What b2b magazines can learn from consumer magazines

Business-to-business publishers are taking a leaf out of consumer magazines playbooks by adopting some of the things that make their print publications into premium products, according to an article by Matt Kinsman in Folio:

Kinsman points to the retaining of art director Robert Newman to help repackage and relaunch Reed Exhibition's JCK magazine. Newman is former design director of Real Simple, Fortune and Details. The article enumerates some of the things b-to-b magazines can do to re-imagine themselves:

• Package the magazine
• Create a sense of value
• Differentiate advertising from editorial
• Be clean rather than clever
• Think about how the reader reads the magazine
• Try not to jam so much on the page -- white space is your friend.

"There is no denying that b-to-b magazines know their stuff," Newman told me. "But traditionally they've been weaker at what consumer magazines are good at, which is packaging. Before the recent economic downturn and shift away from print, a lot of b-to b magazines didn't have to worry about packaging. As long as they delivered the essential material the audience wanted, the ads were there. Now it's more of a challenge and, like consumer publishers, they really have to sell the magazine. We wanted to bring more of a consumer magazine packaging to the quality of b-to-b content."