Women’s monthly mags can either differentiate or die. Emap Elan MD David Davies explains why women these days are getting more demanding.
My last meeting with David Davies was 2 BHD (2 years Before How-Do). He was visiting Manchester to talk to a congregation of media sorts about a new, weekly glossy title set to ‘re-define the female magazine market’.
Davies
“Grazia” he said (to a crowd concentrating largely on consuming free Beck’s) “will prove that weekly titles can attract upmarket readers and advertisers. It’s the first of its kind, but it won’t be the last. It’s a new dawn.”*
The media throng, yours truly included, looked suitably impressed – as soon as we spotted there’d be free food as well as beer.
‘Mewh’
If there was an air of apathetic ‘mewh’ at the news of Grazia’s arrival it was entirely understandable.
The hard-nosed media mafia are used to hearing big ideas, big launches and big promises, but only genuinely interested in getting big results. Which is why on Davies’ latest trip up North they may have been listening slightly more attentively.
Since Grazia’s launch it has done exactly what Davies said it would. The latest ABC’s showed it to be shifting 220,125 copies per week, up 26% on the same period last year, meaning it now sells more copies per week than Vogue does in a month.
It does this with a cover price of £1.90 – vertiginously high for a weekly – and attracts more prestigious fashion brands than the walk-in-wardrobe of your average Alderley Edge WAG.
In a perilously tricky sector to negotiate it’s a runaway success.
First chance, second time round
This time round Davies is in the Little Smoke to wax lyrical about the re-launch of First – Emap’s former women’s news weekly that’s just had a wee bit of a lifestyle makeover.
“There was nothing wrong with First as it was,” the former editor of Q, FHM and Heat tells How-Do, “we were very proud of it – it was selling 100,000 copies a week. However, given the scale of our business, and our ambition, selling 100,000 copies wasn’t enough. We didn’t really feel it had a long-term growth potential.
“In research it tested much better than it did on the newsstand,” he admits with an air of regret. “It was a very flattering read, but it just didn’t seem to cut through on the shelf. In the end we decided that, with the success of Grazia and More, a lifestyle proposition would be a better bet for both readers and advertisers.” Sticking to its original demographic – females in the late 30s to 40s bracket – this second First aims to give readers a magazine that “really represents” the lives of the UK’s second biggest magazine group. A group that, according to Davies, usually dips in and out of multiple purchases without ever feeling really ‘at home’ with just one title.
To get it off the ground there’s a £3.5m marketing budget running up until Christmas – a spend that our interviewee hopes will take it “to our target ABC of around 150,000 to 180,000.”
It’s a substantial gamble (switching from news to lifestyle and potentially alienating 100,000 loyal purchasers), but then so was the £16m launch budget for Grazia, and that seems to have paid off pretty nicely.
No future for monthly mags?
Anyway, one of the most interesting aspects of our last meeting was Davies’s almost evangelical belief that a weekly frequency was the way forward for the female magazine market. At the time it seemed like quite a novel approach, now it seems almost common sense.
Is he still a chest-beating advocate we wonder?
“Without a doubt,” he fires back. “We can all see how much faster the world is moving and waiting a whole month for your magazine doesn’t lead to great engagement.
“That’s what we want from our readers; engagement, to really have a relationship with them. With a weekly magazine we can talk about breaking stories, readers can interact via the website, we can have a conversation with them on a regular basis and I think that works exceptionally well.”
He continues: “It’s the way the market’s going. I mean if you look at the launches into the market this year we have First, which we regard as a completely fresh launch, and Look (the IPC title that clocked up a whopping 318,907 at its inaugural ABC). It’s been a long time since I saw a big monthly launch.”
A fair point. So, does he not see any future for women’s monthlies at all (meaning magazines, of course)? Can they arrest their current circulation declines?
“No. I don’t think so. Monthlies like Vogue, Elle and Good Housekeeping have strong propositions, so they’ll have a good future ahead of them. However, I think titles that are poorly differentiated lifestyle magazines in the monthly market are going to fade quite rapidly. Where I see the market going is that those customers that used to consume those titles are now much better served by the lifestyle weeklies.
“That’s why we’re pushing More, why we’ve re-launched First, why we’ve had success with Grazia. That combination of aspirational lifestyle content and news is a much more compelling proposition on a weekly frequency than just aspirational content out monthly. That’s simply the way it is.”
Quite what that says about New Woman’s future is anyone’s guess, but it certainly shows a lot of faith in the division’s core group of big hitters.
Free threats?
So, can anything spoil the party for the weekly titles then?
One fly in the punch-bowl, How-Do proffers, could be the rise of the free titles – as evidenced in Manchester a couple of weeks back by Shortlist’s arrival. Clearly this is a burgeoning sector and now it’s been graced by a free, men’s weekly surely it’s only a matter of time before a women’s pops up.
Is this something that’s got them quaking in their crocodile skins down at Emap central?
“Not especially,” comes the cool response. “I suppose it will happen, but I think women are deeply engaged with the magazines they’re currently getting – I mean they’re buying millions of them. So, I think price is less important that quality in the women’s market. Just because something else is free doesn’t mean people will take it.”
Unless of course you work in the media and it’s free Beck’s David. Then it’ll get hoovered up.
First Magazine re-launched on 11th September, with Davies saying that he should have an indication of its early performance by mid to late October. The Emap Elan division includes the titles Heat, More, First, Closer, Grazia, Pop and New Woman.
* I can’t honestly remember if this is exactly what he said. The beer was free.
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