Is print back? What the re-release of NME’s magazine tells us

Image: NME

For many of us, NME was a huge part of our teenage years — if you listened to (real) music, you read their magazine. This was before the appearance of blogs, when ‘screen time’ didn’t even exist and we had to pop to the newsagents or WHSmith for the updates on what our favourite artists were up to.

The end of an era?

Fast forward more years than I’d like to admit, and magazines have become something entirely different. The internet changed everything for regular print, and five years ago NME made the decision to move entirely online. I mean, it makes sense — the costs of producing a physical piece have only risen, and if your audience are hanging out in the digital space then can you really justify the outgoings? It’s always a sad moment when something that was once so prolific ceases to exist, signifying the end of life as we knew it.

Back, but with a difference

The best comeback stories are the ones with a clever twist. NME have recognised that their old format isn’t what people want anymore, but they’ve worked out what people do want — exclusivity. Treating the publication as a limited piece means that you’re not only saving on production costs, but you’re creating a buzz around the brand. Instead of having to recycle all of last months unsold issues, they’re now creating scarcity. Released bi-monthly in small numbers, the psychology behind an exclusive product is what makes many luxury fashion brands so successful. Not everyone can own it, which makes it feel more unique.

Long live print

Everybody thought print was dead, but the scarcity of it has actually created a whole new culture. There are now many great shops dedicated solely to niche magazines (Unitom and Catalog are two of my favourites), and some highly coveted issues can be sold for a fortune. They’ve become an iconic thing in a world where get our news to our phones rather than through the letterbox — and I believe our over exposure to screens has played a huge part in that.

As I mentioned in this Creative Boom article, print feels so much more of a novelty to us now. We rarely experience the sensory qualities of objects anymore, as we spend most of our time looking at them on a screen. The feel of paper, the smell of a book, the sound of a page turning has become something quite nostalgic. There have even been studies lately that have proved people interact and retain information more from a physical marketing piece than they would a digital campaign.

So what does this teach us?

First of all, we know that print is far from dead. If anything, it’s somewhat of an untapped resource for many businesses, so we need to start thinking about new ways to approach it. Take from the old, but bring in the new — just as NME have done.

I’d love to know your thoughts on print — do you enjoy it? Are you a magazine lover, or a book sniffer? If you’d like to consider bringing print into your marketing plan, you can get in touch with me via email or Instagram.

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