Perhaps in time the so-called Dark Ages will be thought of as including
our own. – Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742 – 1799)
Time
Magazine Declared Digital Strategy “Genius”
Time magazine’s digital strategy is “genius,” according to L2, a think
tank specializing in luxury brands, in their Digital IQ survey released
yesterday. The surveys highlight magazines that are both thriving and
struggling to transition into the digital space. A total of 87 magazine
titles were profiled for the study, and Time was the only one to achieve
the “genius” title. Included in the list of titles profiled were
New York Magazine and Sports Illustrated in the “gifted” category and
Rolling Stone and Newsweek, which were deemed “average.” Among the
titles whose digital strategy needs works were Reader’s Digest and House
Beautiful, which were considered “challenged” and rounding out the list
in the “feeble” category were Men’s Journal and In Touch Weekly.
The study also found that magazines with larger parent companies
performed better than those without, and that most dedicated the
majority of their mobile resources focusing on the Apple iOS platform.
In addition, while every magazine profiled has an active Facebook and
Twitter account, the study found that circulation isn’t a guide to the
brand’s following, concluding, “the social media battleground is about
more than just active readership.”
Tablet Publishing: Why Sports Illustrated Is Looking Beyond the iPad by
Lauren Indv
http://mashable.com/2011/07/26/sports-illustrated-tablet/
The magazine industry’s current interest and investment in tablets
beyond the iPad
can be described as tentative at best.
It’s not terribly surprising. Even by the most conservative of estimates,
the iPad will make up the lion’s share of worldwide tablet sales for the
next three to four years. Nearly seven of every ten tablets in
consumers’ hands at year’s end will be iPads, Gartner
forecasts.
By comparison, Gartner estimates that Android will own 19.9% of the
tablet market by the end of 2011, followed by QNX (5.6%, used by the
BlackBerry PlayBook), webOS (4.0%, used by the HP TouchPad) and MeeGo
(1.1%).
Given early indications that the Android-based Motorola
Xoom and Galaxy
Tab are not selling well, that RIM has shipped – not sold – a mere
500,000 BlackBerry
PlayBooks, and that HP’s webOS TouchPad tablet has garnered only lukewarm
reviews, those numbers even strike us as a little ambitious.
(Asus’s Android
tablet appears to be selling well enough to compensate for the rest
of the Android tablet category, however.)
Despite evidence that sales of non-iOS tablets will not take off for the
next few years, a number of news organizations have launched
one-size-fits-all apps for Android tablets to complement their
multi-platform, “all access” subscription
offerings, and a few have even developed apps for RIM’s QNX platform
and Palm’s webOS software.
But very few magazine publishers have released full-fledged apps (by
which we mean more than PDF-like copies sold through apps like Zinio
) for the newer crop of tablets. Magazine apps typically require a
substantial investment in terms of resources, as each edition must be
formatted uniquely from its print counterpart rather than automatically
refreshed from a feed.
It’s for that reason that so many publishers previously waited to see if
the iPad would make a sizable impression on the market before developing
apps for the device, and why an even larger portion have not yet
allocated resources for developing other tablet editions. (If you
recall, more than a few
publishers made similar mistakes waiting to see if the web was here
to stay.)
Many have opted instead to focus on and build out their iPad editions –
that is, if they’re not still struggling to launch on the iPad in the
first place.
Despite slow development, we have been both impressed and, frankly, a
little puzzled by the way Sports Illustrated has tackled each new
device, churning out unique, richly interactive editions of its magazine
not every month, but every single week.
Why, we wondered, is Sports Illustrated bothering to produce editions
for these other tablets, when all evidence suggests it will be some time
before the devices reach consumers’ hands in significant numbers? Why
not allocate more resources to print, which still brings in the majority
of their ad revenue, or enrich its iPad version instead?
___________
A Substantial Investment
___________
In terms of time and staff, the requirement is substantial. Sports
Illustrated’s design team, headed up by creative director Chris Hercik,
must format the issue at a 4:3 ratio in both vertical and horizontal
formats for the iPad, at a vertical 16:9 ratio for the HP TouchPad, and
at a 16:9 ratio (horizontal only) for the Samsung Galaxy and Motorola Xoom.
Side by side: the same elements rendered for print (left), iPad
(center), and Galaxy Tab (right).
Furthermore, unique functions must be built for each platform. In a
recent music-themed double issue, Sports Illustrated was able to embed
iTunes songs in the iPad
edition, but other tablets had to link out to Amazon’s music player
so that readers could listen to songs.
The publication has been able to do all of this without staffing up, but
by working harder, faster and, ultimately, more efficiently.
Beginning Thursdays, editorial determines what long-term stories will
make the print issue while brainstorming creative extensions for the
tablet editions. As major events occur throughout the week, additional
stories are assigned by vertical editors (i.e. the baseball editor, or
the football editor) for print as well as the web.
The design team formats each issue for print and tablets simultaneously,
closing print Monday night, the iPad and HP TouchPad editions on
Tuesday, and Android
versions on Wednesday.
It’s an impressive feat. While many magazines are still struggling to
put out one tablet issue per month, often bringing in a “tablet editor”
and other staff to oversee its production, Sports Illustrated is
releasing four each week, having seamlessly integrated each of them into
the existing workflow without making significant new hires.
___________
What Sports Illustrated Stands To Gain
___________
Editor Terry McDonell at the Sports Illustrated offices in New York.
The work will pay off, Sports Illustrated Group editor Terry McDonell
expressed in a recent interview withMashable, and indeed it already has.
Sports Illustrated’s digital revenue was up 22% between 2009 and 2010,
and is on track for double-digit growth again this year.
Other magazines that were quick to adopt the iPad, such as Wired, have
reported similar
gains in digital revenue since launching iPad editions.
“We’re placing bets across the table, because we don’t know where we’re
going to be in 18 months. But [other tablet platforms] are going to
grow,” McDonell said.
What’s essential, he explained, is giving readers access to Sports
Illustrated wherever they are. It’s part of theall-access subscription
strategy the publication rolled out in March, which enables readers,
in theory, to access Sports Illustrated in the form most convenient to
them – print, web, mobile or tablets – at any time.
Among magazines, all-access is an unusual strategy – until last
week, no other magazine of which we are aware has rolled out a
similar offering. Glamour, Esquire and The Atlantic, to name three
examples, released nearly identical, paid and notably static magazine
products for both print and the iPad (which, until
recently, had to be purchased separately), and have a web operation,
run under a separate online editor, that produces live, freely available
content independent from the magazine.
The problem with the latter strategy is that the web arms of these
magazines are more like franchises than true embodiments of their
respective brands. Most of the content is produced by a different staff
with a different voice and, inevitably, a different standard of content
quality. Furthermore, readers are unable to seamlessly access all of the
content a publication produces. They must seek it out through a
combination of print, apps and browser navigation.
Ultimately, the latter three are doing their readers – and their brands
- a disservice by a) failing to enable readers to access all of their
content on the devices and platforms most convenient to them, and b)
keeping that content inconsistent in form, quality and voice across
platforms.
This is ultimately why there is a good chance that Sports Illustrated
stands to succeed – not only through digital revenue increases, but by
carving out the model that other successful magazine publications will
inevitably imitate.
