The audit results for magazines for the six months to December 2012 is challenging for many publishers. Marie Claire dropped 9.6%, InStyle 8.2%, Family Circle 33.1% and Men’s Health 2.8% for Pacific Magazines in the monthlies. They’d be very happy with Women’s Health – up .3% facing considerable competition and Better Homes and Gardens – up 2.5%. They’d also be happy with Diabetic Living – up 8.4%.
In the weekly space, New Idea fell 4% and Who 4.6% while Famous rose (again) 2.5%. Overall good numbers here for Pacific.
Bauer had a tougher audit. Cleo dropped 23.6%, Cosmopolitan dropped 16.2%, Madison dropped 23.3% and Shop Til You Drop dropped 14.9%. Tough numbers to face.
In the weeklies, Grazia dropped 24%, Woman’s Day 5.8%, OK! down 11.4%, Zoo Weekly down 18.1% and NW losing 6.9%. This is interesting in the face of the continuing Bauer discount program at train and airport locations and their regular bundling of titles at a discount. While I don’t have detailed data, these sales numbers, compared to like titles from Pacific, indicate the discounting program from Bauer is not working.
The Australian Women’s Weekly sales remained the same – a good result for Bauer in this marketplace. They’d also be happy with Good Health – up .5%, Real Living – up 15.3% and Belle – up 13.4%.
Good news in the audit for Frankie – year on year sales up 5%. The continued Frankie success shows that content is king. Indeed, good, well-targeted, content can support a high ($9.95) cover price without the need for free gifts and other tricks too often used by magazine publishers to drive sales.
I say give the editors more control over the product and the marketers less control. Also, support newsagents more as the magazine specialists – so people can have the time, space and support to fall in love with the medium and specific titles.
Check out the B&T report on the magazine results.
To be magazine specialist we need to have access to a new magazine immediately if they are available from the distributors ( titles you don’t already stock). At present you have to request a new title and wait 2 weeks so you get next issue, by then the customer that wanted it goes elsewhere. We had this recently with a bee keeping title, no one had asked for it before but they would not wait for us to get it in. you call the dist or go online and get the run around that they have no stock etc etc etc etc. If we had access next drop we could get more sales as we live in a “I want it now” time.
Bee keeping is an unusual example but I know what you mean Luke. There have been a few magazines that I would have expected to be allocated without chasing up the distributor and this is very frustrating.
I just picked an out of the everyday one, but it could have been scale model, absailing we may not sell heaps of them but it would be good to get them in at short notice and start building customer range.