Special Magazine Issues Made Even More Special

The New York Times has just published a good article about magazine publishers making some waves with special issues – ESPN’s Body Issue for example, where athletes are featured in mostly nude poses.

Gary Belsky, editor in chief of ESPN The Magazine brings up a great point in the article: “These days, people are skeptical enough about print, or at least wary enough about print, that they’re looking for executions that differentiate print.”

This couldn’t be closer to the truth.

Belsky goes on to say, “Print can’t deliver music, video, but what print can deliver is beautiful, in-depth visuals and journalism that explores subjects in a particular kind of way.”

That’s a HUGE misconception with print. Print can actually deliver more now than ever. By distributing your “print” on paper and online in the same form, like a special issue, it can differentiate your publication and attract more advertisers.

Digital editions not only cost less to publish and distribute, they also allow publishers to up-sell really exciting features to advertisers like music, video, animated ads, rollover windows and hyperlinks. All of these things add an element of “cool” among audiences and allow advertisers to offer more dimensions and in turn, value, to their ad.

“Magazines need to offer these creative alternatives to standard pages,” said Charlie Zakin, vice president for corporate media at Hasbro in response to Hasbro running an ad on the November cover of FamilyFun magazine, the first time FamilyFun would do such an ad. (The cover would be a pocket and contain a pull-out sheet promoting Hasbro’s family-game-night initiative.)

Imagine a digital edition of FamilyFun, where an animated section of the cover would promote and link to a pop-up window, which would contain all of the information found in this fun pull-out sheet, complete with animation, audio or video about the family-game-night initiative. Cool, eh?

I’ll end with this quote from Deborah Mignucci, publisher of Disney FamilyFun:
“Print is not the medium that is in vogue right now, and so we have extra pressure to overdeliver to our advertisers.”

Magazine Publishers, use a digital edition to spring up some new advertising sales. With animated, interactive ad pages you can start overdelivering now.