The paradox of the ‘lads mag’

September 24, 2011 By

I grew up around the time ‘lads mags’ such as Loaded, FHM and Maxim were peaking in terms of launches and print circulation, immediately prior to the rise of the internet. And working in the industry, including a brief period advising the FHM team, I’ve paid attention to the massive decline for the weekly titles such as Zoo and Nuts, and the monthlies such as FHM, which in recent times have seen losses of 32% (Zoo), 22.5% (Nuts), FHM (19.5%) as reported in the ABC figures in August 2011.

At the same time, Nuts is apparently the most popular Men’s Lifestyle website, according to Hitwise, with FHM and Zoo also in the top ten.

So is it that their audience is simply transferring to their websites, and have they cannibalised their audience?

Without access to their analytics, surveys and research it’s impossible to say for sure, but I don’t think so.

I think the fact is that most men aren’t contained within the ‘men’s lifestyle’ category for websites.

 

Where did the male readers go?

The main magazines in this segment have always covered a range of areas, packaged up with some titillating shots of a current celebrity, and the problem is that doesn’t work anymore.

There are a range of sites catering for those in search of bare flesh and celebrities, from adult sites to Youtube to small spam blogs, and all of them are focused for that need.

When it comes to sport, automotive, music, film, fashion etc, the same is true. Even within my own tiny publishing ambitions I can cover motorcycling, online racing games, FPS games etc. All of which come without the risk of offending fellow commuters with a half-naked celebrity when you’re in public.

The newspapers which are most at risk in the digital age are those without the specialist expertise which can fuel a paywall system, or the massive resources to attempt a global audience big enough to command advertising spend. Those in the middle are the ones getting squeezed.

And if you’re targetting a male audience for your products, you can go to communities and websites which have a laser-focus on one particular subject, or you can go for massive web properties and use their targetting to filter your advert to just appear to a huge number of men.

But it’s increasingly difficult to see the value in creating, publishing or spending money with something that tries to be everything to every bloke.

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My new project is now live…

January 5, 2010 By

Well, after a few late Christmas nights (But surprisingly few), I now have another digital project.

Having spent years creating content and working for a variety of big and small publishers, it felt odd not having an least one working demonstration of how I’d propose digital publishing can work. Since switching to marketing full time as a career, and the seemingly indefinite hiatus with has afflicted Disposable Media since I left,  I’d had an idea nagging at me for a while for a new site.

It’s a fairly simple idea, hopefully serving an audience which I’m hoping is passionate enough to embrace it and also show how it can become a profitable small scale business.

OnlineRaceDriver.com

It’s called OnlineRaceDriver.com and the plan is to serve the huge group of people out there who put a lot of time and effort into enjoying their online racing on consoles and PCs. Some like videogames, some like cars, and some are even professional racers or keen amateurs who fancy unwinding with some less risky motorsport.

It’s joined 140char.com and this site as part of my miniscule publishing empire. The plan is to overhaul 140char shortly, redesigning and refocussing it. And I’m more motivated than ever, as OnlineRaceDriver has already got two great collaborators involved with potentially another joining us, and meanwhile I’ve also got a great collaborator on 140Char.

So I’m now working hard to balance an incredibly exciting and demanding day job at Absolute Radio, the demans of a young family, and three websites – and once 140char.com is complete, I’m thinking it’s time for a makeover here as well.

That should keep me busy for most of 2010!

Incidentally, if you’re interested in possibly contributing to any of the three sites, whether it’s content, design or development, let me know… Follow the About link above for my contact details…

Oh, and if you happen to like the look and feel of OnlineRaceDriver, then you’ll be please to know it’s based extensively on the Metro Theme from Studiopress (affiliate links). It’s cost effective, really easy to work with, and they’ve got some really nice alternatives on their site. And if I couldn’t break it yet, you know it’s got to be pretty good!

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Is any magazine company leading the way digitally?

July 21, 2009 By

Does any magazine company have a clear strategy for their digital business? Viewing it from the outside, there seems even less chance of picking who will be successful in the future.

