|
US magazine Car and Driver is out this week with its biggest redesign in more than 20 years, including the elimination of a white cover border only a tad less storied than Time magazine's red border. But it is really counting on its new digital innovations to expand the brand's audience -- and more than double its page views in 2007.
The overriding insight, one that other enthusiast books may want to study, is that about 80% of the magazine's online visitors are not subscribers to the magazine. Instead of the enthusiasts that read Car and Driver regularly, these people are actively researching cars in preparation for a purchase. While an enthusiast title might struggle to broaden its print audience without losing its hard-core devotees, a website can offer all kinds of things to many kinds of people.
In a move more magazines are bound to make, some print features have been moved to the website, including the bar graph that compared road-test vehicles against three competitors. "We wanted more space in the magazine to be more graphically interesting," said Csaba Csere, editor in chief of Car and Driver, which is part of Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S. "And we hope we can drive more people to the web. We can also put more in the bar graph on the web."
 Digital Magazine News carries an interview with me on the launch of Excite Publishing in the UK, and in particular what lessons we learnt from the launch of Make!. Since doing that interview, I've had time to reflect that perhaps the biggest lesson is that with a subject as big as crafts, you have to give the readers a very focussed product. Which is what we'll be doing in the new year...
 YOUTUBE and MySpace, two companies barely 12 months ago,dominated the entertainment world in 2006.
In just over a year, these two companies not only revolutionized content consumption and social interaction, but also became so ingrained into pop culture that even my mum knows who they are. Well almost..
But YouTube and MySpace also did something more: They awoke traditional entertainment companies from their digital slumber. Everyone plunged into the cyber pool in 2006 and no fewer than three of the traditional entertainment giants - Disney, Time Warner and Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation - are forecasting revenues of nearly £400 million in 2007 and beyond.
Or not as the case may be. Hachette's Shock Magazine, aimed like Cut (from Bauer, which closed in 2004) at teenage boys, has closed. That, coupled by FHM's withdrawal from the US has caused some sober revaluations of the men's magazine market on both sides of the pond.
“It is tough to come up with something fresh in the category,” said Greg Gutfeld, a former editor of Stuff in the United States and Maxim in Britain. “The only innovation is price and frequency, and the only price that is working is free and the only frequency that is working is daily.”
Dennis Publishing is rumoured to be flogging Maxim in the US, along with the company’s other magazines, Stuff, Blender and The Week. In the UK, Dennis is trying to stem the flow of male attention with the launch of Monkey, its email magazine, but with consistent ABC falls at market leader FHM the outlook is bleak.
Why? Well I'd hazard a guess that the Internet might have something to do with it. Shock's website will remain, a testimony to its potential - 41 page views per visitor - but the brutal fact is that men's magazines are no longer delivering something different.
Where does that leave the world of paper magazines? Finding a really good idea that captures consumer interest is a neat trick. Sustaining that interest issue after issue with long lead times is brutal. As Keith Blanchard, another former editor of Maxim, said, “It ishard to find the edge when the edge keeps moving.”
Of course, there are still niches - if you call GQ's snobbery a niche - but you have to wonder if a million circulation magazine like FHM cannot work, what hope is there for everyone else?
|
