Brand Perspective

Lifestyle magazines have told us how to "pick up men," "put on makeup" and "lose that flab" in all manner of ways. Considering the flimsy functionality of this advice, many people really just buy the magazines for the glossy high-end advertisements that make us want to purchase our way into an economic crisis. With this in mind, author and branding specialist Mark Tungate released a collection of premium customer magazines designed and created for luxury brands.

Research has since shown that clients are now allocating more marketing budgets to branding magazines with less dependence on revenue from advertising, which could soon mean the death of the newsstand. Alongside websites, editorial and blogs, brand magazines have been on the up, with Diesel, Nike, Louis Vuitton and many other high end and streetware brands taking the move to produce these desirable annual publications.

These brand magazines have also had an easier time engaging readers because people know what they are reading about from the start, giving way for more respected relationships to form between the brand and the buyer/reader. Unsurprisingly, sales for labels that have come out with their own brand magazine have gone up since releasing their own publication. Sure they're costly to produce, but Jeremy Leslie, author of magCulture, exxplains: "Whatever they cost, magazines are a cost-effective way of communicating brand values."

—Retna Wooller