Maureen Werner is president of Magazines Canada. Werner is the association’s first full-time executive since 1986.

Magazines share many challenges facing other major media: tight advertising budgets, redirection of funds to trade and consumer promotion, competition from new forms of electronic and other new media.

To meet these challenges, the magazine industry must sell and establish magazines as a singularly powerful and relevant medium.

Maximize strengths

We must demonstrate how to maximize magazines’ strengths and harvest their resources.

Recently, many marketing efforts have been driven by short-term goals.

Brand awareness, image, and, consequently, brand loyalty have been compromised.

The magazine industry must demonstrate that successful marketing strategy truly supports the product or service – not just for today, but also for tomorrow.

We are optimistic advertisers will initiate activity to reinforce brand awareness and image, and keep consumers faithful to a brand.

We will illustrate that magazines contribute to immediate sales, but, most importantly, achieve lasting consumer faith in brands, and that magazines outperform other media because of their one-on-one relationship with the consumer.

Not new

One intriguing challenge magazines face is the illusion we are not new – we weren’t discovered today. We aren’t ‘emerging’ now.

It is Magazines Canada’s mandate to put ‘discovery’ back into the selling and buying of magazines – discovery of why and how magazines achieve advertising objectives; discovery of the fact that – magazines sell.

The major objectives driving marketing efforts demand attributes magazines have always offered, still offer and always will offer.

It is our responsibility to identify these attributes and demonstrate to advertisers how to profit from them.

ccountability: Accountability has many facets. Here are two that demonstrate the magic of magazines is void of smoke and mirrors.

1) As of this date, one Canadian magazine generated more than 60,000 orders from its marketplace advertising. One article alone generated 41,000 responses. One reader service card generates an average 13,122 leads per issue for participating advertisers.

Readers have been known to enter retail shops and car dealerships holding a copy of the product they want in their hands.

They took the ads out of magazines. Magazine readers respond. They respond to editorial messages. They respond to advertising messages.

PMB

2) Magazines created the PMB Print Measurement Bureau, which has a membership of more than 230 publishers, ad agencies and advertisers, which also serve on its board and all committees.

Marketers know who they are reaching and what they are buying from quantitative and qualitative perspectives when using pmb.

More than 75 advertisers are paying members. This fact alone demonstrates the respect and credibility the study generates.

Relationship marketing: Above all other media, magazines establish firm and lasting bonds with their audiences. They reflect readers’ personalities, interests and activities. Each issue further entrenches these relationships.

The act of reading is an intimate one. An active mind becomes involved with a subject; willing to explore it, learn from it and often respond to it.

Consider the vast number of letters to the editor. These readers cared about what they read.

Consider the vast number of requests for further information about a product or service advertised within magazines. Advertising generated interest, and readers responded.

Advertisers share the benefits of these close relationships when they invest in magazines. The investment involves trust, continuity and active involvement. It is relationship marketing at its best.

Niche targetting: Homemakers, nature lovers, news or fashion junkies, political savants, parents, children, teens, cooks, drivers, travellers, city dwellers, cottage owners, the health-conscious.

Advertisers may be as specific as their service or product demands by demographic, interest or activity, and magazines will meet the challenge.

Niche masters

Magazines have names, addresses and geodemographics. Magazines have databases. Niche marketing was invented the same time magazines were.

Efficiencies: Controlled budgets demand constructive, creative strategies to optimize dollars. Magazines offer maximum effect for minimum dollars, regardless of how broad or selective the market.

Advertising in magazines endures. Ads can be held, read and reread, and filed for future reference. That’s efficiency at work.

Magazine ads are affordable to produce. No other medium offers such strategic use of ad dollars with such a wide range of creative options.

Magazines are in continuous development.

The process of keeping magazines vibrant and relevant to the reader demands constant attention and renewal, and publishers are steadfast in this commitment.

Publishers also ensure magazines remain vibrant and relevant to the advertiser.

Advertisers choose from a myriad of options, traditional display advertising to select binding and ink-jet techniques, designed to enhance and anchor communication.

Magazines constantly mine the benefits technological advancements provide for readers and for advertisers.

For example, magazines are discovering the vast range of opportunities offered by online, cd-rom and interactive applications.

Magazines Canada and the magazine industry must passionately reinforce these messages. The future belongs not to what is new, but what is effective – what sells product and services.

The 1990s and beyond are demanding attributes magazines alone have always owned: relationships, involvement, loyalty, interaction, trust, differentiation.

These attributes are responsible for making magazines distinct among all media. These same attributes are responsible for making magazines an intrinsic element of a media mix.

Magazines and other media form strategic and creative alliances to achieve advertising and marketing objectives.

Benefits

Magazines Canada and the magazine industry are enthusiastically extolling the virtues of magazines. We are illustrating the benefits they offer advertisers.

Although we are professionals, the amateur spirit prevails: fresh attitudes, high energy, respect for challenge and exceeding goals and the confidence that comes from knowing magazines make a difference.

Magazines understand commitment, involvement, partnerships. We bring this understanding to advertisers, offering strategic solutions key to realizing today’s and tomorrow’s advertising challenges.

It is one of my greater pleasures to increase awareness of the magazine industry by expanding Magazines Canada’s membership and illustrating the vast range of talent, environment, niche markets and opportunities available to advertisers.

The magazine industry is a rich one. It is an imaginative, fascinating one.

Our readers think so, and we are confident advertisers will increasingly want to share in its dynamics.