Trade press - the quality publications

The last blog - "The changed role of trade press" - brought a deserved rebuke from an editor for failing to mention the quality publications.

At the centre of the blog item was the old and on-going practice that evolved from 'colour separation charges' into the now quite open charge to print press releases. A subject also picked up today on another blog. At one end of the publishing spectrum are the vaguely positioned publications that seem to have no defined target audience, perhaps deliberately so to accommodate a breadth of content in the form of published press releases. Here is an example of such a communication following up the initial 'sales' call. Only client details have been removed for reasons of confidentiality. 

"Hi,

Hope your well, nice talking to you earlier, here is a quick email discussing what we are looking too do with your company. We are looking too feature xyz groups ( name of item removed)  'within our industrial feature in the next issue of the publication, Its due to the fact that we have been let down with artwork at the last minute and need to fill the relevant space. As a result we will be reducing the cost to £125+vat as it is normally alot more than this. I hope to here from you soon. If you are happy too proceed, could you please reply reserving down your location and i will send you a booking form. 

We are national basis to 15000 readers which include company directors, plant managers,maintenece engineers, machine builders , design engineers, health and safety officers etc.

Kind Regards" 

What I failed to mention is that despite the emergence of the opportunist publishers most sectors still benefit from the continued existence of quality journals.  The comment on the last blog from the editor of such a quality publication offered the following conclusion.

"Industry needs a symbiotic relationship with a healthy trade press. While the enquiry mechanism has undoubtedly moved online, there is a mass of independent research highlighting that ideas are generated and business decisions made on the printed page. While the paid for advertorial magazines persist, they drag the whole of industry down around them. Those of us in the quality press do our utmost to maintain standards and to hold industry up around us. It is time that more of the PR world tried to do the same."


In previous blogs we have observed the importance of news items/press releases online in contributing to search engine optimisation performance and also the archive role of news items online. However there is emphatically a role for the quality printed publication that provides well informed and researched content that offers an authoritative voice in the industry sector it addresses.  

The changed role of trade press

Despite the growth of online news and failure of some established trade journals, there is still a proliferation of titles. So what has happened?

Before the Internet, the trade press played an important role in publishing news about a company and its products. Generally speaking editorial content was published on the merits and news interest of the story and not, in an ideal world, by the advertising spend of the company in question. The aim was to produce a quality, interesting, relevant, informed and trusted magazine. Companies wanted their news published because of the credibility and apparent independence of appearing in a respected and well read journal. Because there were often many titles, company  strategy was to place display advertising only in the leading books and use PR to gain mention in the rest. Most employed a PR agency to cosy up to editors and get their press releases published.

Even before the Internet the trade press landscape was changing. Publishers were experiencing cost pressures and many looked to increase revenue by effectively charging to publish press releases. Of course it was not presented like that, the requests were along the lines that the editor had selected the news item for publication but would you mind contributing towards the cost of colour separations so the text could be illustrated and be more effective? Agencies initially resisted these charges but over the years and the disappearance of the excuse to pay for 'colour seps' many trade journals simply charged to print press releases. Some appeared as 'advertorial' to identify that the content was paid for but others simply published press releases collated together in product or company news sections. Because of publication dates most of it by the time the magazine lands in the letter box is not news anyway, or at least has been available online for at least a month. The willingness to print anything also ensured that there were always plenty more stories than the magazine could publish.

So other titles started - effectively product 'books' - no editorial just a magazine full of product press releases creating a different business model, one that didn't need to hire journalists, just space salesmen. And based on this model publications come and go that just publish press releases often scavenged from other publications and web sites - a weird collation of news stories with no obvious target audience and published simply because someone agreed to pay.

Of course news publication is a very effective marketing tool, but one that calls for expertise in ensuring the most effective use is made of the PR budget.

No time for the detail

Despite, or perhaps because of, the proliferation of productivity devices and applications fewer people now appear to have time to look at any detail.

The fact is many of them never did anyway. They were happier firing off one line commands rather than collecting information, analysing data and determining a plan to successfully accomplish a task. Strangely people with limited attention to detail and minimal attention span often occupy top jobs and have a personality that seems impressive at first. "I prefer to take a helicopter view" might seem as though they have a grasp on the big picture, but are the creatures on the ground they view from on high giants or ants?

The problem is people who should actually be looking at detail don't, or may be are incapable of doing so. Managing by forwarding emails is one symptom that should raise caution. It is quite instructive to look at the email trail that typically arrives from some companies. It starts deep within the organisation with someone emailing a colleague a question, one that is dealt with by forwarding to someone else and so on until it leaves the organisation entirely to land in the inbox of an external consultant. Oddly the serial forwarders probably consider the act of forwarding completion of a work task in itself. Sometimes the email goes to a colleague sitting just a few feet away. Perhaps if people spoke to each other more, overburdened email inboxes might be less of an issue and communication more effective.

It is quite common these days to see people working the emails on the move. On the over crowded commuter trains into and out of Euston there are people sitting cross legged on the floor a Mac on their lap busy forwarding their emails. So the working day extends into travel time too - no wonder they have to giveaway the London Evening Standard for free now. Its what the chairman of a company I worked for years ago would call 'being busy fools.'

But marketing only really succeeds if the planning is meticulous something it shares with the military - in fact the approach to a successful marketing campaign calls for the same ingredients such as reliable intelligence, analysis, consideration of options, strategy, detailed planning, marshalling of resources and immaculate execution - plus the flexibility to change if conditions change.  And you can't pull that off without attention to detail.