Feature: Shopping For Circulation

Following Hello! and OK!’s inflated results during the recent audit, ABC is to change the rules, preventing magazines from being able to count copies given away at less than 20% of cover price being counted as circulation. Low price is undoubtedly a draw for the fickle consumer- Glamour’s debut success is thought to be in part to do with its £1.50 cover price.

Although Condé Nast is said to be planning on retaining its low price for Glamour most magazine backers cannot afford to go so low. A notable exception are customer magazines, whose backers are happy to either give away or sell cheaply what are plausible versions of full price newsstand titles.

Among the most successful of these titles is Sky Customer Magazine, which recorded a circulation of 4.7m for the title, sent free to Sky subscribers, in the Jan-Jun 2001 audit. Boots Health & Beauty, a free quarterly title, reaches 2.4m and Spirit of Superdrug, a free monthly, reaches 950,000. These are circulations that the equivalent paid-for titles can only dream of; Top Santé Health and Beauty, for example, manages just 182,211.

A title does not have to be free to achieve success, as Ikea Room’s entry into an otherwise deteriorating Home Interest market demonstrates. The title, quarterly and priced at £1.70, managed an opening circulation of 171,620, not too far behind market leader Ideal Home, a £2.40 monthly with a circulation of 256,505.

Similarly Sainsbury’s Magazine managed sales of 321,308, compared to Good Housekeeping’s 395,070. Both monthly titles, the supermarket’s title costs £1, while Good Housekeeping retails at £2.60.

In terms of advertising, it could be argued that the perceived value by readers of the content of these cheap or free magazines may be lower than in paid-for titles which have to compete on the newsstand. The danger in placing advertising among so many product-linked competitions, offers and advertorial is that it will lose integrity.

That said, the suggestion that a store endorses the product by allowing it in the magazine may not be a bad thing, and in many cases advertising in customer titles costs less per head of circulation than in the newsstand equivalents.

In addition, but less quantifiable, is the fact that a Boots or Ikea customer is unlikely to have entered the store simply to buy a magazine, therefore advertising is more or less guaranteed to be reaching someone already interested in drug-store or home products.

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