Men's magazine Loaded has a reputation for its frank, cheeky take on all manner of laddish subjects. But a recent weekly e-mail to readers has taken this attitude to a new level - and the subject of the correspondence has nothing to do with sport or scantily clad ladies, but covermounted gifts.
"We need some new ideas," the publisher baldly states - and is offering one lucky punter £100 and a crate of beers for the best one proferred.
Suppliers trying to break down the doors to the magazine giant could be forgiven for wondering just how it came to this point, but with Loaded's sales down by 21.9 per cent in the past year, it's fighting hard to entice readers away from the cheaper weeklies and the interactive web experiences that eat away at monthlies' sales.
In its time, Loaded has given away chocolate biscuits and condoms, while rival FHM has been sold in a box full of goodies. But today, the titles stick to reliable gifts such as DVDs, calendars and sexy supplements.
Few mass-market magazines can afford the luxury of, for example, running a blank cover and giving readers a set of crayons to design their own cover in a prize draw, as Future's design title Computer Arts Projects did in April.
The runaway success of women's weeklies such as Heat, Closer and Grazia has left glossy monthlies drowning in a sea of shoes, bags and novels in a bid to get noticed - with the competition reaching fever pitch each summer.
"It's an epidemic in monthlies, and extremely difficult for one magazine to take a stand," says Eric Fuller, head of men's magazines at Loaded's publisher, IPC. He criticises the "lucky dip" recently taken by Future's Classic Rock with a music CD, CD-Rom quiz and a book in the same issue. "What was it selling?" he asks. "We're supposed to be publishing magazines, which needs a sense of perspective."
Catering to reader demand
Publishers are increasingly protective of their brands, especially now that many stretch across several platforms, and they want to be seen to own the consumer insight. This extends to the entire package of the magazine, including the covermounted gift.
In research conducted by Conde Nast, Glamour readers invariably said they want more bags, so the magazine has to match their expectations, but in a way that also surprises them.
"It's our job to come up with the core covermount idea," acknowledges the magazine's publisher, Simon Kippin. "Suppliers can help, but are not terribly innovative. The major ones tend to have a number of customers, especially in the press, and can't always understand individual magazines. It's about giving something familiar, and something that matches the magazine's profile."
Simon Foster, marketing director of Cosmopolitan at publisher NatMags, agrees. "Suppliers can bring insights, and can add value with the creative, but there should never be an excuse for not finding the answer for ourselves," he says.
Different tactics work in different sectors. For children's and teenage titles, covermounts offer instant gratification. With computing magazines, previews of games are so commonplace that when PC Gamer gave away a screwdriver set, it had guaranteed standout.
Music and men's magazines primarily aim to offer something the reader cannot buy, while for women's titles, it's the opposite: the more valuable the gift, and the more likely they would be to buy it anyway, the more readers covet it. Which could explain why the past year has seen an influx of modish designer names including L K Bennett and Cath Kidston.
The hunt for a new and relevant gift can be as much of a headache as the quest for the big scoops on newsstands featuring daily, weekly and monthly publications fighting for a small pool of bankable cover stars.
"It's all variations on a theme, just as magazines are in their own right," says NatMags' Foster. "There will always be a place for a really good idea, but there's an inherent risk in that there is a core of established themes. Shooting from the hip is career suicide."
Since publishers are beholden to advertisers, covermounts are a key weapon to grow magazines' average sales figures in the six-monthly ABC reporting periods. Messing with the formula risks falling out of favour.
"You have to be pretty brave to give up a covermount that always works for you," says Julie Harris, general manager of women's titles at Hachette Filipacchi. "What you have to do is move the idea on every year." Publishers can't afford to be lazy, she adds, especially given the pace of high street fashion and the long planning times required for implementing the best promotions.
Time to take risks
For suppliers, though, publishers are still not taking enough risks.
With each gift, the stakes get higher and magazine budgets can only go so far.
A case in point is NatMags' men's title Esquire, which raised its price by 55p last year to fund a planned monthly covermount, including a series of cult movies on DVDs, a radio and CDs, only to pull back from the strategy and run more editorial supplements when the initiative failed to curb a circulation decline.
"Getting publishers out of their comfort zone can be very difficult," says Martin Mason, managing director of Expansive Media, which produces bespoke interactive DVDs and CDs, subsequently developed for retail.
He sees signs, however, that publishers such as BBC Magazines, Emap and Future are thinking about the next stage of innovation.
"They understand that more of their readers are engaging with new technology, and sooner or later they will demand that this is reflected and delivered through their regular read," he says, predicting more new media giveaways such as music downloads and mobile promotions.
For now though, traditional gifts remain. "Instead of using really good promotions that work, publishers tend to panic and put out something cheap every month," says Simon Stanford, founder of Upfront Promotions.
