IPC Weeklies Ready For Further Projects
At this morning’s “Feast of Magazines” seminar held by IPC Magazines, Iris Burton, editor-in-chief of IPC’s Women’s Weeklies group, said she thought the market was always ready for new titles.
Her comments came as part of a series of talks on IPC’s magazines which focused on both editorial and advertising matters. She went on to point out that between 50 and 60 days per year were spent by the group on research and this could not be done without seeing opportunities for new launches. In the market as a whole Burton said there was a perceived “sameness” amongst titles which IPC is keen to change. There is also a greater fragmentation in the sector, a “wear-out” factor with true life stories, a growing celebrity interest amongst readers, a desire for longer reads and more appreciation of quality. This is the kind of market which IPC’s latest launch, Now * Now Magazine – First Issue Review, tried to aim at, with the company claiming that it is now achieving sales of around 800,000.
Sally O’Sullivan, editor-in-chief of Ideal Home, Homes & Ideas and Woman & Home, then went on to explain the reasons behind the recent Ideal Home relaunch * Ideal Home Relaunched. She said that although it had great strengths as a brand it simply did have not enough distinction and this was what needed changing. With the new-look title a different range of advertisers such as fashion and beauty were now being attracted.
Speaking about TV listings titles, Peter Genower admitted that the sector was facing increasing competition from newspaper listings but was “gearing up for the challenge” and actively carrying out research to counter the threat. As part of its active measures the group had increased TV & Satellite Week‘s pagination and was in the process of developing an online service – an interactive TV & Satellite Week.
Nicky Rodger from the IPC Specialist Group then went on to point out how she believed that such titles were providing new opportunities for advertisers: Eat Soup for example, the magazine for foodie men, was attracting FMCG advertisers and she said it would not be long before Persil ads would be appearing in such titles. Overall, research had indicated that specialist titles were read on average for 84.5 minutes and were picked up around five times with 90% of readers taking notice of the ads.
In terms of integrated communications products, Ruth Colinese, ad marketing manager of the IPC SouthBank Group, said that readers are attracted to advertorials, believing that such pages meant the magazine was endorsing a product. She also claimed that readers like inserts and felt “possessive” towards them: they were also found to be intrusive and extracted good responses over a short period of time.
Mike Baker, IPC’s ad marketing director, finished off the seminar by highlighting some new research which claimed that magazine advertising, when combined with television, added an extra 35% to a campaign’s coverage. Highlighting specific brands, he said that over a short sales period of around 16 weeks, magazine advertising had meant that Birdseye had achieved extra sales of around £98,000, Lux about £83,000 extra and Persil liquid around £64,000 extra.
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