estimates that the advertising value of the publicity achieved is in the range of £3.2-3.4 million this year (with extensive promotions in the Sun and the Daily Mirror and lots of TV and radio advertising). 14 million WBD tokens were produced, and most of these tokens were exchanged for '£1 off a book' or for one of the specially produced titles, selected from publishers' offerings and priced for the promotion, at £1 a time. Godfray emphasises that this success comes from everybody committing resources. The publishers club together to fund the organization and provide the core budget, while the booksellers take the hit on the margin (they absorb the £1 off on the free Book Tokens) and the schools also like to get involved -- 40,000 school packs distributed.

It will be hard for Magazine Week to find such an obviously 'good' goal as helping kids to read, and to buy their first book. For books have a particularly central and foundational role in the reading pantheon -- I dont see 'helping kids to buy their first magazine' having a comparable pulling power with teachers and parents. But finding a goal which is not too obviously self-interested. Not in Joel Rickett's phrase too obvious a 'retail gimmick', but a noble challenge or opportunity around which the whole consumer magazine market can coalesce -- that is the challenge. Because the WBD cause is so obviously worthwhile, as well as being 'publisher self-interested' the big wheels of the publishing business Gail Rebuck (Random House), Tim Hely-Hutchinson (Hachette) and Nigel Newton (Bloomsbury) are prepared to invest personal initiatives in making it work. They have been very active, especially in PR. More about PR tomorrow.

Magazine Week (2)

Magazine Week is scheduled for 17-23 September, see previous post. I have asked a few key people who have been behind the success of World Book Day since its inception, for their advice and the fruits of their experience. Magazines and Books are different but there are surely some parallels.

Jo Henry runs BML which has been very influential in tracking the consumer appeal of WBD. Jo kindly answered some questions that I threw in her direction:

Q1 Is there a key lesson that you have learned from the success of World Book Day?
WBD works because there is a core of very committed, highly professional people within the industry who really believe in WBD as a concept and put a lot of (mostly unpaid) time into making it work year after year. It is a very good example of the way in which the book industry can collaborate to grow the market and create readers. There is also, of course, the essential sponsorship from Book Tokens which underwrites much of the cost and a lot of organizations who provide eg free distribution and printing for the specially chosen £1 books.

Q2 Do you have any advice for the magazine publishing and magazine selling industry?
WBD still has much greater impact in the children’s market, being promoted heavily through schools and libraries to that sector. However, in the last few years efforts have been made (with some success – now over 50% awareness) to reach adults as well. I would suspect that having a core audience in mind would be helpful as you launch.

Q3 A day or a week? Plusses or minusses?
In fact the voucher redemption scheme (£1 book tokens send to every school child in the country which can be redeemed against the £1 books or used as a discount voucher against another purchase) runs for almost a month, and whilst there is a concentration on the day itself, schools and shops do run the campaign over long periods. Shops find it difficult to sustain for longer periods, however, as their promotional calendars get very full, but on the other hand you risk missing lots of people if you only go for a day.

Q4 Has the international side to World Book day been important to its success in UK and Eire?
No one seems to take much notice of this. We don’t use the same day as other markets and we don’t use the same theme (give a book on World Book Day for example, used I believe in Spain).

It sounds as though WBD success, like many other marketing triumphs, is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. Jo's advice on having a 'core audience' in mind is very helpful. The Spanish tip is interesting and possibly more relevant to magazines than to books. Book Tokens won't work for magazines since we do not have Magazine Tokens, but perhaps the theme of developing magazine week as the week in which one buys a magazine for a friend ...... that could work. It could have that concrete 'call for action' focus of the 'Book Token' scheme.

I am sounding out one or two other luminaries of the book trade, so there may be more advice from this quarter.

Magazine Week and World Book Day

The PPA (the Periodical Publisher's Association) is planning a Magazine Week for September 17-23, 2007.

This seems like a good idea. It is surely inspired by the success of World Book Day, which, although it is only 10 years old, attracts a lot of press interest and consumer involvement. The consumer involvment is probably the key to success here .... I wonder what the people involved in the success of World Book Day have to say about the project? Imitation is, after all, the sincerest form of flattery.