The debate has been rumbling on in Twitterland for the last few months. What is with the lack of real content in the industry magazines?!
When I joined the industry nearly 6 years ago, the magazines were full of stories, proper stories. They included company bankruptcies, mergers, special columns from highly regarded people within the industry. But now, the mass majority have been reduced to the double glazing industry’s answer to the Yellow Pages! Some barely break 20 pages per month and even then they’re peddling stories that are 3 months old!
If magazines are going to re-connect with disillusioned readers they are seriously going to have to improve the content of what they are publishing. I understand that money has to be made to keep these magazines going, but there has to be a more even balance of opinion and comment and advertorials. The raft of magazines that landed on my desk this week so far have been so advert orientated that I’ve put ALL of them down within 30 seconds! They then go on the pile to be recycled!
People take the time out of their busy days to read magazines because they want to read something that gets conversation stimulated and causes a bit of controversy, ruffling a few feathers! I’m not saying go angering all your advertisers, but stop running the same articles for months and months at a time. Harvest the social networks for the most active double glazing commentators and use them to help reinvent the many stagnant and frankly achingly boring magazines.
I flick through them all, but it’s verbatum regurgitation in every one. It’s repetative advertorials, and the full cycle of “Dear Nathan” moaning letters in every one is plain old embarassing. Why do they do that?! Looks pathetic. The few articles worth reading are very few and far between – Terminus, Rod Appleyard, Philip Rougier et al. There’s The Blogger, and also David thingy from FGI – their writing has been good, and Gary Dean’s thoughts are interesting to read, if not always agreed upon. The best newish one is Glass News. At least that has some competitions and a… Read more »
Thanks for your comment Ginty.
The mags used to be full of opinion and high quality writing. The magazines are guilty of taking advantage of their readership by thinking that people won’t get bored of their magazines even if they start loading tons of advertorials in them. Well people are noticing and voicing their opinions against it now.
Here is my halfpenny’s worth—The news is old, and everything seems to be disguised advertising material even if written as a supposed objective piece. More power to your elbow DGB that’s what I say!