Accessories from the NZZ Chinese
Magalogs Globus demonstrates its innovative spirit with its Shanghai catalog, which has been upgraded to a lifestyle magazine. And is starting to compete with magazine publishers.
Magalogs Globus demonstrates its innovative spirit with its Shanghai catalog, which has been upgraded to a lifestyle magazine. And is starting to compete with magazine publishers.
The Swiss consumer spring is bringing many a Chinese bloom this year. Zurich's Chinagarten, for example, is using mailshots to advertise "particularly authentic finger food" at its new opening, and the department store Manor is promoting its "China Today" weeks on posters and in newspaper supplements. Competitor Globus, on the other hand, relies on a no less exotic mixed medium, the "Magalog" (see box), to advertise its exotic Shanghai promotions and products (at least here in Switzerland). Its content and visual concept, which was implemented for the first time last Christmas, was developed by Zurich-based corporate publishing agency Primafila - of course in close coordination with the Globus marketing department, as co-owner Viviane Egli emphasizes. For Egli, the 84-page customer magazine, which is published in a print run of 250,000 copies and four-fifths of which is sent directly to customer card holders, is also "not a magalog in the classic sense". By "classic", however, she does not mean Lucky, the American mother of all magalogs, but, for example, the domestic Kuoni catalogs, which have been based on the principle of product storytelling for a year now.
With Shanghai, Primafila, together with its Munich-based editorial design partner Horst Moser, has further expanded and significantly refined the new Swiss genre of the sales brochure with journalistic standards. None other than Urs Schoettli, the NZZ's China correspondent since 2002, reports on the local tea culture and handbag wearers. His reports - like all editorial articles - are accompanied by images of the Chinese goods on sale in the twelve Globus stores until the end of May.
As with other high-quality CP titles, companies are also becoming potential competitors to traditional magazine publishers with Magalogs. However, Globus marketing manager Urs Freudiger puts this into perspective: "We don't see ourselves as publishers." The long-term thinking required for this with regard to the reader and (third-party) advertising market is lacking. "As soon as Jelmoli, for example, copies the Magalog idea, we try something new. Until then, we benefit from our first-mover advantage."
Refinancing third-party advertisementsEven more than the innovative product, the fact that Shanghai offers attractive advertising space in addition to appealing content is likely to be a strategic headache for publishers. And markets it cleverly. Thanks to an estimated page price of 25,000 francs (Freudiger refuses to give exact figures) and 15 bookings, the Christmas edition was "almost completely refinanced". In the current issue of the biannual Magalog, however, there are only 2.5 paid advertising pages. But next Christmas it will "certainly be more lavish again", says Freudiger confidently. And if not? "No problem, unlike the publishers, we don't live from this business."
Hybrid print genreOne of the first German references to the American "magalog" can be found in the "Dictionary of trendy languages" published by the Hamburg Trend Office. As early as mid-2000, this dictionary defined the conceptual combination of magazine and catalog as a "blending of information, entertainment and advertising into a new medium". For the left-wing alternative daily newspaper (taz), on the other hand, the new bastards on the press boulevard are simply "editorially enriched and journalistically concealed shopping lists".
In the USA, magalogs are so successful in the reader and advertising market that the trade press has been celebrating them for years as the "shooting stars and cash cows of the magazine industry" (Media Week). The market leader is Condé Nast with the monthly title Lucky (paid circulation 2004: over 1 million copies) for the female target audience and Cargo (350000 copies), launched a year ago, for the male target audience. In France, too, money can be made with journalistically styled purchase recommendations, as Gruner + Jahr has been proving since 2003 with its quarterly Magalog Shopping.
However, its German version was reintegrated into the parent magazine Woman at the end of 2004. Shortly before this, Bauer Verlag had withdrawn Shop & Style from circulation and Milchstrasse had suspended its Amico. It will be interesting to see whether innovative retail companies and retailers - or rather their corporate publishers - will be able to find the
shing agencies - will have more luck with this new genre in German-speaking countries than the (for the time being) failed magazine publishers. (oc)
Product advertising journalistically prepared: Kuoni made the start, Globus is following suit.