Countering the impulse to this knee-jerk reaction requires careful negotiations between content provider, publisher and supplier. With a recent promotion for The OC on CosmoGirl, the simple approach would have been to give away an episode on DVD.
But mindful of perceptions of DVDs' disposability, Upfront managed to get two episodes (voted for by fans), a competition to visit the set and a discount offer on the DVD boxset as part of the deal, with The OC further promoted inside the magazine.
Similarly, the NME compiles CDs as often as the budget allows, but a recent promotion aimed to lift sales at the end of the year with three consecutive discs curated by up-and-coming record labels. Not only did it fulfil the magazine's exclusivity brief, it also matched the brand's ethos and, crucially, encouraged loyalty.
Publishers are, however, unsure whether covermounts can ever build long-term loyalty. "You can't tell readers too much in advance, because rivals might steal a march," says Glamour's Kippin. High-value fashion items also require long lead times, not least because they are often ordered from the Far East, and predicting fashions is an inexact science.
Futhermore, notes Debbie McNally, sales development manager at Random House: "There's pressure to make each month's covermount different from the last, so they aren't keen on a series run over a number of issues, which is what newspapers do," she says. "It's an avenue that is there to be explored, but magazines are wary."
So what do publishers want from suppliers? They are unlikely to relinquish control of deciding the right covermount for their brands, but they welcome support in realising their visions.
"Suppliers are in the know about what is available, and whether they can do certain covermounts within a specific budget," says Julie Jones, marketing manager at children's publisher Redan. "We allow them free rein in coming up with ideas, but they have to fit these budgets and variations on existing ideas." She adds, however, that in the marketing plans for their latest products, suppliers often overlook children's magazines, where free gifts are an essential part of every magazine package.
BBC Magazines' buying team even goes on joint shopping trips with suppliers to the Far East to be the first with the latest trends. Trips have resulted in everything from the UK's first "scoubidou" laces covermount to digital watches and radios.
Call for innovation
IPC's Fuller wants suppliers to bring their knowledge of developments in manufacturing and packaging. "It's all about the overall package, and the ways we can achieve standout, especially if they can lower the unit cost," he says.
Hachette's Harris says she always aims for at least one gift each year that has never been tried before, which means increasing pressure on suppliers.
"Every year it gets harder to innovate, and you can guarantee that if you've had a good sale with a gift, the competition will be doing it next year," she says. "We therefore expect suppliers to produce better gifts each time - for the same or less money."
- Robin Parker is a reporter on MediaWeek.
"We need some new ideas," the publisher baldly states - and is offering one lucky punter £100 and a crate of beers for the best one proferred.
Suppliers trying to break down the doors to the magazine giant could be forgiven for wondering just how it came to this point, but with Loaded's sales down by 21.9 per cent in the past year, it's fighting hard to entice readers away from the cheaper weeklies and the interactive web experiences that eat away at monthlies' sales.
In its time, Loaded has given away chocolate biscuits and condoms, while rival FHM has been sold in a box full of goodies. But today, the titles stick to reliable gifts such as DVDs, calendars and sexy supplements.
Few mass-market magazines can afford the luxury of, for example, running a blank cover and giving readers a set of crayons to design their own cover in a prize draw, as Future's design title Computer Arts Projects did in April.
The runaway success of women's weeklies such as Heat, Closer and Grazia has left glossy monthlies drowning in a sea of shoes, bags and novels in a bid to get noticed - with the competition reaching fever pitch each summer.
"It's an epidemic in monthlies, and extremely difficult for one magazine to take a stand," says Eric Fuller, head of men's magazines at Loaded's publisher, IPC. He criticises the "lucky dip" recently taken by Future's Classic Rock with a music CD, CD-Rom quiz and a book in the same issue. "What was it selling?" he asks. "We're supposed to be publishing magazines, which needs a sense of perspective."
Catering to reader demand
Publishers are increasingly protective of their brands, especially now that many stretch across several platforms, and they want to be seen to own the consumer insight. This extends to the entire package of the magazine, including the covermounted gift.
In research conducted by Conde Nast, Glamour readers invariably said they want more bags, so the magazine has to match their expectations, but in a way that also surprises them.
"It's our job to come up with the core covermount idea," acknowledges the magazine's publisher, Simon Kippin. "Suppliers can help, but are not terribly innovative. The major ones tend to have a number of customers, especially in the press, and can't always understand individual magazines. It's about giving something familiar, and something that matches the magazine's profile."
Simon Foster, marketing director of Cosmopolitan at publisher NatMags, agrees. "Suppliers can bring insights, and can add value with the creative, but there should never be an excuse for not finding the answer for ourselves," he says.
