Monday Morning Cooking Club
In 2006, a group of Sydney Jewish women began meeting every Monday morning to discuss food, cook and debate the merits of certain recipes. They collected recipes from their families – generations past and present – and from the community in which they are so richly engaged. A broad collection of recipes started to take shape, each with its own story and history of the cook. Five years and hundreds of dishes later, six members of the sisterhood have handpicked their favourite recipes for publication of their first book of the same name. They then set about looking for a publisher who would give them the creative freedom and commercial knowledge to bring their dream to life.
Hardie Grant is proud to announce the publication of the Monday Morning Cooking Club book as a custom project. With its incredible recipes, amazing stories, beautiful photos and stunning design, this book takes the reader on an inspiring journey through a community bound by food. All proceeds of the book will go to two charities of the authors’ choice. The books are available in all good bookshops (distributed via Random House) and direct through the authors.
Wine Regions iPhone app a Top Five hit!
Just eight weeks after its launch, our Wine Regions of Victoria iPhone app achieved 10,500 downloads, and scaled the upper reaches of Apple’s App Store charts, peaking as high as number 4 in the App Store’s highly competitive “lifestyle” category. The app, created as a mobile digital companion to the printed Wine Regions of Victoria guidebook, adds an extra dimension to the guide’s functionality. Features include an itinerary planner, allowing users to map out their journey before they leave home, and “Wineries near me”, which enables users to locate and navigate to nearby wineries when they already in wine country. The printed guide and app are published on behalf of Tourism Victoria.
Greyhound - Detour
Hardie Grant Magazines is proud to have launched its first issue of Greyhound’s new quarterly onboard magazine, Detour. Greyhound is the single largest on-road domestic carrier, with 1.3 million passengers travelling on their coaches annually, and provides the only national regional coach network. Travelling passengers onboard the Greyhound coaches will now be enlightened, entertained and inspired by this new magazine.
Detour will be a fresh, fun and colourful 100pp magazine. It will include news, events, and experience-based features about the regional destinations made accessible by Greyhound bus routes. Detour will also guide readers on where to go and where to stay, with up-to-date information for the best regional tours and accommodation. Fully integrated media packages incorporating in-magazine advertising, ambient media (headrests, onboard coach media and outer coach decals) are being offered for the first time. In short, Detour is set to be the must-have guide for any traveller looking for adventure and an on-road exploration of our great sunburnt country.
Hardie Grant Magazines now in Adelaide
Earlier this year, Hardie Grant announced the acquisition of leading Adelaide publisher Jigsaw Media Solutions. Jigsaw was founded in 2002 by Bronwen Gwyn-Jones and has an excellent portfolio of magazines, including Sumptuous, The Vine, next, and the South Australian Wine and Food Guide. Bronwen continues to lead the business as publishing director of Hardie Grant Magazines in Adelaide, with the support of Hardie Grant’s Melbourne and Sydney offices in areas such as digital communications and book publishing.
Print and online integration
With the rapid expansion of digital media, publishing heads are now faced with the question: do we amalgamate print and online operations?
Although there is no hard and fast rule, many large publishers are learning what works through trial and error. The Washington Post and Forbes are integrating digital and print and Playboy plans to do the same this year.
Click here for Rob O’Reagan’s full article published on eMedia Vitals in December 2009.
UK retailers and customer magazines
Building a two-way relationship with shoppers is the holy grail for marketers in the downturn. With print runs that go into the millions, retail customer magazines are big business according to Retail Week. Of the top 10 most widely read consumer publications in the market, three of them belong to retailers - Asda, Tesco and Sainsbury's and while many of these titles are distributed free of charge, their impact is invaluable.
In terms of marketing spend, customer magazines are well suited to these recessionary times, fostering that all-important relationship with the customer. Retailers in the UK are increasingly recognising the value of this investment.
But the world of customer magazines is also a rapidly evolving industry. Just as retailers have had to embrace the importance of online with their transactional websites, the digital space is becoming increasingly crucial if they want to maximise the effectiveness of their customer communications.
Click here for Charlotte Hardie’s full article published in Retail Week August 2009.
Content-driven websites gain more traffic than retailers
UK measurement firm New Media Age found that in the past three years, free sites in categories such as entertainment, social networks and news and media had, on average, increased their share, while share of visits had declined for sites such as shopping and classifieds, business and finance, and travel.
In July 2006, Hitwise found the transactional categories had 5 per cent more traffic than free content.
Robin Goad, Hitwise UK research director, said the decline had been accelerated because of the decrease in consumer spending over the past 12-18 months.
For more information go to NMA.co.uk
Gen ‘Y-not’ goes for a bit of both
A new Nielsen study titled ‘How Teens Use Media’ indicates that Gen-Y teens are embracing digital media, but not at the expense of traditional delivery mechanisms, and are instead making time to enjoy both. The June 2009 Nielsen evidence-based study debunks the myth that teenagers are obsessed with digital media and disengaged from traditional channels like TV, print and radio. The report highlights a range of interesting facts including:
• Their media preferences do not differ greatly from their adult counterparts.
• YouTube is not the leading medium for teenagers – in fact a typical US teen only watches about 11 minutes of online video per day.
• Teens are not the most avid internet users spending only half the amount of time the overall average internet user spends online per month.
This enlightening report on teenage media usage habits can be accessed by clicking here.
Source: Nielsen ‘Teen Media Usage Report’ June 2009. Author: Philip Jenkinson
UK customer magazines and trust
Recent Royal Mail research discovered that 78 per cent of the UK's most trusted brands publish a customer magazine as part of their integrated customer communications strategy. Organisations including British Airways, Tesco, Virgin, British Gas and AA were all recently as named the country's top trusted brands within their respective categories in the Reader's Digest annual survey, and all of whom regularly publish a customer title.
Click here for Julia Hutchinson’s full article published on the APA website.
Connecting to Customers Using Emotion
According to Paul Dunay, now more than ever emotion is saturating buying decisions and marketing needs to tap into this and use new ways to research and connect with customers.
A recent study determined:
15 per cent of decision making is rational
85 per cent of decision making is emotional
Another Harvard study said that only five per cent is rational.
Major industries are clearly focused only on the rational. But marketers are clearly ignoring the 85 per cent that really drives the buying decision. A good strategy should have two parts the rational and the emotional – and don’t think the rational isn’t important – it is – but it needs to come together with emotion to form a powerful bond.
Read Paul Dunay’s blog, Buzz Marketing for Technology.
Do Magazines Still Work?
New research from the MPA (Magazine Publishers of America) asks the scariest question in publishing, and gets the thumbs up. Among other finds, magazines are the best medium for driving overall purchase intent, and the best medium for driving online searches (beating online ads by miles). Why? Because magazines are selected by readers, and have engaged readers.