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Media disruption

A must read report on the success on products on the Apple newsstand

Paid Content has published a report about the success of the publishers who were the early adopters of the new Apple digital newsstand platform.  Newsagents should read this.

The success of the newsstand platform, even though it is only in its early days, will draw attention from more publishers.

This is what we need to watch and be aware of as it will impact our longer term business plans.  We need to be aware of any moves to digital of products which we sell in our businesses … as I’ve written here for years.

There are two key contexts of concern: how magazine distributors deal with us through the transition and what we bring to our businesses to respond to the challenge of digital.

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Irony in print is dying story

There is irony in the report in The Australian yesterday reporting an expert claiming that print will be dead in 5 to 10 years.  The report is behind the new paywall if you navigate through the newspaper website – offering commentary about the changing nature of digital access to news.  You can get to the full story, outside the paywall, here.

I think that it is inevitable that daily news will move from print to digital formats.  The nature of today’s news cycle and the growing ease of availability of mobile digital devices make it inevitable.  The challenge is what happens in the meantime and how we leverage the opportunities which flow from disruption to print.

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iPad App for Vogue Australia launched

News magazines has announced the release of an iPad App for Vogue Australia.  The result is content distinct to the print product:

“Far from being a replica of the printed magazine, the Vogue Australia iPad app will engage our audience with exclusive multimedia content and behind-the-scenes glimpses of a world of fashion and beauty that only Vogue can access,” said Kirstie Clements, editor-in-chief of Vogue Australia.

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Weather patterns and magazine sales

Tyler Brûlé, Editor-in-chief of Monocle magazine, has written an interesting piece for the Financial Times about how print media engagement  changes with weather patterns.

While the UK news trade still has to pull itself into this century, retailers in the Baltic countries recognise the relationship between weather, dimmer days and media consumption. The Swedes and Norwegians have become particularly good at understanding what constitutes a proper media diet and how it changes with a rise or fall in the mercury.

There is no doubt that print media consumption changes in Australia with the weather.  Reading this piece by Brûlé makes me wonder if we could be smarter in leveraging weather opportunities in our newsagencies.  I appreciate that some of us do this now as seasons change – garden magazines in Spring for example.

I think that Brûlé is writing more about leveraging the weather as we find it today.  For example, shopping centres fill when it is raining outside.  What if we were to create a display of great magazine reading to enjoy while in front of the fire and a glass of red or a soup?  I could see this working.

It’s not often that we created displays which respond to the conditions of a single day.  Maybe we should experiment.  It’s certainly a way to position the print experience and drive sales of print products in our newsagencies.

I am grateful to a regular here who shared the link to Brûlé’s article.

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Björk shows us the new world

Icelandic artist Björk is showing us a new world with the release of Biophilia and iPad app top coincide with the release of a new album. eBOOK NEWSER has more on this.

What is innovative is the direct access across multiple platforms being embraced by Björk.  For me, this speaks to the new world of mobile access to digital content.  The app lets the reader / listener interact with the music and personalise the experience.

Many look at the iPad and compare it to print and say they like the feel and small of a book.  Fair enough.  Björk is showing off a completely different experience which you cannot get with a book of a CD (or vinyl for that matter).

For me, the Björk release epitomises why digital innovation will continue to migrate consumers from the print experience.

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Putting magazines together on a newsstand is driving digital sales

According to a report yesterday at PaidContent, putting magazines together on a digital newsstand and away from other digital content is helping drive sales.

Condé Nast is the latest publisher to claim a boom in digital magazine sales from the launch of Apple’s Newsstand two weeks: the publisher of Glamour, The New Yorker, Vanity Fairand Wired says that new subscription sales, per week, across all nine digital editions, was up 268 percent, with single copy sales up 142 percent compared to the previous eight weeks.

I think that our concern about print subscriptions and other retail outlets is misplaced if you take a long term view.  What publishers are playing which here and an entirely new channel from which we make zip.  Kudos to the publishers and Apple for doing this.  It’s what I’d do if I were them.

That said, what is happening here is another reason we need to get the Australian magazine distribution model right for newsagents.

I think that magazines present us with good opportunities in the short to medium term.  If some or all of us get the magazine distribution model right we can profit from opportunities.  I say some because I know of some newsagents who have turned their back on magazines.  That’s okay.  More for me.