Different tactics work in different sectors. For children's and teenage titles, covermounts offer instant gratification. With computing magazines, previews of games are so commonplace that when PC Gamer gave away a screwdriver set, it had guaranteed standout.
Music and men's magazines primarily aim to offer something the reader cannot buy, while for women's titles, it's the opposite: the more valuable the gift, and the more likely they would be to buy it anyway, the more readers covet it. Which could explain why the past year has seen an influx of modish designer names including L K Bennett and Cath Kidston.
The hunt for a new and relevant gift can be as much of a headache as the quest for the big scoops on newsstands featuring daily, weekly and monthly publications fighting for a small pool of bankable cover stars.
"It's all variations on a theme, just as magazines are in their own right," says NatMags' Foster. "There will always be a place for a really good idea, but there's an inherent risk in that there is a core of established themes. Shooting from the hip is career suicide."
Since publishers are beholden to advertisers, covermounts are a key weapon to grow magazines' average sales figures in the six-monthly ABC reporting periods. Messing with the formula risks falling out of favour.
"You have to be pretty brave to give up a covermount that always works for you," says Julie Harris, general manager of women's titles at Hachette Filipacchi. "What you have to do is move the idea on every year." Publishers can't afford to be lazy, she adds, especially given the pace of high street fashion and the long planning times required for implementing the best promotions.
Time to take risks
For suppliers, though, publishers are still not taking enough risks.
With each gift, the stakes get higher and magazine budgets can only go so far.
A case in point is NatMags' men's title Esquire, which raised its price by 55p last year to fund a planned monthly covermount, including a series of cult movies on DVDs, a radio and CDs, only to pull back from the strategy and run more editorial supplements when the initiative failed to curb a circulation decline.
"Getting publishers out of their comfort zone can be very difficult," says Martin Mason, managing director of Expansive Media, which produces bespoke interactive DVDs and CDs, subsequently developed for retail.
He sees signs, however, that publishers such as BBC Magazines, Emap and Future are thinking about the next stage of innovation.
"They understand that more of their readers are engaging with new technology, and sooner or later they will demand that this is reflected and delivered through their regular read," he says, predicting more new media giveaways such as music downloads and mobile promotions.
For now though, traditional gifts remain. "Instead of using really good promotions that work, publishers tend to panic and put out something cheap every month," says Simon Stanford, founder of Upfront Promotions.
Countering the impulse to this knee-jerk reaction requires careful negotiations between content provider, publisher and supplier. With a recent promotion for The OC on CosmoGirl, the simple approach would have been to give away an episode on DVD.
But mindful of perceptions of DVDs' disposability, Upfront managed to get two episodes (voted for by fans), a competition to visit the set and a discount offer on the DVD boxset as part of the deal, with The OC further promoted inside the magazine.
Similarly, the NME compiles CDs as often as the budget allows, but a recent promotion aimed to lift sales at the end of the year with three consecutive discs curated by up-and-coming record labels. Not only did it fulfil the magazine's exclusivity brief, it also matched the brand's ethos and, crucially, encouraged loyalty.
Publishers are, however, unsure whether covermounts can ever build long-term loyalty. "You can't tell readers too much in advance, because rivals might steal a march," says Glamour's Kippin. High-value fashion items also require long lead times, not least because they are often ordered from the Far East, and predicting fashions is an inexact science.
Futhermore, notes Debbie McNally, sales development manager at Random House: "There's pressure to make each month's covermount different from the last, so they aren't keen on a series run over a number of issues, which is what newspapers do," she says. "It's an avenue that is there to be explored, but magazines are wary."
So what do publishers want from suppliers? They are unlikely to relinquish control of deciding the right covermount for their brands, but they welcome support in realising their visions.
"Suppliers are in the know about what is available, and whether they can do certain covermounts within a specific budget," says Julie Jones, marketing manager at children's publisher Redan. "We allow them free rein in coming up with ideas, but they have to fit these budgets and variations on existing ideas." She adds, however, that in the marketing plans for their latest products, suppliers often overlook children's magazines, where free gifts are an essential part of every magazine package.
BBC Magazines' buying team even goes on joint shopping trips with suppliers to the Far East to be the first with the latest trends. Trips have resulted in everything from the UK's first "scoubidou" laces covermount to digital watches and radios.
Call for innovation
IPC's Fuller wants suppliers to bring their knowledge of developments in manufacturing and packaging. "It's all about the overall package, and the ways we can achieve standout, especially if they can lower the unit cost," he says.
Hachette's Harris says she always aims for at least one gift each year that has never been tried before, which means increasing pressure on suppliers.
"Every year it gets harder to innovate, and you can guarantee that if you've had a good sale with a gift, the competition will be doing it next year," she says. "We therefore expect suppliers to produce better gifts each time - for the same or less money."
- Robin Parker is a reporter on MediaWeek.