STARS OF & Page Screen
Print/Web integration gives custom publishers twice the chance to shine
GOOD CUSTOM PUBLISHING – both online and off – can’t just be a sales tool for a company’s products or services. Today’s readers are sharp. With the plethora of media at their fingertips, they have too much competing for their valuable time. If they perceive you’re trying to snow them, they’ll move on quickly – and probably won’t come back.
As Diana Pohly, president of Boston-based custom publishing firm Pohly & Partners, noted last issue (“All Around Custom Fit,” November 2000, page 9), to be effective, a good custom publication has to build brand and serve the readers’ needs, both practical and emotional. A strong step toward this goal is to integrate your online and offline custom communications. Most readers appreciate having access to content in various media, so they can get the speed and convenience of the Web, coupled with the comfort and familiarity of a print magazine to browse.
“A Web presence has the advantage of currentness, instant changeability and customization,” Pohly says. “However, there’s a subliminal but concrete lack of tactile stimulation that’s missing with Web-only interaction. People want to touch, hold and feel.”
FUNDAMENTALS Customers also want to communicate on and offline, says Pohly. “The fundamental marketing philosophy from years ago hasn’t changed all that much. People bore easily. You need to find lots of touchpoints. Building brand takes broad outreach.”
“Won’t one medium cannibalize the other?” is a question clients often ask Carol McCarthy, vice president of electronic publishing at Chicago-based Imagination Publishing. She doesn’t think so. “Each component serves a different and valuable purpose in achieving marketing objectives,” she says. “Together they expand the access, breadth and depth of information to the reader.”
As reported last issue, the Massachusetts Office of Tourism and Travel is having great success with its steps toward media integration. This month, 1to1 profiles three other organizations’ efforts to build readership by powering up their Web connection: Muscle Media, which has multiple sites working out its Web regimen; UAW-DaimlerChrysler, whose magazine Tomorrow was recently redesigned to better drive Web traffic; and Experience, which began life as an online project long before its first magazine was ever published.
UAW-DaimlerChrysler’s Tomorrow promotes employee education today For many people, reading a custom publication is a leisure time activity. But for United Auto Workers-DaimlerChrysler employees, it’s homework.
But the assignment isn’t a painful one. The union and auto manufacturer worked together to create Tomorrow magazine as a way to promote its National Training Center (NTC) in an informative – yet educational – way.
Tomorrow was initially launched to reinforce the NTC’s commitment to educating workers and to encourage more workers to take advantage of its curriculum. Courses, which focus on specialties like parts or assembly, are offered in over 50 plants around the country.
The 4-year-old 32-page bimonthly, mailed to homes of about 80,000 workers, is edited by Michael Buller, editorial director of Pohly & Partners, which produces the magazine for the NTC. Content is aimed at not only enhancing the work environment but overall quality of life. Articles include the expected business stories on topics like new DaimlerChrysler plants and equipment, health and safety programs, and drops in injuries. But the line-up also includes personality-driven features about workers’ off-hours activities, like an Albany, NY, employee who each Halloween turns his home into a haunted mansion, or a Michigan worker who played on the senior PGA tour – and teed off on a course he was once banned from because of his race.
The magazine was recently redesigned to help drive traffic to the training center’s Web site (www.uaw-daimlerchryslerntc.org), which itself is undergoing a redesign. The site has a newsstand section featuring content from the magazine.
In response to reader requests, more useful off-duty content has been added to the magazine, including departments on retirement planning, finances and caring for children or the elderly. These departments, called Off the Clock, include “Link to Learn” boxes, alerting readers to other sites of interest.
As part of the redesign, one generic and five region-specific inserts of course listings for different types of manufacturing plants were created. The first redesigned issue was polybagged with a letter from the NTC and a magnet so readers could post the listings on their refrigerator as a reminder of both upcoming courses and the site.
Tomorrow’s impact on enrollment in specific courses is hard to quantify, notes Diana Pohly, president of Pohly & Partners, because courses are offered in so many locations and at so many different times. But research done by the training center shows that 90% of workers read the magazine, and that 90% of Tomorrow’s features rated successful as educational tools. Eighty-five percent of workers said they participated more in training programs due to the magazine.
Supplement firm EAS builds Muscle with custom publishing Think of it as cross-training.
Muscle Media magazine – the custom publication of sports nutrition supplement company EAS – has much timely information to distribute to readers. “And it changes so fast in some respects that we can’t limit ourselves to one medium,” says Michael Sitzman, publisher. The solution seemed obvious: a Web presence working in unison with the magazine to provide a consistent message.
