1. The future of the glossy magazine industry
Elske Joustra
Researcher at Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands
335887ej@eur.nl, +31-(0)642 23 1656
Proposal presented at Sophie Spindler’s creative direction company
January 2010

2. Index
1. Preface
2. Summary
3. Introduction
4. Theory
4.1 Economic crisis
4.2 The content doesn’t change
4.3 The technological and social possibilities of new media
4.4 Social media
4.5 Social network sites
4.6 Women and social network sites
5. Literal-review
6. Answer to the central question
7. Proposal
7.1 Introduction
7.2 Strategy
7.3 Financial-table
8. Literature

3. 1 Preface
This business proposal is written in order of Sophie Spindler’s creative direction
company to research if new media have influenced the traditional format of the glossy
magazines. This paper was presented to the board on January 15th 2010 by Elske Joustra
researcher at Erasmus University.

4. 2 Summary
The glossy magazine industry is facing some problems nowadays, caused by the
economic crisis, the unsatisfied readers of the glossy magazines and the rise of new
media. The economic crisis leads to a decline in the volume of ad pages, which lead to
smaller edition sizes. The reason the readers are no longer pleased with the content of
the glossy magazines is, because the glossy magazine industry hasn’t changed the content
of the magazines for years and doesn’t know what kind of subject the readers want to
read about. Because of the rise of the new media there came a lot of new forms of media,
like social media. Social media give people the ability to talk, cooperate and exchange
information with each other throughout online tooling, like social network sites. Social
network sites are also very popular among the readers of glossy magazines witch share
their interests with each other on the social network sites. If the glossy magazines want to
reconnect with their readers, sell more magazines and attract there cosmetics-advertisers,
glossy magazine companies have to use the social network site Facebook.

5. 3 Introduction
With a market share of 27 percent the women magazines are, beside radio- and
television- magazines the most popular segment of magazines in the Netherlands.
Women magazines exist in different forms and shapes. There are a lot more women
magazines than there are magazines for men. From commercial view this is logical,
because women read more and are a very attractive and profitable target group for
advertisers. The market of the women’s magazines can be divined in two types of
magazines; the women’s weekly magazines and the women’s monthly magazines.
The market of the women’s weekly magazines exists of “the general interest magazines”
and “the gossip magazines”. The market of the women’s monthly magazines can be
divined in the subcategories; “glossy magazines” and “ special interest magazines”.
This paper presents a research about the market of the glossy magazines. So for this
reason there will be only taken a closer look at the subcategory of the women’s monthly
magazines; glossy magazines.
Glossy magazines are a type of women magazines that is mostly focused on subjects that
are related to the appearance of the women. Glossy magazines became more popular in
the nineties. The reason of the release of this new segment was because during this
period there was a period of economic prosperity. Women got a higher education level,
had more money to spend and for this reason were more interested in glossy and luxury
goods. This made them a very attractive target-group for cosmetics- advertisers, the
biggest source of income for this type of magazine. The reason glossy magazines become
popular among their female readers was because of the huge success of the releases of
the magazines; “Cosmopolitan” (from the America publisher Hearst) and “Elle” (from
the France publisher Hachette).
Through the years the women’s magazines have made some mature changes. For
example nowadays there are no taboos anymore and the cover as well as the inside looks
are more colorful than before. (http://vrouwentijdschriften.nl/). Other factors that
have changed the form, production, distribution and consumption of the magazine have
been caused by the rise of new media. The new media will also influence the future
glossy magazines.

6. The way new media will influence the structure of the classic magazine format of the
glossy magazine will be answered during this research. In order to do so the following
central question is addressed in this paper:
“Have new media influenced and pushed and reinvented the structure of the classic magazine format of
the glossy magazine?”
To answer this question first there will be addressed to the different developments in the
glossy magazine industry existing of the economic crisis, the unsatisfied readers and the
influence of new media. After the question is theoretically framed another literature –
reviews about this subject will be discussed. After this the first answer to the central
question will be given and a business proposal for Sophie Spindler creative direction
company will be presented.
4. Theory
4.1 Economic crisis
After finding out more information about glossy magazines there are a couple of
developments witch have influenced the glossy magazine industry. The first development
is the actual economic crisis. Because of the economic crisis publishers have to cut back
on pagination and make smaller edition sizes, because of the decline of the volume of ad
pages from there cosmetics-advertisers. Although referring to the following quotes not
everybody wants to admit the position of the glossy magazine industry, caused by the
economic crisis is become unstable.
Peter Phippen, managing director of BBC magazines says about the economic crisis ;
“It might not be one of the best periods for the industry, but still in time of recession consumers tend to
gravitate toward strong brands”. Stephen Quinn, publishing director of Vogue agrees with
Phippen by saying; “Consumers will continue buying the top-quality titles like my own magazine ,
Elle and other magazines like Cosmopolitan and Marie-Claire. So we will holding up well despite off
the downturn in the economy” (Clark, 2009).

