ALTERNATIVE MEDIA: Customized Content

You don’t have to be a Big Shot like Oprah to launch your own magazine. In fact, all you have to be is a Big Boy.

Brand marketers increasingly are realizing the potential of custom magazines as a viable tool — particularly when their objective is customer relationship management.

Historically, custom magazines created specifically for marketing purposes have had a poor reputation in the U.S., in large part because the prohibitive costs of production kept them from looking like anything more than cheap throw-aways. But marketers have become more willing to invest significant money in brand-specific publications that can help foster a deeper relationship with consumers.

“This is all about building customer loyalty,” says Michele Bartnik, marketing communications manager at Irvine, CA-based Lincoln Mercury, which contracts publishing behemoth Condé Nast to produce a quarterly magazine called American Luxury. Named after the Lincoln brand’s tagline, the publication comes out in two versions: one for Lincoln Town Car owners, one for owners of the sportier Lincoln LS and Navigator models.

“This isn’t just an automobile magazine. We want to give customers something they can apply to their lives,” says Bartnik. Thus, articles run the gamut from fashion to travel to financial management as Lincoln seeks to position the brand within an owner’s overall lifestyle.

“These communication vehicles are welcomed and appreciated because they’re comparable to the best newsstand magazines,” says Kathy Gogick, vp-business development at Redwood Custom Communications, New York City, which publishes titles for such brands as Home Depot, Safeway, and Volvo. “The concept is really ready to take off” because, if the content suits the target audience well, these magazines can be “so engaging their average read time is 47 minutes,” she says.

The concept is taking off so well, in fact, that custom publishing avoided the revenue downturn suffered by the rest of the magazine industry last year, posting 10-percent growth to an estimated $1.5 billion, according to the Magazine Publishers of America’s Custom Publishing Council, New York City.

Captivating the Audience

While it’s still a fledgling pursuit here, brand-specific publishing is commonplace in the U.K., where six of the 10 best-read magazines are custom publications, including such un-Glamour-ous titles as Safeway, Marks & Spencer, and Sky Customer (from digital TV service BskyB).

“In the U.K., not having a custom magazine would be as unthinkable as a U.S. brand not having a p.r. budget,” says Simon Kelly, who came stateside to head London-based TPD Publishing’s Fluent Communications, a Seattle publisher that produces titles for Eddie Bauer, Spiegel, and Microsoft Corp.

Although most brand-specific U.S. titles can’t provide the reach of advertisements in mainstream magazines, custom publications certainly can cut right to the chase. Surveys conducted by the 1.4 million-circulation Volvo Magazine found that one-third of readers bought a Volvo product because they received the publication. (Try getting that level of response from a media ad.); 44 percent of Sears Roebuck & Co.’s New Outlook readers said they are more likely to buy from the chain than its competitors; and 38 percent of Home Depot’s Style Ideas readers say they’re more likely to buy something because it’s featured in the magazine. (Redwood handles all three titles.)

Still, the strategy isn’t designed to produce short-term results. “If you want to sell something immediately, you’re better off with a coupon or a discount offer,” says Diana Pohly, president of Pohly & Partners, Boston, which produces magazines for Sotheby’s, Continental Airlines, and Blue Cross Blue Shield. “This is a loyalty tool,” concurs Rick LaFave, managing director at Campbell-Ewald, Warren, MI, which handles publishing chores for such clients as Farmers Insurance and Pier 1 Imports. “You need to give it a year at least.”

High-end and Low-brow

Marketers employ a wide variety of publishing strategies — they don’t call it “custom publishing” for nothing, after all. Content generally eschews the blatant sales pitch for “lifestyle” articles tailored to the brand’s audience, so Kraft’s food & family is heavy on the recipes while Mudd Jean’s Mudd Zine leans on profiles of teen celebrities.

Frequency can sometimes be as infrequent as annual (such as Nintendo of America’s Frequency), but more often is at least quarterly and sometimes monthly.

