MarkLives.com runs a regular slot featuring the best local and international magazine covers every week. We recognise well thought out, powerful and interesting (and hopefully all three in one) magazine covers and celebrate the mix of pragmatism, creativity and personal taste that created each of them.
Category archives: Media
ABC Analysis Q3 2012: The biggest-circulating consumer magazines in SA
by Herman Manson (@marklives) Last ABC Period: July 2012 to September 2012
The ABC has released circulation statistics for the period AJuly 2012 to September 2012. Here are a couple of numbers that popped out for us. We also updated our list of the biggest circulating consumer magazines in SA!
Note: We compare the current figures with the same figures for this time last year and not with the previous quarter!
Biz and Finance
Finweek and the Financial Mail circulation departments seems to have come to a joint decision to longer put out the exact same sales figures. Good on them. FM upped its circulation to 25,065 from 23,649 for the same period last year (total paid: 22,980) while Finweek declined from 21,978 to 25,670 (total paid: 19,359). New entrant Forbes Africa shows an ABC of 18,919 (total paid 9,688). Noseweek took a bit of a tumble to 15,886 from 18,006 – maybe it’s time to hire some fact checkers and halt the decline.
Health not looking healthy
Shape and Pols/Pulse both closed down resulting in circulation figures for the ‘Health’ niche collapsing from 174,116 to 98,912 (or more than 75 000 copies). Shape competitor Women’s Health is categorised by the ABC as falling under Woman’s Magazines. It would have added 57,270 copies to the category.
Entertainment/celeb news is bad news
heat kept its freefall going and collapsed to 28,316 from 34,592. It’s lost about half its circulation since 2005.
Huisgenoot declined to 273,772 from 289,068 (and 281,045 in the ABC period for April 2012 to June 2012). YOU fell to 162,879 from 175,698 and Drum to 115,375 from 130,253. Bona fell to 82,855 from 90,311.
Social Media Effect: “Barely Negligible”
by Bob Hoffman (@adcontrarian) If you’re in the business of selling stuff, according to one big-time research firm social media marketing is a waste of your time and money.
Forrester Research has released a report recently that concludes…
“Social tactics are not meaningful sales drivers. While the hype around social networks as a driver of influence in eCommerce continues to capture the attention of online executives, the truth is that social continues to struggle and registers as a barely negligible source of sales for either new or repeat buyers. In fact, fewer than 1% of transactions for both new and repeat shoppers could be traced back to trackable social links.”
Now think about this for a minute. This study is about the influence of online social media on online sales. If the influence on online sales is “barely negligible” can you imagine the influence on traditional retail sales (which account for about 94% of everything sold?) What’s below barely negligible? Strongly negligible?
Weekly Top 10: Fastest rising search terms from South Africans on Google
With the help of Google Trends we are publishing the top 10 searched for phrases (minus the sexy stuff of course) by South Africans on Google over the previous seven days.
The US presidential elections, and the win for President Obama, dominates the fastest rising Google web searches list from last week. The Linkin Park concert tragedy in Cape Town, test cricket and a search for alternatives to the now stranded budget airline 1time also makes the list.
Fast rising searches
us elections +900%
linkin park +650%
barack obama +600%
obama +600%
cricinfo +250%
cricket +100%
psl +60%
speed test +60%
british airways +40%
discovery health +40%
Magazine covers we love & what makes us ‘Southern’
MarkLives.com runs a regular slot featuring the best local and international magazine covers every week. We recognise well thought out, powerful and interesting (and hopefully all three in one) magazine covers and celebrate the mix of pragmatism, creativity and personal taste that created each of them.
Tech Law: Content piracy and a panicked industry
by Paul Jacobson (@pauljacobson) We’re so accustomed to the term “content piracy” in the context of copyright infringement that we just accept that it is an appropriate term for what is going on.
Magazine covers we love (this week!)
MarkLives.com runs a regular slot featuring the best local and international magazine covers every week. We recognise well thought out, powerful and interesting (and hopefully all three in one) magazine covers and celebrate the mix of pragmatism, creativity and personal taste that created each of them.
Louise Marsland & MarkLives launches TREND.
MarkLives and well respected marketing and media commentator and editor Louise Marsland have teamed up to launch an exciting new market intelligence resource to the advertising, media and marketing communications industry in Southern Africa.
TREND. brings together the research savvy of Marsland with MarkLives’ cool and sexy take on the modern advertising world. TREND. launched this morning at trendlives.info and will focus on trend forecasting, in-depth reports, insight and analysis relevant to the broader marketing industry.
The site will serve as a central curated resource for local and international marketing and media research as well as create its own unique in-depth reports that sources and charts influential modern trends marketers and their agencies need to note.
As with MarkLives, TREND. will will offer its content free of charge, and will be supported by site and report sponsors. Ornico, Quirk, Machine Agency, 60layersofcake Cape Town and John Brown Media are the founding landing page sponsors for the site.
The first in-depth Dissect report to be published on TREND. focuses on socialising the enterprise. Compiled by Marsland and sponsored by Quirk, the report, which runs to over 11 000 words, sets forth the effects of a socialised consumer base on the modern enterprise. Content is broken in readily digestible pieces for the busy executive.
Social media is not about a suite of social networks and tools writes Marsland. “It is now about the social enterprise, the brand that integrates social across all platforms of engagement. It is about living social.”
Magazine covers we love
MarkLives.com runs a regular slot featuring the best local and international magazine covers every week. We recognise well thought out, powerful and interesting (and hopefully all three in one) magazine covers and celebrate the mix of pragmatism, creativity and personal taste that created each of them.
In the undeclared war between printed and digital media, there are many dates that will live on in infamy
by Arthur Goldstuck (@art2gee) In the undeclared war between printed and digital media, there are many dates that will live on in infamy.
28 October 2008: The Christian Science Monitor closes its daily print edition.
13 March 2012: The end of the Encylopaedia Britannica as a set of printed volumes.
And 18 October 2012: Newsweek announces it will cease publication of its weekly magazine, and become a digital-only publication.
The announcement last Thursday sent shock waves through the print media industry, representing a capitulation to the inexorable rise of digital media. Newsweek said it would lay off a portion of its staff, and those who remain will produce a paid-for online magazine called Newsweek Global. It will continue to exist alongside Newsweek’s online sister publication, the startlingly inappropriately titled The Daily Beast.
In an interview with the New York Times, editor-in-chief Tina Brown confessed: “You cannot actually change an era of enormous disruptive innovation. No one single person can reverse that trend. You can’t turn back what is an inexorable trend.”