NewsLine Column: Jack, Not For Lads?

James Brown could be held responsible, for better or worse, for the creation of the “Lads Mag Phenomenon” as launch editor of Loaded. With that phenomenon seen by most as well and truly over, Brown’s I Feel Good Publishing is preparing to launch the magazine that the new, touchy-feely, “I love my baby and animals” Brown says it was always meant to. Jack is resolutely distancing itself from the “L” word, but is it different enough? And do readers want different anyway? NewsLine’s Assistant editor Gareth Jones considers how much lad there is in Jack.

Japanese men in their underpants, lions attacking elephants and sex with superheroes. No,it’s not a bad dream, but the new men’s magazine from former Loaded editor James Brown.

At first glance you’d be forgiven for thinking that I Feel Good’s new lad’s mag Jack is a little strange, and quite frankly you’d be right. The title, which has been described by Brown as a cross between Loaded and National Geographic, is the magazine equivalent of surfing the internet, and with its A5 format and retro cover Jack is a long way from the quick-hit, booze and boobs formula of FHM and Loaded.

Not that that’s a bad thing – the flow of the magazine maybe a little hard to follow and the change of pace between features slightly extreme, but Jack certainly makes for an altogether interesting and refreshing read. There are plenty of jokes and entertainingly pointless facts and the whole thing is held together with the kind of humour that made Loaded so successful.

It’s obvious that Brown has gone to great lengths to distance Jack from what he called the “corporate bilge” of the men’s market and with insights into bio-terrorism and the Fonze as a drug dealer he has created a genuinely innovative and entertaining title. However, the men’s sector is dominated by a handful of long established titles and Brown is going to have to struggle to make Jack succeed against the likes of GQ, Esquire and FHM.

I would genuinely like to see Jack take the men’s market by storm and coax readers away from what, by and large, has become formulaic and homogenised sector. However, while I hate to be cynical, I’m simply not convinced that it can.

Brown seems to have done everything right so far. He has cleverly avoided aiming Jack at a particular age or demographic and by promoting it simply as a magazine for “intelligent men” he is ensuring the widest possible target audience. It also seems that with all of the major men’s lifestyle titles seeing circulation decline in the last ABCs readers are there for the taking – if they can just be weaned away from a diet of booze and boobs, the limited appeal of which is evidently wilting.

So in theory there should be room for an intelligent and creative title like Jack to succeed. But is it really a case of finding a “magic formula”? The, admittedly more established, market for women’s lifestyle magazines, both monthly and weekly, has always dwarfed the men’s sector, even in its heyday. Even without a discernible gap in the market, put a well put together product such as Glamour onto the women’s market and it will sell. Can the same be said of the men’s market? Or is it the case that a lot of men just don’t need or want lifestyle magazines, whether the content goes for the highbrow or the lowest common denominator?

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