Evelyn Webster: “Magazines can’t compromise their editorial integrity”

Magazines can’t compromise their editorial integrity, despite needing to generate more advertising revenue in the recession, according to the panellist at MediaTel Group’s ‘Future of Consumer Magazine’ seminar yesterday.

The panellist all agreed that delivering a quality product and maintaining consumer loyalty and trust is the most important thing in the magazine market, regardless of the economic climate.

“We have to be customer-centric, even in this market. We have to please consumers,” Stevie Spring, chief executive of Future, said.

“There is a certain amount of creative flexibility and editorial is changing – for example, readers are looking online – but magazine’s can’t become purely ad driven,” she added.

Sport magazine’s managing director, Greg Miall, said: “The same applies to Sport – it doesn’t matter that it’s dependent on advertising because it is free – content is still the most important thing.

“We can’t let advertising take-over. It’s not just about money, it’s about time and consumers won’t pick up our magazine unless they actually want to spend time reading it, so we have to deliver a quality product.

“Advertising and editorial teams need to talk and support each other because there is also the case of – don’t bite the hand that feeds you,” he added.

Spring believes advertisers understand that publishers are expected to keep a certain amount of independence – “if you breach consumer trust, ratings will fall and clients will lose the opportunity to advertise in a very special environment,” she said.

In terms of looking to the future and maintaining or growing revenue in this kind of market, the panellists agreed that publishers need to work at delivering premium products as well as creating innovative solutions.

“Publishers need to do what they do better, create premium products and focus on levels of engagement – as well as working closely with advertisers,” Webster said.

“There are lots of activities that surround brands, all of which can deepen consumer relationships and in turn, are attractive to advertisers,” she added. “We need to work on creating innovative cross-platform solutions, and bespoke ideas and projects.”

Spring agreed, adding: “There are massive opportunities for magazines in this environment. They can try new things and be creative, it’s exciting.”