Robert Downey Jr. is standing on the cover of a magazine, and he is talking to you.
At least, he is if you've picked up the December issue of Esquire, thanks to a technology called “augmented reality.” The reader holds the magazine in front of a webcam. An encoded black-and-white square communicates with software, and the actor leaps from the page with a robust holler. “Boo-yah! In your face!” Mr. Downey Jr. then gives a tour of the issue's digital extras. This, he says, is “easily the most remarkable way to experience a magazine.”
Esquire's editor-in-chief, David Granger, hopes so. “Whatever digital philosophy I have, that's it – to use technology to actually get people excited about things that are in the magazine,” he says. Without a print copy of Esquire and the square icons on its pages, the technology won't come to life.
Magazines are hardly leaping out at media buyers these days. The industry has been walloped by falling sales: In the first nine months of 2009, magazine ad pages in the U.S. dropped 27 per cent from the same period last year, and revenues were down 20 per cent, according to the Publishers Information Bureau. The Canadian magazine industry fared slightly better, but ad pages still dropped 21 per cent from January to September of this year, according to Nielsen LNA.
The latest edition of Esquire magazine includes some new graphic coding that allows readers to view video content on their computer by scanning the codes into a webcam.
The decline in ads, which represented about 60 per cent of U.S. magazine revenues in 2007, leaves publishers more reliant on subscriptions and newsstand sales. But in a climate where many recession-weary readers would rather troll the Internet for free than curl up with yet another discretionary expense, magazines have to reckon with the digital age, and make it profitable.
Last week, five of the largest magazine publishers in the U.S. announced they were joining forces to create a “digital storefront” to make it easier for consumers to buy issues of their magazines for download onto laptop computers, smart phones and e-readers. The venture includes Condé Nast, Meredith Corp., News Corp., Time Inc. and Hearst Corp., which publishes Esquire. As part of the announcement, Time Warner's magazine Sports Illustrated released a video showing what its issue might look like on a full colour e-reader tablet, such as the one that is rumoured to be in the works at Apple.
It is the latest example of the flurry of experimentation going on in the magazine trade, as publishing companies try to figure out what works and what doesn't. At Esquire, Mr. Granger attends meetings every week to discuss the next big thing to bring in readers.
“Yeah, they're gimmicks,” Mr. Granger says. “But when Vanity Fair put Demi Moore naked and pregnant on the cover, that was a gimmick as well. What gimmicks do is they cause people to come and experience your magazine. The last thing I want to do is create a magazine that nobody looks at or reads.”
Magazine readership is far from dead. But circulation numbers tell a discouraging story. In the first six months of 2009, of the nearly 600 consumer magazines in U.S. and Canada to report such figures, 67 per cent saw their paid circulation drop from the same period last year, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations.
Even the most successful magazines are struggling. Of the top 25 U.S. titles, 60 per cent were down this year. A similar proportion of top Canadian magazines saw declines.
“The market is so much more fragmented,” says Kaan Yigit, a Toronto-based new-media analyst. “The Internet is this vast sea of free content. What used to be the domain of magazines is already there.”
In a study just released by Mr. Yigit's company, Solutions Research Group Inc., less than one in five of the Canadians polled said they would pay for magazine content online. Still, magazines have to go digital, or risk losing their relevance. There are 78 per cent more consumer magazine websites in existence now than there were in 2005, according to Magazine Publishers of America.
“It's difficult to find any magazine publisher across North America that would say their print product is the only thing that is really part of their stable,” says Claude Galipeau, senior vice-president of Rogers Digital Media, part of the media group that publishes 70 magazines, including Maclean's, Chatelaine and Flare. “It's no longer just the glossy print product à la Anna Wintour.”
