Yesterday, during a conversation about publications preparing apps for iPad, I said that an iPad app that allows me to flip through digitized pages of a magazine is, wait for it, boring. The challenge for magazine or newspaper publishers is to provide a consistent brand by enhancing the consumer’s experience.
I suspect the people sitting around the table enjoying coffee beverages thought I missed what they said. They were sharing details about iPad apps and I was responding with comments about branding. But that is exactly the challenge. To repeat what a Seattle branding studio said: Brand Is Product. Brand Is Service. Brand Is Experience. (via AdPulp)
So, what does an ink-on-deadwood-pages publisher need to know about new technology and providing consistent experience, service and product? Part of that answer is addressed in the following article from Der Spiegel:
Part of the reason for all the hesitation is that many publishing executives and journalists, as enthusiastic as they are about the new Apple device, are having trouble developing concepts to bring together the various media worlds: online journalism, magazine feel, the dramaturgy of computer games, video effects and the look and feel of a touchscreen.
Many publishers have long held the erroneous view that the iPad in itself represents the solution for all of the print media’s problems. Only gradually are they realizing that it will not be enough to simply pour the usual content that is normally printed in newspapers and magazines into the iPad, through some sort of electronic funnel, as it were — and expect everything to turn out for the best.
In fact, it is now clear that more and different ingredients are necessary. But what exactly should this “more and different” consist of? Or could it be that precisely the opposite is needed, and will the all-too-convenient magic of multimedia merely end up exhausting readers?
Lukas Kircher, the managing director and principal founder of a newspaper and online design firm, is currently serving as a consultant to several iPad projects of German newspapers, including Bild. He is one of the most important representatives of his trade. “It is a huge mistake to believe that we already have the content, and that the iPad is just another distribution channel,” he says. In fact, he adds, readers will expect a “much stronger visual form of narration” on the iPad.
According to Kircher, iPad users will expect something from journalism that they have found predominantly in computer games until now: the ability to examine an event, relive it and almost experience it directly themselves. “The 20-page essay won’t replace that,” says Kircher. “At the same time, however, a new way of telling stories will emerge.” According to Kircher, the reader will expect, to a far greater extent than in the past, to be cleverly seduced into acquiring information and knowledge. Kircher believes that we should not be searching for the model in today’s online journalism, but in computer games and e-learning programs, and that these are presumably the most important motivating factors for many people to buy such a device — and not, for example, the apps of daily newspapers.
(Link: Will the iPad Save the Publishing Industry? By Markus Brauck, Martin U. Müller and Thomas Schulz)
So, my take away is this: publishers need to adapt ink-on-deadwood-page content to multimedia formats that enhance consumer emotional and psychological investment in their brand. One example that seems to have it right is Paste Magazine. I’m not aware of Paste’s financial situation nor their business model, but they present a product that enhances user experience and provides a product and service that reflects their readers’ lifestyle choice and value system. Another example of an ink-on-deadwood-page publisher that seems to understand their readers’ investment in their brand is The Economist.
Bottom line is this: publishers need to be technologically agnostic and brand evangelists.
Coffeehouse Junkie 