The 1.2 million subscribers to US weekly People have been sent an e-mail this week that links to a digital edition of the title. The Canadian Magazines blog has warned that it loads very slowly. The blog says: ’The 30-page digi-mag starts with an animated cover in which dolphins leap out of the water behind a bathing suit-clad Beyonce Knowles while a “Plus: Matthew McConaughey On The Beach!” tease floats up and down.” Mmmm…
Readers are deserting teenage magazines in droves - Cosmo Girl! is the latest to close - and, say publishers, turning to online media. That presents a problem because, as David Hepworth says in the Guardian, magazines have yet to get a handle on how to make money on the web. He’s right, but there are some interesting experiments going on.
Dennis has its digital weekly for lads, Monkey and Nat Mags has Jellyfish for young women. Both are e-mailed free to people who register. And Sublime started as an online group before launching on paper this year.
But, at least in my house, the switch to digital isn’t the whole story. My lad’s world is built around BMX biking. It’s where his money and most of his time goes - TV barely gets a look in - apart from when he’s in a biking mail group or chatting to pals. It also dictates his magazine reading with the likes of Ride, Dirt and Dig BMX.
As for Darling Daughter, it’s been horses (and hence the likes of Horse & Pony), then just a year of teen mags (Bliss and Cosmo Girl!) before heading on to Glamour. (As a user of Facebook for 2 years, she feels the site has made a mistake in opening up to the likes of Andrew Neil, rather than just students.)
By the way, anyone know if the likes of MySpace are a licence to print money for Rupert Murdoch, in the way that Roy Thomson said television was for newspaper publishers in the late 1950s?
Vogue magazine has lost a trademark dispute over a perfume of the same name (Press Gazette). The patent office has backed United Toiletries & Cosmetics, which has been selling perfume called Vogue since 1982, against an attempt by Conde Nast to stop UTC using the name.
IPC went to court in 1996 to prevent Valucci Designs filing a UK trade mark for the word ‘Loaded’ covering clothing. In that case, the publisher won, with a ruling that said allowing Valucci the rights to the name would prevent IPC selling promotional Loaded T-shirts and might limit and damage the magazine brand.
The Loaded name has since been licensed for beer and sister title Nuts has lent its ‘credibility’ to pub entertainment games, a personal greetings cards service, books and calendars. In the US, Maxim has set its name to steak houses and nightclubs.
Reading such cases is interesting not only to get a feel for how the law thinks, but also for what the cases reveal about the parties. Vogue has to prove it is a famous magazine and Loaded had it prove it was a well-known, successful title - and it quoted its turnover for three years as evidence (where else could you get those figures!).
Lest anyone think that magazine brands and brand extension are not big money-spinners for publishers, let me just say one word: Playboy.
