ABC Consumer Magazines: agency view

The ABC results released on Thursday once again showed many magazines, including flagship titles, struggling to hold on to their readers.

Could the huge decreases in the Women’s Weekly market mean an increased apathy with the public’s appetite for celebrity? With declines in OK! down 23% year on year, Heat once the golden child at Bauer down 19.3% year on year, and Now down 14.2%, this does seem to be the case.

Any hope of an upturn in the Men’s Lifestyle market has been dashed once again; with Nuts, Zoo and Loaded all showing double digit declines. There is one slight glimmer of success down at IPC, following their sell off of Loaded in October last year – Nuts magazine now has double the circulation of their Men’s weekly rival Zoo. Titles for the more discerning gentleman are holding their own – with Men’s Health, Esquire and GQ all faring much better.

The free magazine model appears to be going from strength to strength – with Stylist, ShortList and Sport all showing increases. ‘Freemium’ during a recession does seem to be the way forward.

It will be interesting to see whether the upcoming Royal Wedding will have an effect on the more pertinent titles in the next set of ABC results.

The Women’s Lifestyle ABC results threw up some interesting insights. Whilst a number of ‘young women’s’ titles saw a drop in circulation (Cosmopolitan, Company, Marie Claire), this was combated by the ‘Bond Street Brigade’ (Harpers, Elle, Vanity Fair), who all enjoyed an increase or remained static.

At the other end of the scale the more mature titles that target women in their 40’s and 50’s are enjoying healthy circulations. Both Good Housekeeping and woman&home have realised that this age group are not who they were 15 years ago. They are enjoying life to the limit, spending their money on what they enjoy – holidays, travel, food, home decor and the family and these titles have adopted that lust for life.

On the other side of the fence, the Men’s market is not faring so well. It’s no news that the mass market men’s titles are dying a death but with double digit drops for the majority it begs to be seen how long this sector will live. This is compounded by not only the lack of launches but even tentative launches are now rumoured not to be happening. The more upmarket titles – GQ and Esquire – managed to weather the ABC storm, showing that the more affluent male still buys his style guide, but this is not enough to keep the sector alive and well.

Top observations of the day…

1) Overwhelmingly the Year on Year trend for actively purchased (AP) figures is down, again. Whilst no sectors have escaped this (with the average AP fall in the major sectors about -2% YoY) the Men’s sector is once again the hardest hit (AP down -13%), with GQ amongst the more surprising results – AP down -21%.

2) Prima‘s AP figure of -7% YoY arguably reflects the impact of the new ABC ruling rather than a particular failure of the title. Prima‘s September issue infringed the new governance on multi-packs, meaning an issue which has historically been very successful was not in 2010. NatMags have since challenged ABC on the wording and exclusion of this issue and have independently released a circulation figure of +3%, verified by KPMG.

3) Nevertheless, multi-packing is still rife, especially in the weekly sector with Best, Reveal & Real People sold jointly on newsstands for between 18-22 weeks (of a 24 week period). However, this sales method is no longer producing dividends, with only Real People of those particular titles posting an increase in AP circulation. This is a trend shared throughout the sector, with only 3 other titles (Woman’s Weekly, Hello, and More) posting marginal AP increases.

4) Whilst the total AP figure for the Home Interest sector was down -2% YOY, this was due to the performance of Real Homes; -44% or 29,539 copies YoY. The rest of the market appears to be in comparatively rude health with more titles posting increases in their AP circulation than not – quite an occurrence in this audit period. The market leader (Ideal Home) was up 7% YoY.

5) Elsewhere it is a story of market leaders doing quite nicely thank you, whilst the competition continues to struggle. In the TV Listings sector the 2 biggest titles (TV Choice and What’s on TV) were 2 of only 3 titles to post an increase. Whilst in the Women’s Monthly sector 2 of the top 4 selling titles (GH and woman&home) posted increases, but 13 of the top 20 posted decreases.

Beware of the hype – magazine publishers will be tucking into app developments aplenty in the next 12-24 months, and clearly this is already regarded as an absolute necessity in these technological times for fear of looking antiquated and off the pace.

However, if you accept that (with the notable exception of the young Men’s sector) in the majority of cases magazines are not competing with the digital world for readers, and that magazine reading is a totally different experience, which cannot be replicated elsewhere, these developments are unlikely to arrest the number one concern of circulation decline.

The fact that there are still magazines posting period on period increases in circulation is encouraging and a triumph for great content. Categories that seem to be struggling the most are celebrity focused and targeted at the younger markets, who are increasingly looking online to satiate their appetite for real time news.

This indicates that younger audiences are shunning magazines as a medium rather than showing their disinterest in the content.

Brands like Sugar have realised this by closing the print title and becoming an online-only brand, which is shaping up to be a real success.