Photography Week (PW), a digital only title from Future, launched in September 2012. To date, it has seen 122 thousand downloads and has over ten thousand subscribers. It has 130 thousand Facebook ‘likes’ and 30 thousand Twitter followers. A successful first year was rewarded with a PPA award in July – Digital Innovation of the Year (Consumer).
How did they do it? Paul identified the key pillars of their success:
1. Product Philosophy.
For the launch of PW, Future decided to start with the device and work backwards, and this was, says Paul, a liberating experience. There was no legacy print product to constrain their digital thinking - they could start with a blank canvass. They developed the product based on their understanding of how people use tablets and what they expected from them.
Future’s expectation was that people would spend a maximum of 30 minutes reading a digital magazine, so they settled on a page count of 30.
And they took the decision to focus more on ‘usability’ than ‘interactivity’. Clear navigation, readability and ease of use are the cornerstones of the product.
“A little multi-media goes a long way”, explained Paul and they settled on three videos per issue. Some said that was nowhere near enough, but experience has shown that most users do not even watch all three.
They decided to go with a weekly frequency, in part to complement Future’s existing monthly photography titles. In terms of price, they went low: £1.49 per issue, or £19.99 for a year’s subscription.
The device-first philosophy was followed again when PW launched an iPhone version of the title in July this year.
2. Digital Content Flow.
According to Paul, PW’s content strategy was “based around connecting all the dots, by integrating the magazine and social media channels”.
Share buttons are built into the interface at every opportunity with Facebook, Flickr et al all easily accessible from the pages of the magazine. The editorial team is highly regimented in their approach to social media and outputting content to the various social media platforms is part of the editorial programme every single day.
A good example is the ‘photo of the day’ which is blogged on PW’s Tumblr platform daily. The photos are submitted by readers and are accompanied by their notes, a link to their own site and a strong call to action:
See the world’s most inspirational images every Thursday in Photography Week. Get five free issues today at http://bit.ly/RHzJmN
3. Pre-launch Social Media Activity.
In what is now a familiar strategy from Future, PW started building the audience six weeks before launch. Activity (which included targeted Facebook advertising, affiliate links, shared sneak previews and a YouTube promotional video) gradually ramped up as launch date approached.
4. Crowd Sourced Content.
From the outset, PW sought to celebrate and involve the reader, as not only a great source of exceptional content but also as a readymade promotional device. Readers get their photos published and, surprise, surprise, tell their friends about it. Cover images are always submitted by readers; there are regular photo challenges and PW actively shares the best photos from the PW community. Users are also a great source of article ideas, and features in the magazine often start from Twitter or Facebook discussions.
All in all, a very neat package, but, asked one member of the audience who had noticed a dearth of adverts in the magazine, how does it make money?
Circulation revenues, answered Paul, along with special high-margin products which are sold through the pages. Paul puts the lack of ads down to the immaturity of the ads market, which hasn’t yet worked out a clear commercial proposition with regards to advertising on tablet editions.
Once they do, I’m guessing the future of the already successful Photography Week, will look rosy indeed!
