How Blippar helps magazines stay relevant and dynamic in the digital age

Lorein Abenhaim, below, is our new product specialist and Blippbuilder Brain for the media team. Lorein comes to Blippar from Shape Magazine, where she was Editorial Assistant.

Before SHAPE she wrote for Stylecaster and freelanced at several other online media sites. Here she chats about life in Blippar’s New York office, and offers a few media tips...

I’m a magazine hoarder. Since I was 14 years old I’ve collected everything from Esquire to Vogue, and many in between. I was (and still am) mesmerised by the incredible photography and visceral storytelling that makes flipping the pages of a magazine so special. I would spend hours dissecting layouts and articles, so when it came to choosing a career path, being an editor seemed like the most logical choice.

It wasn’t without its hardships. No one knows exactly what the future will look like for print magazines, but one thing is certain – online is cheaper and faster. Finding a job in the media industry was tricky, and staying relevant was that much more difficult. Nonetheless, I kept writing and writing… until Blippar came along.

The past three weeks have been fascinating. There isn’t a moment I don’t learn something new or get inspired to take editorial and commercial content to new heights. Blippar is every magazine’s second chance – it’s the method to the madness of staying relevant in the face of the digital iron hand that is slowly flattening print.

Embellishing print pages with everything from interactive online image galleries with photography that would normally get cut out because of page cost, to live polls, I’m so excited to see how dynamic we can help magazines become, and we’ve only just scratched the surface.

The August issue of Harper’s Bazaar just hit shelves, and it features the first blipp I helped their marketing team build on Blippbuilder. A small conquest, as I know bigger and more advanced projects lie just around the corner. Which brings me to my main point: to create the best blipps we can for magazines, we need to intricately study the publication or brand so the ideation is equal parts current and creative.

I end with a few tips and tools for magazine teams wishing to make their issues blippable. Please feel free to get in contact if you wish to bounce around some ideas, offer constructive criticism, ask a question, or simply say hello.

Plan blipps alongside editorial content

Ideally, all blipps should be created alongside each article’s development. This allows the design team to make room on a layout for a great CTA, and means they don’t have to be rushed to create custom assets or do photo research to make the blipp feel like a seamless extension of the page.

Create a strong call-to-action (CTA)

A clear, prominent, consistent CTA is key to the success of your Blippar campaign. It is the flag telling readers there is an interactive experience hidden beneath the pages of your magazine. Without a strong one nobody will ever find your blipps and your campaign will fail.

For magazines we suggest the following:

1. A clear CTA on the front cover alerting people to the interactive quality of your issue.
2. A whole page of user education informing people HOW to blipp near the front of the magazine.
3. Blippar mobile icons on the contents page, indicating where in the magazine blipps can be found.
4. Consistent CTAs on each page a blipp appears, hinting what will be found if the reader blipps.

One blipp per page

We strongly advise never putting more than one blipp on a single page. The reader can become confused about which ares of the page to blipp, and may accidentally trigger the wrong interaction, leading to them becoming frustrated.

Think in trends

Is Christmas coming up? Is Fashion Week around the corner? Just as you plan editorial content around these events, offer your readers topical blipps, too. It will make them more likely to pull out their mobile phones and interact.