Feature: Women’s Glossies, Older And Wiser?

This week Cosmopolitan celebrates its 30th birthday, yet its ability to lead its market seems undiminished, as evidenced by last week’s ABC results. Cosmo may, if reports are to be believed, be about to swap some of its orgasm tips for emotional stability, but other than that it is refusing to show its age. The same could be said for the Women’s Lifestyle sector as a whole, which despite being written off as ailing and tired a year or so ago, has seen a healthy revival of late, as predicted by some of its major editors last year. Its male counterpart, meanwhile, is looking far less vigorous.

Between the July to December 1999 and the January to June 2000 audit periods, the total circulation of Women’s Lifestyle magazine shrank by almost 300,000 to less that 5.3 million, with casualties including strong titles such as Cosmo and Marie Claire. Meanwhile, the Men’s Lifestyle market, more or less created in the mid-90s by IPC’s Loaded but dominated by Emap’s FHM, reached the 2.67 million total which has so far proved its peak.

Since then, the figures have told a different story. In the women’s market innovation has been the trend du jour. With varying degrees of success Nova tried cooler, Eve tried cleverer, Aura tried older, InStyle tried more celebrities and Glamour tried smaller. The last few audit periods have not been without their casualties- two of the titles in the previous sentence, as well as Shine, Bare, Woman’s Journal and this week Celebrity Looks– but the spirit of making new a tried and trusted formula appears to have given the sector the boost it needs. True, this is due to a large extent to Condé Nast’s Glamour, but while this has boosted the market to the advantage of others including Cosmo and New Woman (up 0.6% and 8.3% year on year according to the Jul-Dec 01 figures), it has also given some troublesome competition to others such as Elle and Marie Claire (down 4.6% and 6% respectively).

In the men’s camp, things have not been quite the same. Perhaps James Brown departing from Loaded and eventually from the sector as a whole in favour of his I Feel Good venture meant the loss of a vital factor. Or perhaps it was just that the exciting new area of growth was maturing. Certainly, what wasn’t in evidence was the innovation seen in the women’s sector, as the Loaded formula was flogged to death, even, it seems, by the originators of the style. This set of ABCs has seen the apparent apathy come home to roost, as the mens market became the sob story of the period, dropping 11.2% of its circulation total year on year, and with its leader, FHM bearing the brunt with a 20.4% fall.