Interview: Anna Hyde, Ad Director and Adam Porter, Online Editorial Guru: I Feel Good
James Brown’s new publishing company I Feel Good has yet to launch a title but is already worth £5 million after it floated on the stock exchange last week. Since resigning from GQ last year the controversial editor has been building up his new publishing venture and is preparing to launch a number of major titles in the coming months.
The first will be in the shops on Thursday. Described by ad director Anna Hyde as a “medium-sized launch” with a “mega” one lined up for December, it is called Hotdog and its strapline ‘You’ve been watching too many movies’ sums up the target audience.
“I would describe our target readers as people like Joey and Chandler from Friends, young guys who are saturated with film and TV culture”, says Hyde. Irreverent and informed, they like cult rather than hype and the mag taps into the laddish pub culture which made its editor-in-chief famous, with lists of the top ten psychos in film and “stuff-orientated” features on toys from the latest movie releases.
Extensive research into the sector discovered a gap in the market for a film title which straddled the current mags available but shifted the emphasis towards the entertainment value of lads mags. Terry Watkins Research group presented the mag to six focus groups in London and Manchester who were sorted according to their film preferences and age group. Hotdog came out as the mid point between “film buff” mags such as Sight and Sound and consumer titles such as Empire and Total Film. Its position in the men’s market is placed somewhere between the “smugness” of Arena, Maxim and GQ and the “smartarse” feel of FHM and Loaded.
“Hotdog is doing something different,” says Adam Porter, online editorial guru for hotdogmagazine.com. “The whole ethos of our company is about ideas and enthusiasm. We write features that Empire would never touch as it is too caught up in the PR of film.” Thus the first issue of Hotdog has Robert De Niro as its cover star, avoiding the slavish trailing of latest releases which adorn other film mag covers.
It is embracing the growing influx of DVD’s in the UK which are significantly altering the movie market. “The film-viewing arena has changed with the explosion of DVD,” says Porter. “New features are not so important when you can watch films from any era on your DVD player which have the same high quality as the cinema.”
Porter describes DVD technology as a “potent commercial market”. In the first three months of this year, more DVD players were sold than in the whole of last year. While current magazine titles in the DVD sector, including DVD Review from Paragon and DVD Monthly from Predator, give priority to the technical aspects of the medium, Hotdog is aiming for the entertainment value of the new market. News and reviews of releases past and present are included and the mag’s website will take the technology even further.
Porter who is in charge of editorial content for Hotdogmagazine.com, due to launch simultaneously with the print version, explains. “The site is to become a showcase for the best films using the new media available and give advice to would-be film-makers. The DVD explosion is just beginning in the UK and we are accommodating the interest in the new media, allowing users of the site to buy DVD’s online and letting them know all the best hardware available,” he said. He has struck a number of deals with cult short film production companies such as Druid Media and Blunt Productions, whose films will be shown on the site.
Formerly editor of Uploaded.com, he is hoping to bring some of the same mixture to Hotdogmagazine.com with columnists including Richard Benson from The Face, former “minder” of Heidi Fleiss, Ivan Nagy, and Kerri Sharpem, who was previously head of Virgin’s exotic publishing arm.
Future plans for the company are veiled in secrecy at the moment but a December launch of a lifestyle title is expected, with a leisure title due to launch next year.
Advertising in the first issue comes from BT, Renault, Channel 4, DVD retailers and e-tailers and men’s clothing and accessories brands. A fly-poster is to be included in each issue with space for an ad of the same size on the reverse. The initial print run for the magazine will be 160,000 with circulation expected to settle at 60,000.
Interview: Clare Goff