Cameron, please

to hold ads and pages together. My lovely new copu has 3 holes in where the Berghaus boots page is and access code card was.

Thanks.

I agree. A couple of my pages are stuck together. The brochure taped to the front cover isn't a good idea either.

A record amount of junk in mine.
I thought it was a double issue when it thudded through the letter box.
One of the drawbacks of a subscription is the inner glow I used to get in WHS when I sneaked said crap into Dive Magazine...

How tidy of you, most people just drop it on the floor...

yep ditto here get rid of the bumpf and the sticky bits.

I've got a nice hole in the double page pic of Rum.
After the comments a few months ago I thought there was consenus to stop the sticky stuff?
Anyway its good that TGO welcomes comments in a public forum like this!

To defend TGO on the inserts: advertising is crucial to a mag's profitability and inserts are a key part of that. The mag price would be much higher without the ads and inserts.

But I do agree on the tip-ons (sticky bits): unless the paper is pretty meaty then even with the semi-stick glues it's likely the pages will tear.

Ah… you wouldn't believe the debate we had about that Berghaus ad.

It's actually one of those clever marketing ideas - representing how sticky the boots are. And it works to a great degree.

Full marks to Berghaus for coming up with the most innovative ad of the year so far!

When our ad sales people approached us with the idea, we suggested it might be best if there were non-editorial pages on the back of both sides of the dps, just in case the gum did tear a hole. You won't believe me but on the early copies we had in the office the gum DIDN'T tear a hole and we thought we'd had that element of security for nothing. Turns out to have been a good job we did that and I'm glad we did.

As for the cover, well, that little map thingie was supposed to be gummed on too but the gum wouldn't adhere to the plastic bag they came in, so it had to be taped… thankfully the guys used a light tape which shouldn't cause any/much damage if it's gently removed.

And the wee card on the inside? That caught us out! Too much gum perhaps...

We won't get away from advertisers wanting to stick magazines up with things, as they believe that they catch readers' eyes and are more effective than simple printed ads. But where we can we'll try to ensure that they don't ruin your enjoyment of the mag. And we don't do it entirely for your sakes, I'm afraid - we're not fond of spending an entire month striving to produce what we hope is a great magazine, only for it to be spoiled by an advert. We're doing it for selfish reasons!

John,
why don't you point out to the advertisers, sticky stuff just makes us resent them for destroying our mag.

Ha ha, you have the floor, Mr Weirdness!

It's not just them you have to convince! Believe me!

Ha ha ha... ha ha ha.... (exit left into weekend, re-enter Monday, off stage, voice faintly heard, diminishing laughter, receding footsteps...)


Sorry, don't mean to be facetious - Cameron and I would LOVE to be able to produce mags with no ads whatsoever and let manufacturers sink or swim by what the gear reviews and the public say about their kit.

But we, and every other journalist on this planet, work for companies who's prime motivation is profit, and ads are their prime source of profit.

And it subsidises (in a sense - in another sense it doesn't, but that's another argument for another day - perhaps Birmingham?) the product you hold in your hands.

And the stickier the advert, then more the advertisers pay for it. It'd take a direct protest movement from readers to advertisers to effect change on that one*, and I think there are better things to protest about, like the ruination of the landscape, the loss of access, the price of milk…


Oh, it must be Friday, I'm having a rant...

* though maybe the OM pieces we pull out for our letters page might help get things started...

John,
shouldn't you be working this weekend putting show tickets into envelops ready to send out to those of us that have begged/humiliated ourselves for them?

I agree John and I don't think anyone on this forum would argue that the publishers of TGO aren't producing the magazine out of the goodness of their hearts. And that they are in it to make money.

I also don't disagree with the fact that a magazine makes most of it's money from advertising.

Now sticky ads maybe more money into the publishers pockets, and some sad low life (sorry I hold advetisers and marketing people just above estate agents and lawyers, and actually think Bill Hicks summed them up really well - but that is for another thread) is probably congratualting themselves on coming up with a clever ad.

But if at the end of the day that ad alienates the very people they are trying to target. Then ultimately it will hit their profits. And then the publishers as well in the end.

Let me illustrate. After doing the ice climbing in Jan, I look very favourably on Mountain Hardware now. Whereas previousily I would not of even considered them.
Now apply this the Berghaus and there sticky ad, now when I look for kit I will remember their ad and how much I disliked it, and most likely rule them out because of it.

Maybe I'm being shallow, here.
But I don't take kindly to riping a mag I've spent hard earned money on, because an ad exec thinks he's being clever.

PS Oh and have a good weekend John

I half looked at the Berghaus ad (half looked because I'm not ripping my mag to read it) and thought what a waste of paper.

