AMID THE increasingly frequent demise of women’s magazines – Preaw, Image, Volume and the Thai editions of Cosmopolitan and Seventeen have all succumbed in the last nine months to soaring printing costs and slumping ad revenue and circulation – at least one new title has appeared, even if it’s not in print.
While the hard-copy publications are dying off, online beauty and lifestyle bloggers are thriving, and Anon Poungtubtim, who edited Volume, is taking them on at their own game, declaring, “I haven’t quite given up yet!”
Anon is today launching the chic digital magazine The Editors Society, a compendium of stories by experienced editors, with the aim of taking back his throne from the bloggers and rising to the challenges of the new technology.
“You can’t get stuck in one time period,” he says. “If you do, you’re outdated.
“I’ve lived through the age of public telephones, pagers and handheld mobiles. Admittedly I love print, but I’ve also spent plenty of time swiping my mobile screen and engaging with people on the social media. It’s all part of the modern lifestyle – people prefer getting their information through the digital media and it reaches more people faster and easier, even if the information disappears just as quickly.”
Anon wants to counter the fleeting nature and often-dubious factuality of the stories and gossip shared online, as well as the sloppy grammar in which they’re typically couched.
“I believe there are many people like me who want to read useful, creditable content in correct and beautiful language, not necessarily just like you find in print but creative and standardised. So I thought, ‘Why not turn this crisis into an opportunity? Why don’t I simply change platforms?'”
One of the pioneers in the Thai women’s-magazine field, Anon got a degree from Sorbonne University in Paris and worked for an advertising agency before moving into publishing. He started as a guest columnist at Lalana and Preaw and was art director at Image before founding Lips and Volume.
During his 30 years in the trade he witnessed the boom times for print media, when lifestyle journalists led five-star lifestyles, jetted off for fashion shoots overseas, chummed around with famous foreign designers and sat in the front row at Milan runway shows. They were spoiled, it was excessive – and it made for excellent experience, something the new generation of bloggers simply can’t match.
“Time flies and everything changes,” Anon says. “In the print media we used the language beautifully so that readers could close their eyes and see the image as if they were right there with us. We had incredible pictures they could enjoy while sipping their coffee.
“Online these days, it’s more like ‘Please get to the point!’ The new generation doesn’t like to wait. They scan the story and move on – unless it’s something they really want to read and then they click on the link. We want to get their attention and make them click the link.”
Women’s print magazines that also have an online presence tend to lose readership for the hard-copy edition, Anon says. “The team works incredibly hard, but the readers see what’s online and don’t buy the print issue unless it’s a really special edition or has a star they like on the cover. So all the magazines on the shelves end up looking very similar.”
With online content rocking the social networks, the Editors Society is looking for an edge in its presentation of hot trends, hotter fashion brands, cool travel and dining features and the coolest advice on beauty. Party events and celebrity news will add to the site’s liveliness, and a partnership with online shopping portal Lazada means there’ll be deals from across Asia.
One of the editors populating the “society” is Aomsin Saenlom, the former beauty editor at Cosmopolitan (Thailand) and author of the blog Oh La La Story. Anon’s concept appeals to him, he says, because it has all the superior writing of a print magazine in a catchier format.
“I wrote for Cosmo for 20 years and I can’t change my writing style,” Aomsin says. “I can’t ‘chat’ with my online readers as if they were my pals, using lots of slang. What I can do, though, is share my experience and expertise in a friendly way.”
Vorasit Turongsomboon, who handles brand publicity in the beauty and grooming division at Procter and Gamble Trading (Thailand), cautions that there are crucial marketing factors to consider in the shift from print to digital. It comes down to how effectively the consumers are targeted and how well they respond, he says.
“These days the challenge in marketing is really about content. Once you identify the target consumer, you see what content they like and then blend the product advertising into that that so they don’t feel like they’re being sold something. You need an ‘influencer’ – a key opinion leader – and finally you decide which communication channel would be most effective in reaching that consumer, whether TV, newspapers or blogs.”
While it’s apparent that readers do absorb the content of the traditional media, it’s trickier to measure when it comes to blogs, Vorsasit says. You have to assess the “engagement rate” – the number of likes, shares and reader comments, and the quality of the comments too – to determine whether the marketing message is getting through.
Supranee Janthapaiboonkajon, country manager of Sephora Thailand, says digital content is extremely important for her retail store – “the future”, in fact. Sephora customers are Net-savvy, grabbing their gadgets as soon as they wake up to check what’s been happening.
Bloggers on beauty and fashion who write about Sephora products become crucial, she says, “and since we have limited resources, we set priorities. We don’t want to work with every blogger – only those who share the same aim, which is to be sincere with our customers and not get overly commercial. Integrity and having a real passion about beauty is a must.”
One of Thailand’s biggest “influencers” when it comes to beauty trends is Napassorn “Momay” Buranasiri, who hosts the “Momay Pa Plearn” telecasts on the SpokeDark TV website and, as “Dailycherie”, has 730,000 followers on Instagram alone.
Momay started out seven years ago posting videos of her sampling different makeup products. “I don’t call myself a blogger – I’m a consumer. I don’t write,” she says.
She’s also a musician, singer and dancer, familiar with show business since her mother Suda Cheunban and sister Patcharida Wattana are well-known singers. She’d always do her own makeup for concerts and television shoots. When the Internet began creating its own stars, she and her friends decided to get into Web-based television.
Momay says the focus of the telecasts is always on the consumers rather than the brands, so being sincere is essential. She had no sponsors to begin with, since it took a while for marketers to recognise the potential in what she was doing. She still pays for all the products she tests and feels free to criticise those she doesn’t like. Viewers thus know they can trust her and their numbers have grown steadily.
Marketers now understand the importance of creative content, Momay says. “There are plenty of lipsticks out there, so you need to be creative in the presentation. Whether bloggers survive or not very much depends on whether they can really teach people anything. The consumer is smart enough to see whether they’re only in it for the fame or to get stuff for free. They have plenty of choices in who to follow.”
GET A DIGITAL ‘DO’
-The Editors Society is at www.TheEditorsSociety.com and on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube as “theeditorssociety”.
– Keep up with Aomsin Saenlom at www.OhLaLaStory.com and “ohlalastory” on Facebook.
This source first appeared on The Nation Life.