Distribution depends on a brand’s points of contact. Most are mailed, although companies with real estate generally distribute through stores.

Likewise, costs vary greatly, and can range from $300,000 per year for a simple newsletter to as much as $5 million annually for a glossy, four-color magazine, according to Pohly.

Costs can sometimes be reduced through the sale of third-party advertising, although that strategy can potentially dilute the intended one-to-one connection between brand and customer. Lincoln’s American Luxury, for instance, recently began accepting about 10 outside ads per issue, but is limiting the program to upscale brands such as Movado and Saks Fifth Avenue that match its own high-end image.

“You have to strike a delicate balance. On one hand, advertising is a familiar element that adds credibility. It also helps mitigate costs,” says Gogick. “But this is a marketing tool and you have to limit the ad space so it doesn’t take away from your own message.”

At the high end of the market are titles like Sotheby’s Domain, a 100-page glossy (produced by Pohly & Partners) the New York-City auction house delivers to 85,000 targets twice a year. The magazine’s multi-pronged distribution plan includes mail, airport newsstands (at a cover price of $8.95), events, and hand delivery. With articles on pricey real estate and interior decorating — along with auction listings, of course — Sotheby’s Domain “has been an engaging and inviting publication that initiates a dialogue with current and potential customers,” says Sotheby’s senior vp-marketing Laura Killam.

On the more blue-collar end is Big Boy Magazine, a cross between a comic book and Tiger Beat that Warren, MI-based Big Boy Restaurants has been giving away in restaurants since the 1950s. The title averages 10 pages, is published every six weeks, and is read by about one million kids. Yoe Studios, Peekskill, NY, produces.

“I had the original Big Boy comic book as a kid,” says Tony Michaels, the chain’s ceo. “I wanted to keep that same irreverence while bringing the book into the 21st century.”

“The Internet stole the spotlight from magazines, but people love to read,” says Craig Yoe, founder of Yoe Studios. “There’s still nothing more intimate than the printed page.”

Yoe also produces Mudd Zine, a three-year-old mini-magazine of celebrity interviews, games, and fashion tips stuffed into the back pockets of Mudd Jeans at retail. New York City-based Mudd distributed about seven million copies in 2001, and estimates that as many as 12 million teens saw it.

“It builds our customer base without us having to do costly or pushy ‘buy our product’ type ads,” says Mudd partner and designer Jo Ann Jacobsen. “We’ve been told that, very often, they go ‘missing’ in the stores.”

Newsstand-Worthy

Los Angeles-based Farmers Insurance’s 40-page quarterly, Friendly Exchange, ranks as the largest controlled-circulation magazine in the U.S. (and the seventh largest overall) with a circulation of six million. The title was launched 20 years ago as a travel publication, but underwent a major repositioning in 1995. Campbell-Ewald produces.

“This was always seen as one of those nice things to do for our customers,” says director of editorial services David Crocker of the changes. “We wanted to keep that touchy-feely aspect, but this magazine also costs $9 million per year to produce. We needed ROI.”

Having broadened the content to include articles on insurance, home buying, and other topics more closely aligned with the company’s core competencies, Farmers now estimates that the publication inspires $439 million in incremental sales each year. “For a $9 million investment, that ain’t bad,” says Crocker.

Making content consistent with the brand message is key, whether the connection is subtle or blatant. Fort Worth, TX-based Pier 1 Imports recently changed the theme of its Design Senses title (which is mailed to 330,000 store credit-card holders and 40,000 interior designers) to better reflect the in-store experience. “Originally, there was a lot more editorial,” says vp-marketing Leslie Eades. “It’s become more pictorial since our customers want to see the products and get a feel for what’s going on in the stores.” Campbell-Ewald produces.

And, of course, these days a magazine doesn’t necessarily have to be made of ink and paper. “Custom publishing is really a misnomer,” says Kelly at Fluent, which supplies editorial content to cataloger Spiegel.com. “We refer to it as ‘branded content’ [because] it needs to be media-neutral.”

As long as it’s consumer-friendly, too.