Question 3

What kind of media institution might distribute your media production and why?

IPC publishing company is a very popular magazine publisher. Time Warner is the companies owner, and his company publish many popular magazines such as ‘NME’, which is a hugely successful music magazine which covers the same target audience. This therefor adds the chance that they would make my production successful as they already have the skills to promote there products to this age group. Also due to IPC’s huge customer base, they could potentially get there already set fan base to also become interested in the electronic music industry which could hugely increase my customer base. Time Warner also owns television channels such as cartoon network and have stakes in MTV which is mainly target at a youthful audience. This could become a major advantage as they can use channels such as MTV to promote the magazine.

Harris publications is one of the leading magazine publishers in the world, publicising magazines such as XXL. This company would be ideal to publish my magazine, seeing as they have the skills and expertise to successfully promote my magazine to my target audience. Harris publications also publicise 10 other major music magazines around the country and continent. However the most important magazine they promote is the DJ magazine ‘scratch’, which integrates into my genre of magazine and ties in with my contents page features in my magazine. Again there expertise on the electronic music genre suggests they know the ways to promote around the country. Most importantly is the fact that Harris publications are the largest publishers of music magazines in the US. Selling over 285,000 copies every month. This gives for great promise as Mixmag could potentially be promoted throughout the U.S as well.

Bauer media are a well known privately owned publishing group which own over 300 products, including TV stations, radios, and other online products. Q and Kerrang magazines are both published by this group, thus meaning they have great expertise and knowledge in the music magazine market. These magazines also come under the same target audience as mine, thus why they would be very helpful to publicise my magazine. Bauer magazines publish 38 million magazines a week thus meaning the production of publishing my magazine would be relatively cheap to the hugely large scale they are already publicising on.

My magazine is mainly targeted at teens between 16-25 and based around the electronic music magazine genre. I would like my magazine to be mainly published and distributed by companies such as Bauer, IPC and Harris publications. Many institutions may be suitable, but the most suitable would be Harris Publications, this is due to huge scale they are producing meaning costs would be low as well as having such a large customer base promotion of the magazine would be very easy. Also due to Harris publications producing ‘scratch’ they have a lot of expertise in publishing electronic music magazines. Harris publications is a major conglomerate and have the financial benefits to distribute my magazine through horizontal and vertical integration. Horizontal and vertical integration is crucial in the distribution of magazines. Horizontal integration is when a company e.g. Harris owns multiple companies of the same structure including TV, radio, magazines and newspapers (all media). So horizontal integration would be using these media groups to help publicise my magazine in order to create a larger audience. Vertical integration is when the publishing company own different companies in the same selling genre. E.g. the sun owns multiple newspapers and magazines within the business. This is useful for my magazine as it can distribute it cheaply and in bulk as they already own the business within.

Synergy could come into play when distributing my magazine, synergy in media distribution means the sale of production through other media conglomerates. So companies such as Harris may put my magazine in different business’s such as music labels which can increase sales of my magazine through this technique. Social media and the internet which is a multi platform approach which can help target my product through Facebook and twitter which is also the main use of social media for my target audience. Social media for my target audience is hugely popular and is used daily. Thus meaning it can spread like wild fire throughout the internet and can be viewed and promoted rapidly and relatively free of charge. The idea of ‘sharing’ and ‘retweeting’ the magazine would allow many people to view there opinions and promote it through their friends. By using promotional strategies such as eyeline marketing, where the product is put at the customer’s eye level so they can constantly see the magazine and become subconsciously attracted to it. In conclusion Harris publications should distribute my magazine, due to there experience and skills in the target audience. As well as the sheer size that they publish meaning costs will remain lower then if it was published from a smaller independent publisher. Also due to my unique colour scheme and house layout my magazine will stand out against the other magazine they publish