First Issue Review: Reveal
The National Magazine Company has today unveiled its latest foray into the women’s weekly celebrity market with the launch of Reveal, a new celebrity focused title designed to compete with Emap’s fledgling Closer.
The magazine, which is backed by a £16 million marketing spend and has been in development for under a year, is hailed by its editorial team as four magazines in one: celebrity, real life, lifestyle and TV listings – all this for just £1.
When asked to review the first edition of Reveal I jumped at the chance – being a bit of a celebrity gossip queen and all! At first glance, this magazine could have easily been mistaken for Emap’s Closer, the colours, logo and layout are very similar.
However, you can’t judge a book by its cover and I thought, well, if the editorial team have spent nearly 12 months preparing for the launch of Reveal, it must have something different to offer – right?!?
On opening up the front page, I’m still waiting for the something different, never mind …. on to the next page …. mmm, still waiting …. on to the next page …. by this point I’m really struggling to find what exactly could’ve taken 12 months to develop. This magazine, definitely looks like it was cut from the Closer cloth.
The special free preview issue cover leads with a shot of teenager, Charlotte Church, frolicking on a Dubai beach with her boyfriend. In contrast another front page picture shows a depressed looking Kerry McFadden; in this issue her mum spills the beans on why her marriage to ex-Westlife singer, Brian McFadden has collapsed.
It looks as though the only significant difference between Reveal and other celebrity magazines is that it has included a holiday feature on Cuba. I did however think that the television section Reveal TV was one of the best around, it was lengthy, a feature had been made from the return of Wife Swap and the low-down on the week’s soaps was given blow-by-blow.
Advertisements in this issue were kept to a minimum, with product placements being used in the beauty and food sections instead of obvious campaigns. The only place real advertisements featured were on the inside of the front cover, for Tesco and on the back cover for Woolworths and MacLeans.
Circulation figures for Closer have continued to go from strength to strength since launch, growing 43.5% year on year in the six months to June 2004, while Emap’s other celebrity title Heat magazine has seen a slight decline in its popularity since Closer pushed its way on to the shelves, falling by 4.4% during the same period. Another major player in the celebrity weekly field is Now, again it has seen its circulation fall of late, down by 1.8% year-on-year in the latest ABC results.
Even if Nat Mags doesn’t manage to steal Emap’s celebrity weekly crown, I’m sure it will be happy with achieving even a fraction of the success of its nearest rivals.
Review by Alaine Gardner