Bride and Groom Expo starts on fever pitchPublish Date: Jun 27, 2014

June 29, 2014 by admin
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Are men finally choosing brains over boobs?

June 29, 2014 by admin
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If you speak to Brendon Hill, the Australian publisher of Zoo Weekly and 27 other lifestyle publications at Bauer Media, the answer is unsurprisingly no.

“In fact, the story is one of growth for Zoo over its multiple platforms,” he tells me. “The Zoo Weekly brand is at record levels for brand interactions across its multiple platforms … it delivered more than 5.3 million brand interactions in the month of December 2013 across Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, YouTube, website, EDMs, tablet, oh and the print version.”

Through our correspondence, it’s clear that Hill has a background in marketing. His answers are all peppered with the buzzwords of a great pitch. It’s all about “innovation” and “evolution”. “Young men are consuming print products less across the board, no matter the genre,” he says. “[But] the print figures are what seems to be the conversation.”

Although the assertion is undoubtedly true, this doesn’t account for the fact that Zoo is in fact suffering the worst. In the latest figures from the Australian Bureau of Circulations, the magazine has seen the second-largest drop recorded by any of the nation’s major publications in the year. Second only to fellow Bauer publication TechLife, Zoo recorded a circulation decline of nearly 20 per cent in the last half of the year alone.

Hill maintains the magazine’s readers – “[those who] consider themselves a typical Aussie bloke” – are now all consuming the product online. “We are in the business of entertainment so we compete with anything that young men fill their spare time with, especially social media, gaming, and online,” Hill says. “[This is why] we have moved our content delivery to these channels.”

Requests to speak to Zoo editor Tim Keen were declined by those at Bauer Media including Hill himself. On the matter of content, Hill did, however, say: “The brand unashamedly produces content that young men love to consume.”

“Unashamedly” being the operative word. One only has to look as far as founding editor Paul Merill to find the publication’s ethos. As editor in 2012, his LinkedIn profile boasted he “ran competitions to find Australia’s randiest nanna, hottest horse dentist and ugliest baby”; “offered prizes of a boob job, lesbian wedding, divorce and voluntary euthanasia for a loved one”. In an interview with Mumbrella, he joked the longest word Zoo has every published was probably “nymphomaniac”.

Of course, that’s all fine assuming the readers are there to buy it.

With Zoo now officially one of the last lad’ mag in the country – perhaps only rivalled by international brand Maxim – the market has changed. Put simply: men are no longer buying boobs. The above factors coupled with the undeniable sway of online pornography spells a pretty bleak outlook for the future of these sticky treasures and, instead, the sales are going to those with a focus on the reader themselves.

Men’s Health is the industry leader for men’s lifestyle publications. Although suffering slight drops over the past year in Australia, it still consistently outsells the competition and has even seen a print increase of 17 per cent in the UK. And here in Australia, there are new trends that seem to change the game entirely.

Smith Journal is a relatively new player on the market. Its paper is thick and grainy to the touch and the latest cover sports a sombre photograph of the Tamworth Historical Society from a German photographer’s series on rural museums. In one semblance to its average lifestyle counterparts, a lurid yellow sticker sits over the image. It reads: “Thinkers. Adventurers. Makers. Writers. Inventors.”

Although it sells fewer magazines overall, Smith‘s print run and circulation figures have increased every year since its inception in 2011. I spoke to editor Nadia Saccardo about how to launch a men’s publication in a failing print market, and better yet – succeed.

“Part of the reason Smith started was because there was a gap in the market for guys who felt that their magazines hadn’t grown or changed with them,” Saccardo says. “From my end, there was less a gender-specific state of mind than there was a focus on unexpected, accessible storytelling coupled with great photography and illustration … My stories in the first volume ranged from two guys riding their bikes across the Americas to a taxidermist in the deep south of Florida and a man living alone in the wilderness.”

Unlike typical gendered publications, Smith Journal has published some extremely accomplished writers. In just the second volume of this quarterly publication, Saccardo commissioned a personal narrative by Pulitzer prize-winning author Dave Eggers; in a recent edition Elizabeth Gilbert – of Eat, Pray, Love fame – wrote an opinion piece on science and adventure; and last year they provided readers a work by Tim Winton titled “10 Things I Believe”. “Big names are fantastic if they have something interesting to say,” Saccardo says.

Far from the latest cover of Zoo that promises “lingerie cage fighting” – because “violence never looked so good” – Smith regularly opts for the mundane. Last year one cover depicted a photographic ode to the classic Australian brick home – an understandably surprising choice to move units off shelves.

“Our readers are curious, open-minded and no bullshit,” Saccardo says. “The content and design resonate with anyone looking for something different on newsagent shelves – readers who feel like they have been ignored, or would not traditionally pick up magazines.”

Although getting her start in online publishing, Saccardo disagrees with Zoo publisher Brendon Hill, maintaining a great optimism for the print medium and the state of men’s magazines at large.

“I would argue that as the number of established mags goes down, the quality of what’s on shelves or available to order online is going up.” She lists a host of boutique titles such as Apology, The Believer, Fantastic Man and Monocle, then publications renowned for respected reportage like n+1, The New Yorker and Vanity Fair.

“I think it’s a great time for magazines in general,” she says.

Of course this investment in quality writing isn’t new, and one only has to look as far as industry leader Playboy to see its historical worth. Although it’s easy to poke fun at Hefner and his infamous debauchery, his magazine originated as an incredibly prolific publication. In the ’60s and ’70s it was home to the likes of Kerouac, Steinbeck and Vonnegut. In 1964, Hefner even published a posthumous essay by Ernest Hemingway aptly titled “Advice to a Young Man”.

“I consider ignorance the primary enemy of mankind,” Hemingway wrote. “All the glory of life, all the romance of living, all the deep and true joys of the world, all the splendour and the mystery are within our reach.”

It’s become a punchline over the years, but yes, there really were people “reading it for the articles”.

In its first issue of this year, the 60th anniversary edition, Playboy offered a throwback to this journalistic heyday. It published an essay from philosopher Slavoj Zizek, the “lost letters” of Hunter S. Thompson and William S. Burroughs, and an extended spread of Kate Moss dressed – or undressed – in traditional bunny garb. It offered some nostalgia – an homage to a time when pornography and quality could co-exist.

Perhaps this is the kind of beacon lads’ mags can take example from today. Such magazines stemmed from a concern of what makes a man, and with publications such as Smith on the rise, it’s clear the answer to that question is more than boobs, beer and belly laughs.