Shortlist continues to hold the top spot in the men’s sector with a year on year rise in circulation of 1%, their 10th consecutive increase.

Shortlist, like Stylist, has expanded into many areas digitally with the launch of their daily email newsletter Mr Hyde and their innovative Blippar issue. The Blippar issue, which they ran at the end of November, was a great success receiving 227,000 ‘blips’ and 51,000 unique users making it the biggest ever execution Blippar have worked on with any media. Technology of this kind will become a must for advertisers to consider this year as it allows consumers to develop a much stronger brand connection through its interactive capabilities. In addition to their digital expansions, Shortlist’s dedicated fashion title Mode made its first foray into the ABC reports with an exceptionally strong circulation of 268,879.

Though both Shortlist and Sport remain in poll position in the men’s lifestyle sector ahead of the paid-for titles, Sport has seen its first decline since 2011. This is perhaps surprising considering the impact of the Olympics and the resultant heightened interest in the sports sector.

Men’s Health remains the market leader among the men’s paid-for titles, despite a 6.3% period-on-period circulation decline, to 202,704. As expected, however, Men’s Health digital figures are very impressive, boasting 12,676 this period and continuing to grow. Looking at a combined print and digital figures their circulation numbers are down but not quite so significantly at -2.6% YoY and -0.4% PoP.

Some of the titles within the men’s market really are struggling with almost 50% of titles experiencing a loss during the six-month period, with bi-monthly magazine Healthy for Men taking the biggest hit, -20.5% PoP and a huge -35.8% YoY.

Upmarket men’s magazines Esquire and GQ outperformed rival lads’ mags with a robust set of sales figures in the final half of 2012.

Esquire reported a 12.6% sales rise, to 61,579, in the six months to December compared to the previous half year. This represents its highest print ABC figure since 2005 and is reflective of its huge success on the UK newsstand. Other titles in the market are either flat or down on the newsstand, which highlights the success of the brand under editor Alex Bilmes and the impact of world exclusive covers such as Daniel Craig, Rihanna and Cameron Diaz.

In addition, Esquire continues to have a strong multi-platform presence, with Esquire.co.uk engaging with more than 130k unique users a month and a ground-breaking re-launch is planned soon.  With the digital edition becoming tablet-optimised from the March issue onwards, Esquire expects even more growth with their affluent and early adoptive audience. The brand will continue to grow in to new areas in 2013 with the imminent launch of luxury bi-annual “The Big Black Book”.

GQ is also performing well, bucking the general market decline and remaining static YoY & PoP. There have been no alterations on their cover price or subscription price changes to encourage additional sales either which is positive and Conde Nast have been investing in digital outdoor advertising to help recruit new readers of the title.  This year marks the 25th anniversary of GQ which will culminate in their December issue which they are expecting to be their biggest issue ever and will include plenty of partnerships & promotional activity.

GQ is one of the highest read magazines digitally and, as with Men’s Health, the GQ digital figure is really helping to bolster their print circulation.  If we include this figure in a total circulation, GQ has had a YoY increase of nearly 10%. Men’s Health & Esquire are still only flat pdf/Zinio style downloads whereas GQ have their fully interactive, all-singing, all-dancing app. We would then expect that once Esquire launch their tablet-enabled app in March their digital numbers will rise and perhaps even eclipse those of GQ.

Wired saw a minor circulation dip of 2% in the final half of 2012, to 51,105. Compared with the same half in 2011, sales are steady at 0.1%.

The ‘lads mags’ market are really struggling to hold onto their newsstand numbers. Nuts have been hit the hardest with almost a 30% decline since Jul – Dec 2011. One of the reasons we could attribute to the downfall of the ‘lads mags’ market is the increasing availability of this kind of content online. Websites such as Buzzfeed provide the humorous anecdotes; newspaper sites provide the sport and so on. All of this can be so easily accessed at the click of a button for free and perhaps print versions of these without video content are now obsolete for the male audience of today.

In summary, men’s lifestyle as a whole is actually up 9% YoY, despite the struggles of some titles, with Shortlist remaining top. Freemiums are still leaders of this sector despite Sport taking a decline. We expect Shortlist will continue to grow as they are able to keep testing and launching in new regions.

Although it seems many men’s print titles have declined the strong digital presence has lessened the gap and before long they will be able to quote these as a whole coverage figure. This will be of particular relevance as titles like Esquire launch their fully interactive tablet enabled editions.

By: Lucy Jennings

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The women’s lifestyle sector has seen further decline since the last ABCs (Jan-Jun 2012). In the previous period, 8 publications increased their print circulations.  Between July and December 2012 only 3 managed increases, with the picture one of almost universal decline – More!, Psychologies and Company were amongst the worst hit.

