Do magazines today need to reinvent themselves? What can they do better? What is the panacea for magazines to grow?

These were the key themes discussed at the session ‘brands and magazines poised for a content renaissance’ by Deepali Naair, group CMO, CK Birla group and Ketan Bharati, VP global marketing operations, Truecaller, at the Indian Magazine Congress. The session was moderated by Annurag Batra, chairman and editor-in-chief, BW Businessworld.

Setting the context of the topic, Naair talked about how partnerships with magazines are now different as compared to how they were 15 years back when digital did not exist. She said, “What magazines do on the digital platforms for themselves today is becoming extremely important to us as a brand and as a marketing fraternity. They are not just competing for marketing dollars, they may be competing with digital portals too.”

Emphasising the importance of audience and format, Naair noted, “Audiences are important in terms of who's reading and what is congregating. When a magazine has a format which is different from others and because of the format that it is being read, absorbed and assimilated by the audience, that format also becomes important.”

She also talked about how the magazine landscape has changed over the years. “15 years ago, we would have been able to do innovations with magazines. Magazines used to be that one place where the brand would do a lot of media or format innovation. That avenue has now completely stopped because now brands can't do that,” she said.

Stressing the importance of adaptation and relevance amidst the competitive landscape, Naair mentioned that magazines as a genre may not be competing only with other magazines, but they may be competing with a lot of other credible news media or sources.

“Physical magazine readership has shrunk. But, the digital readership of a brand or the digital consumption of the content of a brand is where the growth opportunity is. It’s about how you get the audience and how you market it,” she added.

Bharati then steered the conversation to talk about the challenges faced by magazines today. Content saturation, consumer scepticism, constant change in algorithms and complex consumer journeys were the four key challenges identified by him. 

He stated, “In the world of AI, content is everywhere and there’s a lot of duplication. In any magazine, you may see the same sort of information and the same sort of content everywhere which leads to content saturation. The second thing is consumer scepticism, which is there because we live in a polarised world now. And because we live in social media, the constant change in algorithm which also influences the readers, poses a challenge. And the fourth thing is this complex consumer journey, where the consumer is everywhere.”

On a concluding note, he asserted, “It’s all about authentic storytelling and it's about how you engage with your audiences in any form, be it short format, long format, events. Touching the audience on multiple platforms is the key. You can be at an event, you can be a snippet, or you can have a hardcore magazine which has a longer shelf life. What I feel is that it (the magazine) has to reinvent itself to also see how it can be measured beyond the old conventions of readership or average issue readership.”