'Magnificent Magforum'- University of Westminister Journalism website

Celebrity magazines price war

Now cuts price to £1

N&S aggressive tactics

Effect on Hello! and OK!

Table: Celebrity magazines: details and sales

Now was launched in 1996 to bolster IPC's ageing women's weeklies, rather than as a celebrity title. Mel Gibson was the launch cover star

Now cuts price to £1 Back to top IPC's Now cut its cover price by 20p to £1 in May 2004, in a bid to maintain its position as the top-selling celebrity weekly - it was just 30,000 copies a week ahead of Emap's Heat. It also needed to see off competition in the weekly celebrity magazine sector, from two new, downmarket celebrity magazines from Northern & Shell (N&S), as well as Emap's Closer. IPC was in a weaker strategic position than its competitors in only have a single celebrity title. It is marketed as one of the company's group of five women's weeklies. Both Emap (with Heat and Closer) and N&S (with OK!, New! and Star) have employed a 'cluster publishing' strategy to protect their top title (Heat and OK! respectively). Not only does this mean they can spread costs, but also that they can use a variety of tactics, including price and advertising rates, to undermine competitiors. Sales of Now were down by 6% in the latest sales figures, against a 2% rise for Heat. Now was originally marketed as 'The smarter woman’s read' with higher production values and better quality content than IPC’s other women’s weeklies. However, it dropped that tagline and all the celeb titles are well-produced. It has gone in for Heat-style celebrity bashing, but retained non-celeb content with health, fashion, cookery and cookery pages. It has never carried television listings (all the competition, bar New! do), probably because this would hit its listings magazines, such as TV Times (Emap and N&S don't have any). The IPC weekly carried ‘Now only £1’ in a large yellow circle on its 5 May cover. In fact all the issues for the first week of May promoted themselves on price, except Heat, which appeared to be keeping to the high ground with its £1.50 tag (in small type). Now’s cover (5 May) was also promoting a ‘15% discount at Warehouse for everyone’. Its coverlines were: ‘Beach bodies’, mainly an excuse to show unflattering images of people such as Geri Haliwell, Jerry Hall and Gillian Taylforth; ‘'Posey Posh'’; and ’'23 real life [sic] diet success stories'. Heat ran a similar knocking lead: ‘When surgery goes wrong’ with Posh’s boobs, Jordan’s boobs, Jodie’s nose and Jacko’s everything.

• Closer
• Hello!
• Hot Stars
• New!
• Now
• OK!
• Ooh! Scandal!
• Star