For local brands looking to extend their reach, the mobile opportunity is too juicy to ignore. As Grant Shippey, CEO of digital agency Amorphous points out, mobile’s tremendous growth poses interesting advertising models that publishers and media owners need to consider
According to Shippey, SA has about 4.2 million tablets distributed in the market already, and just under 17 million smartphones ( depending on who you ask ).
Vodacom recently launched a R799 smartphone, so the market is actually broadening quite a bit, says Shippey. People are spending 4 to 5 hours with their devices a day, and the consumption trends are changing from TV to tablet and mobile and particularly mobile as in phones.
Massive Reach
We are the digital publisher for Edgars Club magazine, which I suppose is the largest magazine in the country by miles, literally, he says. Circulation is in the 850 000 mark, so that is two to three times your Huisgenoot and YOU magazine from a national reach perspective.
As Shippey emphasizes, the digital Edgars Club magazine provides a hugely interesting shopper interaction, Club interaction and a lifestyle read.
We’ve ported to a phone as well as a tablet environment, and we haven just lifted the content verbatim (which is I think the error that most publishers have been making), he explains. We’ve actually developed a truly interactive advertising platform, as well as an interactive publication as opposed to a page flipper.
He adds: We are regularly seeing people spending 18, 19, 20 minutes with an edition as opposed to most magazines where you have a 5-7 minute flip.
Touch and Texture
If you’re on a touch device, you expect to be able to touch things, and everything needs to link, he says. So the advertising as well as the editorial needs to talk a language that is specifically designed for fat fingers, and needs to be in a bite size/snippet format.
In addition, he says there’s a large editorial drive to repurpose content into the different environments.
The reader experience is a slick, seamless, glossy, high definition experience with beautifully backlit photography, he explains. Because of the nature of the devices that they are consuming them on all the latest Samsungs and Apples are truly high definition so producing the material in a high definition space means that you can actually get into the texture on a button on a shirt (which supplies so many editorial and photographic opportunities where the creative teams can actually just run in a beautifully unconstrained environment).
New Distribution Models
According to Shippey, the pilot programme was launched in December, with a media launch late in February.
We then added the phone addition in April and phone has actually matched tablet in a single month from a download and a reader perspective, he says. And that’s largely as a function of the environment: where you’re looking at 17 million phones versus 4 million tablets and the tablets are far more of a shared device in a household, most tablets are actually used by 2-4 people (whereas phones are a lot more individual).
With regards to the magazine’s print edition, he says that as a result of the challenges with the SA Post Office, the distribution model [for the paper based version] has changed.
Our VIP members will get a hand delivery from people in the newspaper distribution business, so that’s about 350 000 that will get thrown over walls or put into post boxes while the balance will be in all Edgars or all Boardmans stores where club members can pick it up for free at the point of sale, he explains. Members of the public will be able to purchase the magazine, like a traditional magazine, and that is distributed via CNA.
