Zoo Weekly new men's magazine
There is a lot riding on this, and not just the £8m cost. Zoo will test Emap's expertise in consumer weekly sector built up through Heat - while IPC has had women's weeklies for decades. However, Nuts is IPC's first big launch since it was taken over by US group Time Warner in 2001. Nuts was clearly timed to beat Emap's Zoo on to the shelves - Emap executives described it as a spoiler.
Breakdown of Nuts launch issue.
In an article in Press Gazette, IPC editor Paul Merrill said Zoo aimed at blokes 'enjoy a laugh'. He said research showed men wanted girls, football, conspiracy theories, jokes and reviews. He added: 'It's a massive advatage to us that we can get really topical stuff on the cover, which Nuts can't do... Their covers go early but we hold ours back.'
Merrill has clearly brought his sense of the bizarre with him from Chat, given the photograph of a woman's enormous tumour and a condom in the soup stories. The use of far more model shots - many topless - is a clear differentiator, which Nuts editor Phil Hilton had avoided, wanting to produce a magazine that could be read openly on a train and left lying around at home.
Like Nuts, free copies given away at large branches of WH Smith. Zoo does not reveal a cover price, but has 50p-off vouchers for the next four issues - a tactic IPC is sure to respond to.
At stake for the two companies is the potential for a new market in men's weeklies. In the same way that Loaded and FHM built a market for men's monthlies with copy sales to rival - and - beat those of women's monthlies, such as Cosmopolitan , can IPC and Emap now create titles for men in the mould of Woman , Now and Take a Break? The top 10 women's weeklies have combined copy sales of almost five million; six of them sell more than 500,000 a week, with H Bauer's Take a Break having the magic formula to sel1 1.2m copies - more than double its nearest rival. The top women's weeklies (December 2003 ABC figures) are:
- Take a Break (H Bauer)....1,225,116
- That's Life (H Bauer) ...........592,036
- Now (IPC Media) ................590,544
- Chat (IPC Media) ...............575,585
- Woman (IPC Media) ...........571,482
- Heat (Emap) ........................565,484
- OK! (Northern & Shell) ........489,882
Women's weeklies is a market that IPC used to own with Woman
and Woman's Own, until the late 1980s, when German group's Bauer
and Gruner & Jahr moved in. Now was launched in October 1996.
Chat was launched in 1985 and Paul Merrill had been its
editor until poached for the Zoo launch. He boosted Chat
's sales, credit for which he ascribed to his skill in writing cover lines
in an interview with the FT's Creative Business.
Emap and IPC are looking for sales of 150,000 or 200,000 a week. The first issue of Loaded sold 60,000 copies; it now sells about 260,000, having been eclipsed by FHM at about 600,000 a month. The weeklies may effect monthly sales, although Soutar's comments suggest this will not be the case.
Zoo – facts and dataEditor Phil Hilton, who had run IPC's Later editor, had rejoined IPC from Emap in March 2003. He was up against another former IPC editor, Paul Merrill, who was lured from the successful women's weekly Chat in December to launch Zoo Weekly. The 100 page magazine was printed by Polestar with repro by Graphics London. The sections were made up as follows:
Verdict: smaller page size and poorer quality cover paper than Nuts. Much nearer to FHM than Nuts is to Loaded. Cover and overall design similar - easily mistaken at a glance. Difference in content is greater emphasis on late news, exclusives and reviews, and swapping Nuts motoring coverage with women. |
| Magazine launches and events |
Men's magazines A to Z
Man About Town magazine
London Life magazine
Magazine launches
Zoo
went head-to-head with Nuts to gain leadership in the weekly
men's magazine market
