The Media magazine last year described the explosion of consumer titles in the print market as a magazine minefield. Spurring the growth has been the country’s recent economic boom, which has seen South African consumers spoilt for choice with the number of magazines quadrupling in the past decade.
In the past year alone, 10 consumer titles entered the print media market, bringing the number to more than 500. More publications are expected to grace our already bulging magazine shelves in the near future, among them Destiny, a women’s business publication that is a joint venture between Media24 and former True Love editor Khanyisile Dlomo’s newly formed Ndalo Media.
However, the closure of several titles in the previous year has raised questions about the sustainability of the boom, especially in the face of increasing inflation, which is affecting advertising and consumer spending.
Accounting for a majority share of the magazine market is publishing giant Media24, home to established titles such as Fairlady, Sarie, True Love and Drum. The media group, which last year launched three more women’s titles, accounts for more than 65% of the market. Last year it brought out True Love Babe, an extension of True Love, aimed at sassy, brand-conscious young women; and international titles InStyle and Psychologies, the latter said to be aimed at ”emotionally intelligent” women. Spicing up the industry was the entry of Intiem in November, which is a sex magazine for the conservative Afrikaner woman.
Caxton, which owns Farmer’s Weekly, Woman & Home and Rooi Rose, launched Cleo, an Australian-licensed publication for the young, fun-loving and freeÂÂspirited woman.
The year also saw a lot of activity in the men’s magazine market with the launch of four new titles. UpperCase Media, owner of FHM and heat, brought out a title ZooÂÂWeekly/Weekliks aimed at the average 22-year-old, while Touchline Media, publisher of a variety of women and men’s sport magazines, took the men’s market to new levels by introducing Men’s Health Living, a decor publication for men, and BestLife, an extension of Men’s Health but for the older 35-plus reader, whose focus is not only on health but also on wealth and family.
The growing black middle class also didn’t escape exploitation last year with the launch of one new title, The Deal, aimed at the so-called black diamonds, and the resurrection of Tribute, an old-time favourite.
Magazine boom
The growth begs the question whether consumers’ interests are being served and how sustainable this boom is.
On the former it appears the industry’s strategy — well, at least, that of Media24’s — is that as long as there are still gaps to be filled, there will be more magazines launched. Quite frankly, I’m surprised no one has launched a publication for plus-size women, who constitute a significant portion of the population and are a lucrative market. Ask Glo-Mail.
Overall, there appears to be a shift towards being more distinctive as more magazines try to make it clear, often unsuccessfully, who their target audience is — a move driven by increasing competition and pressure. This has also led several titles to go through nip-tucks in order to survive. An example is Femina, which Associated Magazines this year sold to Media24. The magazine recently went through a major make-over, relaunching itself as a magazine for the 40-year-old woman. This follows months of declining circulation figures.
On the question of sustainability, it is clear that the game is survival of the fittest, and the signs are already showing. The recent circulation figures released by the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) two weeks ago show the consumer magazine industry to have dropped by 1,6% between January and June 2007. Of the 512 new titles that entered the print market between 2005 and 2006, 217 have closed down and more are expected to follow suit.
”It is clear that the honeymoon is over … The challenge will be to hold on to the growth. It is now time for the survival of the fittest,” The Media quoted Gordon Patterson, a bureau board member, as saying in eMedia, the publication’s electronic newsflash.
Community media
Bucking the trend, however, are community magazines, which are up by 11% with the likes of Get It and MyWeek showing increased circulation of 140 000 and about 440 000 each respectively. Of the 121 community publications that saw the light during the same period (2005 to 2006), only 21 have closed shop.
”Community media is where the real activity is,” said media analyst Mike Leahy at the bureau’s breakfast.
Earlier this year custom magazines also proved to be a growing sector, outshining other categories with a massive overall growth of 47,8% between January and March 2007.
