Attracting new advertisers and retaining old ones: carving a niche in Vancouver's city magazine market

This report examines city magazine advertising in Vancouver. It explores the types of advertisers that use this medium, their marketing needs, the range of media in Vancouver that attempt to satisfy these needs, and how these local businesses plan and execute their media campaigns. It uses a case study of a city magazine, VLM to explore and analyse the advertising sales process. It provides an overview of the changes in editorial, circulation and advertising strategy that VLM introduced in 2008, and explains how these might make the magazine more attractive to local advertisers. It concludes by taking a closer look at the workings of the sales department. It outlines a selling strategy that sales reps must use to showcase their magazine’s unique selling point, to defend the magazine medium as a viable advertising option, and hence to compete in Vancouver’s saturated media marketplace for local advertisers’ finite marketing dollars