Why have a custom magazine?

It has been proven many times that no other medium works as well as a custom magazine at reinforcing brand position and building trust between a company and its customers.

An expertly produced magazine can communicate to customers a breadth and depth of information that just isn’t possible via television or radio advertising. It allows a company the opportunity to intimately engage with their customers, deepening the relationship and building sales and lifetime value.

If you consider the typical conditions in which a reader consumes a magazine it becomes clear why this medium, more than any other, is so effective at building brand loyalty:

“The magazine moment is generally an intensely personal one, with the reader absorbed in the title, cocooned from external intrusions. It is often read alone, in a relaxed situation. The reading experience is welcomed both for its undemanding nature and for its active input - dipping in and re-reading. This high level of control and content relevance builds levels of trust and confidence and magazines are thus felt to be more engaging than other media.”

The benefit of control pertains not only to the reader. With a magazine, an organisation has control of the information being supplied to customers or stakeholders. They are "pushing" out a message to a predetermined audience at a predetermined time that fits with their business objectives. A website on the other hand acts as a “pull” media. The website acts as a depository of information which the customer actively searches. It could be said they “pull” desired information out of the site. The organisation has limited control of when this information is accessed or by whom.

Both media therefore play discreet roles for the organisation and customer alike, so a complementary execution should be carefully considered based on an organisation's objectives.