NewsLine Column: Going Nuts For Men’s Weeklies?
Following the recent high-profile launch of IPC’s Nuts and Emap’s Zoo Weekly, Nik Vyas, associate director at ZenithOptimedia, examines what the future holds for the fledgling men’s weekly magazine market…
It’s a well known fact that you can’t be a lad if you’re bashful or understated. You have to be brash, bold and have size 12 balls. You have to tell it like it is not be afraid to push things too far.
True to form, with the exuberance of youth and a complete lack of modesty IPC’s Nuts, “the worlds biggest men’s weekly” and Emap’s Zoo Weekly, “the world’s best men’s weekly” hit the streets a few weeks ago in a multimillion pound marketing blitz. It’s been impossible to avoid them though, on first glance, difficult to distinguish between them. Again reverting to type they straight away set about laying into one another and the media crowd duly gathered round to watch the brawl and see for themselves what all the fuss was about.
An early victory has undoubtedly been won by Zoo as the assembled media fraternity returned a generally positive response to the title in spite of Nuts calling foul and protesting that it wasn’t a fair fight – “we’re a higher quality publication” and “we’re not tacky” they cried. It may be true but you couldn’t help but feel it sounded a little churlish.
Despite the early feedback from the media industry there’s still all to play for. The real prize is the release of robust circulation and readership figures. There are many issues to be published before audits are gathered and we can therefore expect a lot of fine-tuning and revisions over the next few months.
Observers, including some at Emap and IPC, have claimed that there is room enough for only one title in this market sector and that one is doomed to failure. This is no doubt a lot of spin and more than a little disingenuous. There is no market sector that I’m aware of that has only one title within it. You do of course find some magazines that claim to be unique and without competitors but no one seriously believes this. Successful sectors and titles by their nature attract competition and imitators, if there’s money to be made you’ll always find a publisher sniffing around.
There has already been speculation that a number of other people from Richard Desmond’s Northern & Shell to German publisher Bauer are looking at the men’s weekly market. It would certainly be tempting for Desmond or News Group to launch into this sector as the synergies with their existing businesses would mean they could produce a magazine relatively cheaply and watch the money roll in through copy sales and advertising. They are unlikely to do so however, until the viability of the market has been proven and reached a critical mass.
The key for any new entrant will be the ability to define, create and articulate a distinctive brand personality. In the monthly lads mags sector FHM has led the market for a number years despite all the titles looking virtually identical on the newsstand. Numerous focus groups and tests have demonstrated that if you removed their mastheads readers wouldn’t be able to tell which magazine was which from it’s cover. The reason people keep returning to it is because the brand means something to them.
There is a clear lesson in this for the men’s weekly sector. Any publisher can put a magazine together, but the real skill is in producing one that readers can identify with and have strong resonance with, the kind of magazine they seek out at the new stand despite all the clutter.
The story of Nuts and Zoo still has a long time to run and we’ll no doubt see them joined by other rivals. As this happens advertisers can look forward to the competition that this will create, both in terms of cost-efficiency and the continuous improvement it will force upon the existing players.
If you would like to respond or make further comment on this or any other NewsLine article, please email [email protected].
Subscribers can access previous articles by NewsLine columnists in the Columnist Archive – click button on left.