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This week in branded content - magazine innovation and the best branded Facebook pages
Honda's magazine that dealers can customise, Tesco expands its magazine range and are blogs dead?
River Publishing has unveiled details of an innovative magazine its launched with Honda. Targeted at customers in Honda dealers the 20 page magazine features lifestyle content which aims to showcase the depth of the Honda brand.
The smart bit is that the magazine can be customised by the dealer who can create their own cover image, add local new stories and deliver a personal message to their customers. Eight pilot dealers have used a specially built online content management system to upload their content and images.
The first issue, which had a total print run of 14,000 copies, was distributed to dealers in July.
Tesco is set to expand its magazine offering with the introduction of two new a4 magazines. The titles, Food and Home will launch at the end of September with a target circulation of 50,000 each and a cover price of £1.99. A third magazine, which will see Tesco compete against existing TV listings titles, is called Your TV Week and is expected to launch in December with a coverprice of 45p.
The magazines are produced by a new company called Catmags Communication which is a joint venture between customer publisher PSP Rare and marketing company Lucid Direct.
Tesco already has a huge presence in customer publications with its flagship title, Tesco Magazine, is produced by Cedar Communications and has the fourth-highest magazine circulation in the UK. It also has the quarterly customer magazine Real Food, which launched in March.
It has been a busy week for Facebook with the launch of its new location based service Facebook Places. Not unlike existing apps like Foursquare and Gowalla Places lets users check in at venues like bars and clubs to let their Facebook friends know where they are.
Perhaps of more relevance to brands for now is a superb article at Econsultancy which highlights twenty five Facebook pages owned by brands that it considers to be innovative and effective. Among the list are Sainsburys, Oxfam and Honda.
Finally big news from the blogosphere where Gawker Media, which operates several of the most read blogs in the world including Gawker, Gizmodo and Deadspin, has unveiled a re-design which according to The Wrap actually looks more like destination magazine sites than blogs. The redesign has sparked a series of ‘are blogs dead?' articles on blogs and websites with some commentators pointing out that the leading commercial blogs, many of which date from around 5-7 years ago, are becoming the new mainstream media.
