Marketing Strategy and SWOT analysis of The Week Magazine

Magazines have earned their reputation as a more illustrative and catchy media channel. Considered as “upgrades” of traditional and centuries-old newspapers, they quickly captured their place in the market. The Week magazine entered the game with a clear positioning of their purpose. Being relatively younger than its competitors are, they were already sure of their main weapons in marketing. We will take you on to journey to learn more about the business’ marketing strategy itself and its ideal customer.

The Week’s ambitions took them far…

Mission Statement

The Week compiles the news and stories from trusted and local sources into one inclusive edition. The Week magazine’s mission is to provide an overview of the week in an entertaining and informative manner. The physical magazine and website complement each other in bringing the best possible experience to the table.

The Week’s watchwords are brevity, clarity and consistency. The content must not bore the reader and be a small read to enjoy. The manner of presentation is equally important. Therefore, they have a thought-out structure for building the magazine, which they follow strictly in every edition. Finally, they value the idea of compiling news that is understandable and clear for a non-expert reader.

Vision Statement

The Week’s vision is to be an unbiased intermediary between the worlds of publishers and readers. As a combined edition of weekly news, the magazine carries a huge responsibility. Regardless of whether they produce the content or not, they are obliged to address the needs of customers. The compiled news need to be precise and relevant.

Bias is the enemy of The Week, so every story and news includes insights from different perspectives. At The Week, they always make sure that they tell stories, not from one side only. Every story has two sides after all. Their primary objective is to avoid presenting content that might disregard other opinions and spread misunderstanding.

The Week’s positioning strategy uncovers their personality as a brand…

Companies are like their customers; they follow certain life principles and they build character over time. From a marketing standpoint, the positioning strategy of a brand builds its actions in the business world. The analysis of this post will tell us more about The Week’s “personality”.

The Instagram post features the cover of another The Week issue. This particular cover represents a conflict associated with Covid-19. There has been a lot of conversations and disagreements around the topics of vaccinations. As a result, these issues found their place on The Week’s new cover.

The Week’s covers need no introduction. Their illustrations are more informative and spot-on than most of the live-photo covers of others. This time, protestors became the target of The Week. Surely, one of its missions is to decorate the magazine. Nevertheless, every cover illustration has a deeper meaning.

The huge crowd represents the scale and resonance around the topic of vaccination. The posters in the hands of protestors show various opinions voiced around this issue. Protestors falling from the cliff demonstrate how they became victims of their complaints.

The description of the post is the main topic covered by this edition of the week. The Week tries to show that the arguments brought by anti-vaxxers resulted in a new wave of infections. The new Delta variant threatens the population, and the cause of this is the anti-vaccine attitude of people.

The main title of the magazine is a conclusion based on various news published during the week. “Choosing Covid,” means that anti-vaxxers chose being infected over being vaccinated. The Week is doing an astonishing job of compiling news and applying a personal signature to their presentation.

Each The Week edition is unique by itself, from the cover to the back. Due to this analysis, we can conclude that The Week magazine belongs to the Magician brand archetype.

What key qualities are typical to the Magician Archetype?

Core Desire: Knowledge of the main principles that explain how the world around them works.

Goal: Make dreams into reality

Strategy: Form a vision of the future and build a life out of it

Values: Self-transformation and improvement, constant drive for change.

The messaging levels of the Magician archetype are:

Level 1: Exciting simultaneous experiences.

Level 2: Momentsof magic andexperience of transformation.

Level 3: Experience of moving forward.

Level 4: Miracles,the vision becomes a reality.

The brand would correspond to the Magician archetype if:

• It is a user-friendly technology accessible to many.
• The product or service transforms in every step.
• It appeals to younger audiences.
• It contributes to the transformation of the customer.
• There is a spiritual component to it.
• It helps expand the mind to new horizons.

SWOT analysis will show how The Week balances its growth.

Strengths

Cover illustrations – The Week’s cover illustrations are a whole another story. All of them have a common signature. They usually carry strong satiric messages and illustrate hot news in a meme-like manner. It is important to spice up the magazine with custom content. Luckily, The Week came up with a creative way of decorating the magazine: illustrating the cover. The Week can surely be proud of presenting their magazines in a quite presentable way.

Non-biased reputation – The magazine has positioned itself as an unbiased intermediary between other publications and readers. Their mission is to not only compile news but also do that neutrally. The Week presents all the viewpoints on one news to eliminate bias and misunderstanding. They do everything to offer a balanced perspective on news and not take one side of the story.

Diverse portfolio – The Week magazine has a diverse portfolio. Their product line is diverse, designed to fit the needs of specific target groups. The Week portfolio includes The Week Junior, The Week Journey Science + Nature, and Money Week. These magazines have suited content for different age groups and professional occupations.

