Condé Nast Prepares To Deliver Glamour To the UK, But Will We Buy It?
Condé Nast is preparing to launch the British edition of Glamour, a mid-market women’s glossy offering the usual suspects of fashion, features and beauty, on 8 March. Adding another title to a market which is not only cluttered, but also in decline according to recent ABC figures (see Women’s Monthly Sector Continues Decline, As Two Thirds Of Titles See Falls), appears to be a foolish venture, yet this is Condé Nast, which practically invented the glossy genre with Vogue, which while it doesn’t compete with Cosmopolitan on circulation, wins out on ubiquity as a household name. Surely they know what they’re doing?
The allure of the market is not hard to see. Glamour’s launch material points out that 3.3m young women read “glossies” and they have some considerable spending power: according to TGI April 1999-March 2000 figures this group spent £1.8bn on fashion last year, £545m on cosmetics and skincare, £2.3 bn on holidays, £17.8bn on their most recent cars. What’s more, 1.8m own credit cards and 1 million flex their plastic at least twice a month. Attract them as readers and advertisers will follow like fashionistas after a Fendi bag.
The glossy equation is simple – put the big fashion and beauty names in your feature articles (Glamour is promising more beauty pages – 35 per issue – than any other title), and the big fashion and beauty names will want to run advertising alongside.
Looking at the circulation performances of the heavyweight glossies – Vogue, Elle, Marie-Claire and Cosmopolitan -over the last decade, Marie-Claire, the most recently launched of the four, managed to break the 400,000 barrier in the mid-90s, and its curious but successful mix of mid-market style and po-faced reportage has kept it close on the high heels of the mid-market style and sex features of Cosmopolitan ever since. However, both titles, while retaining their leading, 450,000-ish ABC figures, have experienced ups and downs over the last five years, as editors came and went and so did readers’ enthusiasm.
The less diverse, more dedicated style titles, Elle and Vogue, on the other hand, have seen a much steadier decade, comfortably ensconced around the 200,000 mark, without feeling the need for reinvention, preferring to insert the new seasons trends into classic formats. Had Glamour gone for this part of the market, it appears it would have had a hard job prising away those devoted to their established style bibles.
Instead, Glamour is going for the same territory as Marie-Claire, Cosmo, New Woman (which Glamour editor Jo Elvin used to edit) et al. One of the first weapons it has, in terms of the immediately obvious, is its cute size. Each 220 page magazine will only measure 225mm x 170mm, making it smaller than any other glossy on the rack (see box, left). The size was tried out on the Italian version, launched in 1992, and was found to improve sales considerably. In fact, the whole Glamour format is very much tried and tested, as the US version was established in 1939.
Condé Nast is not skimping on investment either. As well as recruiting the award-winning Jo Elvin to edit, it has signed up Simon Kippin, former publishing director at Cosmopolitan and Good Housekeeping. The magazine, which has an initial print run of 500,000, will have £5m spent on its marketing during its premier year.
One more important factor up Glamour’s designer sleeve will be its “strong commitment to celebrity coverage”. While the women’s monthly market might have been ailing in the last ABCs, TV Listing and Celebrity titles were the belle of the ball and are hot tipped to be the smart investment for the magazine publishing future (see Feature: Star-Studded Future Beckons For The Magazine Market).
Condé Nast are calling this the “most important launch into the women’s magazine sector since 1988 when Marie Claire and New Woman came into the market.” Kippin claims, “I know we have a winner” and Elvin says she is confident that the title will have “an enormous impact on the market.” As Condé Nast’s first venture into the mid-market it has certainly been long awaited and tickets for the launch party are apparently more sought after than the new black. Whether Elvin and friends can deliver will have to be seen.
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