Esquire To Launch Spin-Off Sports Quarterly As Editor Continues Rebrand
Upmarket men’s magazine Esquire is set to launch a spin-off sports title called Esquire Sports Quarterly, or ESQ, in June this year. The title has been developed as part of Esquire publisher National Magazine Company’s plans to concentrate on the development of its ‘masterbrands’.
NatMags has instigated a policy to concentrate on the company’s key brands and develop them laterally as a way of maintaining presence in the increasingly fragmented media marketplace. As a result of this the relatively new men’s health and fitness title, ZM, was closed at the beginning of the year and some of its content folded into the more-established Esquire name (see ZM Magazine Goes Under Esquire Brand).
As part of these masterbrand extensions, Esquire has already developed a website, at www.esquire.co.uk, which does not duplicate any of the material found in the printed magazine. The launch of ESQ is the second brand extension for the magazine, says editor Peter Howarth, and is targeting a market which he feels is currently not catered for in this country.
ESQ will be pitched at the general sports fan offering a broad look at the world of sport with a sophisticated slant drawn from the style of Esquire. “All the sports titles in the market at present concentrate on the practicalities of health and fitness, like going to the gym. In the States you have magazines like Sports Illustrated which are targeted at the general sports fan.
“We want ESQ to have a broad appeal to people who like watching sport and perhaps play a game themselves every now and then, but with a sophistication that comes from the Esquire brand. We might, for example, have the definitive interview with David Beckham,” Howarth told Newsline.
Esquire recently began rebranding itself to move away from the lads-mag-girls-in-bikinis-and-knickers approach which has become prevalent over recent years. Howarth says that he wanted Esquire to reclaim its heritage as a high quality, sophisticated magazine, building on its already upmarket readership and offering advertisers a tightly-focused audience.
As part of this move, the magazine has begun to feature only portrait shots of its cover stars, staying away from semi-naked models, which Howarth describes as a ‘cul-de-sac’ in terms of brand differentiation. “I decided I wanted to completely distance Esquire from the lads mag market,” he explains. “If you’re putting girls in bikinis on the cover month after month you can hardly claim a position of difference, can you? And if you’re doing that and not selling as many copies as FHM, then you’re not doing very well really.”
Howarth realises that the repositioning of Esquire may be tough on newsstand sales initially and NatMags has given the move a year before it will assess whether it has been a success. In the latest ABC figures, which cover the final period of the title in its old guise, circulation fell 7.2% year on year to just over 100,000 copies.
National Magazine Company: 020 7439 5000