Weaknesses

Dependence from other publishers – We have mentioned many times that the purpose of The Week is to compile weekly news into one edition. This fact makes them dependent on other publishers, and this affects the content of the magazine as well. If the content is not what they would expect, there is a risk of compiling undesirable content.

Undeserved criticism – When the content of The Week does not meet customers’ expectations, The Week gets the criticism. The magazine might not cause the mistake, but the dissatisfaction coming from customers affects the magazine itself. The Week needs to avoid criticism by thoroughly filtering out the potentially harmful content.

Opportunities

Expansion to new locations – TheWeek currently operates in the United Kingdom and the United States. These are primarily English-speaking locations. However, The Week has the potential to expand to new locations. They can keep the style of the issues, and adapt the content to the current location. Europe and North America can potentially be the new locations for expansion.

Diverse emerging trends – Every emerging trend, be it negative or positive, can serve as a great source of content. With trends or global phenomena, news channels are the ones that benefit the most. Moreover, The Week’s style is suitable for adapting to emerging trends. Their primary objective is to compile filtered news and apply their signature style and structure.

Collaboration with other publishers – Collaborations with other big publications can be a great growing opportunity. The Week can use the large customer bases of bigger publications. Moreover, they can lure in many customers by marketing their product itself.

Threats

Strong competitors – Even though The Week differs from its competitors; there are still strong competitors out there. Compared to The Week, they have huge customer bases who trust their preferred brand.

Substitutes – The magazines have stronger alternatives in the market now. These alternatives are quicker and more flexible than magazines. Social networks are one channel of news that has many edges over magazines. The content flows constantly, and large groups of people prefer social media as their primary source of information.

The Week’s segmentation strategy helps them design products for their ideal target customer.

For having a product touches customer’s hearts, companies need to know their customer and their needs. The product can experience many changes to fit the preferences of target audiences. Analyzing this commercial will help us know whom The Week targets.

The commercial features a jogger who meets various people and events on his way. The feature of the post is that every event shows a page number. The commercial wants to show that the news on events is on those pages. The page numbers are in a very creative way. There is an earring “6”, a page “50” on a bus, a “20” price tag and so on.

The hero of the commercial finds himself on the magazine cover at the end. The slogan of the ad is “More About What Affects You”. The whole idea of the ad is that The Week includes all the events that happen around you. Every moment that you live finds its place in The Week.

After analyzing the commercial, we can conclude that The Week belongs to the Balancers segment.

Who are Balancers?

Lifestyle and Values: The name of the segment says it all. Balancers always try to balance their life, and it causes a feeling of guilt. They try to spend equal time at work, with family, with friends and other groups of people. When they spend time with one group of people, they feel guilty for not spending with others.

Balancers give a lot of importance to family. Marriage is a responsible thing to do, which is why they might think a while before getting married. They try to have a long-term approach to important life decisions.

Representatives of this segment are open to new challenges and appreciate variety. However, they try to balance their openness to new things by excerpting their control over them. They give a lot of importance to a career. It is not merely a job to do. They want to excel at their work, but not at any cost. They know they might need to sacrifice their time with family, but it is not an option.

Attitude to shopping: Balancers appreciate ads with a little more imagination in them. They are tired of seeing repeating ads and want something fresh. The ads need to be catchy and creative to get their attention.

Balancers are open to trying new things, but the time of catching their attention is pretty short. They might try new products or brands, but they must be sure they will use them. They are smart shoppers who can afford quality products, and they do not mind paying extra. They are deal hunters as well, and they might not pay just for the brand.

Household shopping is an enjoyable family activity. They treat it as a ritual and make sure they do it at least once a week. The balance also finds its place here. They try to balance between healthy food and quality food they pay extra for.

Interesting facts about Balancers:

• They consume mostly traditional media (TV, newspapers)
• Sport is a typical topic for balancers. They choose one sport and follow it via various news channels, mainly newspapers and magazines.
• Extensive internet users. It is often an information tool to stay up to date on business and personal life.
• They have not engaged in social media networks as much. They enter social media at mid-age, and they catch up with their old friends.
• Purchasing good food is a sign of being a good parent for them.

After all this analysis, we know that The Week has a clear mission in the market. They have developed their unique style and structure that serves the customers at its best. Despite all the differences in the market, The Week stayed strong on its feet. Their marketing strategy was and is suitable for their ideal customer. In the dynamic market of magazines, their mission is to stay unbiased and loyal to their unique style. The latter made The Week who they are today. That is it for today, be sure to check out more posts like this on our website.