Content Decoded

This week’s POV on the state of content is penned by Rick Liebling, an industry thought-leader I personally admire and look up to.

Rick Liebling is the Global Director of Client Management at  Taylor, a marketing communications agency.In this post he talks about the need for innovation and integration within existing content formats. Read on!

I think a lot of the conversation regarding content today revolves around platforms, distribution channels, digital v. analog and asynchronous v. live. These are all important issues, but at the heart of it they aren’t as important as the actual content. I think this is particularly true when it comes to something like print magazines.

I love magazines for many reasons. Convenient, portable, relatively inexpensive, targeted. And yet magazines are losing out to the web because, well, because it’s easier to read the content online? Hmmm, not sure about that. Pretty tough to read a magazine from your computer on the beach or on the train. Perhaps the challenges the publishing industry is facing are rooted in something else.: quality of the content.

Over the past several months I’ve read cover story feature interviews of Daniel Craig, Clive Owen, Gerard Butler, Eric Bana and Hugh Jackman.  The format for all of them was pretty much identical: Describe the restaurant where the author meets the actor, with a brief mention of the food consumed; a brief backstory on their childhood and then off to do something that shows what regular blokes they are. None of these guys seemed particularly daring, dashing or dangerous – all things they are quite adept at playing on screen. But it’s not just the carefully controlled interview. Out of 12 issues, how many times can Men’s Health trumpet “the ultimate ab blasting workout?” Apparently 10 or 11 times per year.

And while the copy often lacks imagination or style, the art is even less compelling. When was the last time you saw anything even as remotely challenging as what George Lois was doing for Esquire in the 1960s? As the magazines all fight for the same handful of Hollywood stars to grace their covers it gets harder to tell one publication from another.

Are there still good books out there, still talented editors, writers and photographers? Absolutely. But many have fallen into a rut of safety and herd mentality, leaving the daring work to smaller niche pubs like Stop Smiling or Monocle. It’s time to stop running cover shots by focus groups or committees and time to start letting crazy mad men like Hunter Thompson or literary iconoclasts like A. J. Liebling (no relation) go off on flights of fancy.

Uncompromising. Unexpected. Unconventional. Bring these back to magazines and the readers just may come back as well. Or maybe it calls for something even more radical. Perhaps a completely different approach to combining content along with advertising could create an entirely new business model. What if magazines looked to partner with content creators and advertisers to create a completely integrated publication? What might that look like? Let me lay out an example:

Start with a magazine like the previously mentioned Esquire. It appeals to an upscale, sophisticated man who is interested in fashion, women, luxury items, travel, etc. Now, add the content in the form of critically-acclaimed television show, Mad Men. The issue would include interviews with Sterling Cooper’s Don Draper, a Women We Love feature on Joan (neé Holloway) Harris, a look at the summer home of Bert Cooper and original fiction from Ken Cosgrove, just to name a few.

From an advertising standpoint, issue exclusivity could be worked out with the television advertisers of the show, along with broadcaster AMC and regular Esquire advertisers that fit in with the thematic. Could Esquire do this 12 times a year? No, but think of the buzz that would be created once a year as they did this with a hot TV show, or the latest Bond film. I’m sure there are dozens of reasons why something like this wouldn’t work, and the people who are willing to watch publications fold will tell me what those reasons are. The point is, there are opportunities out there for those brave, bold or crazy enough to try them out.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 20th, 2009 at 12:33 pm and is filed under The State of Content. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.