A new entrant in the business print sector is due to be launched in October. Called Maverick, the title is aiming at a circulation of 25,000 to 30,000, and will sell at a cover price of R23,00. The publication will be distributed every four weeks and is to be funded by an institution whose identity, according to publisher Branko Brkic, ‘will be announced in due course.”
Brkic has told eMedia that, through his ‘various distribution deals”, he is confident of reaching his initial target of 25,000 sales for the first six issues. ‘There’s a very good reason I’m after 25,000,” says Brkic. ‘Because the FM [Financial Mail] is on that.”
Maverick‘s editorial positioning, he says, is designed to attract ‘high net worth individuals and influencers” and will be broadly based on ‘analysis and trends in business.” There will be a focus on high quality photography and layout, he adds, with emphasis on the ‘readability” of the pieces.
‘I’ve found that nobody reads anything in the business press. We will try bring people out of their silos, so that the guys in IT read insurance, the guys in mining read finance. The actual aim is for people to read it.”
Brkic says the rationale behind Maverick‘s unusual frequency is that ‘when you have a business monthly you can’t have a January issue, so you end up having 11 issues and 12 sets of costs. With [a frequency of] every four weeks you have 12 costs and 12 issues.”
Tim Spira, newly appointed publisher of Finance Week and sister publication Finansies & Tegniek, believes that the 25,000 circulation target ‘is a tall order” (Finance Week‘s latest ABCs are at 17,614, with Finansies & Tegniek at 15,089). But, says Spira, ‘it’s easier for [a four week frequency] to get to a higher circulation, because they’re on the shelves for longer. We do 85 percent of our circulations on subscriptions.”
As for the advertising revenue Brkic hopes to attract, a major objective is to bring back the brands that he feels have been lost to the sector. ‘Your FM’s of the world used to have quite a big chunk of aspirational advertisers, like Rolex, Visa, Jack Daniels and BMW. The logic then was that people with money were reading FM. But a lot of these brands have now migrated to Men’s Health-type magazines.”
Says Spira: ‘I don’t know if it’s so much a case of these guys moving into the lifestyle sector as a case of the financial mags not courting the lifestyle advertisers better in the first place. We would certainly like more aspirational advertisers, and we now need to go out and get them.”
Although reluctant to dismiss a title he has not seen yet, Spira promises the new entrant tough competition. ‘At the moment, quite honestly, there is enough advertising out there to sustain this. These magazines do well in healthy economies. If it’s a great title it will also weather the storms. I do think there is room for improvement in the space, and you will certainly see Finance Week filling the gaps in the next few months.”
The first full dummy issue of Maverick will be out next week, according to Brkic. No firm date is yet set for the October launch, but ‘there will be two or three issues out before the Chirstmas break.”