The debate may be new to the school marketing world but not so in the world of business to business or consumer magazines. Think of any big UK brand and you will find that they are now producing a digital magazine. Think British Airways, BT, Tesco’s, Waitrose, M&S, Virgin, Cadbury’s, Boden to name a few. And then of course the traditional magazines themselves are creating a digital magazine, think Homes & Garden, Marketing Week, even “Dairy Farmer” has a digital edition! So just why has the digital magazine arrived and why is it becoming so popular? Firstly, faster internet speeds are now the norm at home and in the office making so many more things possible. We, as a society, now spend more time on the Internet than reading magazines or watching TV. Secondly the birth of eReaders such as Amazon’s Kindle and the iPad make reading on the move a light weight, slip in my handbag / briefcase, must have. And, while you may be in the “I prefer reading printed versions of books, etc.” camp, many people find reading on screen far easier as they can make the text any size they want.

So, what are digital magazines – after all they’re not websites and they’re not print. Is it a lazy way to get online without investing in a really good website? You may have been led to think so by the proliferation of PDF / Flash, whatever replicas of print, where you take your prospectus and simply turn it into a page-turning edition. Some simply convert their prospectus into a PDF file, which loads at a snail's pace, even on the fastest computers. Others convert their printed prospectus into page-turning online magazines using Flash based software - simple and low cost and many schools have them. However, many of these printed online replicas are clunky to use, slow to load and have type so small that you have to constantly zoom in and out. Not to mention the photograph quality is often blurry. So the PDF or simple page-turning printed equivalents have major shortcomings – although on the upside they are still more environmentally friendly and lower on cost than printed prospectuses.