The long awaited Stylist was launched this week filling the gap in the market for a free title aimed at 20-40 year old professional women. Unsurprisingly the launch issue has attracted top-end advertisers such as Clinique, Selfridges, Burberry fragrance and French Connection. The issue is also surprisingly thick for a free title aimed at professionals commuting to work, however this is to encourage women to keep the magazine for the journey home too. The magazine is a mixture of meaty articles such as the Angelina Jolie cover story and the witty column by Dawn Porter, as well as bite size images and text. The range of subjects is broad from tasteful celebrity features, to politics, to arts and culture as well as the usual fashion and beauty editorial. So far so good, however the only complaint is the paper quality, with some pages looking particularly grainy. Although this won’t put advertisers or consumers off as the main selling point is, of course, that it is free.
Archive for October, 2009
- Oct
- 8
Stylist Magazine – First Impressions
- Oct
- 6
How to Spend It.com Launches
How to Spend It.com Launches
The FT’s How to Spend it launched it’s website last week. It is written and produced by the same team as the magazine but includes exclusive online content, including videos, blogs and new columns. The website covers all lifestyle subjects including travel, fashion, food and drink, luxury and art and will no doubt attract the readers of How to Spend it.
The website has a great luxury look and feel with the hidden navigation bar and subtle advertising which appears next to articles, as well as brand micro sites. The How to Spend it fashion shoots are also included on the website in a gallery format but with extra video content. The website is set up for users to spend a substantial amount of time reading content with the added tools to change font size, amend line spacing, print the article, and adjust the contrast of the article. There are also options to search the website and bookmark favourite columns, to improve the user experience.
- Oct
- 2
London Evening Standard to Become Free
London Evening Standard to Become Free
The London Evening Standard is to become a free newspaper from 12 October, with its circulation doubling from around 250,000 to 600,000 copies per day.
When Rupert Murdoch’s News International announced recently it was to close its free London evening newspaper, the londonpaper, it was an indication of how tough the London newspaper market has been of late. The Evening Standard has been struggling to maintain a meaningful paid-for circulation for some time. The ABC circulation for August 2009 came in at 235,977, but of these, only 45% were sold at the full cover price. The remaining copies were either given away free or sold at below cover price. So a move to a totally free model was perhaps inevitable.
Geordie Greig, editor of the paper, said: “This is an historic moment and a great opportunity for the London Evening Standard. Its owners will be funding the distribution of over 600,000 copies of the newspaper, making it available to more Londoners than ever before. And most importantly this be a quality newspaper.”
The move is likely to see the closure of London Lite, the free newspaper owned by Associated Newspapers, which has a 75% stake in the London Evening Standard.
Rate card advertising pages for the Standard are currently about a quarter more expensive than Associated’s London Lite, reflecting the premium advertisers place on the currently paid-for title.
Following today’s news, the Standard’s cost per thousand (CPT) ad rate is expected to have to come down.