Dennis Publishing seemed to be leading the way with online mags Monkey, iGizmo and iMotor, but has gone on to buy The First Post and  bit-tech.net. Now it’s buying Kontraband, which has been around for 10 years, and has seen unique users decline from 10 million to 3 million as online video has solidified around the likes of Youtube and the BBC iPlayer.

Integrating video from a Dennis-controlled site into the other properties might make sense – after all, the various outlets guarantee a certain number of views, and there won’t be a need to share revenue with Google/Youtube.

Future Publishing is adding an online album club costing £3 a month for Classic Rock to let people read online reviews and download advance copies of the accompanying albums.

Meanwhile Conde Nast is closing Men.Style.com to focus on a new GQ.com website, Businessweek is up for sale by McGraw-Hill, and my former home at Bauer Media has been pretty quiet on the digital front since relaunching Aloud.com and shuttering Ditto.net (which has now been removed entirely from the internet).

So what seems to be a wise move?

Dennis expanding their portfolio seems logical, especially as they can now experiment to see whether their own revenue from Kontraband makes more sense than the bigger marketing potential of Youtube, and whether they can entice their 3 million unique users with some text to accompany their videos.

Conde Nast aligning their online and offline titles is also a good move – too often companies have tried to build portal sites which incorporate a number of magazines – to hide costs and a lack of content and resource – and have ended up trying to establish new brands whilst confusing audiences.  And there are some really viable alternatives…

What don’t make sense?

I’m not entirely convinced by an online album club – granted the Classic Rock audience are more likely to be familiar with an album club than torrenting MP3s, but is there enough to justify £3 in the face of memberships for the increasingly familiar Spotify and Last.fm? Plus the music labels are making their own moves to become content providers, along with the artist themselves.

Having worked on Ditto, obviously I’m biased about it, but as it was pretty much quiet on the staff/development front, it seems strange to save some minimal server costs.

Oh, and I’m still not tempted by the print UK edition of Wired. Besides the obvious ‘geeks on the internet’ issue, I’d have rather seen a larger U.S. edition which included more UK coverage and content to boost awareness of UK companies, and to go further to justifying the cover price.

Any less confused?

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How microblogging is hurting major news sites

July 30, 2008 By

I actually posted my thoughts on Twitter, earthquakes, and how major news sites are going to increasingly lose their advantages on breaking news on my other blog, www.thewayoftheweb.net, but obviously it also needs flagging up here.

I’ve tried to provide ways in which the news companies can adapt and evolve to embrace the new technology, but whether or not they’re capable of thinking in terms of changing quickly enough will be interesting…

I’d love to hear more thoughts on how applications like Twitter are affecting other people’s news diet…

Incidentally, you can see our first thoughts on earthquake messages on Twitter here. And it was online before the BBC, and around the same time as CNN!

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Make your website simpler, easier, faster, better…

October 18, 2007 By

There’s a difference between successful new technologies and websites, and ones which fail.

All the successes are able to answer a problem, or solve an existing one, in a simpler, easier, faster way than before. If what you’re planning needs explaining in more than a sentence, or needs instruction for a consumer/visitor to use, then it’s probably not quite right. After all, if someone came to your house for a meal, would you expect to have to explain how to use the doors, use the stairs, go to the toilet, flush the toilet, and walk down the stairs again?

If you need a comprehensive take on this…or a handy reminder, see ‘Don’t Make Me Think’ on the book list, right…it’s full of things you might forget in the excitement of site building.

This was brought home to me for the umpteenth time today when I went to the doctors. I’m sure many people have already seen this with their doctor, but when I went in, I was amazed to find that I no longer had to queue for ages to speak to a receptionist to tell them that I had made the trip from my bed to doctor’s surgery without accidentally ending up in the pub.

Instead, I just had to type my sex and birthday on a touchscreen, and in return I got a personalised welcome, plus a rough idea of the current delay between my appointment and the time I’d be seen.

It saves a line, it saves receptionist time (which means they can be doing more complex tasks), and it gives me a rough idea of whether I can nip to the loo or not before my appointment….

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