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How the telco world is changing

A friend put me on to the Viber App a few weeks ago while I was overseas.  It lets your phone call another phone with the Viber app, using a wireless network, at no cost.  This means that I could call the office, friends and others with a Viber app on their phone and avoid having to call through a hotel or my regular mobile service.  The savings were extraordinary.  Viber is, in my view, easier and better than Skype.  Ideal for business travellers.  It’s also easy for businesses to call businesses.

No, this is not an ad.

My point, I guess, is that who’d be a telco right now?  Seriously. They are migrating from making money from phone calls to making money from the overarching network.  Hence the importance of the NBN play.  It’s a major structural shift for the telcos.  Not unlike the structural shift we are seeing in print and experiencing in newsagencies.

All around our businesses, and inside our businesses, change is the order of the day. Telcos are walking toward and even through change.  We need to do the same.

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Digital subscription to The Australian announced

I was fortunate to be briefed by News Ltd yesterday about the launch of a digital subscription service for The Australian which will launch on Monday.

The Australian is the first of the News Limited newspapers to move to the long talked about paywall model.  On Monday, they will start with a free three month trial.  This will be followed by a ‘freemium’ model – some content will be free but the good stuff will be behind a pay wall.

On Monday they launch a redesigned website and a new m-site for mobile devices.  The iPad App stays as is for the moment. After the three month free trial period, the price offers will be:

  1. $2.95 a week for what they are calling The Australian Digital Pass.  This will give you access to the entire website, iPad and Android Apps plus the m-site.
  2. $7.95 buys you The Australian Digital Pass for 7 days and the print newspaper home delivered for six days.
  3. $4.50 buys you The Australian Digital Pass for 7 days and The Weekend Australian home delivered.
  4. $5.20 a week buys you The Australian Digital Pass for 7 days, The Weekend Australian home delivered and one more single weekday edition home delivered.
  5. Existing six day subscription customers will receive the Digital Pass for no extra cost.

I like that they have print in with the mix.  While I am not a fan of paywalls, I understand that publishers like News have to take this step.

What the folks at News do not have an answer for at the moment is how newsagents could engage in selling the $2.95 a week Digital Pass. News is open to suggestions on this.  It is with their permission that I encourage newsagents to email their suggestions on how we could sell or promote or otherwise commercially engage in the Digital Pass.  Email your suggestions to: circulation@theaustralian.com.au.

It would be relatively easy for newsagents to sell coupons to pay for the digital subscription, like we sell the iTunes cards today or like a phone card on the eziPass platform.  We could also sell it directly through our newsagency software and gather required customer details for emailing by News of login for the digital content.  So a technology solution is achievable at the newsagent end, feeding data real-time to News.  There is a question whether News has the appropriate technology at their end to receive this data real time for efficient handling.

I have put the idea of a newsagency software based technology solution to News.  I’d encourage newsagents to put their ideas to the company.  This is at their invitation.  They are genuinely interested in engagement suggestions around driving uptake of the Digital Pass.

There will be some reading this saying that we should do nothing to assist or support the uptake of the Digital Pass.  Resistance or lack of engagement by newsagents will not slow or block the progress of the Digital Pass.  News is doing what I would do if I were them.  It is no different to magazine publishers embracing the iPad and Android devices or lottery companies selling their products online.  Such moves are inevitable.  It’s why we need to be reinvent our businesses outside of our business with magazine and newspaper publishers.

How we engage on opportunities around The Australian could define what we do when this model is offered for the state based dailies in the News Limited stable.

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Simply Knitting magazine App

I noticed this ad on a business news website last week, pomoting an App being launched for Simply Knitting magazine in the US via the new Apple Newsstand facility.  The latest developments from Apple in this space are certain to lure more publishers into pursuing subscribers through digital platforms.

I hope that newsagents are noticing these moves and are ensuring that their businesses are appropriately flexible.

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E-Singles – magazines follow music

Just as the iPod released the single song from the album, so is the iPhone, Kindle, Nook, iPad and other devices releasing the single article or topic from the magazine.  Check out the report published yesterday at PaidContent on E-Singles at magazine publisher Hearst in the US.

When I first wrote at this blog about tablets years ago, back when some in the newsagency channel said that they would not affect print, I said that the single article or single topic item for purchase will revolutionise the purchasing of content.  Now, thanks to Hearst and others, we get to see if this is the case.

