Three media planners and two marketers discuss their magazine media strategies

This article originally appeared in Campaign

The majority of people in the UK (78%) say they would rather save on other areas to ensure they have a nice Christmas, despite the cost-of-living crisis remaining a top concern, according to research from Future.

The report shows that only 14% of people in the UK do not feel affected by the financial crisis. However, 96% of those who celebrate Christmas say they always try to make sure they have a good time during the festive period, no matter how tough times are.

For many retailers, Christmas is an important trading period, often the most important of the year. “It’s a special time,” says Pete Markey, chief marketing officer at Boots UK. “It’s the time of year we get to introduce customers to our extensive gifting range, as well as to the 55 new beauty brands we have launched in the past year.”

According to the Future report, 36% of respondents admit they are likely to overspend at Christmas and deal with the bills in January. While this increase in spend presents opportunities for brands, there are multiple challenges for marketers to grapple with. 

Challenges

For most retail brands, performance over the festive period often determines their outlook for the next financial year, notes Juliette Weller, media planning account manager at Mindshare UK. And that puts added pressure on marketers. 

“Competition is fierce, but customers are also in the depths of their own ‘busy season’, with jam-packed work and social schedules which makes their attention highly sought after and often difficult to find,” Weller says.

One benefit of magazine media brand partnerships is the ability to create accessible and original content that appeals to different audiences. Weller says these help marketers access hard-to-find attention, high dwell time and deep content engagement.

Partnerships also allow advertisers who can’t afford big TV campaigns to emotionally engage with consumers through festive branded video series or pop-up experiences in busy shopping areas, which can then be shared across a magazine’s portfolio.

There are some retailers for whom Christmas is not the peak period. Take holiday brand TUI for whom the time between Black Friday and Boxing Day is quiet for holiday bookings. 

Despite that, however, it has taken a recent tack to advertise in December even so. Its activity simply has “a different purpose” to most others’, explains Sara Ali, director of brand and content for TUI & Ireland. Its goal is to build awareness and brand equity before its busiest time in the New Year.

“As we move into January, we hit peak trading when the competition is fierce and getting stronger every year with more capacity and players in the market,” Ali says.

“Brand advertising keeps us top of mind, and with a humorous, festive idea such as the elves [in its Leo Burnett-created ads], we are not just top of mind, but creating brand engagement and positive sentiment.

“By connecting emotionally with consumers as we hit that peak, we have already built ad stock and awareness, along with the predisposition that TUI is fun and ‘gets you’.” 

Magazine media is “always a consideration” for TUI’s media mix, depending on the company’s goals and audiences, Ali says, and are used in a variety of ways. “For the right audiences, magazine media offers us a chance to attract more dwell time online which helps us drive more consideration-led activity.

“We also use them – not exclusively – where we create a partnership to build buzz and word-of-mouth,” she adds. And TUI tops up its fame-driving work with magazine media via homepage takeovers and cover wraps.

Festive work

Data from Time Out shows that festive content is in demand, with gift guides and reviews of Christmassy events high on people’s wish lists. Meanwhile, 51% of Time Out Loud respondents say they plan on doing some Christmas shopping with friends and family during the holiday period, highlighting the importance of shared experiences.

Creatively, Nathan Sebanakitta, senior publishing executive at Havas Media Network UK, says festive work needs to “ensure emotional connections and create urgency”.

Magazine media “excels at this through storytelling and immersive activations tailored to the season,” he adds.

According to Harry O’Mahoney, account director at Starcom UK, the fact that the Christmas period is inherently time-sensitive creates a natural sense of urgency that advertisers can leverage to encourage quicker decisions. 

“By building mental availability in the lead-up to Christmas and capitalising on increased consumer spending in this period,” he says, “brands are more likely to drive conversions in the short term.”

Planning

There are both pros and cons to Christmas being an annual point in the calendar, according to media planners. 

With all brands vying for attention in the same crowded space at the same time, marketers and media planners must look to constantly innovate to stay relevant and find new ways of reaching audiences.

“Magazine publications are also evolving in this regard, what was once a traditional print ad has now expanded to include cross-channel activations and partnerships,” says O’Mahoney. “These include the publication’s social channels, live events, and video series, creating multiple touchpoints between brands and consumers.”

But Sebanakitta believes that the predictability around Christmas is helpful for brands. 

