[case study]
"We were once rated as the smallest bourgeois magazine in China by New Weekly, which is a very good brand." Li, editor-in-chief, said at a salon of Xinhua Media Studio that all the operations of City Pictorial are centered on the brand. "Our promotion, our editors, our advertisements and our distributors all revolve around this center."
The brand-centered management and marketing strategy of City Pictorial is closely related to the reader orientation of "urban youth". Its core readers are young people aged 25-35 in large and medium-sized cities in China, and the consumption life of this group tends to be "branded" more and more: drinking coffee to Starbucks, shopping to IKEA, going to comfort fort for fitness ... Look at their mobile phones, computers and clothes, almost all of which are related to brands. If City Pictorial is to be accepted by these young people who like Coca-Cola and Nike, it must also establish and consolidate its brand advantages like Coca-Cola and Nike. Its goal is not only to stand out from more than 8,000 magazines in China, but also to make young people as accustomed to buying Pictorial as they buy Coca-Cola.
It is reported that at present, the circulation of City Pictorial is about 300,000 copies, and the annual advertising revenue exceeds 6,543,800 yuan.
Happiness: the connotation of brand
An important part of brand management is the establishment of brand connotation. Only by establishing brand positioning and defining brand connotation can brand marketing of products be targeted. In fact, for enterprises that truly understand brand marketing, brand is not a link or a local thing, but a long-term solution for the whole enterprise system. In the process of enterprise operation, the brand runs through and is everywhere. From product and pricing to promotion and channel, a brand is like a red line, and the connotation of a brand is the impression and feeling that the brand ultimately wants to convey to consumers.
City Pictorial has a concept: not just to be a magazine, but to be an example of young people's culture and to be a cultural infiltrator. Driven by this cultural concept, magazines must give their own brands clear and rich cultural connotations. This connotation should not only conform to the positioning of the magazine, the needs of readers, but also conform to the preferences of advertisers, and even the trend or law of the target market. How to establish your own brand connotation? City Pictorial chose Happiness as a magazine with happiness as its marketing appeal and business philosophy.
The readers of Pictorial are mainly aimed at young people born around the 1970s. They are increasingly becoming the mainstream of society. Their pursuit of life is very individual, and their consumption power is constantly improving and exuberant. In addition, the urbanization speed of China is amazing. City Pictorial aims at the young people in the city, which means it has found a sustainable growth market. The editor of City Pictorial believes that young people in today's cities pursue the concept of "happiness first" and try to attract their target readers through the content and management driven by "happiness". It is this unique business philosophy that makes it maintain its characteristics and consolidate its advantages in the homogenization competition of the magazine industry.
CI: brand vision
In the brand marketing of Urban Pictorial, CI has always been a very important strategy. The application of CI strategy can be used as a clue for us to interpret our brand marketing.
CIS is the abbreviation of enterprise identification system, which can also be referred to as CI. It mainly includes four parts: enterprise mental recognition (M 1), enterprise behavior recognition (B 1), enterprise visual recognition (V 1) and enterprise auditory recognition (H 1). The most intuitive and external part is visual identification (V 1). In general, CI mainly refers to VI, which conveys all kinds of information of enterprises through organized and systematic visual schemes.
For newspapers and periodicals, the visual composition of CI mainly includes title, Logo, font, paper, color, symbol, spokesperson and so on. Brand building of newspapers and magazines is closely related to these CI elements. With the help of visualized, standardized and systematic CI forms, we can effectively spread the ideas and culture of the media to readers, so that their brand impression and cognition of the media gradually coincide with the brand characteristics of the media. "CIS established by the media according to its own unique cultural concept has distinct personality characteristics, which is a shortcut to show the difference between this media and other media, and is also an important link for the media to implement differentiated competition."
Below, let's take a look at how some CI elements of City Pictorial serve and lead the brand marketing of this magazine from the aspects of advertising language, cover, logo and spokesperson.
Slogan slogan is not only the most concise summary of magazine positioning, but also the loudest voice of brand marketing. City Pictorial has different orientations and corresponding slogans in different periods. The slogan is directly printed on the cover of each issue, which forms an overall visual symbol with logo, and conveys the positioning of the magazine with direct and simple words. At the beginning of the revision, we took "Give you a comprehensive information about Guangzhou" as the theme to tell people the new orientation of Guangzhou's urban information. In addition, under the banner of "new life", it expresses the unique pursuit of content and the unique praise of fashion life of City Pictorial. The upgrade from "communicator" to "leader" also reflects the magazine's confidence in improving content quality and brand culture. Obviously, leadership is more advanced and far-sighted than communication.
As an intuitive external form of products, cover is undoubtedly the forefront of magazine competition. The cover of a magazine follows the principle of "three steps and five seconds", which means that readers can find themselves in a dazzling array of newsstands in three steps and five seconds. If there is no distinctive and eye-catching cover, the marketing of the whole magazine will lose its "good start" For magazines, the cover is the first selling point and the key to brand building. Among the cI elements of all magazine brands, the cover is undoubtedly the most visually impactful element.
From 65438 to 0999, the cover of City Pictorial was greatly adjusted when it was revised, with the popular women as the main visual content. After the opening of the "beloved" column, there will be a beautiful girl living and working in Guangzhou on the cover of each issue, with beautiful pictures, strong creativity and concise words. For a long time, the "beloved" photo as the cover has personality and attraction, which has won many eyeballs for City Illustrated.