Oliver Classen
The Swiss consumer spring is bringing many a Chinese bloom this year. Zurich's Chinagarten, for example, is using mailshots to advertise "particularly authentic finger food" at its new opening, and the department store Manor is promoting its "China Today" weeks on posters and in newspaper supplements. Competitor Globus, on the other hand, relies on a no less exotic mixed medium, the "Magalog" (see box), to advertise its exotic Shanghai promotions and products (at least here in Switzerland). Its content and visual concept, which was implemented for the first time last Christmas, was developed by Zurich-based corporate publishing agency Primafila - of course in close coordination with the Globus marketing department, as co-owner Viviane Egli emphasizes. For Egli, the 84-page customer magazine, which is published in a print run of 250,000 copies and four-fifths of which is sent directly to customer card holders, is also "not a magalog in the classic sense". By "classic", however, she does not mean Lucky, the American mother of all magalogs, but, for example, the domestic Kuoni catalogs, which have been based on the principle of product storytelling for a year now.
With Shanghai, Primafila, together with its Munich-based editorial design partner Horst Moser, has further expanded and significantly refined the new Swiss genre of the sales brochure with journalistic standards. None other than Urs Schoettli, the NZZ's China correspondent since 2002, reports on the local tea culture and handbag wearers. His reports - like all editorial articles - are accompanied by images of the Chinese goods on sale in the twelve Globus stores until the end of May.
As with other high-quality CP titles, companies are also becoming potential competitors to traditional magazine publishers with Magalogs. However, Globus marketing manager Urs Freudiger puts this into perspective: "We don't see ourselves as publishers." The long-term thinking required for this with regard to the reader and (third-party) advertising market is lacking. "As soon as Jelmoli, for example, copies the Magalog idea, we try something new. Until then, we benefit from our first-mover advantage."
Refinancing third-party advertisementsEven more than the innovative product, the fact that Shanghai offers attractive advertising space in addition to appealing content is likely to be a strategic headache for publishers. And markets it cleverly. Thanks to an estimated page price of 25,000 francs (Freudiger refuses to give exact figures) and 15 bookings, the Christmas edition was "almost completely refinanced". In the current issue of the biannual Magalog, however, there are only 2.5 paid advertising pages. But next Christmas it will "certainly be more lavish again", says Freudiger confidently. And if not? "No problem, unlike the publishers, we don't live from this business."
Hybrid print genreOne of the first German references to the American "magalog" can be found in the "Dictionary of trendy languages" published by the Hamburg Trend Office. As early as mid-2000, this dictionary defined the conceptual combination of magazine and catalog as a "blending of information, entertainment and advertising into a new medium". For the left-wing alternative daily newspaper (taz), on the other hand, the new bastards on the press boulevard are simply "editorially enriched and journalistically concealed shopping lists".
In the USA, magalogs are so successful in the reader and advertising market that the trade press has been celebrating them for years as the "shooting stars and cash cows of the magazine industry" (Media Week). The market leader is Condé Nast with the monthly title Lucky (paid circulation 2004: over 1 million copies) for the female target audience and Cargo (350000 copies), launched a year ago, for the male target audience. In France, too, money can be made with journalistically styled purchase recommendations, as Gruner + Jahr has been proving since 2003 with its quarterly Magalog Shopping.
However, its German version was reintegrated into the parent magazine Woman at the end of 2004. Shortly before this, Bauer Verlag had withdrawn Shop & Style from circulation and Milchstrasse had suspended its Amico. It will be interesting to see whether innovative retail companies and retailers - or rather their corporate publishers - will be able to find the
shing agencies - will have more luck with this new genre in German-speaking countries than the (for the time being) failed magazine publishers. (oc)
Product advertising journalistically prepared: Kuoni made the start, Globus is following suit.
Oliver Classen