7. 4.2 The content doesn’t change
Beside the economic crisis there is another problem the glossy magazine industry is
facing. The regular female readers of the glossy magazines are losing interest in the
magazines. This problem is caused because glossy magazines are out of touch with the
cultural changes that have been brought by social network sites.
The readers want the content of the glossy magazines to change. Instead of changing the
content of the magazines many glossy magazines have not evolved there content in years.
For example prominent magazines, like US Vogue have become stale and repetitive using
the same subjects about promising secrets to thinness and eternal happiness, that
women that have been reading the magazines long enough know aren’t true.
Another example is the way some glossy magazines have handled the economic crisis.
Cover stories like : “simple luxuries”, “shopping in your own closet” and “how to stop
the recession” makes the magazine seem soulless and without dept. And thereby not
capable to adapt their content to changing value systems, causes by temporary economic
circumstances. So instead of reading about unrealistically beautiful celebrities in printed
glossy magazines, the readers want to read the truth (Louw,2009).
Another reason of the lost of interest of the readers in glossy magazines is the rice of the
extreme popularity of personal style blogs and social network sites. Instead of printed
glossy magazines, that present unrealistically beautiful celebrities , blogs and social
network sites discuss issues and cover lines that are realistic and more inspiring , excising
of a mix of high-end and budget fashion. The popularity of the blogs and social
network sites is also caused by the rise of new media (idem:2009).
4.3 The technological and social possibilities of new media
New media will lead to very big changes in the form, production, distribution and
consumption of future magazines. Instead of traditional media, which is media that relies
primarily upon print and analog broadcast models , new media is a term meant to point
out the emergence of digital, computerized and communication technologies, like
Internet. (Manovich, 2003: 13-25).
The rise of new media is a result of the evolution of the new media technologies of
electronic media, called globalization. Globalization means that people can communicate
with each other and get information from all over the world, whenever we want and

8. without the need of being physical present. (Croteau & Hoynes, 2003:401-410). Thereby,
instead of traditional media that offers one-way communication one of the characteristics
of new media is that it can offer two-way communication called, interactivity. If the
traditional format of the magazine will be compared with the format of the magazine,
influenced by the possibilities of digital interactive media, differences are noticed in the
way new media leads to new textual experiences. This new textual experience are new
textual and visual images in which the magazines are presented. (Lister & Dovey, 2003:
9-44).
At last, one of the biggest trends of new media is the fact that consumers are becoming
producers/creators. Until the twentieth century publishers of media products had the
power over the distribution of media products. Because of the emergence of the new
media group of users they don’t control de distribution anaymore. People can produce
there own media, the so-called “user generated content”(UGC).This “self produced
media” is a form of social media(Michael Opgenhaffen, 2008).
4.4 Social media
Social media or web 2.0 is a collective term for sharing stories, knowledge and
experiences on online platforms via online media, that is not controlled by any external
authority, but by the users themselves. Because of the interactivity, online media can
offers people to talk, cooperate and exchange information with each other throughout
online tooling. Types of online tooling are blogs and social network sites (Lister
2001:200-201).
4.5 Social network sites
A social network site is a webpage that focuses on building and reflecting social networks
or relationships among people who share the same interest and/or activities. A social
network site consists of visible profiles that display a list of friends that are also users of
the system. Profiles are unique pages were each user can show texts, pictures and other
things they are interested in or want to share with there friends. (Danah,2007).
After joining a social network site an individual is asked to fill out a form with a couple
of questions about there age, education level, location, interests and other factors that
typically segment society. The answers on those questions give the users the ability to
find other people who have the same demographic segments. This demographic
information can also be used by companies that want to advertise on a social network