However, the 39th issue of City Pictorial published on May 1 1 2006 changed its cover from "beloved" to "very male and female", giving up the original practice of relying on "a woman" as the cover and changing it to "a man and a woman". For this major adjustment of the cover, the editor told the readers their difficulties on the title page: "We tried to use the image of a man and a woman as the cover of this magazine. Is it different? It will be different. Is it a better difference? ……
When most magazines are used to using beautiful women as their covers, the bold innovation of City Pictorial is obviously conducive to maintaining its distinctive visual image and brand style. General magazines rarely use two people as their covers, which is "easy to distract attention" in the words of professional photographers, but "City Pictorial" pursues "no one has me". While reforming the cover, the editor also found a more tacit explanation between the magazine contents of the new cover: "very male and female" wants to express "the relationship between men and women", which is precisely the most sensitive and evocative theme for our core readers.
Similar to City Pictorial, Girlfriend magazine also has ingenious ideas on the choice of cover characters. When cutting-edge luxury magazines become the favorite readers of urban women, girlfriends consciously enter this market, expecting to become the first choice for mature women. However, the old readers who have grown up will never return to their youth, and the growing girls also expect magazines to better meet their needs. For this reason, Girlfriend was changed from a monthly magazine to a bimonthly magazine. The first half is the original girlfriend, which continues to be aimed at students in the mood for love, and the second half is the new girlfriend, which is aimed at mature women who have entered the society. When deciding the cover, the girlfriend considers that teenage girls call for group awareness, while mature women emphasize self-awareness. So the same two people, "City Pictorial" used the cover style of a man and a woman together, and "Girlfriend" used the cover style of two girls together.
LOgO 10go is the logo, which mainly refers to the magazine masthead. In the history of City Pictorial, the change of logo has always been the main symbol of the magazine's change. On September 9th, 1999, Guangdong Pictorial was transformed from a provincial photo propaganda publication to an urban youth fashion publication. The Pictorial 10so published that month has undergone major changes. The word "Guangdong" was reduced and placed in the upper right corner of the word "painting", and the word "pictorial" was clearly highlighted on the whole cover. It is reported that as early as before the revision in September, the report applying for renaming was already under examination and approval, but the name of the publication cannot be changed because it has not been officially approved. Therefore, the handling of the September issue enlarged the word "Pictorial" and played a good transitional role. On October 8th, 65438/kloc-0, Guangdong Pictorial was officially renamed as City Pictorial, and the word "Guangdong" in L0go was naturally changed to "city".
It is worth mentioning that the LOGO processing method similar to "City Pictorial" enlarging "Pictorial" and narrowing "City" has been adopted by many magazines at present. Under the policy condition that it is relatively difficult to change the title, many magazines weaken the unwanted parts of the title in the form of shrinking and diluting, and highlight the parts that need to be highlighted through bright colors and enlarged fonts. This practice neither directly violates the policy, but also has an indirect renaming effect. If readers don't read City Pictorial carefully, it's easy to regard this magazine as a pictorial.
At the end of 2002, City Pictorial performed a major operation on 10go, which had been used for three years. Because there are many magazines that play "Pictorial" in China, almost every province has "Pictorial", and many of them adopt a logo similar to "City Pictorial" to highlight the word "city" with similar fonts. In this way, it is difficult for the headlines of City Pictorial to "jump out" on the colorful newsstands.
Generally speaking, the new logo inherits and innovates the old logo in style. There are two major differences between the old and new logo: 1. The word "pictorial" is reduced to the lower right corner, while the word "city" is enlarged; 2. Tilt the word "city" slightly and frame it. It can be said that replacing pictorial with enlarged "city" is not only different from the logo of other similar magazines, but also more directly highlights the magazine's own "city" positioning. Li Hui, the executive editor of City Pictorial, explained that the word "city" was tilted: "This design follows the original font. In order not to emphasize the left and right, the word is slightly left and the border is bold."
Considering that "this scheme may not be a perfect design, it needs to be taken out to solicit opinions from readers and all sides." As a result, City Pictorial launched a "double cover" to make the old and new logo into two different aspects for readers to compare, get familiar with and accept. At that time, it coincided with the subscription time of the new annual magazine, and the distribution competition entered a white-hot stage Releasing the new logo in the form of "double cover" not only creates the reading expectation of the new image of the New Year, but also provides strong support for distribution and advertising investment. The new logo was officially launched from June 5438+ 10, 2003, and City Pictorial once again created a brand-new visual and brand image in readers' minds.
Spokesman Spokesman is the embodiment of the concretization and humanization of magazine image, and it is also an important strategy for magazine brand promotion. Choosing an image spokesperson that is consistent with the magazine's positioning, style and temperament is very helpful to enhance the magazine's popularity and reputation. According to the characteristics of "City Pictorial" in capturing fashion and spreading popularity, its image spokesperson must also have a full sense of fashion and distinctive temperament. Therefore, Pictorial chose Qiao Zhou and Grain Rain. Both spokesmen are models, handsome or beautiful, and their temperament is more individual than ordinary models. Because City Pictorial often holds fashion matching activities in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and other places, spokespersons can often participate in activities, narrow the distance between magazines and readers, and spread the new life concept of "you are happy, I am happy" in a vivid way.