Reading, Writing and Relationships

Who could have written or spoken these words?

– The marketing landscape has been forever changed. Fierce competition, fragmented media, unlimited information sources in the electronic retail revolution have transformed the buyer/seller relationship.

– Marketers simply don’t possess the leverage they used to have. The customer is now completely in charge.

– Brand loyalty isn’t dead, but nowadays marketers must go an extra mile to earn it.

– Educated consumers will buy again and again from companies that clearly demonstrate a consistent understanding of customer needs.

– The key to winning and maintaining customer relationships is to establish a dialogue predicated on the customer’s point of view.

– Customer power is the new reality. Customer power is now forever in charge.

Clearly the writer must be a direct marketer and/or customer relationship management specialist, someone who thinks that brand marketing and one-to-one relationships have little in common. Would it surprise you to know that these words come from a company where magazine advertising is the core revenue stream? And where brand messages are the heart and soul of the enterprise?

Yet more than other media, major magazine publishers truly understand these days that nurturing deeper customer commitment often requires more than traditional advertising and promotion. They think so much more clearly about the needs of their “advertiser customers” than they did 10 years ago. They know that custom publishing in particular is a critical component of the drive to build better bonds with the best and most growable customers.

Database and Web technology have placed the chalk in the hands of the brand, facilitating not just e-commerce or customization of products for sale, but crafting communications that build bonds without asking for an order.

Magazine publishers like Hearst and Time and Hachette, and on and on, have become real partners with marketer brands in the customer communication revolution. In the bargain, they generate new profits for themselves – serving the advertiser’s existing customers with targeted sponsored information and infotainment in those wonderfully portable, tactile magazines. Vibrant new relationships with advertiser brands are bringing more advertising space to the new breed of custom publishers than ever before. I’ve said in earlier columns that too few relationship marketers, with their focus on CRM technology, have appreciated how critical the art of communication is to the building of customer bonds – marrying the high touch of the pretend word to the high tech of digital customized printing. Publishers, on the other hand, have long understood the value of combining the credibility and authority of magazines with selective targeting. Custom magazines alone are estimated to be a $1-billion-a- year business. Add newsletters, special reports, customized Web content and e-mail to the picture, and we’re talking a major opportunity for those who know how to speak one to one with customers.

Here is what publishers say sponsors can count on from custom publishing:

– Relevant, credible information that speaks directly to specific consumer needs.

– A fresh perspective on company products and services.

– Anticipation of future needs by maintaining relationships through life stages and purchasing cycles.

– Bringing brands into repeated personal contact with customers.

– Motivating behavior by moving customers through the purchasing process.

– Personalized, one-to-one messages that address different sets of customers (end users, distributors, retailers, employees, stockholders).

The Brand Controls

The dramatic surge of publishing revenue for magazine publishers was shown recently in a study conducted by Wilkofsky Gruen Associates for the Magazine Publishers of America’s Custom Publishing Council.

For a $1-billion-plus market, magazines take in $655 million for producing custom products and generate $655 million in third-party advertising.

The fact is, however, that custom communication is now a much bigger industry than we can reliably measure, and publishers are participating in it vigorously. Web content used by major marketer brands is often licensed or created by magazine publishers, segmentation and customization.

The CPC study is covered in greater detail in the 1to1 supplement in this issue of DIRECT.

Technology has made publishers partners with brands and created a variety of standalone communications that target groups on the publisher’s subscriber file.

In all these custom initiatives it should not be forgotten that the chalk is in the hands of the brand. Editors edit, publishers publish – but in the end the brand controls.