Ian Reeves

Customer publishing becomes ‘content marketing’  Customer magazines are used by large corporate organisations as part of their marketing strategy  They encourage the ‘brand values’ of their organisations by using professional editorial teams to create content that reflects their customers’ aspirations  They often provide in-depth information on products, deals and services.

Examples Airlines, retailers, car manufacturers, travel companies, membership clubs, financial institutions and property companies all produce customer magazines

Tesco Magazine1,945,015 Asda Magazine1,944,393 Morrisons Magazine1,293,617 Tesco Real Food1,225,417 John Lewis Edition 487,550 Asos446,055 Waitrose Kitchen412,681 The Garden (RHS)359,897 Sainsbury’s Magazine215,109 Odeon Magazine203,140

Customer publishing market  Average customer magazine circulation: 321,257  Combined total circulation: 137 million  5% of titles reach more than 1 million readers  14% have circulation greater than 250,000

Distribution  Magazines are circulated in several ways:  Direct mail  Free at point of contact  Distributed with newspapers  Door drops  Digital distribution

Customer publishing sector value (£m) The market was worth £496m in 2011

Customer publishing sector value forecast (£m) Industry estimated to be worth £630m by 2016

Readers’ views  39.4% agreed they were as well produced and interesting to read as other magazines  68.2% said they didn’t bother to read customer magazines  23.3% said they would read in-flight magazine  22.2% said they would read free magazines from retail outlets such as Boots or M&S.

Does it work?  “In 2013 more than 60,000 car sales were directly attributable to behaviour prompted by the magazine” – claim from publishers of Audi magazine.

Customer publishing formats

Customer publishing companies  Cedar Communications clients include BA and Tesco  Condé Nast clients include Ferrari and Maybourne hotels  Ink clients include RyanAir and Thomas Cook  Redwood clients include Barclays, Boots and Fiat  John Brown clients include Waitrose and John Lewis  Publicis Blueprint clients include Asda and Cath Kidson  River Publishing clients include Superdrug and Honda

Further reading  MediaWeek’s sector analysis: /sector-analysis-customer-publishing /sector-analysis-customer-publishing  The Content Marketing Association