From mayonnaise to dating apps, branded print made big waves this year. In fact, the last few years of this decade just might go down as the time branded specialty publications became mainstream. According to Jack Neff in Ad Age, many of these brands are doing some spot-on content creation to elevate their marketing strategy.
“Unilever, marketer of Hellmann’s, launched Sandwich magazine to support its other mayonnaise brand, the upstart Sir Kensington’s,” Neff notes. “The premier edition, via TCO, London, is a deep dive into the BLT.”
Weird? Not really. After all, if the goal of marketing is to engage the reader where they are, face deep into a BLT is the perfect place to connect with the mayonnaise consumer.
Other perhaps unlikely but ultimately genius titles include Uniqlo (we see you, Roger Federer); REI and their Uncommon Path; Goose Island Beer’s Ingrain; and Ideas of Order from California Closets.
Marketing with branded print is effective in two specific ways – it helps cast a wider net to engage your potential audience members, and it offers a trusted platform on which to build deeper connections.
And with the incessant chorus of “fake news” all around us, consumers believe that if a company invests in the printed word it’s more valuable. This kind of public perception is why print magazines offer a measurable trust bump among readers, elevating the brand signature in much the same way those first company blogs did back in the day.
If you don’t have branded print in your marketing funnel, it may be time to reconsider. It’s not just that print is more affordable than you might think. It’s that you might not be able to afford to be without it.