As Coach joins the freemium ranks and the NME moves away from the paid-for model, Stuart Charlton reflects on how free came in from the cold.
Waterloo Road London, England. It’s the morning rush hour and another free magazine is being waved in the faces of commuters trying to leave the station. NME, a title that used to sell a quarter of a million copies every week, was re-launched several weeks ago. Now the aim is to give away 300,000 copies for free. The same scenario is played out daily at rail stations across the UK, as more and more publishers are having to evolve. Time Out, Sport, Shortlist, Stylist… Dennis recently launched Coach, a new health and fitness title to join the melee at Waterloo Road. I wonder which one will be next?
We now live in an era of free stuff; and the stuff being given away at Waterloo station is content. An eclectic mix of useful, engaging magazine content produced to a high quality by respected and well-known journalists and talented designers. There are lots of brands and advertisers supporting this freemium model. NME has ads from ebay, Topman and Gillette. All clearly influenced by their advertising agencies able to see the value of these titles. Why would you not place an ad campaign in a well-crafted publication with a targeted (ish) super-large print run?
There has always been an audience for well-written and expertly designed free magazines. Publisher and industry research can prove that magazines produced for brands by content marketing agencies (contract publishers back in the day) deliver engagement and sell product. These free magazines from the old school customer or contract publishing agencies always competed for advertising budgets with established newsstand publications.
A decade ago free magazines were not valued in agency land. The view was that if you walked into WH Smith, selected a magazine off the newsstand and paid for it you were much more engaged and interested in the content, and therefore more likely to see the ads and respond to them.
On the flip side of this the perception from some agency staff was that if you received a free magazine from a store where you are a loyal shopper or you were mailed a publication from a brand from whom you buy a service, you would place no value on it and would bung it in the bin.
Free magazines played second fiddle to paid for titles and ad teams from customer publishers were usually given short shrift by brands and their agencies.
Today things have changed dramatically. Content marketing has been embraced. The free thing is no longer an issue – the challenge for publishers is making the free thing work. Most especially, shifting a publication such as NME into the free space with a fundamental shift in look and feel. It’s a risk but I won’t be the only one hoping it works.
The good thing about the NME strategy is that it has multiple distribution outlets, from Topman and HMV to music venues and universities (and don’t forget Waterloo Road). If you had presented this model to the media buying agencies 10 years ago they would have slammed the door. But today the improved quality of free magazines means they are attracting more consumers and advertisers than ever.
Stuart Charlton is PCP’s commercial director
