OK Magazine – First Issue Report

OK magazine, the first direct rival to the hugely successful Hello, launches tomorrow with a print run of 750,000. The new magazine launches amid a strong promotional campaign, which included a sample copy free in last weekend’s Sunday Express.

The future of the new magazine is already unstable following the sale of Northern & Shell’s magazines to United Newspapers last week. It is unclear at the moment whether Northern & Shell will hold onto their newest title.

There are many obvious similarities between the first issue of OK and the current issue of Hello.

 
                             HELLO           OK 
 Frequency                      Weekly          Monthly 
 Cover Price                    £1.20           £1.95 
 Ave Pagination                 100             148 
 Colour Page Rate               £8500           £8000 
 Circulation                    464,000 *       750,000 @
 
 *      =       ABC JUL-DEC'92 
 @      =       IPR 

Unlike Hello, which is a weekly, OK will appear monthly. It is slightly larger in size than Hello with a higher quality glossy cover. OK’s media pack pledges to acquire a profile of 60% ABC1 women aged 18-44.

At a glance the editorial within the two magazines is very similar with glossy photographs and features on the rich and famous dominating both. OK includes features on the Royal Family, Jenny Agutter, the Redgraves, Lesley Joseph, Mel Gibson, Catherine Zeta Jones, Andrew Morton, Victoria Wood and Jackie Collins. It also has a food, health and review section.

The current issue of Hello includes features on Jacqueline Bisset, Andie MacDowell, Dionne Warwick, the Royal Family, Eddie Murphy and Charlotte Attenborough. One of the main differences between the 2 magazines is that much of Hello’s editorial is in black and white while all of OK is full colour glossy.

Considering one is a weekly and one a monthly, there is little variation in the cover price and pagination (see chart on previous page). OK has kept to its promise of providing 118 pages of editorial, its first issue carries 30 pages of advertising. Advertisers include Walls, Next, Andrex, Freemans and Susan Woolf, which took a total of 15. 16 of Hello’s pages were taken up with advertising including Estee Lauder, Calvin Klein, Boots, Debenhams, Elizabeth Arden and Givenchy.

OK’s media pack claims “The time is right for OK Magazine.” The first sales figures will give some indication to the truth in this statement.

Gruner & Jahr’s Sarah Lindsey feels the new title is similar to Hello but on a different level. She says it has a “popular” feel but does not know how big the market will be for it. Hello has established itself very firmly with strong reader loyalty, she suggests it will be very difficult for OK to overcome this.

Publishing director at Hello, Sally Cartwright thinks OK looks “quite good” and is much more locally orientated than her own magazine, with a much more British feel. She points out that the advertising is on a different level, aiming at a different market. She also comments that “Their use of exclusive is very different to ours.”

There is no doubt that OK will have to work very hard to match the performance achieved by Hello. The success of Hello, which launched in 1988, took the industry by surprise, perhaps OK will do the same.

OK: 071 987 5090