9. site to reach out to a certain target group. A type of active users of social network sites
are women.
4.6 Woman and social network sites
According to a new study from SheSpeaks there are now 86 percent women that are
using social network sites. 50 percent of the women use the social network sites to
purchase products, because of the information they saw of the brand on the social
network sites. The social network sites women like the most are Facebook and Twitter.
They also use tot social network sites to interact with their friends or to share pictures.
The differences between Facebook and Twitter is the fact that Twitter is a service that
provides people to know what there friends are doing, instead of Facebook which
provide a service were you also can create your own personal online platform. Thereby
Facebook with there 60 million users is much bigger than Twitter that has about 18
million users. Finally the last difference between Facebook and Twitter is the fact that
women that are using Facebook are likely to log in daily (72%) in stead of the women
that are using twitter(36%).
For marketers the overall growth and habitual use of social media by women represents
opportunities to reach and engage women of all ages, and influence their purchase
decisions (http://www.utalkmarketing.com).
5 Literature-review
That social network sites are a great instrument to reach certain target groups is also
reported in the research project in 2007 of two students of the Michigan State University.
They did a research project about the big influence of social network sites on people.
Other research that I have found are two articles about the great influence of the social
network sites as a promotion tool. The most important finding in this articles were;
“Social networking are increasingly popular, and have become wildly popular with a
varied demographic. Nowadays many companies use social network sites to connect or
reconnect with their costumers by communicating and sharing ideas. Thereby social
network sites are a great business promotion tool. An example of a great social network
site to use is Facebook. Facebook is one of the biggest social network sites in the world.

10. It’s no longer just the social networking choice for teenagers, but is a thriving business
promotion tool. Facebook give companies the ability to make their own personal
business page were they can promote their company” (http://www.articlesbase.com).
6 Answer to the central question
After discussing the highlights of the theoretical research and literature-review an answer
to the central question can be given:
“Have new media influenced and pushed and reinvented the structure of the classic magazine format of
the women glossy magazine?”
New media has had a great influence on the structure of the classic magazine format of
glossy magazines. Because of the rise of new media there became a lot of new forms of
media, like social media. Social media give people the ability to talk, cooperate and
exchange information with each other throughout online tooling, like social network
sites.
Social network sites are very popular among the readers of glossy magazines witch use
the social network sites to share their interests with each other. This leads to the fact that
the companies of the glossy magazine industry no longer know which subject the reader
want to read in the glossy-magazines. To reconnect with their readers, sell more
magazines and attract there cosmetics-advertisers, glossy magazine companies can use a
social network site, like Facebook.
7 Proposal
7.1 Introduction
After discovering the need for glossy magazine companies to use social network site, to
promote their brand, a proposal for Sophie Spindler’s creative direction company about
how they can use social network sites is written. In this proposal the chosen social
network sites will be first discussed. Secondly the promotion- strategy that will be used
by this social network site will be explained. After this the financial-table to accomplish
this strategy will be presented.
The social network site that has been chosen for this proposal is Facebook. The reason

11. this social network site is chosen is because this social network site seems to have a
strong reputation among the readers of the glossy magazines. Secondly, with more than
60 million active members, Facebook is the world’s largest social platform. The strategy
Facebook uses to improve the reputation of companies exist of five different campaign
types which will be described in the next paragraph.
7.2 Strategy
The first campaign type there can be used is the Poll Engagement Ads.
With Poll advertisements a company can can get the users opinions on any topic they
like. To solve one of the problems the glossy magazine industry is facing the women
glossy the Poll advertisements can be uses to ask their readers what subjects they find
interesting to read in certain glossy magazines.
Another application that is quiet similar to the poll’s are the Quiz Applications. With
the Quiz Applications glossy magazine companies can also ask their readers what they
want to read in the glossy magazines. Besides getting the opinion of the readers about
certain subject there are a few more features Facebook can offer companies.
Another campaign type Facebook can offer is the Video Engagement Ads.
With Video advertising publishing companies can select a target demographic and
display the video ads to them. This video has no limitation on the length of the video in a
way similar to television advertisements.
A third campaign application Facebook is offering are the Branded Gift Engagement
Ads. This gifts are virtual gifts that friends who are connected on Facebook give to each
other The branded gifts will display on the homepage and users will be able to see those
friends which have sent gifts to each other, as well as what they wrote when the gifts
were sent. This is also a great way to get Facebook users engaging with a brand.
The metrics provided to the brand following the campaign is the number of gifts sent as
well as the demographics of the people who shared and received the gifts. This is a good
way of promoting a glossy magazine. One of the advantages are the fact that users can
send the gifts to other friend and in this way also promoting their brand.

