The US Sports Illustrated magazine has gone live with professionally produced video content to support stories in the magazines. At SI.com you can access stories behind the stories in the magazine.
Online Media Daily quotes Jeff Price, vice president and chief of marketing at SI.com. “The idea is to play both mediums to their strengths,” said Price. “We’re looking forward to great online/print opportunities for the editions coming up that will be devoted to college and pro football.”
The Sports Illustrated strategy has three elements from what I can see: to support a high subscription price; to engage readers (viewers) with their brand for longer; and to position the brand for disaggregating stories from the magazine.
While SI video content is currently available to everyone, I’d expect it soon to be available only to subscribers. I’d also expect audio and video content to be available on a story by story basis. This is how the younger demographic prefers to purchase content and smart publishers chasing the younger demographic will give them what they want.
The video stories at SI.com are professionally produced and carry advertising.
It’s a fine line they are playing since newsstand and subscription sales are important. New Media sales will be equally important. Hence the need to focus on their brand in multiple mediums at once and engage in precision balancing – ensuring that growth in one medium does not pull does sales in another medium which that medium is key to revenue.
Sports Illustrated is not a big title in Australia and we could be forgiven for brushing their new initiatives off. That would be ignorant. The lead by SI and some others needs to be understood, especially by the traditional news and information supply chain. There are new supply chain alternatives which we need to be playing in and or responding to.
Sports Illustrated are demonstrating that the world has changed.