Five years ago, when marketing was going increasingly digital, Toronto-based Sporting Life decided to get physical. To grow its business, the high-end sporting goods retailer launched a glossy direct mail magazine featuring a mix of seasonal fashion, product spotlights and editorial.
“It was like-minded business professionals who were coming into Sporting Life and buying $5,000 jackets… and they’re not getting their information from digital,” said John Roe, director of marketing and advertising. “These are hard-working people who work from 9 to 6. They’re bankers, they’re investors. They’re not Googling and spending all their time on the web.”
That’s not to say Sporting Life is stuck in the digital Dark Ages; the retailer has a robust e-commerce platform and has done CRM for years, noted Roe. But the idea of a printed magazine came down to giving consumers an experiential element — much like brick-and-mortar retail.
“At the end of the day, there is something tangible about looking through a magazine that sits on your coffee table [versus] flipping through a hundred pages of a digital magazine,” said Roe.
Montreal-based Birks is another retailer that believes in the effectiveness of marketing you can touch. This past spring, the iconic jeweller launched a new bi-annual print publication called 1879 by Birks (referencing the year Henry Birks opened his first store in Montreal).
“We’ve always had a Birks catalogue… It’s been part of our marketing strategy for a very long time,” said Eva Hartling, vice-president of marketing and communications at Birks. “But we knew it had to evolve… We still liked the idea of having a physical publication that customers could get their hands on, but the catalogue wasn’t the right tool anymore.”
Rather than just feature product information, like the catalogue, the magazine has editorial content covering luxury travel, fine wine and international restaurants. “Consumers can go on any website if they’re just looking [for product information],” said Hartling. “We wanted to have more of a storytelling opportunity, with editorial content that covers other interests than just jewellery and time pieces.”
The magazine has a circulation of 100,000 in Canada and 50,000 in the U.S., where the publication is called Mayors Magazine. (Birks has a chain of stores in Florida and Georgia under the Mayors name.) In Canada, the largest share of the publication is mailed to Birks’ customers. The magazines are also available in Birks stores, in Air Canada’s Maple Leaf lounges in Canada and internationally, and in Shangri-La luxury hotels in Toronto and Vancouver.
Digital remains important for retailers in general, said Hartling. “But because we’re selling a luxury product, people still pay a lot of attention to magazine ads, to newspaper ads, to out of home, and our print magazine is part of that.”
Even digital brands are branching out into print magazines. Two years ago, Montreal-based e-tailer Frank & Oak launched Oak Street, a bi-annual magazine that explores the intersection between work, culture and community. The magazine is sold on newsstands across North America and at select stores, and is sent to key customers.
“We like to think of ourselves as a technology company that happens to sell clothes,” said Eric Alper, SVP at Frank & Oak. “But at the end of the day, I don’t know that our consumer wants to have a completely digital experience with the brand. It’s part of the reason why we build physical stores – we also want to create opportunities for touch and feel.” But Oak Street is not an advertorial, added Alper. “It’s really about expressing our point of view on the community we want to foster.”
For Birks and Sporting Life, on the other hand, the goal for the branded magazines is to drive people into stores. To measure ROI, Birks is tracking the number of new customers that come in after the magazine comes out and is looking at the response from existing customers.
“We’re able to know exactly who’s coming and shopping after they’ve received a magazine, and we’re tracking sales on specific items that are part of the magazine,” said Hartling.
The key metric for Sporting Life, which sends the magazine to half a million homes, is the number of new customers who come in five to six weeks after the magazine comes out. “When you look at the new customers that you’ve acquired in that time frame, that’s the biggest ROI there is,” said Roe.