12. A fourth campaign application of Facebook is the Event Engagement Ads, who give
companies the ability to get awareness by organizing an event.
For example the glossy women magazine Cosmopolitan who launched a sponsored
social media initiative called; “The Cosmo Karma Project”. This project encouraged
Facebook and Twitter (another social network site) users to document acts of kindness.
This acts of kindness meant that the magazine 320.000 fans could go to post their do-
good activities, like racing money for a donation company, like War Child.
Another application to promote a brand is by the Fan Page Ads.
With this application Facebook users can become a fan directly from the advertisement
and so automatically ask their connections if they also want to be fan of this fan
application. For example the glossy magazine company Cosmopolitan can make a “
cosmopolitan” fan application to promote their magazine
(http://ww.facebook.com/ads).
To accomplish each of the advertising types there will be presented a financial-table
below.
7.3 Financial- table
Pricelist of the Facebook Engagement Ads
Type of Ad: Price:
Personal sales coordinator $3000 a month
Poll Engagement Ads $10.000 a month
The Quiz Applications. $5.000 a month
Video Engagement Ads. $100.000 a month
Branded Gift Engagement Ads $2.500 a month
Event Engagement Ads $10.000 a month
Total costs: $130500 a month

13. 8 Literature
Books:
- Manovich, L.e.v. "New Media From Borges to HTML." The New Media
Reader.” Ed. Noah Wardrip-Fruin & Nick Montfort. Cambridge, Massachusetts,
2003.
- Lister, M., J. Dovey, S. Giddings, I. Grant & K. Kelly New Media. A critical
Introduction.London, Routledge, 2009
- Croteau, David & William Hoynes Media, Society: Industries, Images and Audiences.
London, 2002
Articles:
- Clark, Nicole: “Weathering the magazine circulation storm”. February 2009.
http://www.marketingmagazine.co.uk/news/881362
- Louw, Carina: “A glossy downturn”. May 2009.
http://www.fluxtrends.com/web/index2.php?
option=com_content&task=view&id=125
- Opgenhaffen, M, De commerciële waarde van user generated content. February
2008. http://www.denieuwereporter.nl/2008/02/de-commerciele-waarde-van-
user-generated-content/
Thesis:
- Danah, B. Ellison, N. “Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication”2007.
Websites:
- http://vrouwentijdschriften.nl
- http://www.articlesbase.com
- http://www.utalkmarketing.com
- www.facebook.com/ads

14. 9 Critical reflection
This critical reflection is not part of the proposal that is written for the direction
company of Sophie Spindler, but is written for academic purposes.
Dear mr. Leendertse,
For this assignment I had to answer the question:
“Have new media influenced and pushed and reinvented the structure of the classic magazine format of
the women glossy magazine?”
The subject I have chosen for my research is the influence of new media on the
glossy magazine industry. I have focused my research on the type of new media;
social network sites. The reason I have chosen social network sites is because before I
started my research I already had certain ideas about how the social network sites
could influence the glossy magazine industry. But to prove my hypotheses I had to
search for scientific theory. The theory about the different kind f media was easy to
find. More difficult was finding the information about the current development of the
glossy magazine market.
One of my ideas about how social network sites could influence the glossy magazine
industry was by reaching their target group throughout the social network sites. When
I searched for information how the creative direction company of Sophie Spindler
could use a social network site as a promotion tool for their glossy magazines, I
founded the advertising tools that Facebook uses. This strategy agreed with my ideas
of how a company could promote their company with a social network sites, so I was
very pleased with this findings.
The part I had much difficulties with was to find a good literature-review about this
subjects. There is a lot of information about social network sites, but the problem is
that most of the information is not scientific, but written on blogs or websites. To find
enough information about my subject, to compare with my theoretical research, I have
chosen more resources. I hope this is alright.

15. Thereby I have to note that my financial table is totally fictitious, because I couldn’t
find the prices for the ad engagements of Facebook and I have absolutely no idea what
the cost of a personal sales assistant are.
The last thing I want to add to this critical reflection is that I liked this assignment a
lot, although it was very challenging for me, because this was the first paper I have
ever written in my life. I hope I have fulfilled all the requirements.
Greetings,
Elske Joustra