Magazines: An Umbrella for the Digital Deluge

Imagine receiving a letter.

Bleary-eyed one morning you approach the pristine white rectangle lying there on the doormat full of promise. It’s not a bill or a flyer, but an envelope addressed to you in hand-written ink.

Thirty years ago, this would have been commonplace. Hallway floors around the world were strewn with paper every day of the week. Today receiving a letter is so rare that it would make for a good opening to a dramatic novel.

Questions would bubble up: who’s it from? Why me? What am I about to discover? The possibilities would be endless, because with paper and ink comes the promise of something unusual, even special – a break from the norm.

Now imagine receiving an email. It plops in, one of 50, often disappearing into a spam folder, usually deleted without reading. The daily deluge of stuff you don’t want or need.

Email, social media and alerts are perfunctory and routine. The repetitive drumbeat of modern life. The messages might well be important, but the vehicles often fail to announce the fact. Today, print is power and, perhaps ironically, with every day that the digital era evolves its potential grows

The return of the magazine  

Nowhere is print better expressed than in magazines. In the height of the global digital transformation, they took a backseat, gradually relegated, unloved and less used as the internet became the primary vehicle for marketers.

And with good reason. Digital channels have numerous benefits ranging from immediacy to affordability. You can broadcast messages on mass scale and see the results in real time. The problem is, so can everyone else.

It is this ubiquity that takes the edge off. Brands are vying for attention in a world beset by online pings bothering audiences who deep down would love nothing more than to detox and give their eyeballs a rest.

It is within this context that print finds its natural home. Reading a magazine is a lean-back experience associated with deep concentration; it is a pastime best accompanied by a cuppa, not a secondary screen.

Brain mechanics

Best of all, what’s good for readers’ souls is also good for branded marketing campaigns. Evidence suggests that people who access information via print trigger memory centres in the brain, raising recall rates and message retention.

A US study by the National Institutes of Health shows reading physical paper stimulates the visual cortex and hippocampus better than digital displays. Both are critical for memory and spatial episodic retrieval, helping to transform temporary experiences into lasting knowledge which can be recalled.

Paper is physical geography: you remember not only what the point was, but where it appeared on a page, something which doom scrolling fails to replicate. Meanwhile, the absence of pop-ups, notifications and lower scope for multitasking reduces mental load, giving more room for comprehension.

A quick wager: I bet you can remember the gist of a book you read a decade ago, but not that clever LinkedIn insight you skimmed last week.

Proof comes in the form of a 2023 study of school-age children by the University of Valencia, which revealed that reading print text raised comprehension levels between six and eight times compared with digital materials.

It’s the same story for grown-ups. A study by Canada Post conducted by neuromarketing from TrueImpact found that physical content marketing is easier to process than email and online display advertising.

When asked to recite the company name of an advertisement they had just viewed, 75% of those exposed to piece of physical mail were able to do so, compared with only 44% who saw a digital ad.

Interestingly, an envelope with an added scent scored highest in the “motivation-to-content load ratio”, meaning it had the best chance of “in-market success” and proving that sensory triggers have a noteworthy impact.

Separate research by the University of Bangor concluded that physical material triggers spatial memory networks, making it feel more “real”. It involves more emotional processing, useful for brand associations, and produces more brain responses associated with sentiment.

A question of trust

In marketing, trust is usually associated with loyalty and, when accompanied by other metrics, also buying decisions. Gain it and your customers will be loyal and happy; let it slide and watch your share price tumble.

A study published in Campaign found that seven in ten Britons trust magazines, compared with just 30% who said the same about social media. Ofcom says 82% of magazine readers perceive the content as exceptionally high quality, while 84% agreed that the medium offers a depth of analysis and content.

Combine these stats with YouGov research showing that 58% of British consumers get more ‘singular enjoyment’ from print editions than electronic ones – a sentiment that grows with age – and you have a recipe for impact. Both formats have their place, but on this evidence leaving out hard copies could be a mistake.

A historical factor weighing on trust in magazines is the perceived impact of print products on the environment. It’s true, for example, that an email or an AI prompt has a lower carbon footprint than a 60-page journal on 170gsm paper and premium ink.

But the magazine industry woke up to this challenge years ago. Today, the best print companies offer a carbon negative service, meaning that they remove more CO2 from the atmosphere than they put in.

The same can be said for sellers of paper stock, the majority of who source sustainably and can demonstrate how (evidence is in the fact that European forests have been growing for the last 25 years), plus distribution companies who offer sustainable, low-impact delivery solutions.

From a trust point of view, the credentials of market leaders in this space appear pretty robust next to those of even the most modest datacentre.

The point of all this is not that magazines are a sudden panacea for all of marketing’s challenges, they still do the same job they always have. But their magnificent, unique scope for impactful design and long-form journalism, coupled with their comparative rarity, make them a key component of the marketing mix that should never be dismissed.

About Dan

Dan Matthews is head of editorial at Man Bites Dog. 

Talk to Dan about custom publishing, branded magazines, websites, dynamic digital and editorial products to help your business become a thought maker in its market. 

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