Hearst admits magazine industry has ‘big job’ to change advertisers’ perceptions
Speaking at Advertising Week Europe on 26 March alongside execs from Channel 4, Global Radio and News UK, Dolphin admitted that magazine media is partly to blame for the miss-understanding around the influence the medium has in today’s fragmented media space, but attributed this to the paradigm shift seen in publishing in recent years.
“We have a huge perception issue and I’ll take it on the chin for us publishers here and we’ll take some of the blame,” she said. “Over the last four or five years we’ve been through the biggest transition so we had to get our heads down and work on the engine.”
That work includes upskilling journalists to interpret data and analytics and training sales executives to operate across multiple platforms.
“We’ve been spending loads of time on the engine but we haven’t spent enough time on the bonnet, on the perception bit,” Dolphin continued. “So I kind of understand that agencies have missed the mark with magazine media.
“Really with everything we’re been through we’re the new kids on the block. We are the ones people need to understand how we are operating… there is a big job for us to do, but we are all focussed on doing that now.”
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