Threw the thing about Windermere in the bin without taking it out of the plastic bag because its a honey pot that heaves with tourists already so I never go there and I don't believe people need encouraging.

All the other stuff fell out all over the car footwell (and is still there, I might pick it up and stuff it in the bin tommorrow).

I know that advertising basically pays for the mags production but what I would perhaps prefer to see is features sponsored by companies. Not in a push out kit way but just a little panel perhaps at the bottom of the page and a logo at the start. They get to promote themselves, give is something good to read and we remember them because what we read was interesting.

I don't want innovative adds at the expense of lots of torn pages!

Why do advertisers pay to enclose adverts that will fall all over the shop floor? I counted 11 in all (including the bit of snot on the berghaus page. Is it not cheaper to include it in the magazine where it will always be found. Two weeks from now will you be able to lay your hands on the bumf that fell out of TGO? Of course not. But I bet 90% of you can still put your hands on last months magazine, and therefore the ads within.

bouncing this up in hope John will debate some more

Hi Darren,

I don't see much point in debating it cos actually I agree with most of the points being made.

On the subject of article sponsorship though I am, personally, opposed. It happens in a minor way with tgo, on features that are usually not associated with the sponsor but the system is too open to abuse. Imagine the following phone chat.

"Oh hello, Mr Rucksack Manufacturer, I'm calling from tgo to see if you'd like to sponsor a nice big feature in the next issue."

"Sounds great! What you got coming up about rucksacks?"

"Funny you should ask, there's a six page packs review you could sponsor for the bargain sum of £1million."

"A million quid? You gotta be joking."

"Okay, make it half a million, and you get your logo on every page."

"Okay, I'll go with that if you make my pack the Best Buy and promise to say only good things about it."

I'm not saying there's anyone in this company who'd agree to that sort of crooked deal but not everyone in a publishing house has the same ethics as an honest, credibility-concerned journalist. No, puns, please.

Whereas we want to bring you good, honest, trust worthy reviews, some folk in some publishing houses would just see this kind of marketing trick as a money making dodge.

Just a sideline, thrown in for debate...

Ues, John, sponsoring a gear review would be open to bias and abuse. Gear reviews that are sponsored would not be taken seriously by the readers either - we are not that stupid.

Sponsoring a feature though - say a suggested weekender or something would be different. The sponsor could also provide a piece of kit which would then appear in the photos, product placement is very successfull in film making.

Getting sponsorship for features would also allow you to pay freelances enough money to actually make more than it cost them to write the feature for a change. This would lead to more variety of places and stop the problem of this months walk being three miles from last months because the writer was trying to get as much money out of one trip. It would also stop various versions of the same walk appearing in different magazines as much.

I fully support John on his analysis of sponsored articles/reviews. Before I turned freelance I worked for a publishing company specialising in PC software and hardware. It was common practise to give reviews in exchange for advertising, and in most cases the actual review subjects were not set until we had the advertisers list in from the marketing dept. As if that wasn't bad enough I wasn't allowed to make derogatory remarks on any of the software that was given away free on the cover disks, no matter how bad it was. This actually went as far as being told not to put comments like "Another shareware photo editing package that does the basics well but has little to distinguish it from the alternatives". To this day I still have an email from the Editor stating "We're in the magazine business for profit, not to please the readers".

Without advertising we wouldn't have magazines of the standard of TGO, as cover price doesn't come close to covering costs - despite the miserly rates in-house and freelance journalists get paid. At the end of the day there has to be a compromise somewhere - and unfortunately this usually comes down to putting up with what some bright spark in a manufacturers advertising department thinks is a great idea. More advertising at lower rates means that at least the journalists can keep their integrity and produce truthful reviews.

By the way, the best method of removing the stickt bits on adverts like "The Access Gateway" card is to rotate the card slowly in circles. The Berghaus type of sticky ad is best unstuck by placing the mag on a hard surface with the thicker part of the magazine below the ad (In this case front cover up) and very slowly working round the edges of the plastic.

As assistant editor we used sponsorship for space as a way to raise revenue. The deal was simple, and the pages simply featured a banner at the right hand side. The sponsor didn't actually know what the article would be about but we did agree that it would not feature a direct rival.

THis may prove more difficult with something like TGO because of the product source variation.

We never used sticky stuff though as it got too many complaints. We had inserts and on occassion these would result in the use of bagging the publication to ensure they actually made it to the customer.

In my capacity as a freelance I have to say that the general level of pay across all magazines is fairly appauling. This is probably why we just see the same names all the time - people with regular contracts are the only ones that tend to get anywhere.

Ho hum, seems I am a sad low life :(