IPC Plans To Relaunch Loaded

IPC’s flagship men’s monthly magazine, Loaded, will be relaunched in May after the veteran magazine saw its circulation drop to its lowest level for nearly a decade.

The latest ABC results, released yesterday, saw Loaded lose 16.4% of its circulation year on year, taking figures for the last six months of 2004, down to 220,057. This slump saw the high-profile monthly title overtaken by rivals Maxim and Men’s Health.

Naill McKinney, publishing director of Loaded thinks that the increasing success of the men’s weekly titles has aided the downward spiral. He told Newsline: “There is an element of the weeklies affecting all the men’s monthlies. It is also a long term trend which has been happening in the men’s monthly sector.”

McKinney went on to disclose plans for a relaunch of Loaded, revealing the idea had been in the pipeline for some time. He said: “We’re about to launch our new strategy which we’ve been working on for the past six months, we started work on it in September and I’m very confident that the trend can be turned around over the next couple of ABC periods.”

There has been various speculation in the trade press about what shape this relaunch will take, and its affect on the price of the publication and redesign, because of the competitiveness of the market however, McKinney was unable to comment on this.

He did reveal that the relaunch would involve a variety of elements, including editorial, product and marketing, and said he was confident that the new strategy would be successful.

The men’s lifestyle magazine market has experienced something of a rocky ride over the last few years as it came down to earth with a bang following its rapid rise to notoriety in the late nineties. Loaded saw spectacular rises in its circulation during this period, peaking in the second half of 1998 with 457,318. However, it has been largely downhill since then, falling below 300,000 in 2002, after a brief 12 months sales plateau.

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