Maria McCloy
Cond Nast debuts in South Africa next year with the lifestyle magazine House and Garden.
It joins a hedgerow of similar lifestyle magazines on the local market, including Republican Press’s Garden and Home and Food and Home; Associated Magazines’s House and Leisure, Habitat and Times Media Limited’s Elle Decoration, which will be on the shelves in February next year ahead of Cond Nast’s launch in May.
Garden and Home editor Margaret Wasserfall says the choice in lifestyle magazines exists because “it’s a very lucrative market – the A/B income group [top earners].
“Competition will not only be for circulation and advertising but also for features. Are we competing for the same market and the same ads? Of course we are.”
Les Aupiais, editor of House and Garden, says Cond Nast has been watching the South African market for two years. She says home and decorating magazines are an established area, so it makes sense to move into this field and not something like the untested men’s magazine market.
Garden and Home has over 100000 buyers, House and Leisure comes in at 40 000 and Habitat at around 18 000. House and Garden is aiming for circulation of 40 000.
The latest comer will have a more international flavour, says Aupiais, adding that local publications like Garden and Home, Habitat and House and Leisure are younger and “very locally-orientated”.
Gisele Wertheim-Aymes, the head of TML’s magazine division, says the defining characteristic of Elle Decoration will be also be quality, but it is aiming to set trends for a readership older than the traditional Elle magazine reader but younger than House and Garden’s target market.
Wertheim-Aymes does not feel they are entering a flooded market or that Elle Decoration has any direct competition. They are not aiming for a mass market, but hope to begin with a circulation target of 25 000.
All the magazine editors agree the market is growing, but right now the existing publications are read mostly by whites. So how are they going to attract black readers?
Aupiais says House and Garden will be for discerning buyers: “We’re not colouring it anyway. It will be for people with wonderful taste and a disposable income.”
Wertheim-Aymes says Elle Decoration will be trying to attract a mindset, not a colour. They want an audience of “young aspirational, upper-income people”.
Jaccie Pestana, fashion editor of Tribute – which is aimed mostly at upper-income black people – agrees that home decorating is more an issue of taste than race, so there is no “black way” of decorating.
She suggests that the way to change the perception of lifestyle magazines as white magazines is to feature black people’s homes and interview black interior designers.
Yvonne Johnson of advertising agency Ogilvy and Mather says the market felt “a bit crowded but we thought Marie Claire wouldn’t survive, and it has.
“The magazines will have to very clearly differentiate themselves in advertisers’ and consumers’ minds.”