Mens clothing site Mr Porter gives an advanced example of the new retail and media trend. Take this beautiful fashion magazine styled like a 1950′s newspaper:
The magazine contains fantastic articles on topics like coloured chinos, sports jackets and how to put outfits together and ‘nail it at the office’. It’s exactly the sort of content I might previously have purchased magazines like GQ or Men’s Vogue to read. It’s content like Mr Porter’s that’s contributing to the decline in readership of magazines. And rather than having to sell advertising, a magazine like Mr Porter’s has a clear revenue model – all the product in the magazine is available for purchase in the Mr Porter store.
To assist with linking the physical magazine to the Mr Porter store, they’ve created a phone app that allows you to hold the phone camera over an article, then directly purchase the products from that article from the Mr Porter store on your phone!
I had being blatantly sold to, and Mr Porter have done a brilliant job to avoid this. The content in the magazine is not salesy, in fact, despite the whole magazine effectively being an advertorial for Mr Porter, then content is far more engaging and less salesy than a traditional magazine advertorial. The Mr Porter app also has benefits beyond just buying product from the magazine. Hover over certain articles and you can watch videos related to the article such as interviews with people profiled in the articles talking about their approach to style.
Here some post journal:
Also do not miss Mr Porter videos on YouTube: