Gillian Farquhar
A MAGAZINE for men that sells better than GQ and Esquire … not likely? But true … Men’s Health hit South African news-stands last week and is “the most popular men’s magazine of the decade”, says Jeffrey Morgan, its United States and worldwide publisher who was in Johannesburg last week for the magazine’s local launch.
First launched in 1990 in the US, Men’s Health now has monthly sales of 1,3-million copies there and is also published in the United Kingdom, Germany and Mexico, with an Australian edition on the cards for September. Morgan says the company aims to go global with this magazine and is confident that it will be published in 25 countries within the next three years.
Men’s Health South African publisher is Rob Moore of Touchline Media, and former Playboy editor Paul Kerton is at the helm of the local edition. Kerton says the secret behind the magazine’s success is that “it talks to men on a private, personal basis, acts as a forum for men and provides answers to the kind of questions they can’t ask each other”.
While this personal service journalism has been at the heart of women’s magazines for years, it is a “profoundly new concept for the men’s magazine market”. It is, Morgan says, a symbol of the cultural changes that have taken place since the emphasis on materialism that dominated the 1980s towards an era of “greater male self- awareness” in the 1990s.
The South African edition will have a core coverage of health, fitness and nutrition, but it will also be a rounded lifestyle magazine . It will cover issues relevant to South African men in their working, emotional and sexual lives, including practical tips on fashion.
For a taste of things to come, the launch issue includes articles such as “69 Sex Secrets Other Men Know” and “Single Men and Suicide”. It also has an opinion column (drawing on Christina Hoff Sommers’ book Who Stole Feminism?) called “Malegrams”.
Initial circulation is set at 60 000 and the target audience is men between the ages of 20 and 50 across the socio-economic and cultural spectrum, who are goal-oriented and have self-improvement on their agenda.
Men’s Health has a humorous tone and communicates in what Morgan calls “men’s vernacular”.
ENDS