English Language Publishing in Asia
Marketing publisher trash-talks rival Media Magazine
Justin Randles, founder of Marketing Magazine, trashtalks the competition in this Marketing Magazine, trashtalks the competition in this video below, saying why you should read his recently launched publication and ignore his highly established main competitor, Media Magazine.
(With Marketing magazine fighting Media magazine it can get somewhat confusing. Can someone please tell these guys to think up more creative titles for their publications?)
Founded out of Singapore by Randles in 2002, Marketing Magazine is intended to attract marketing, advertising and media professionals in Asia. The publication has opened up market-by-market using an online first strategy. If the online audience seems to justify the investment, they launch a publication, as they recently did in Hong Kong in 2007.
Media Magazine, published by industry giant Haymarket, just doesn’t match the ambitions of Marketing Magazine, Randles said.
“Their approach is pretty much one magazine for Asia, whereas we treat each country as a separate and parochial market,” Randles said. “When we go into one market, such as Singapore, we really focus on the needs of our target audience in that particular market.”
In the second video, Matt Eaton, editor of Marketing Magazine for Hong Kong, explains his editorial approach to the market.
Update from Eaton: Marketing will soon be audited in Hong Kong. They currently claim a print run of 9500 mags for Hong Kong and added another 1116 email addresses added in China this week to make for a total of 8500 e-newsletters going out each weekday in Hong Kong and China
Anyone from Media Magazine available for comment?
More on Randles’ market-entry strategy in a previous posting Justin Randles: 4 ways the Internet has changed niche publishing.
This is a further installment of my postings on English language publishing in Asia.
Should you read The Asia Media Journal?
Today my tour of English language publishing in Asia brings us Mike Savage, editor of The Asia Media Journal, explaining why we should read his publication.
Mike has covered media for more than ten years, including six years in Britain before coming out to Hong Kong about four years ago.
His publication, which covers developments about the media in Asia, differentiates itself through depth of coverage, Mike said. The publication is closely associated with Media Partners Asia, a consultancy that specializes in analyzing Asian media markets. They put out thick publications on a range of topics. They have a sister site: Media Research Asia.
While the publication comes out about four times per year, Mike updates The Asia Media Journal blog regularly.
Not convinced? See video for more.
Congrats to Asian Editorial Award Winners
Congratulations to the many winners of awards at the SOPA editorial awards tonight.
SOPA honored Asia’s best journalists for their outstanding work.
(Apparently, however, the Society of Publishers in Asia did not seek proofreading help from the Society of Copy Editors in Asia.)
FEER blogged what many writers and editors in the audience must have been thinking: “There but for the grace of God go I.”
The Awards for Editorial Excellence have grown considerably in size and stature in recent years.
I have been involved in judging the awards for more than six years and remember when we had only a few entries from a several countries. Tonight’s awards were handed out at a pace of one per minute for great journalism done in countries across the region.
Keynote speaker Ching Cheong (in photo above), the Straits Times journalist jailed for 1,000 days in China, spoke about the importance of the values held in Hong Kong, particularly in relation to protest and free expression.
Earlier in the day I co-organized a lunch on the Future of Media in Asia that was packed with a very high level audience and included panelists who were wonderfully combative.
AsiaXpat
A website launched by Paul Luciw in 2000 that aims to help expatriates in cities across Asia find practical information and conduct a range of business transactions. See full profile (link below) for details.
Frank Proctor
A longtime Hong Kong resident, Frank Proctor was for many years Newsweek’s general manager for Asia and international circulation director. In February 2007 he launched Muse Magazine, a cultural magazine for Hong Kong.
Muse Magazine, Hong Kong
A publication on Hong Kong’s cultural scene launched in February 2007. On sale in bookstores and select newsstands, the magazine’s cover price of 50 HKD is intended to give the publication value and encourage subscriptions. From the monthly print run of around 8,000 copies per month, the magazine reached 1,000 paid subscriptions and several hundred copies sold on newsstands by March 2008.
Mike Savage
Mike Savage, editor of Asia Media Journal, has covered media for more than ten years, including six years in Britain before coming out to Hong Kong about four years ago.
The Asia Media Journal covers developments about the media in Asia and differentiates itself through depth of coverage, Mike said. The publication is closely associated with Media Partners Asia, a consultancy that specializes in analyzing Asian media markets. They put out thick publications on a range of topics.
Tom Doctoroff: Paul French is wrong about China (and Tom Doctoroff)
Tom Doctoroff, CEO of J. Walter Thompson for Greater China, accepted my invitation to respond to the critique of his book by Shanghai-based writer and businessman Paul French.
In a nutshell, French said (blog posting here or video here)hat Doctoroff falsely claims a pioneering role in opening China in his book Billions: Selling to the new Chinese consumer.
The real pioneer, French said, is Carl Crow, a Shanghai adman in the 1920s and 1930s who introduced Buick and other brands to China. French recently published the book Carl Crow, a tough old China hand.
Doctoroff’s reply to French:
Thomas,
I don’t know what to say. I believe the posting is unbalanced and the tone is bully-boy cocky.
How does one respond to a sweeping statement — at least my book, on the first page, warns of “generalizations” — that yours truly is “wrong about China.”
And then he rails against me, sarcasm dripping, for having the audacity to call myself a “pioneer” when Carl Crow had already seen “everything.” He’s playing a gotcha game gone bad.
First, I have never called myself a pioneer. And, by the way, no one “took credit” (or implied involvement) for launching Buick. We did not even do that work. Bates did.
Second, Carl Crow was man of ahead of his time — yes, he was a “pioneer” and blessed with extraordinary insight and observational skill. However, he did not see “everything.”
The world has changed just a bit in 75 years.
He did not see a middle class boasting 150 million people and an auto market with 6 million passenger cars sold per year. He did not see a mass market — now penetrating the rural fringe — snapping up mobile phones and using them to transform their lives. He did not see multinational corporations setting up R&D centers and manufacturing scale on the mainland. He did not see that extraordinary release of energy that resulted from the embrace of capital markets.
For anyone to assume that “everything” has been seen before discredits that extraordinary genius of the Chinese people and their ability to adapt to an evolving world without sacrificing their enduring cultural orientation.
It also denigrates the efforts of, yes, expatriate businessmen who, while far from perfect and certainly not always noble, have done their part to make China a more dynamic place as the 21st century unfolds.
Tom Doctoroff
Shanghaiist
Met with Dan Washburn and Kenneth Tan of the Shanghaiist this morning for brunch.
Dan, a former newspaper writer in America’s Bible belt, came to China in 2002 and started an urban blog called Shanghai Diaries. Seeing the popularity of the site - and lack of such a site for Shanghai - Washburn approached the Gothamist team in New York.
Taking advantage of the City-ist network’s name, Dan started launched the Shanghaiist, which has turned into one of China’s most popular English-language blog/portals. There is no sharing of advertising across the city-ist network, but a number of the English-language portals in China have considered teaming up to make themselves a single sale for an ad rep. (Not a bad approach, in my view.)
As Dan concentrated in 2007 more on his book about golf in China, Par for China, Kenneth Tan joined the team to make sure the site is updated half a dozen times per day. Kenneth runs the site while selling men’s underwear from a disused bomb shelter in Shanghai’s French Concession.
Kenneth Tan of Shanghaiist
The primary contributor to the popular Shanghaiist blog, Kenneth Tan also runs a men’s underwear store out of a disused bomb shelter in Shanghai’s French Concession. Tan’s shop, Manifesto.com.cn, recently opened another outlet near the Forbidden in Beijing.
Singaporean-born, Tan has been in Shanghai since 2003.
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