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Why the flush
of magazine redesigns
Better times and rising competition are two reasons
By Lorraine Sanders
If it seems like a lot of magazines are launching
redesigns lately, it's because they are. Perhaps the most recent example
is music weekly Billboard, whose May issue carries an updated cover and
logo, the first changes the magazine has undergone since 1963.
Earlier in the year, there was the much-ballyhooed Money magazine
redesign. Other magazines undergoing recent redesigns include Time Inc.'s
Health and a slew of smaller titles, such as men's magazine Complex,
Meredith's American Patchwork & Quilt, GamePro and Primedia's
Motorcyclist, Car Craft and Dirt Rider. Primedia says it plans to redesign
some 30 of its titles this year.
Magazines are perpetually tweaking editorial content, and
minor redesigns are common. But redesigns of the sort undertaken by Money,
or for that matter Business Week some 18 months ago, are far less common
and are taken on with far more deliberation.
Just why we seem to be seeing more now can be attributed to
several factors. One is the improving ad economy. With more advertisers
out there spending, the competition for their dollars has heated up in a
number of magazine categories. Redesigns can also draw in new readers,
which helps circulation.
At the least, a redesign gives the title's ad salespeople
something new to talk about, both with existing advertisers and those who
have passed on the title in the past. In media, as in the consumer world,
new often translates to better, even when it isn't.
In the end, it's all about seeming to be one step ahead.
"It's a constant process, but I also think that there is
a new awareness that magazine publishers can't rest on their laurels. They
have to stay fresh," says Peter Kreisky, principal of the Kreisky
Media Consultancy of Boston.
For media buyers, redesigns raise questions, or ought to.
It's one thing to redesign a magazine. It's quite another for the redesign
to actually work in improving the title in some measurable, material way.
The big concern is that the magazine might look better but be alienating
the very readers who define its circulation base.
"I always ask, 'What have your readers told you,'"
says Brenda White, director of print investment for Starcom USA.
"When I see big changes being made, I want [the
magazine] to assure me that they're not going to alienate their core
readers. Because ultimately we're buying readers," says White.
Buyers also worry that the money going into the redesign will
ultimately raise costs to advertisers. Paying more for a better magazine
is one thing. Paying more simply for a prettier-looking magazine is quite
another.
"When the redesign adds to the production cost and, in
turn, the publication has to charge more to its readers and advertisers,
most of the time this is a shock to their core customers, both consumers
and advertisers alike," says Ben Johnston, CEO of Media Brokers
International.
Some editorial changes won't affect production costs, but redesigns
often involve market research, which can be very expensive.
"I've seen these things cost a half a million dollars
easily, and sometimes much more than that," says Kreisky. "To do
it right, the old adage is you get what you pay for."
That market research can be key to the redesign's success.
"One thing that we often see is magazines doing a redesign
without a focus group beforehand. The magazines that do use focus groups
before the redesign normally get a good fit on the first try," says
Bill Matthews, executive vice president of Media Brokers International.
"Whereas the non-focus group publications normally have to tweak
their new look multiple times to satisfy their audience."
Even cosmetic changes can have months of market research
behind them. For its redesign, which publisher Jennifer Deans describes as
90 percent visual and 10 percent contextual, Health spent eight months
gathering data about its readers.
"We spent a lot of time on a research project on a team,
and a lot of consumer-based research about health and well being, about
how women want health information," says Dean.
In some cases, redesigns simply reflect changing leadership
at the magazine. It can be a relatively new title where the magazine staff
is still searching for the right editorial look and the right appearance
to go with it.
At three-year-old Complex magazine, the arrivals of new creative
director Steven Ballie, previously art director for British GQ, and art
director James Casey, previously a senior designer at Teen Vogue, made a
redesign timely.
"We've got the team in place, people with the real
knowledge of magazine architecture," says Jimmy Jellinek, the
magazine's editor-in-chief, who recently left the title to become editor
of Stuff. "We finally had the right people in place to sort of create
the next phase."
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May 16, 2005
2005
Media Life
- Lorraine
Sanders is a staff writer for Media Life.
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