Desmond To Knock Out Competition In Men’s Weekly Market
Competition in the fledgling men’s weekly magazine market looks set to hot up later this year with news that Richard Desmond’s Express Newspapers is planning the launch of a new title provisionally called KO!.
A spokesman for the publisher’s parent company, Northern & Shell, confirmed this morning that the name KO! was registered last month in the form of a masthead that resembles Desmond’s long-running celebrity magazine OK!.
The title will come hot on the heels of H Bauer’s Cut magazine, which is expected to launch on 12 August, the same day that the latest ABC results for the six months to June 2004 reveal the debut circulations for founding men’s weeklies, IPC’s Nuts and Emap’s Zoo.
Reports suggest that Nuts is currently selling around 225,000 copies and week, some way ahead of its main rival Zoo, which is thought to have weekly sales in excess of 150,000. Both titles have already dented the circulations of their more established monthly counterparts, FHM and Loaded (see Nuts And Zoo Hit Sales Of Monthly Lads’ Mags).
It is expected that both Cut and KO! will be backed by multi-million pound advertising campaigns. Nuts and Zoo launched at the beginning of this year with a budget of £8 million each. Marketing activity included heavyweight television advertising campaigns and point-of-sale distribution deals with a number of retailers (see Advertisers Get On Board As IPC Unleashes Nuts).
A spokesman for Express Newspapers said: “It’s true that we’ve registered the trademark. We are an innovative company and this is just one of a number of concepts that we are considering at the moment. We’re not ready to release details of specific timings and there’s no guarantee KO! will be the final name.”
Reports suggest that the title, which will be the fourth to enter the men’s weekly market, is scheduled for an autumn launch. Northern & Shell is also understood to have registered the coverline ‘A knock-out read for men’, which could feature in marketing activity for the title.
Increasing competition in the men’s magazine market recently forced Dennis Publishing to announced the closure of the its groundbreaking small format men’s magazine, Jack, following a period of poor sales. The title launched in April 2002 as an alternative to existing lads’ mag titles, but failed to make a mark on the sector (see James Brown Unveils Jack).
Northern & Shell: 020 7308 5090
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