Among those with the biggest circulations are Dish/Skottel, Jet Club Magazine and Edgars Club Magazine, which have topped the 700 000 mark. The airline industry also fell victim to the custom-magazine bug last year with Nationwide launching its own in-flight publication, Altitude, and British Airways and Mango following suit early this year with Horizons and Mango Juice. All these publications feature articles on ideal primary travel destinations and promotional pieces about the respective airlines.
While there is evidence that the growing inflation rate is affecting advertising and consumer spending, with magazines now deemed as luxury items, the black women’s-magazine industry continues to show consistent growth.
Although True Love has dominated this market for more than a decade, selling an average of between 120 000 and 150 000 copies per month, this is no longer the case. New kids on the block Real magazine and Move! have taken over.
Not only has two-year-old Move!, which is aimed at the low-income-earning aspirant black woman, doubled its circulation in the past year, but the magazine now also sells an average of 120 000 (ABC January to March 2007). Real, which Media24 bought a 50% stake in early this year, has also shown consistent growth in the past two years and currently stands 56 782 copies per month.
On what the future holds for these magazines only time will tell. It is said innovation is key for survival. But one thing for sure is that should the economy dip, as Naspers head Koos Bekker remarked in an interview last year, ”There will be blood on the floors.”
Matebello Motloung is deputy editor of The Media magazine
BARONS OF PRINT: SECRETS OF SUCCESS
Branko Brkic (publisher and editor, Maverick magazine)
”We’re launching a new magazine called Empire in November. It is our own title, a media magazine. It will be a consumer magazine, not just an industry magazine. It will be the Maverick magazine of the media space. The target will be people from the industry itself but Maverick-like readers who are there to use their own brains and who are interested in what’s going on in this country.
”My theory is that we are in a crucial moment in the history of this country and the media plays a crucial role. I am interested in how we weigh up the intellectual discourse about the media itself. We have a couple of trade magazines but I want to raise the whole level of discussion to a higher level — to the Maverick level.
”In the next two years there are going to be another two magazines coming from us — so we will have four altogether. None of them will be little magazines — they will be big time big markets, centre of the space. There is no guarantee that they will work but what we did was to use Maverick to make a battering ram, to create a space.
”I want to bring quality back to publishing. I want people to love magazines, not just to browse through them. Right now the industry is like a sausage machine.”
Julia Raphaely (MD, Associated Magazines)
”The economy has been booming and I think that is part of the reason why magazines are on the rise. One hopes that the literacy levels are going to be increasing and I think there is a huge portion of the market that hasn’t been catered for. A few years ago when the men’s magazines came out there had been no magazines for men, and suddenly there were five. That was a natural growth area and I think now there isn’t much more room there.
”To get an international licence [foreigners] obviously look for markets across the world where there’s a fairly stable infrastructure and publishers that have a good reputation. In South Africa, if you look at the two main companies, Caxton and Media 24, they both own printers and distributors. So for them to bring a title into the market is more of a vertical integration. There’s been a lot of growth in those companies if you look at the titles that have been launched.
”We sold Femina last year in December to Media24. The repositioning of that magazine for an older market has not surprised me. An opportunity was seen to talk to a similar market to Woman & Home that has done well for Caxton. And Femina already had an established readership. For that title they have had a clear relaunch positioning: they have advertised a lot on TV, they changed the size and format — yet they haven’t diluted it, they have repositioned it.
”What we’ve done over the last year is to consolidate our titles and strengthen them. Obviously with new titles in the market the advertising pie starts to get more stretched. The circulation of magazines has also quite clearly been affected. Our magazines are holding stable, which is the result of having a very clear brand positioning.
”We compete in an independent space, so it is challenging but also quite exciting. Take Cosmo — everybody who has tried to take it on has not succeeded. Twenty-three years later it is fat (which is always a good sign), and it has over a million readers, yet it has a high cover price and a high ad rate. That doesn’t just happen — one has to continually reinvent oneself, staying true to your brand and extending your brand.” – Matthew Krouse