What the Success of Costco Connection Says about the Future of Magazines…

Here’s What the Present (May) Predict for Future Mags

Did you know that Costco Connection is now the third-largest magazine in the US? It prints and mails a staggering 15.4 million copies per month. AARP takes the two top spots with its AARP The Magazine and AARP Bulletin, both with a circulation topping 23MM avid readers over 50. Trailing behind on the leaderboard? Big brand names including Better Homes & Gardens, Reader’s Digest, People and Time.

And before you scoff at Costco Connection, or Kroger’s MyMagazine for that matter (circ 4MM+, which is higher than Sports Illustrated, Taste of Home and Cosmo), you should sit and flip through these pubs. They offer high-quality content, and are run by real, honest-to-God professional in-house editorial teams of writers, editors, designers and photographers.

So what exactly does this mean for the future of magazines? As a big-time fan of magazines, I often wonder what shall become of this beloved format in our fractured digital world.

Are magazines dead?

Well, in one sense they are definitely declining — and magazines as we once knew and loved them are outright dying. For one, the business model just doesn’t work. Advertisers have always fueled the periodical print industry. With attention so intensely fragmented across an array of digital destinations, advertisers just don’t have the dough to send to these smaller audiences. Paper and postage are massive expenses that rise pretty much quarterly, and the math just isn’t mathing.

So why the heck are (some) corporate-powered magazines doing well?

In the case of both Costco Connection and Kroger’s MyMagazine, the model is not advertising-based. In Kroger’s case, the profit is achieved through manufacturer partners paying to include coupons and ad pages for their products. This strong revenue stream pays for printing and postage with a healthy profit margin. Funding for the in-house editorial team generally comes from different budgets because the creative team produces other work for the company as well.

A vintage holiday issue of Kroger’s MyMagazine, from my days as its editor.

In the case of Costco Connection, it mostly uses the heck out of its beloved property to advertise Costco-brand products and services. Kirkland Signature men’s clothing, fine jewelry, hearing aids, credit cards, facial tissue, pet insurance, vacations, vitamins, flu shots, ETCETERA! In the past, they had not allowed outside partners’ ads, but in the September issue, many pop up: Pantene, Dell, Keurig, Campbell’s, Starbucks, Metamucil, BreatheRight, Philips Sonicare, to name just a few. 

This is the very merry image from the cover of this year’s holiday issue of Costco Connection. It’s a reader’s recipe, complete with a heartwarming family story.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, people love the magazine as much as they love Costco itself. It’s featured huge stars on its cover, including Jimmy Kimmel, Elton John, Henry Winkler and Rachel Ray. The magazine is included with the executive Costco membership, so its funding comes from multiple sources (not wholly reliant on the defunct advertising model).

There are other corps joining this space, too. I’ve written before about Marriott Bonvoy’s online Traveler magazine, a brilliant content marketing play that keeps you in the hotelier’s orbit in the most charming editorial way possible. Visiting just now I was nearly seduced into booking a magical solo wintertime trip. And then there’s The Furrow, published by John Deere for over 120 years! The content is mostly made up of charming stories about farmers from around the world, like Spanish pig farmers who produce melt-in-your-mouth amazing jamon iberico.

An early issue of John Deere’s faithful The Furrow. What a fantastic, lasting and iconic name. Tip of the cap to the long-ago mastermind who coined it.

What’s so special about a print magazine?

The tangible, tactile nature of magazines encourages you to slow down and savor, flipping through pages, inviting your eyes to feast on vibrant images and striking design. In a world where the onus is on you to seek out specific information you want to find, a magazine offers a more passive, curated experience. Real humans took time to create a collection of interesting, inter-related stuff so you can immerse yourself in that enclosed world.

Because magazines are a weekly or monthly medium, the stories are “slower,” too — what I’ve come to think of as evergreen. Because of this, they’re usually more thoughtful, deeper, with rich context that reaches into the past and stretches forward into the future. The writing is often very good, likely because there’s time allotted for interviewing, researching, and going through multiple drafts. Editors play just as important a role as writers — what makes it to the press is refined and vetted, polished for shine.

One more reason is the interplay between words and images. Of course, print pages have strict constraints, but literally anything you can fit either on 8.5x11 or 11x17 can basically be achieved. Compare that to digital handcuffs, and it’s a literal playground. Personally, I love print pages that have little snippets of text, or big pictures with tons of captions. That’s really tough to recreate online.