Stylist maintained its place at the top of women’s lifestyle sector after posting positive figures for four consecutive periods. Glamour comes second in the sector but still leads the way in the paid titles despite a sharp decline of 9.8% PoP and 9.1% YoY.  However, with Glamour still to officially launch their iPad edition in their April issue, it will be interesting to see how this changes in the next period.

Easy Living had a YoY increase of 7.1%. The February issue was the first in their new ‘iPad’-sized format, which is considered to be the next stage up from Glamour’s handbag-sized design. In a struggling market this re-format has made the magazine easier to carry around but still with the realistic, relatable content for women 30 and above – most likely responsible for this positive increase. However, we must not forget the title’s recent price drop which must also have proved a good incentive (£3.70 to £2). When you put this into the context of its nearest competitor Red magazine – priced at £3.90 – it’s not surprising that it’s stealing some share.

Harpers Bazaar has also seen a restructure as Justine Picardie joins as new editor. Primarily an author, Justine has re-vamped Bazaar. The 3rd issue into her editorship is the biggest to date – including a new take on shoots and editorial. Harking back to the style of Bazaar editor Diana Vreeland, the magazine will revert to their old traditions – for example, the launch of ‘Why don’t you?’ in answer to Red Direct and Vogue’s More Dash. They’ve also launched “Bazaar Shops” – editorial focused on the high-street – recognising that their readers do not wear head to toe designer and prefer to mix their look.

Elle, Red and Instyle have remained relatively stable despite their slight YoY declines. Instyle has actually increased PoP by 1.5% and Elle 2.27%. Red have just appointed new Editor Sarah Bailey (former Deputy Editor of Harper’s Bazaar) who’s new take on the publication will be interesting to assess in the next period.

Worst hit this period are the celebrity focus magazines – in particular Look, More! And Hello!  – dropping by an average of 10% period on period. A reason for this further decline is that online outlets for fast gossip such as the Mail Online – which has over 2 million unique users – are easily accessible, making print gossip fast obsolete.

This is further reflected by the growth of the digital  and social media properties of these titles – although Reveal suffered a 24% YoY decrease in circulation, its website attracted more than a million visitors in the last 7 months and 400,000 unique users in January alone, illustrating the strong hook of the brand itself. 2013 my see a timely bonus for these titles, however - with a royal baby soon on the way, Hello! in particular could see a boost to their circulation (UK newsstand sales increased 27.3% the year of the Royal wedding).

Company also took a hard hit this period, dropping -10% PoP. This has a lot to do with focusing on fashion only, removing lifestyle and repositioning itself in the market to avoid being referred to as ‘Cosmo’s little sister.’

Cosmopolitan tells a similar story of sharp print circulation falls – dropping 12.7% compared to the first half of 2012 to record an average monthly circulation of 308,482. This represents an 18.3% year-on-year drop for the magazine, according to latest official figures.  It does have a strong digital presence, with a circulation of 10,841, but this is not enough to bridge their shortfall. Cosmopolitan have justified the recent figures by stating the magazine is made around quality rather than volume – turning down discounting the magazine as well as removing promotions that brought the brand more down market. So although the audience has dropped it is from the lower end of their demographic.

Arguably what is represented in this period’s print figures is innovation and experimentation. For example, Click-to-buy apps are becoming more prevalent in the fashion magazines after the success of Cosmo’s Genie app and Reveal’s ‘See It Buy It’ app, launched last May. The total circulation of digital editions has rocketed year on year, up over 260%. But this is only half the story. The full impact of the rise in tablet sales over Christmas and the effect it will have on print brands as a whole will, we hope, manifest itself positively in the next consumer release due this summer.

There is currently a low number of iPad editions, the majority of titles have been content with either Zenio editions or straight PDF. Conde Nast have been the main market leader in this sector with Wired, Vogue and GQ all being interactive. With the constant pressure for brand extension, Hearst are leading the way in cross platform solutions across the young women’s group – Red, Cosmo, Company – and boast a higher collective circulation of their women’s titles compared to Conde Nast.

In Summary

Despite the fact that the majority of women’s lifestyle titles have declined, this year promises a new dawn with digital downloads being counted as a net figure. No doubt we will see many titles finally jumping on the interactive iPad bandwagon in order to boost their own figures.

With the multitude of magazine touch points available advertisers can now benefit from multi-channel consumer engagement. Digital platforms also offer accountability, something we haven’t been able to execute fully in print. They offer rich media and bespoke formats and interactive content which are exciting and engaging and have direct connection to transactional services. Hearst are forever innovating their 360 degree offering. Red will soon launch their extension, Red Local. Hearst have also shrewdly partnered with The Hut Group – multi-website online retailer – to develop a new e-commerce initiative of developing commercial websites for their magazine brands.

It will be interesting to see what Glamour will do in the future. Yes, they have WOTY – but what else is there on offer? We have seen that titles like Stylist have a lot of room to grow, and Hearst are continuing to increase their cross platform offering – what will become of the nation’s favourite young women’s title?

By: Carrie Millard

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