Matthew Holmes took over as Magazines Canada CEO in January, replacing the organization’s longtime head Mark Jamison. Holmes spoke with Marketing about his new role, and the challenges – and opportunities – for Canada’s magazine industry.
You’re roughly six months into your role – what is your assessment of how the industry is positioned?
I had some of my roots in the publishing sector [Holmes served as reviews editor of Arc Poetry Magazine from 2003 to 2008] and always hoped I might find a way back. Through a circular route I did, and I’m very glad to be here. One of the things that has really struck me is how much digital has progressed since I was last in the industry. The magazine sector has been one of the first to move forward and diversify; we see a lot of our members getting their content out there on multiple channels – everything from video and events to six different social media outlets and mobile interfaces. We’re seeing a real broadening of the ecosystem.
What does that mean for the industry as a whole?
It brings lots of new territory and of course some challenges. It affects everything from the editorial calendar to sales. [Magazine publishers are] very complex content companies now – they’re getting material out on multiple platforms and channels at all times. The news cycle has broadened and quickened, and that affects every part of the business.
You arrived at Magazines Canada from the Canada Organic Trade Association, so you bring something of an outsider’s perspective to the role. How has that enabled you to see the industry differently?
I definitely tried to come in and use my fresh eyes as a way to ask a lot of questions – both of my internal team in order to optimize our organization, but also of the sector. We certainly have some challenges ahead, but – and this might be a benefit of being new to the sector – I’m seeing all kinds of opportunities. I’m really excited by the current cultural review in Ottawa; magazines are still seen as a key part of the Canadian media landscape. I don’t have a siege mentality. Obviously this is a time of disruption: Some business models are going to make it and others aren’t. I came from the organic sector, which built itself in very short time into a multi-billion dollar mainstream sector. In the same way, many of those businesses folded and many more worth millions and billions of dollars were created. This kind of dynamic trend is actually a positive in my view – you need to have lots of people experimenting.
Do you see examples of that?
The thing that’s unique about magazines is that they really drill into a very specific interest group or target audience or demographic in a way that a general-purpose format doesn’t necessarily do. Cottage Life is a perfect example of that: They used their magazine brand and their relationships with sponsors to create what is now Canada’s largest consumer trade show around cottaging and all of the services and products that involves. They’re totally reinforcing the relationship they have both with their readers and with their advertisers. It’s a great example of diversifying and experimenting and leveraging brand equity. Everybody’s playing with different models – some are able to monetize their CPMs on mobile and digital, and others are using mobile and digital to expand the reach of their print readership. Everybody has to find the way their audience fits into that dynamic.
There’s obviously been a lot of talk about the challenges faced by print in this new digital age. How well do you think magazines are adapting?
We’ve seen constant readership since the start of the millennium [and] our reader numbers have stayed roughly the same for the last 15 years. We’ve grown the Canadian marketshare, the number of Canadian titles in the market and even at the association level we’ve had 20 new members join up in the last year. The sector is relatively stable and quite dynamic, so there are a lot of new ideas and innovations within print. Everybody’s aware of what’s going on with newspapers, but the business models have always been very different; magazines aren’t facing the same issues.
Speaking with one publisher recently, he said print ad pages are down about 17% this year. How long can the industry ride out this kind of sustained downward pressure?
In terms of the digital arena I don’t think we’re going to see it absolutely replace print. What we see from a reader perspective is 80% of Canadians are reading magazines, and of those, 92% are consuming print in some form. We see the core is still print exclusive – about 51% are reading only in print and 41% are dabbling in digital and print. They’re interacting and engaging with the medium at different times. They might be reading on their computer at work, getting the day’s news and highlights, but getting into more leisurely and engaged consumption at lunch or at home. From an advertiser’s perspective, magazines are by definition multi-platform; advertisers ignore the power of print at their peril – it’s not exclusive, but it has to be part of a multichannel strategy. Otherwise you’re really only getting a very small sub-set of the population, which is digitally focused. With all of the ad fraud in digital, all of the bots and all of the questions around ‘Are you a drop in the ocean?’ I think if you’re really trying to structure a strategic approach, you have to have print as a component.
So much talk about the industry is focused on digital disruption, but are there any other issues you feel are crucial that aren’t getting as much attention?
I came from a food retail and policy [environment], but I was really struck by how some of the issues at retail are still the same in the publishing sector. You’ve got a lot of concentration in the retail and grocery environment, competition for space and getting in front of consumers, and you have a need to really showcase metrics and proof-points around it. Twenty years ago you saw newsstands all over the place, and now they’ve become much more concentrated and limited to mainstream retail, big-box stores and the occasional newsstand. We’ve developed a couple of pilot projects to look at how do we get magazines in print form out into everyday [environments] and broaden the reach into other venues and spur that little “a-ha!” reminder for consumers who just aren’t seeing them as much as they used to. It’s not going to have a major impact on the market at a national level, but it will give us some intelligence on new models that might spur growth and a re-engagement at newsstands.