Can’t magazines just be completely digital?

For me, this is a real conundrum. Technically, magazines can be all digital, but there’s such a loss of that tactile quality that’s a core part of their appeal.

I’ve seen them produced as PDF flipbooks (a poor corollary to print, if you ask me) and simply as websites. In years past, I’ve seen Good Housekeeping offer an experience that felt less like a site and more like an issue, but it must be hidden off behind a paywall because I can’t find it now.

Personally, my favorite digital solution for magazines was that briefest of moments back around 2014 or 2015 when the iPad was taking off and Martha Stewart made these amazing iPad editions of her magazine Martha Stewart Living. In my opinion, it took those curated, beautiful elements that I outline loving about print magazines and made them even better. She had rolling Easter eggs, unfurling peonies, pop-up videos, interactive elements. Oh, it was wondrous! And over in a flash.

At Kroger, we actually created about 4-5 digital iPad issues of MyMagazine. They were super fun and so interactive, featuring monsters that ate different foods, huge images with pop-up captions, dancing gingerbread cookies and more. They have not survived the years of app updates and people’s move away from reading stuff on iPads, I guess.

If anyone ever wants to bring those back, give me a call! What’s old is new again at some point, right?

What’s next for magazines?

Truly, I’m not sure traditional print magazines will be around two decades from now. Maybe they shouldn’t be because … well, trees. They’re due for a big innovation that capitalizes on some of the beloved tactile, curated elements but in a digital space. Maybe there’s an app for that? Also, the advertiser and subscription model needs a total makeover. That’s why at least some of the ones that are flourishing are published by brands. They’re able to fund and monetize through a different model. In a world where we are all paying a la carte for all the content we consume, personal budgets are getting squeezed.

Should brands step into that space and build a new model where great content earns them eyeballs and they can advertise within a solid owned channel? Yes, maybe. Could a collection of brands come together and do that even bigger and better? That would be cool.

As a piece of a robust content marketing strategy, a print magazine with a digital presence can play a hugely important role. First of all, there’s probably no better medium to bring branding fully to life than within the pages of a magazine. Secondly, physical magazines have this way of sticking around, hanging out on a coffee table or a desk for a while (ahem, months in my case!). It keeps a brand top of mind and drives shoppers online. But again, there’s the expense. Paper and postage will only become more dear, and a digital ROI will almost always win out. We’ll just have to wait and see what happens.

The main character in Louise Erdrich’s Future Home of the Living God, Cedar, ruminates on the sensory importance of a man’s scent.

I’ll leave you today with a snippet from the novel I’m reading by one of my very favorite novelists, Louise Erdrich. The passage where Cedar describes her partner Phil almost entirely in terms of his scent and the sense of connection, attraction and well-being it engenders within her, enthralls me. I know what she means, how some people smell right, smell like home. But also, my nose just isn’t this all-knowing. I really wish it were.

Here’s the rest of the passage, which is titled “Trouble Loving Phil.”

Some men smell right and others don’t. You know what I mean if you are a woman who breathes in the fragrance of the stem end of a melon to choose it or if the odor of mock orange or lilac transfixes you or if you pass a piece of woody earth and know from a gulp of air that the soft, wet, fleshy foot of a mushroom has thrust from the earth somewhere close. Men smell good in all different ways. Salty vanilla. Hot dirt. New grass. Bitter leaf. Some are disturbingly odorless. Others dope themselves up with cologne. You can smell fear, vanity, secret meanness, a lonely heart, envy, and cruel thinking. Likewise, easy confidence. Even goodness. You can smell if a man likes you.

            Phil smells as if he’s been in the sun even if he hasn’t, and he’s warmer than most people. His skin is very smooth on the tops of his arms and shoulders and chest, but his hands are callused because he likes to make things out of wood. Sometimes he smells like that clean and honest moment when a saw cuts into a board. There is a brownish gold Mediterranean undertone to all of Phil. Even his voice has that feel to it – a sunny depth. Phil is five years older than me. The first time I ever smelled Phil, we were sitting in a booth in a coffee shop. Someone told me to squeeze over, and I tipped toward Phil. There was the slightly scorched odor of ironed cotton. Then the tiniest hint of sweat. I had the urge to lick his neck.