“We are able to plan the campaign early to ensure that the titles we chose for the campaign are Christmas specials,” he says. “Magazine brands can therefore offer fresh views year-on-year through digital activations, events or sponsorships.”

Weller agrees that planning far in advance is key, but warns that this also means that budgets have been assigned when the festive period starts, leaving little room to react to cultural moments.

She continues: “The great thing about magazine media is while content calendars are planned far in advance, editors always leave room for reactive pieces to amplify new trends. Partnering with digital publishers provides an easy solution for brands to align with cultural trends.”

Specialist titles

According to data from Ipsos iris, users of food magazines online peak on Christmas Eve due to last minute meal prepping and planning, reaching a total audience of 2.7 million adults aged 15+. This is the equivalent of a total of 18.6 million minutes of online reviewing food magazine content. Assuming it takes 10 minutes to wrap a present, you could wrap about 1.86 million presents in that time.

In addition, the use of online TV magazines surges on Christmas Day and peaks on Boxing Day, with a total of 2.1 million adults using them during the festive period.

Media planners agree that specialist titles can be particularly effective at engaging niche audiences around Christmas. 

“They enable precise targeting and provide the perfect context for festive messaging,” Sebanakitta says. 

O’Mahoney adds: “Christmas editions of magazines often feature gift guides, seasonal trends, and festive recipes, becoming essential resources for those seeking inspiration during the holiday season.”

Successful campaigns

Weller says Mindshare has partnered with a suite of different magazine publishers using programmatic display and online video for one of its clients, and has “married behavioural data and signals to reach the right audiences”.

The agency paired broader generalist titles with fashion-focused digital publishers, “so the ads appear against contextually relevant fashion content, driving home the brands’ style credentials. The campaign has just launched, so we’re looking forward to seeing the results very soon!”

Havas Media recommended a specific Christmas magazine collusion to one of its biggest clients which launched a new service this month. Sebanakitta says the agency had to “consider the increased level of advertising from other advertisers during a key period”, with cut-through, stand-out, and emotional connection set to be a challenge.

“For this specific campaign, we recommended the use of Christmas double issues in specialist TV listing magazines, such as TV Times and What’s on TV,” he says. “Knowing that clutter was going to be a challenge, we ensured that we optioned space in early front half positions, and upgrades to premium formats where possible.”

Boots UK’s magazine media strategy

CMO Pete Markey says magazines are “trusted, quality, contextual media partners” that can amplify some of the brand’s key campaigns. 

“It’s a great medium to showcase the very best of what we do at Boots, for example our recent introduction of new beauty brands like Made by Mitchell, Bubble and Byoma featured in a full magazine roll fold advert showing that we all need to ‘make more room for beauty’ in our lives. It’s also a feature of our Boots 2024 Christmas campaign where we get to showcase some of the amazing deals, especially for Black Friday.”

According to Markey, magazine media is a high-quality way for the brand to cut through and stand out, with high dwell times as customers are able to spend more time enjoying the content – including the advertising. 

Magazines are important to the Boots schedule in that they are “the media embodiment of people’s ‘me time’,” he explains, “where people are choosing to spend time with the topics and content that is important to them.”

Boots sees the “strong engagement, trust and warmth that readers have towards the brand translate into performance, both for the brand and from an econometrics perspective”.  

“As a result,” he says, “we believe that there is headroom for investment into magazines that we have been exploring in 2024. In a world of misinformation, it is also important as an advertiser to continue to support quality journalism and magazines give us the opportunity to do that and deliver for our business.”

Advertising around Christmas

According to research from Bauer, Christmas gift advertising should continue right up until Christmas to reach last-minute shoppers.

In addition, many consumers rely on events such as Black Friday for Christmas shopping, with 57% of respondents doing a quarter or more of their shopping during sales events in 2023.

Future’s research shows that the majority of Brits (64%) planned to take part in sales this year too, including Black Friday/Cyber Monday (59%) and Amazon Prime Day (55%), with 54% set to take part in January post-Christmas sales.  

To see more case studies from Bauer, Conde Nast, DC Thomson, Future, Hearst, Immediate and Time Out, visit the PPA Magnetic site here >>>

Source: Ipsos iris Online Audience Measurement Service, December 2023. UK internet users aged 15+ using PC/laptop, smartphone or tablet device(s),

‘Christmas & Sales 2024, The Lens, Future plc, UK, 2024; Bauer Insiders Spotlight on Christmas 2023