The budding free magazine industry will not replicate the paid-for market, but there is room for a small number of reasonably big free magazine brands.
This was the view of Mike Soutar, chief executive of ShortList Media, a panellist at yesterday’s MediaTel Group ‘Future of Consumer Magazines’ seminar held in London.
Soutar, creator of the highly successful free men’s magazine, ShortList (see ABC Results Jul-Dec 2007:Shortlist Falls Just Short Of Circulation Target), cited changing consumer behaviour as the primary reason for reader’s appetites for free publications. He added that ShortList was reaching an audience not served by men’s magazines, and that it was “reaching them on an unrivalled scale”.
However, Caroline McDevitt, managing director of IPC Advertising, was keen to point out that the title was just one small aspect of a much wider men’s sector. Duncan Edwards, chief executive of The National Magazine Company, was full of praise for the product, saying the quality of the team was a large factor in making an “impressive” magazine.
He added that the idea of free magazines was hardly a new concept, but rather the thing that was new with the likes of ShortList was the delivery method. However, he added that vendor-led distribution appeared to be an expensive system.
Media journalist Ray Snoddy was more sceptical about the free model. “There’s an awful lot of profitless prosperity in free newspapers [worldwide],” he said, but added that the genre is here to stay.
Soutar also suggested that the model could work for other sectors, such as the women’s market. “There’s no logical reason that if it works with the men’s market, that it couldn’t work with any other market,” he said. “I think the key would be highlighting and reaching audiences that are typically hard to reach [such as the young and upmarket].”
He continued: “There may conceivably be opportunities for magazines such as this for young, upmarket, female audiences, but not for us for a while.”
The discussion turned to engagement and the arguable difference in value between paid-for and free print products.
Soutar said he was not sure he’d seen much compelling evidence that links paying for the product with the level of engagement. “I’ve seen a lot of publishers claim it, but I haven’t seen a lot of it myself, and engagement is a very difficult thing to prove,” he said. “I don’t think there’s a provable link between paying for something and engaging with it ”
Edwards pointed to an old study that suggested that free products do not engage the reader as much as paid-for, whilst McDevitt suggested that free and paid-for titles were already in competition.
She said that the free market would “come of age properly” if it demonstrated to advertisers innovative marketing, integrating editorial, marketing and advertising,
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