NewsLine Column: More Than A Read On The Beach

With the magazine industry poised for the release of the latest ABC data on Thursday, Tim Kirkman, press director at Carat, looks at how cover mounts have become a key tool in women’s magazine marketing and a fundamental asset in maintaining circulation.

Cover mounts, those ‘free gifts’ usually on the front of women’s glossies, have long been a fixture on our magazine shelves. Over the last few years the summer months have been particularly prone to this, any twenty something now knows that their summer purchase of Marie Claire or Cosmo takes up more room than planned in the suitcase.

This summer, the competition, unlike the British weather, is hotting up nicely. Publishers are coming up with more original and greater quality cover mounts in order to out-manoeuvre rivals and counteract the traditional summer months slump in circulation. It’s a question of saving face and keeping pace with the rest of the market.

This summer the offerings further the notion that a sub-market has emerged within the women’s glossy market, the cover mount market. And things appear to have moved on from the spectacle case and the flimsy plain black bag.

The three big hitters, Marie Claire, Glamour, and Cosmopolitan together provide the beach essentials. Marie Claire, a sarong and a seaside read (a copy of IPC stable mate Now); Glamour, a sarong – if Marie Claire‘s fit is not to your taste, and beach bag; Cosmopolitan, flip flops.

The fact that there has been a noticeable investment this summer in the quality of cover mounts, and with it an increase in the cost of production, suggests this must be a successful strategy for boosting issue sales. But is that the case, or have publishers simply taken on board the view that in the past cheap cover mounts may have detracted from the brand image of supposed upmarket, glossy ABC1 women’s magazines? Marie Claire‘s partnership with Knickerbox, and B‘s deal with Nivea, for example, are intended to provide the reader with a greater assurance of quality, as well as being an additional source of advertising revenue.

Certainly B magazine expect great things of their deal with Nivea – this summers’ cover mounting concludes in their September issue with a Nivea cosmetics pack. Indeed, Attic Futura, the publisher of B, is to print an extra 150,000 copies in order to cope with the anticipated surge in demand.

That’s one example. Media agencies should now be aware that female glossy monthlies are part of a cover mount cycle that is likely to extend beyond the summer months. It has become increasingly evident that cover mounts are a key tool in women’s magazine marketing, and thus a fundamental asset in maintaining circulation levels.

Agencies have a responsibility to scrutinise closely the performance of any breakaway titles. If the national newspapers’ cover price wars model is applied, experience indicates that if one title disengages from a policy that the rest of its competitors continue to pursue, there is a good chance that it will lose pace with the rest of the market.

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