MAGAZINES - especially celebrity ones - go together with summer holidays like barbecues and bangers.
When holidaymakers head out to the beaches and bars, there's nothing more indulgent than spending a few hours catching up on the oos and aghhs of celebrity life.
So as well as the fight for the biggest covermounts (a traditional tactic in the magazine point of sale stakes) it seems that the flip flops are drawn on who is on sale first.
Celebrity weekly Hello! has signed a distribution deal with Daily Mail owner Associated Newspapers so it will appear in newsagents on Monday, a day before arch rival OK! – owned by Richard Desmond alongside the Daily and Sunday Express - and its other competitors, including Bauer’s Heat and IPC’s Now!.
Publishing director Charlotte Stockting tells the Observer it should boost Hello!’s 420,000 weekly sale by 20,000-30,000 copies.
Hello! will be available to buy a day before OK! and its other competitors, including Heat and Now!, giving it a narrow advantage over rivals. "It is like being in pole position in a Grand Prix," Stockting says. "You can't win the race from the back of the grid. Every publisher in the UK always wanted to be on sale on a Monday, but because wholesalers closed at 10am on Sundays it's never happened before. We have persuaded them to stay open longer."
The partnership is also about advertising.
The alliance is likely to involve working together with the Mail on exclusives. "The Mail will promote Hello! and we will promote You magazine. We will be acting like we are part of the same group," she says.
"Our readers are both middle England, they both shop at Marks & Spencer. If Hello! readers aren't buying the Mail they should be, and vice versa. Guy Zitter [the Mail's commercial director] and I share exactly that ambition."
A Mail executive confirms: "We will run ads for them - some of which they will pay for. You'll see an ad for Hello! this Sunday and probably on Monday. They'll promote You or Live [another Mail on Sunday magazine] from time to time."
But it would seem that timing it would seem is as important as the battles over exclusives, celeb loyality, endorsements and price.
Ironically though WH Smith, Britain’s biggest magazine retailer, has announced that it has seen a fall of 8% in magazine sales over the past year. So in one way it’s no wonder the PPA has cancelled this year’s Magazine Week promotion, which was scheduled for September.
However, you can understand the reaction of the National Federation of Retail Newsagents, which told Retail Newsagent it was ‘astonished that at a time when we need to push magazine sales … that they have dropped it’.
WHSmith said: ‘The magazine market continues to be challenging, particularly for monthly magazines and partworks where we are traditionally strong.’
Surely it is a time for the battle ground to move? So many young people were on my plane to Egypt with their ipods and game players that it seems only logical that the electronic versions of magazines could have had some play this year. E-readers and Kindles aside, the apps on iphone and digital deals were enough to make it an option for sure?
A full break down of the WHSmith trade round up is here
Thanks to magforum for the tip off.
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