Print is dead. Long live print!
Desperately seeking offline marketing
“A fucking magazine? Can you believe it?” write editors Maria Dimitrova and Haley Mlotek, introducing a new publication about sex and relationships from the open-minded dating app, Feeld. Yes: a full-bodied, 208-page, matt-papered, coffee-table-worthy magazine. In this economy.
This time last week, we were on a small comedown after the brand-come-publisher’s low-lit launch party at The Standard, where authors shared readings as potent as the negronis. Why had they – people behind a digital product – started a print publication now? Like the app itself, it was part dare, part desire, the editors explain: “To feel the air push past the pages as they flip, the pure rush of sensation that exists for its own sake: that’s why we wanted you to have A Fucking Magazine.”.
Slow marketing for a fast-paced digital era
Turning to print can feel subversive in a chronically online world. And that’s exactly why it gets us looking up from our screens. The internet is a gluttonous, noisy beast, with subject lines screaming from inboxes, double-speed soundtracks, virtual OOH, and bottomless scroll. And many brands' marketing strategies cater to it, producing quick-take content to feed algorithms. Measuring likes, clicks, impressions. But what about lasting impressions? And what content are people hungry for?
The prevailing wisdom says: if you’re speaking to people – millennials and younger, especially – you’ve got to meet them where they are: on their phones, on their feeds, online. But aren’t these the same people seeking offline activities? Analog hobbies like knitting, journalling, group hikes, and candlelit concerts. (Just us?)
Print is back in vogue
For years it seemed digital had pulled the shutters on print media, but its oversaturation might just be flipping the script back. Consider these hot(ish)-off-the-press brand publications: J.Crew’s catalogue returned this May after a seven-year hiatus, Air Jordan took over the street-culture mag Sneeze, and creative collective Female Narratives has raised women’s voices in a zine on circularity and sustainability.
Maybe it’s nostalgia. Like Nylon relaunched its print edition with 90s icon Gwen Stefani on the cover, Selfridges’ zine – a ‘directory of now’, published this time last year – borrowed the name of the phonebook that defined pre-internet Brit culture: Yellow Pages. But there’s something more to it…
Before we turned our pens to brand, all of us at Sonder cut our teeth in editorial – in magazines and papers with big juicy features, fallible first-person voices, touch-me paper stock, photos that were definitely not stock and, ah, the bylines. Flick through these next-gen brand mags, and they’re exactly that: quality editorial, with almost no real estate given to product pushing.
These new brand publications go beyond commerce; they tap into culture, reflecting a brand’s vibe and vision with depth. A Fucking Magazine follows the curiosity of Feeld, with long-form features on transmasc artistry in cinema, short stories about first-date rituals, and conversations that ask: how can desire exist inside a sentence? Local Optimist, a smart mag by Madhappy, shares its brand’s optimism through introspective essays on connection and tranquillity. And More Joy – a zine by motherhood community app Peanut – gives voice to the many nuanced experiences of being a mum. The exhaustion, overwhelm and the absolute wonder of it. The magic of insignificant moments.
It’s original, creative, real storytelling. And yes! Elephant in the room! It takes serious commitment to make something this good. Time, budget, talent, environmental considerations. Hold the front page! Chances are, many of these kind of mags won’t deliver the precise metrics and direct sales most brands track either.
But that’s the magic. Print’s slowness and immeasurability make it powerful. With a 90% brand recall rate, the highest of any advertising channel, print helps people engage longer, understand faster, and absorb more deeply than its digital counterparts can. Away from jack-in-a-box notifications and hyper-competitive feeds, it’s a moment for meaningful connection. If social is all about bitesize content, print is a seven-course meal. It demands time, makes space for complexity. It says to readers: chew on this.
For a longer shelf life
In print, more than any other medium, you control the narrative. No stress about algorithms, print is an exercise in purpose. When you create a content strategy, you’re really saying: This is what we stand for beyond our product. This is the world we’re building. And then you’re bringing that world into very real, very tangible life with something your audience can touch, collect, even cherish.
When we partnered with Jigsaw to create Comfort Zones, our conversations went far beyond clothes, exploring the boundaries we set ourselves as women. We challenged 28 incredible writers like Yomi Adegoke, Zing Tsjeng and Pandora Sykes to abandon the themes and forms that felt safe to them. The result? A collection of reflective essays and stories spanning motherhood and quantum physics. A packed-out launch party. And £25,000 raised for the women supported by Women for Women International, whose bravery inspired the collection.
In the end, the magic of print isn’t in the metrics but the moments it creates, and meaning it brings to what we do. In a world of fleeting engagement, maybe old-school print is the most forward-thinking marketing of all. Less click chasing, more carving out time for real connections.
Okay, we’re officially itching to make something in print again. Please work with us… or we’ll work out a way to do it ourselves.
The Brand
The Furrow by John Deere
If you need proof of the long-lasting, relationship-building impact of print: John Deere’s magazine has been covering the farming industry for 120 years. It’s agriculture’s Rolling Stone. Just look how much the back issues go for on eBay.
What started as a farmer’s almanac in the late 1800s (generations before ‘content marketing’ was A Big Thing) is today a bi-annual sharing stories of farmers, in 14 languages, to a global audience of two million. 80% of whom still prefer print to digital. Plough through its pages and the words ‘John Deere’ don’t often crop up – its editorial is fiercely independent from the brand’s corporate messaging. “I’ve never worked in a brand magazine… people loved so much,” says publications manager David Jones. “Telling stories that folks enjoy reading – that they can use in their own operations – has been the recipe since the beginning.”
The Vortex
When fads fade and trends turn over, what form of media will act as an evergreen archive or an everlasting source of inspiration? (Surprise! It’s print!)
Some of the best editorial and creative direction out there right now is branded, says Alyssa Vingan
Heart eyes for long-form? Turn to No Ordinary Love, Hinge’s anthology of romance stories ‘almost never told’, fantastically told by authors such as Oisín McKenna and Roxanne Gay
Get inspired with this podcast about magazines and the people who made (and make) them.
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