Muscle Media magazine launched in 1992, followed by MuscleMedia.com in 1995. Next came a corporate Web site (www.eas.com) that same year, and a third site, BodyforLife.com, in 1999, borne from EAS founder Bill Phillips’ bestselling book by the same name. Through subscriptions (which represent 45% of the circulation) and newsstand sales, the magazine, published by New York-based custom publishing firm EMAP USA, has a circulation of 225,000. And the EAS and Body-for-Life Web sites together draw 45,000 unique visitors daily.
IN SYNC The media work in tandem to build brand and loyalty. For starters, magazine features are posted on the Muscle Media Web site, Web addresses appear on the spine of the magazine and on alternate pages, and readers can access feedback forms – which heavily influence editorial content, according to Sitzman – in the magazine or online.
Print ads for EAS supplements contain promotion source codes that customers use when ordering by phone or online at www.EAS.com (the only company site that sells supplements). According to Web manager Mike Pugliese, approximately 10% to 15% of new online buyers enter such a code.
In his Q&A magazine column, Phillips often refers readers to an online “assignment” or to view recipes that comply with his regimen but don’t appear in the magazine. Web traffic tends to jump by about 2% in response to Phillips’ column, says Pugliese.
The Body-for-Life Challenge, a 12-week fitness competition promoted in the magazine through ads and articles, drives Web traffic as well. About 65% of last year’s 670,000 participants registered online. “It’s a great source of lead generation for us,” says Sitzman. “We push the challenge in the magazine, readers go to the Web to register, and we capture their e-mail address. Then they become part of the whole community.” The Body-for-Life message board, where Challenge participants share their triumphs and struggles, receives 1,000 entries per day, and during the last round of a competition, it’s not uncommon to see traffic spike to three or four times the average number of hits, says Pugliese.
Does the company ever envision eliminating one medium or the other? No, maintains Sitzman. “We try to provide information to motivate and educate customers. To do that, we include all facets, from direct marketing to the Web to the magazine.” And there’s practicality. Customers often bring their magazine to the gym to reference during workouts. “It would be difficult to bring their computer there.”
Golden, CO-based EAS plans to continue its integrated approach. The Muscle Media site will soon be revamped. The magazine’s frequency recently increased to 10 issues per year plus two special issues – up from eight. The fourth edition of the Sports Supplement Review is in the works, and once published, EAS will promote it in the magazine and sell it online, as well as by phone and through affiliated retailers. It also plans to bulk up its schedule of online chats with Body-for-Life Challenge Champions and promote the events through the magazine.
The magazine’s return on investment is gauged by newsstand, subscription and advertising sales figures. Judging by the fact that approximately 60% to 70% of EAS customers are repeat buyers, the integrated approach seems to be working.
Beyond Web site hits and magazine circulation figures, Sitzman says ROI comes naturally as customers see dramatic changes in their physique and spirit. “There are a lot of myths about supplements and training out there. The more pertinent information we provide to help customers change their bodies and lives, the more loyalty we get,” he says. “Every time someone says to a customer, `Hey, you look great! What have you been doing?’ that’s the best marketing for us. We can’t buy that.”
Experience helps college graduates get ready for the rat race You’ve completed your thesis. You’ve finished final exams. Now comes the tough part: finding that first “real” job.
Boston-based Experience.com Inc. is working to point students in the right direction with a Web site (www.experience.com) and a custom publication designed to give soon-to-be grads an education on how to successfully enter the workplace.
The site, which debuted in 1996, evolved out of a CD-ROM project. The magazine followed in 1998 as a way to expand the company’s editorial offerings, which initially consisted of mostly research-based content on various industries and careers. Danyel Barnard, editor since the publication’s launch, says the print publication created an opportunity to offer more features and personality-driven articles, and broader content in a different medium.
Experience.com currently has 50,000 registered members. It receives over 100,000 hits per day, and 15 million to 21 million page views per month.
The magazine was initially designed by Boston-based custom publishing firm Pohly & Partners. As per Experience’s plan from the start, production was eventually brought completely in-house as of the September issue. One million issues are distributed quarterly in September, November, February and April. Experience’s target audience is primarily age 18-28, focusing on the period of high school to graduate school, but readership does spill over into younger siblings, parents and students returning to school after time in the workplace.
Synergy online and off is a high priority for Experience as it builds relationships with its audience, whose buying power will only increase as it ages. Content drives readers back and forth between the magazine and the Web site. For example, an article on finding a creative work environment includes a box plugging an online feature on Experience’s picks for top creative workplaces.
ROI is judged in several ways. Barnard notes that both the quantity and quality of advertisers has steadily increased – companies like Ralph Lauren and Ford that want to capture this demographic have purchased space. And 42% of readers go to the Web site from the magazine, which has a passalong readership of 2.1 readers per copy.
