The following is my startup proposal from my Business of Publishing class. I choose to create an online publication called Plucky.
Plucky Magazine is an online publication. Our mission here at Plucky is to encourage, bolster and amplify the voices of our audience by allowing those who yearn to be heard and to make a difference in the world express themselves without the preconceived ideas of age being used against them. The voices we present on our site will advocate for encouraging more diversity, acceptance and love in the digital world we live in today while providing understandable and impactful resources for our audience to turn to in a time when traditional news seems unexplainable.
Our target audience at Plucky includes Generation Z students between the ages of 12 and 17 who are of all gender identities. They tend to be advocates for their passions in their own community or are wanting to become an activist in their own way. They are bright thinkers and promoters for social, political and economic change. They are strong-willed, determined and all in all plucky individuals who won’t let their age stop them from making a change. They want to be in-the-know of all things going on in the world from how to save the Earth to understanding what exactly is happening at the White House. In an article for Entrepreneur Stephanie Schomer quotes CEO of Beautycon Media, Moj Mahdara, saying “‘[This generation] self-educates through content consumption. They're the driving influence in household decision-making. They have more information, more expertise, more insight’” Mahdara goes on to describe this generation as “powerful” and explains this by sharing how this is the group of people who organized the March For Our Lives movement (2019).
Plucky is coming into a world full of difference makers. Many publications are starting to target this audience in ways of marketing and social media. Teen Vogue is one of Plucky’s main competitors. As their mission on their website claims to be “the young person’s guide to saving the world.” Teen Vogue has an aim to educate, enlighten and empower their audience to promote more inclusivity. While Teen Vogue has the upper hand on print publications Plucky being a digital only space allows us to directly target our specific audience. Teen Vogue does have a good online presence with 8.3 million digital uniques according to their media kit. The main difference between Plucky and Teen Vogue would be that Teen Vogue puts an emphasis on style and fashion. Though I feel they have a very different mission than the older counterpart, Vogue, the teen addition still looks toward an audience that is “hungry for style” as it is put in their media kit. We at Plucky do not see style as one of our main focuses. The focus of style and fashion isolates other readers who might also want to read a “ young person’s guide to saving the world.” That is where Plucky comes in.
Another competitor for Plucky Magazine is Affinity Magazine. Much like us, Affinity is an online publication that is written by teens for teens that combines pop culture and social justice issues. Their publication is entirely written by teens and edited by teens. Their content focuses on arts & culture, politics, international affairs, race, feminism, mental health and LGBTQ+ categorized content. Though very similar and probably our the closest competitor we do have a different approach to things than Affinity does. For one, we here at Plucky fully focuses on political and social justice issues. The only time pop culture would be a topic for us to discuss would be in events of a social issue discussion, for example, the #MeToo movement in media. We also partner with schools and other organizations to encourage writers. We will also have adult on-staff writers and editors that will be the guides for the teen writers. Teen writers will have their spot on our site as they are our main focus, but our on-staff journalists will be the ones constructing and piecing together the main articles on the site with the help of our teen writers. Plucky will also always aspire to be honest and factual in our reporting. According to Media Bias / Fact Check article about Affinity magazine they have failed a fact check by an IFCN fact checker, and they also did not correct the article after the fact. Snopes found a false statement in one of their articles about the Red Cross charging victims of hurricane Harvey for disaster relief services and then they later failed to correct it (Kasprak, 2017). Affinity has also been scrutinized for tweets that come from their creator, Evelyn Woodsen. An article from Hello Beautiful calls out the tweets as being “racist and sexist” Woodsen has since made a statement apologizing for the tweets. Plucky sees moments like this as an exemplary reason to have adult professional journalists on-staff to guide our young writers and readers.
