Interview: All About Eve – Editor Gill Hudson On Launching A New Women’s Title
On the day I interview Gill Hudson about Eve, the glossy women’s monthly she is launching for BBC Worldwide, the Press Gazette carries a story about Emap closing one of its women’s titles Minx. Industry watchers are unlikely to be shocked at the news, since the last ABCs saw Minx drop 18.2% in circulation, year on year. In fact drops of varying severity were felt by 60% of titles in the market. So, good timing for yet another women’s title then.
Hudson looks unconcerned. “There’s always room for good ideas.” she says. Good ideas, according to Hudson, are somewhat lacking in the women’s market. “The one thing that strikes me about the titles at the moment is that they are fantastically homogenous. There’s a lot out there, but take the front cover off and people don’t really know what they’re doing with it. I’m on this one woman crusade to change the way women’s magazines talk to readers. They’re full of lines like ‘There’s nothing worse than finding out that all your tights have got holes in ‘ and I think ‘Well, I could be dead!!’ Pick up any magazine and you find this kind of blather.”
In recent years Hudson had avoided the ‘blather’ by working in the burgeoning men’s magazine market, for Dennis Publishing’s Maxim. It seems to have left her less than enamoured with the format she is returning to. “In men’s magazines, the tone is very direct, its like your mate talking to you.” she says, “None of this patronising crap. The more you look at the phrases [in women’s titles], the more you think ‘this is 20 years out of date’. In the research we’ve done, this tonal difference has gone down a storm, in particular the humour. Women laugh! Its part of how we communicate together, yet women’s magazines, particularly the grown up ones, think humour is a page of domestic trivia by Maureen Lipman or Vanessa Feltz. I want to get rid of this worthiness which has dogged the women’s market for years and to prove you can be intelligent, but still funny.”
So that’s how to approach the tone, then, but what are you actually going to write about? Once again, Hudson is unimpressed with current offerings: “Older women’s magazines. Do they all have to be about vaginal dryness, HRT and breast cancer? Worthy, serious and dull. Its not that we wouldn’t cover those subjects, but I would hope to have a much more inspiring, exciting and entertaining mix.” She promises “surprises” within the magazine, although the subjects you’d expect to find like homes, gardens and food are to be included. “We’ve also got stuff on architecture, modern art, the environment, politics. In men’s magazines you can tackle absolutely anything, there is no subject that should be out of bounds to women.”
Hudson believes that this broad editorial span will attract a broader range of advertisers, beyond the big beauty and fashion names. In terms of where Eve will fit on the newsstands she says, “They’re all competitors in one sense, in that they’re all going for a piece of the same advertising cake. Good Housekeeping, Red and She I suppose, but I just feel we’re so different.”
These titles are in the flavour of the month club, the “older women’s market”, where Parkhill Publishing’s Aura has also launched recently and other big name publishers are sniffing around. Hudson, however, is reluctant to give an age to her reader. “Age is not something I would use to define the magazine. Its very hard to pin people down, particularly post-30. I’ve got friends who are grandparents at my age, they’re pregnant for the first time, they’re not even married, they’re living in a big place in the country, they’re living in one-bedroomed flats.”
“You choose your friends according to whether you like their attitude, their humour, their intelligence. That’s what we’re doing with the magazine. I think that’s appealing to people in their late 20s and its appealing to people in their late 40s- a very wide potential span for a particular kind of woman.”
Eve will be something of a departure for BBC Worldwide, as unlike its other titles, there is no obvious link to a strand of BBC TV programming. Its August launch is expected to be accompanied by a £2m advertising campaign for the first year, aiming for sales of around 130-150,000. “Quite bullish in the current market.” admits Hudson, but she is clear what she won’t be doing to win readers. “Something like Women’s Journal is cover mounting about 9 out of 12 issues a year, and when they don’t cover mount the sales just plummet. This just isn’t great magazine publishing is it? This is shoring up really quite indifferent titles with dodgy black make-up bags. Our research points to people casting around trying to find something that excites them. We may not be able to avoid [cover mounts]. They’re a perfectly legitimate marketing device, as a way of sampling with a view to increasing attention. But if you’re not increasing attention, which the current glut of cover mounts are not, what it’s saying is that the magazine’s not good enough for people to hang on in there.”
One way for Eve to stand out will be through its website, which will launch simultaneously. Being associated with the company behind one of the world’s most visited sites, www.bbc.co.uk, is unlikely to do it any harm and Hudson sees the medium as a way to increase the accessible tone of the magazine. The site will not be just a download of the magazine, she says, but will have chat rooms referencing different features, especially the problem page. “We don’t have an agony aunt.” she says. “Because how can Clare Rayner possibly think she knows everything about everything?” Instead, readers’ opinions will be sought and published. Ditto film and book reviews, which will be serviced by a database of reader reviews and a book club. “Why should one film reviewer who spends their entire life like a cultivated mushroom in a little dark preview theatre be the only one to give an opinion?” she asks. “What I don’t want to do is treat our readers as a merchandising opportunity. I’m keen to establish a bond with them before we try and do anything like flog them stuff.”
But is Hudson flogging a dead horse? IPC’s ‘Primetime’ research, released last year, showed that by 2005, 70% of women will be over the age of 35. Of 35-64 year olds, 39% are chief income earners and 93% read magazines. Perhaps the time is indeed ripe for a maverick approach to refresh a sluggish market. But then Minx was praised for its new approach when it launched. And so was Frank, now reduced to two issues per year thanks to poor sales, suggesting that Eve’s team will have to work hard to ensure their place in ABC Eden.
Interview: Anna Wise