MAGCULTURE.COM / BLOG

Men’s titles booming

Magazines never cease to surprise me. Just as a whole sector gets written off as failing, as the men’s market has rightly been recently, up pops a new direction to challenge that assertion. Or in this case two new directions.

UK (and US) men’s titles have been selling in decreasing quantities for several years now. First the monthlies (Loaded, FHM, Maxim) began to dip, not helped by the arrival of the UK weeklies Zoo and Nuts, above, but latterly those initially successful weeklies themselves have seen their sales nosedive too. Hence the stories of the death of the men’s market. And given that the front covers, above, are typical of the higher-selling end of the genre, can anyone really claim to care?

But this month saw the launch of two new projects that are timely and interesting experiments in the possible future of not just men’s magazines but all magazines. One is a free magazine, the other a high-end bi-annual title.

ShortList is a free weekly that launched last week in London. The man behind it is Mike Soutar (meet him here), a man who can lay claim to having invented the modern men’s magazine, taking the sales of FHM from 50k to 500k, later doubling US Maxim’s sales, and most recently launching Nuts at IPC. This latest launch follows the business model of the weekly sports magazine Sport (posted previously) in that it is distributed free once a week at train stations throughout the capital. (By coincidence, Sport has just celebrated its first birthday so they’ve made the model work well, and presumably the two titles share a similar market).

It’s a remarkably unremarkable magazine in all senses: it’s pretty slick, adequately designed and makes all the rights noises, (James Bond, cars, practical fashion and a lot of lists, as above), as you’d expect from Soutar. It’s refreshingly grown up and free of bare flesh. You’ve seen it all before but there’s plenty of it and it’s free. Like a newspaper supplement, you wouldn’t buy it, but it’s great for free.

Assuming the start-up company behind it can sustain it long enough for advertisers to catch up (the launch issue has a low count of relatively obscure ads) it could be a big success simply as free entertainment while you travel.

At the other end of the spectrum is the magazine as object. While ShortList is a weekly stapled 46 pages, Man About Town is 242 glossy pages long and published twice a year. Again, this is not a new business model – think Pop, Arena Homme Plus and Another Man – but it is further proof that there is a market for high-end, low-circulation titles that address the small band of wealthy fashion/culture obsessives. A group of great interest to the big fashion brands, who effectively bank roll such projects.

Man About Town comes from the company who launched Wonderland last year. I never thought that title would last but not only is it still published but here they are launching a big brother. Cheekily taking the name of the classic sixties men’s magazine (presumably nobody owned it?), it is a really impressive launch issue. Well designed by London agency Saturday, it is divided into three ‘chapters’: The Arts (above), The Business and The Fashion (a similarly clear order holds Monocle together).

Very modern in a monochrome, typographically functional manner, you can sense it has been made by people that love magazines (hence the name?) and have thoroughly enjoyed creating this first issue. There is an intelligent, grown up but relaxed attitude to the layouts that feels absolutely current while avoiding the achingly trendy. It even manages to make info-graphics work:

With combined gloss and uncoated papers, a foil block logo, and a good 13mm thick, it’s a fine example of the magazine as object. If ShortList’s physical presence is a matter of irrelevant necessity, Man About Town relies absolutely on it’s form.

Two very different attempts to buck the decline of the men’s market, then, and both successful starts in their own way. Welcome to the future of magazines?