ABC Consumer Jan-Jun 2011: Agency Views

It is difficult to trumpet the rude health of the press market when confronted with these results. There were some winners bucking a downward trend; the news and current affairs sector was no surprise given the state of the economy, with The Week hot on the Economist’s heels.

The same can be said for a reinvigorated interest in the homes sector. There were some other strong performances from market leaders peppered across the board such as What’s on TV and TV Choice, but once you exclude the debut title postings, the whole market was down year on year, which is disappointing.

The Women’s Weeklies had a torrid time, with the whole sector down with the exception of OK! Magazine and Hello!, who were buoyed by Royal Wedding fever. It wasn’t any better for the Women’s Monthlies, with only Glamour, Prima and Essentials posting positive results.

From a value for our client’s money perspective, what is also troublesome is the significant circulation variance by issue in some titles – there are instances where advertisers appearing in February and March issues were being seen by c.40% less people than those appearing in June or July covers.

Whilst the older titles will live with being relatively flat, the downmarket men’s magazines continued its plunge, and it must only be a matter of time before these old cash cows are taken to the abattoir and put out of their misery.

The freemium titles were as stable as expected, allowing their proprietors to carefully balance production costs against incoming ad revenue, which is essential as the gap between success and failure in this publishing model is small. However, with advertiser demand in this sector strong and a recent high-profile outing on the Apprentice, the main question is who and what will fill the Monday and Tuesday gap…?

It cannot go ignored that most markets, with a few exceptions, are down. However, whilst copy sales are in decline, total brand reach is becoming increasingly pertinent. Heat’s print sales may be down 11% period on period, however, its total brand footprint extends to over 550,000 weekly Heat radio listeners and 528,000 monthly unique users online. This is just the tip of the iceberg when you consider mobile, Facebook, Twitter and email in the mix. The list is long.

The importance of brand reach is two-fold. Firstly, it extends the footprint of a title. Heat is case in point as it commands a large, loyal and engaged audience across multiple touchpoints. Print sales in isolation do not tell the full story.

Secondly, magazine brands are increasingly building on their strengths. Look print sales are down 6.6% period on period, however they have clearly identified the magazine’s core values and amplified them. Their ‘buy it now’ ethos is brought to life through their strong e-commerce presence, which shows Look is listening to reader demand. They have also brought London Fashion Week to the masses by staging fashion shows in Westfield shopping centres, which expands on their backbone of mass market fashion.

Let’s not forget that some of the strongest brands in the world were born in print. The Vogue’s and NME’s of this world have and continue to influence consumers. It is exciting to see that Publishers are finally beginning to realise this.

It was no surprise that Hello! magazine (+27%) is the success story of the ABC period. With its extensive coverage of the Royal Wedding it sold over a million copies that week. Hello is hoping this will lead to a new base of loyal readers hungry to see how the better half live. The success can be attributed to the traditionally classy style of the coverage – readers would have been enticed by the glossy images and the memorabilia factor.

Could it be that the Royal Wedding had a less positive effect on other sectors? If you remember we were blessed with a spate of Bank Holidays, long weekend and sunny weather. People were out and about and buying habits changed as retailers have testified. Both the Food and Home Interest sector rely heavily on seasonal editorial and were therefore out of sync when the holiday season started earlier.

More and more readers are looking for something beyond the page. Bored of the same old covermounts and freebies readers need to be engaged and feel that they are getting more for their money. The success of Gardeners World (+23%) is testament to this where readers feel part of the brand, taking part in Gardeners World holidays and ‘meet the editor’ events.

The recent changes at BBC Worldwide and Hearst will not have impacted on this ABC period but there is no denying that all publishers need to think hard about how they are going to overcome this rocky ABC period.

Another magazine ABC audit and another sea of double-digit % year-on-year decline figures. This will bring on the inevitable “death of press” doom-mongers and growth of “freemium” products amongst media commentators – particularly those with vested interests. Clearly, there are two things going on.

Firstly, the magazine marketplace cannot sustain the amount of titles. Do consumers and advertisers really need 23-24 titles in the women’s weekly market, when ten years ago there were about 13-14? Conversely, the number of TV weeklies has remained roughly the same since 10 years ago, despite arguably being under more pressure from newspaper supps and online.

Secondly, there is correlative evidence that there is a decline in household income amongst lower social grades. Whilst the women’s lifestyle sector’s gross sales of c. 5m is similar to ten years ago (excluding the freebies), the women’s weeklies, which generally attracts C2Ds, is down 8% YoY.

There are some notable failings in the latest ABCs. Heat is a strong media brand, but clearly under poor management at the moment. Zoo/Nuts – er…what’s the point? These aside, the fundamentals for the overall magazine market are sound. Ignore the wailing and gnashing of teeth, what you are seeing is the magazine market reaching its natural equilibrium.

In this gloomy climate the latest ABC figures give a positive reading. We have seen some strong results over what has been a difficult period for the UK market.

TV and home interest titles have performed well, which is not really surprising given the current state of the economy, with more people staying at home and refurbishing rather than moving home. These results also show that consumers are still using magazines for specific interests.

Women’s glossies have stacked up well illustrating that women still want their ‘me time’ magazine moment. Although more investment is needed in this area, particularly in marketing, as publishers continue to rely on cover stories and cover-mounts. We have, however, seen heavy investment in mobile and other digital platforms over this period and we are yet to have an overall audience measurement system.

The celebrity market figures represent that there has been a lack of ‘celebrity’ offering recently. The Royal Wedding has obviously helped OK! and Hello!, but Heat and Closer have had a terrible six months. Going forward they require much more investment from Bauer and strategies to recover consumers trust and loyalty. The launch of Big Brother and The X Factor this week will help with content, which should hopefully boost performance in this sector.

We’ve seen another tough period for the men’s market with Zoo losing just under a third of its readers in the past year. With FHM and Nuts also posting double digit declines the question has to be raised whether the end of the ‘lads mags’ is in sight? However, freemiums in this sector are holding their distribution and are a great way to reach upmarket men.

Overall it is a pleasing set of results showing that there is still huge demand for the written word, and with more investment in digital over the coming months, magazines as brands will continue to grow.