Research - Institutions and Distributions

By Deanna Hammond-Blackburn and Emma Hall

We would choose Bauer Media to distribute our magazine as it is one of Europe's largest media distributing groups who have offices in Spain, France, Austria, Poland, Romania, Hungary, Czech Republic, Russia and the UK. This is appropriate for our magazine as we would like to distribute around Europe as well as in the UK, and we've chosen a title, 'Vive', for our magazine that would appeal to continental consumers. Bauer are well known for producing popular magazines like Q, who we have analysed extensively in our similar product research as it has the same older indie target audience as we do. Our magazine is taking a new direction by targeting older readers of both genders but predominantly women, as most magazines are aimed solely at men. At the time of its creation, Q was also aimed at a niche market; therefore Bauer would be ideally suited to distribute our magazine to a similarly uncatered-for market. Bauer also produce a more rock influenced magazine ‘Kerrang!’, and a ‘classics’ magazine ‘Mojo’. These are all aimed towards male readers, so although our magazine is similar to the aforementioned ‘Q’, we are still different enough to be worth investing in.

Q has also become more than just a magazine, but also an international brand that has its own radio station and music TV channel,  hosts live music events and even holds the revered ‘Q awards’ show, attended by many great artists. It is clear that Bauer have been very successful in catapulting the brand beyond just what is printed onto paper, and has effectively increased the recognisability and popularity of ‘Q’ by spreading it across different media. With all the extra publicity for ‘Q’ feeding back into magazine sales, it is clear that there is a lot of profit to be made through this system, and I believe ‘Vive’ would benefit from stretching out into other areas once the magazine has been established. Q is also a monthly magazine and offers digital editions, to be downloaded onto the Apple iPad, with an app called ‘Newsstand’, which houses several magazines on a ‘shelf’. These magazines, once downloaded, can be viewed anywhere, and are exact copies of the printed version, even to the extent that the user ‘flips’ the page by swiping their finger across the screen. Having a digital edition of our magazine could increase sales, as the ‘Newsstand’ format allows the user to carry several magazines around with them at once without any extra weight, and the technology also has the potential to add extras to the digital edition which cannot be put into a printed version. For example, some magazines include hyperlinks in the text that take the reader directly to the magazine’s or an artist’s website. Some graphics on the page can also be animated, and sound clips can be added in places, giving the reader a more complete experience of the magazine, which would encourage people to read our magazine over one that can only be bought at a newsagent.

Currently, ‘Q’ is only available on the iPad, which has an LCD screen. More realistic methods of reading magazines would be on devices like Kindles, which use ‘e-paper’ technology which reflects light naturally instead of emitting light itself, to give the reader the feeling of reading an actual magazine instead of feeling like they are straining their eyes at a computer screen. However, the Apple range of devices are more widely used by potential readers, so it makes sense if we were to offer ‘Vive’ to customers through them, though we may wish to look at expanding into other devices like Kindles.

 Bauer Media has also invested a lot of time and money into developing the ‘Q’ website, with links across all its media, exclusive online content in extension to the magazine, links to monthly subscriptions of the magazine, and even a shop where readers can purchase merchandise like previous magazine overs and t-shirts. This will have to be a vital component of our magazine publicity, as we intend to offer a free single or behind the scenes content that is exclusive to our magazine buyers. This will involve either scanning a QR code using Android phones, Blackberrys or iPhones, or typing in a code found inside the magazine. Readers would need to visit the website to type/scan in their code and reclaim their exclusive content. This process would be a unique selling point for our magazine, and also be a good technique to introduce the website to readers.

Our magazine could also benefit from publicity using social media networks like Facebook and Twitter, both of which are used by ‘Q’ magazine. They could work in tangent with the website to offer exclusives and would keep regular users thinking about ‘Vive’ by updating with status’ and tweets regularly. For our magazine, twitter would be more of a focus, as it is a network more aimed toward an older, adult audience than Facebook, which is widely recognised as being used predominantly by teenagers. Twitter also has the advantage of being able to link regular people directly with famous people. We could use this aspect of the site by asking musicians to ‘guest – tweet’ using the ‘Vive’ account, meaning readers could talk directly to their favourite artists through the magazine, increasing interest in us as well as them. If verified musicians commented or retweeted ‘Vive’ tweets, it would also boost interest in the magazine, as followers of the musician would see our tweet, and think of the magazine as having value, if their favourite musician was interested in it.