Question 3

Question 3: What company would distribute my product?

Previously in the preliminary tasks I was told to research a number of media outlets/publishers who would show me what sort of products already occupy the space in which my product would be trying to obtain a sizable portion of. In the aforementioned task I looked at Livingly and Bauer, two companies which have the lion’s share of the magazine industry but in two different places, whilst Bauer occupies the traditional medium of print, Livingly occupies the now prominent online market which is an important aspect of which company I would choose to publish my magazine.

For the choice of which company should publish my product or whether a company should have my product under its properties at all I have to consider whether some mutual benefit can be feasibly achieved by going under a particular companies wing or more ideally whether you can grow your property to a level where it is a market leader and as a result ascend from a gamble for an institution to a sure fire way to make profit and become the particular company’s flagship product and as a result become more than a side concern and obtain some of the limelight. When you consider what audience my product targets you get a very useful insight into which company you want to coax into becoming your publisher and primary investor/mentor. My product in general targets tech savvy young males of the ages 16‐30 which is because of the need for some lifelong/prolonged exposure to recent tech for many of the articles and jokes to become relevant. (see section I for more on target audience) As my magazine targets a more tech savvy audience then as a result they would be more acclimatised to the internet but the key to being

a successful online magazine is being either the best of your kind of magazine or being the only one of your type of magazine under a company’s guidance as if your vying for a place in its properties will become more difficult the higher number of magazines like yours that exist but if you are accepted when they do own a few likewise magazines then they have some experience in that area and will hopefully be able to guide your product in the right direction.

The alternative to having a conglomerate publish my product is to publish the product by myself with monetary support from bank loans and other areas of influx. The problem with that idea is that with no support from a well‐established company my product will probably not get as much advertising as is needed in the current state of the magazine industry for my magazine to get noticed as other more well established products have a monopoly on the advertising side of product creation and maintenance such as NME and Rolling Stone.

Overall the smartest choice is to go with Livingly as they have experience with the online market and as a result will be better suited to targeting my desired audience of tech savvy 16‐30 year olds and also enables me to save some money along the way by not having to print the magazine but as a result there will have to be an ample amount of advertising space which luckily is covered for partially by the content of my product being around tech which means that I can sneak in some product placement in our articles and perhaps gather sponsorships from particular companies such as AMD and Razer in order to generate some additional revenue. The main reason why I did not go with self‐publishing is that the costs and risks are too high to possibly be favoured over a safer yet perhaps less profitable method of getting my product to its desired audience and making it a cornerstone of the entertainment sector of the magazine industry.