One might wonder just how we are going to achieve our goals. On our website, we will have multiple departments that categorize our content. Some examples of those are the following. One department of our site will be titled “The Teen Taskforce.” Under this category will be everything that is written by teens themselves for teens. In this department will also be the place where teens can apply to writers, write to our editors, read articles or give us feedback on what you want us to cover. The Teen Taskforce will be headed by one of our on-staff editors but will mostly be run by a junior editor who is a teen and is our go-to person for all things teen. This junior editor will mostly be an unpaid intern getting college credit. Another department on our site will be “The New News.” This will feature all breaking news happening. It will include breakdowns of what is happening and why our audience should care or how it affects them. This department will be updated as news happens. Another department is “Social Justice Warriors.” In this department, our journalists will be doing profiles on social justice advocates of all ages who are making an impact on their community. These could include a sit-down interview with David Hogg, advocate for March For Our Lives, or a person from our audience’s community who they want to be featured. On this page, there will be a place to recommend or nominate people who our audience believes are “Social Justice Warriors.” Another department on our site will be “The Real Real.” This department will feature essays and stories of real life and real people. In this department, the content will be coming from our audience as well as our on-staff writers. Examples of content on this page could be your coming out story, how being the child of immigrants impacted your life or how you decided to live an eco-friendly life. This department is a place for our audience to hear stories straight from the source.
For example:
Say I am a teen, and I am writing a story for “The Real Real” department. My story is called, “I Have OCD and No I’m Not Super Clean” the story would explain my diagnosis and how I didn’t even think I would have OCD because I wasn’t a ‘neat freak.’ It would go into the perceptions about OCD and mental illnesses in general. The Plucky twitter account would share the essay and say “OCD isn’t just wanting to clean your room or checking the door locks 4 times...It’s much MUCH more. #MentalHealthAwarness *link to the article*.
Say I am a teen writing for The Teen Taskforce. My article would be called “Halima Aden becomes first Sports Illustrated Swimsuit model to wear a hijab and burkini what does it mean and why it’s important” I would go into detail on why this is such a big moment for women everywhere and what it means for little girls in hijabs everywhere from the teen perspective. Plucky would also tweet out this article “CONGRATS Halima Aden on becoming the first Sports Illustrated swimsuit model to wear a hijab and burkini! This is an EPIC moment for women everywhere! #GoGirl *link to article*.
Plucky will be represented on many social media platforms. According to reach done for the Pew Research Center teens are using YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat as their main social media platforms. We will be targeting those three with the most force as we try and connect with our target audience. This would include a YouTube channel that would feature interviews and fun game-type videos with interviewees and our own specified anchors and content creators. An example of these types of videos would be a mix of the content Teen Vogue produces on their YouTube channel with a mix of the more serious topics that SoulPancake covers on their channel. We would also be sure to create a discover page Snapchat story that will feature links and art relating to the newest articles on our website as well as clips from the most recent videos on our YouTube. Snapchat content would also feature short clickable exclusive content. Instagram will provide similar content. We will use Instagram a lot for engaging with our audience by using Instagram Stories and IGTV, which Instagram is calling “the new generation of video.” According to Instagram’s business website, IGTV is “re-envisioning mobile video with a new standalone surface that features longer videos and easy discoverability through channels, all in a vertical format that sits upright, in the palm of your hand” (2019). With Instagram being used by 72% of teens it is important that we jump on what is new and happening with the app (Anderson & Jiang, 2018). Even though our audience isn’t spending much time on the social media platforms, Twitter and Facebook, we still see them as important platforms to use. Twitter and Facebook both allow for more engagement with the audience as users are able to reply easier to posts. So these will be mostly used for that and posting about our latest articles and content. Throughout all our social media accounts we will aspire to maintain our mission of being a place that encourages, bolsters and amplifies the voices of the future.
Just how is Plucky going to achieve this? We have a well thought out business plan designed to achieve our goals. Within our business plan, we have our value proposition that puts emphasis on the way we stand out and are needed in the media space because we aspire to amplify the voices of those who go unheard while providing truthful and understandable news that matters to a younger audience. We will create close customer relations by using the top social media platforms for our targeted audience and by letting our audience engage with our content by being able to write for us. We will also have weekly newsletters that go out to people who sign up for our email listserv. Our key partners include our audience, content creators and advertisers. Our revenue stream will come primarily from advertisers on our website and the monetization of our YouTube channel. We also plan on allowing sponsored content as long as it complies with our mission, and it is fully evident that the said post is an ad. Our website will also have a merchandise shop that will cater to our mission and audience. According to an article for Forbes Generation Z command $44 billion in buying power. Also, Gen Z has an “all about us” mentality that is much different than millennials’ “all about me” complex. This is a new market trend for Gen Z which will reflect in what we are trying to achieve as a brand as a whole. We will also keep this market trend in mind when choosing advertisers to partner with. Examples of brands we partner with brands like Lyft, LOLA, PBTeen and Talkspace.