Until now E-Singles have primarily been the domain of book and similar content publishers.  The Hearst move drives legitimacy for the format.  I’m told the some newspaper publishers are playing in this space too.

What does this mean for newsagents? Simple, it means we have to work harder to attract and keep our shoppers.  It also means that we need other products and services to attract shoppers to our businesses.  This latest E-Singles move intensifies the challenges (I’d call them opportunities) we face.

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New single edition to encourage publishing by more individuals

eWeek is reporting on a product announcement by Adobe which makes publishing single use or issue content.  While touted as a way of publishing brochures and the like, I am sure we will see this, and similar innovations, as a platform used by start ups to enter the digital publishing space.

So, as devices become easier to access, software makes engaging with mobile devices easier too.

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Transitioning magazines from print to digital

“My goal in life is to find a way to transition from [selling subscriptions] to selling access to a branded experience,” Sauerberg said. “Not just changing the price, but redefining the product in a way that creates a branded experience.”

This is Bob Sauerberg, president of Condé Nast speaking at the 2011 American Magazine Conference and as quoted in a report published by ADWEEK.

The US marketplace is far more dependent on subscriptions than Australia.  This is a reason they are approaching tablet computers differently to here, at the moment.

The best short / medium term opportunity Australian magazine publishers have to stem declining sales and even grow in some areas in newsagents.

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New Kindle Fire to push tablet market even further

The new Kindle Fire announced last week by Amazon will undoubtedly push the tablet market to new places.  This new device and the almost disposable price of the more traditional Kindle further opens this rapidly growing distribution channel for publishers of print content.

It is vitally important that newsagents are aware of these development when negotiating leases and shop fits.  Given that each is a five-year investment, we need to be committing to what key parts of our businesses will look like in five years.

Flexibility on all fronts is vital.

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If this is the experience of all classified advertisers

I was helping a friend manage their classified ads with a regional newspaper this week and wanted to search for one of their ads by content.  No, this was not possible.  I would have preferred to place the ad online, controlling the content myself.  No, this was not possible.   So, while the rest of the world embraces search and gets how important this is in business, this newspaper had to use some other, more arcane, method to find the ad.  The experience overall was awful, a real turn off for anyone wanting to advertise on the classified pages of this newspaper.

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Irony in the iPad giveaway

Is it just me or to others see the irony of Fairfax giving away iPads in their latest promotion of The Age newspaper? While I like the promotion, a consequence is that it helps build awareness of a channel alternative to print.

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Woolworths pushes the Amazon Kindle

Woolworths is pushing the Amazon Kindle through its supermarkets as well as Big W and Dick Smith stores.  This past week the supermarkets have put up posters promoting the Kindle.

While pitched as a book reader, the Kindle is just as much a newspaper and magazine reader.

This pitch by Woolworths is growing a new channel for print products like magazines and newspapers.  Newsagents need to be aware of this – not to be fearful or angry, but to be informed and strategic in our own business planning.  This move is absolutely expected by those who follow the roll out of new technology.

Now go to TechCrunch to read the first review of the Kindle tablet, the next generation Kindle. This review indicates that the tablet war is just beginning and that the digital channel is about to reach a new group of consumers given the lower entry cost.

Magazine and newspaper publishers continue to invest significant resources in pursuit of revenue from these new digital channels.  As music publishers found almost a decade ago, it is not a question of if this channel will become viable and then dominate but when.

While this tipping point is years out we have to make the most of today plus we have to be aware of and plan for the digital future.  These are times of excellent opportunities.

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Coles promotes magazines online

coles-mags.jpgColes runs a consistent campaign offering magazines for purchase through its online store, encouraging shoppers to add magazines to their online supermarket shopping purchase. It makes sense and is sure to see Coles achieve incremental magazine business as a result.  What strikes me about this is not that they offer magazines to their online shoppers but that they do it consistently.  This tells me that it works for them.

I am not suggesting newsagents do this.  No, it’s more about being aware of how others are promoting magazines.  Our points of difference are range and browser friendliness.  We need to play to these strengths.

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Background to the Google purchase of Motorola Mobility

Check out this PBS Newshour video which puts the Google US$12.5B purchase of Motorola Mobility this week into context.

Watch the full episode. See more PBS NewsHour.

Google is building its channel, gaining a stronger direct to the user relationship … just as Apple has done successfully much to the frustration of content makers such as book, magazine and music publishers and film producers.

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