Throughout this entire journey in the creation of Plucky there will be challenges. Our greatest business challenge will be growing our initial audience. We want to form real bonds with our audience. According to a Forbes article, Gen Z has “made it clear that what they care about more than anything is feeling like they know the brand or the person behind the camera. They don’t want to feel marketed to—they want to feel like they’re part of something” (Patel, 2017). We will do that because we want, we yearn, we need them to be a part of us. We wouldn’t exist for them. Other challenges will include keeping up with fresh and original content especially with many platforms turning their aim toward Generation Z. For example, an article for ABCNews quotes Teen Vogue’s editor-in-chief Elaine Welteroth saying, “When Teen Vogue started out, Teen Vogue was an aspirational fashion magazine for fashion lovers. You know it was the little sister to Vogue. And over the years we've realized that our mission was really to become more focused on making this an inclusive community, that speaks to every kind of young person” (Roberts, Kessel, Dawson, Louszko, & Voliente, 2018). These are just some of the challenges that we see in our future but like all startups and businesses there will be bumps in our road that no one saw coming and we will get through those and find our way while continuing to be a voice for those who go unheard and be the voice of reason and understanding when it comes to connecting our young audience with important world events.
Bibliography
Schomer, S. (2019). The Gen Z Whisperer. Entrepreneur, 47(1), 44–47. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=buh&AN=134062365&site=bsi-live
In this article, I got information on how to describe my audience. I used Moj Mandara’s quote to describe my target audience and want they are looking for.
Kasprak, A. (2017). Is the Red Cross Charging Victims of Hurricane Harvey for Disaster Relief Services?, Snopes.com. Retrieved from https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/red-cross-charging-victims-hurricane-harvey-disaster-relief-services/
I used this article to further explain the problems my competition has had in the past with honesty and reputation.
Roberts, D., Kessel, M., Dawson, D., Louszko, A., & Voliente, A. (2018). Teen Vogue's evolution from high-fashion magazine to a community of activism, ABCNews. Retrieved from https://abcnews.go.com/Business/teen-vogues-evolution-high-fashion-magazine-community-activism/story?id=52104594
I used this article to explain how different media sites are turning their missions and marketing strategies toward Generation Z and their wants and needs.
Anderson, M., & Jiang, J. (2018). Teens, Social Media & Technology 2018, Pew Research Center. Retrieved from https://www.pewinternet.org/2018/05/31/teens-social-media-technology-2018/
I used data from this article to explain and show the social media activity Generation Z or my target audience is using the most.
Werts, J. (2018). How To Win Over Generation Z, Who Hold $44 Billion Of Buying Power. Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/jiawertz/2018/10/28/how-to-win-over-generation-z-who-hold-44-billion-of-buying-power/#30ee8a7c4c13
I used this article to further present how powerful my target audience is in this new-age world.
Patel, D. (2017). 5 Differences Between Marketing To Millennials Vs. Gen Z, Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/deeppatel/2017/11/27/5-d%E2%80%8Bifferences-%E2%80%8Bbetween-%E2%80%8Bmarketing-%E2%80%8Bto%E2%80%8B-m%E2%80%8Billennials-v%E2%80%8Bs%E2%80%8B-%E2%80%8Bgen-z/#44e729412c9f
I used this article to show the marketing strategies companies are now using to connect with Generation Z and also to show what Generation Z is looking for in a company and explain how we fit that mold.
Clark, D. (2017). Teen Publication ‘Affinity Magazine’ Under Fire For Old Tweets, HelloBeautiful. Retrieved from https://hellobeautiful.com/2930429/affinity-magazine-old-tweets/
Introducing IGTV. (2019). Instagram Business. Retrieved from https://business.instagram.com/a/igtv
I used this page to further explain the new social media method, IGTV, that Instagram created to further explain Plucky’s social media methods for engagement.
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