Interview: Jo Elvin, Glamour (Evening Standard)
IT'S the latest round in the battle between a mature, well-endowed sex bomb and a petite, bubbly newcomer. Tomorrow, when the Audit Bureau of Circulations reveals the all-important January-to-June sales figures, we will learn if Condé Nast's Glamour has finally displaced Cosmopolitan as the biggest-selling women's magazine. Amid intense industry speculation, Glamour's editor Jo Elvin is letting it be known that she is "very, very, very excited" about her magazine's latest circulation rise - while Cosmo, now into its thirties, is brushing off suggestions that its orgasm-rich formula has finally been beaten.
Already Glamour sells 5,431 more copies than Cosmo in the UK and Ireland, although Cosmo maintained its overall lead last time through higher overseas sales, making a total of 463,010 to Glamour's 436,579. Still, in just 18 months, Glamour has jumped ahead of Marie Claire, Company, New Woman and Good Housekeeping - all once giants, now laid low by a handbag-sized upstart. This format, too, has been imitated by a range of other titles, from Bliss to Jack, and even Hello! has investigated producing an A5 version. The advantages are clear: as well as saving paper costs and distribution bills, the smaller pages - which still cost advertisers up to £43,400 - appeal to women in a way Elvin insists men would not understand.
"There's no way of explaining the intimate relationship women have with their handbags," she says (a Prada handbag, in her case). "I fully expect there to be more imitators, and I've noticed that New Woman's Celebrity Spy section has just gone small. But the content has to be right too - B magazine in Australia went small for six months, but then went back, which made me smile." The £1.80 cover price - compared with £2.90 for Marie Claire and £2.80 for Cosmo - may also have something to do with Glamour's success, although Elvin points out that Company, at the same price, has failed to match its rise. The only downside is that she wishes she had room for an extra four cover lines.
The Glamour formula relies on an unchallenging blend of celebrity, accessible fashion, beauty, plus what Condé Nast's MD, Nicholas Coleridge, calls "an unseedy weave of sex and relationships". The Glamour reader is "15 per cent less grubby than the Cosmo girl, 15 per cent less earnest than Marie Claire", and, on average, is an affluent 26-year-old career woman, more educated than most, who prefers to watch Friends and drink vodka.
"They're very urban thinking, very knowledgeable about everything from L'Oréal's range of shampoos to catwalk fashions, but they'll pick one catwalk item to spend money on and buy the rest at Topshop," Elvin says. So it is her job - "one of the best jobs in the world", as she reminds readers this month - to produce "the glossiest, most stylish mass-appeal product" that somehow manages to be "different".
For Elvin, an unaffected 32-year-old Australian who arrived in London 10 years ago, this difference can be found in its demanding if complimentary celebrity interviews by Chrissy Iley or Emma Forrest, who tend to produce copy for the national press. After early criticism that the magazine lacked substance, Elvin has recently discovered a news sense and stresses that Glamour is "more cerebral" than many of its rivals.
"We were the first women's magazine to go to Afghanistan, and next month we'll carry the only interview in the world with [murdered US intern] Chandra Levy's parents, which not even Oprah could get," she says between sips of Panna mineral water. "That's not to deny we're the magazine that also looks at what Britney's thinking."
It is Britney rather than reportage that defines Glamour. Covers tend to feature the American superstars such as Jennifer Lopez and Halle Berry; the Appleton sisters make it this month, but Elvin finds the British star pool, dominated by the likes of EastEnders actors, not really her sort of people. Kate Beckinsale may one day work, but she "still has a long way to go".
At least the Hollywood stars do not demand copy approval - an ill-advised strategy favoured by a number of "British B-list actors" and invariably refused, even if that means losing the interview. Only once has a model featured on the cover, but that hit the newsstands on 12 September last year, hardly the moment to test its impact. In January, Elvin will risk a non-celebrity for a second time - a cover is the prize in the Channel 4 series Model Behaviour, which Elvin has been helping judge, and believes will boost the profile of her "brand".
Glamour has been published in the US since 1937 - it sells around 2.2 million - and today Condé Nast also owns versions in Germany, Greece and in Italy, where the small format was first tested. But in its Old Bond Street office, surrounded by Gucci and Prada stores, Elvin and her publisher, Simon Kippin, run the show autonomously - only taking the occasional photograph from the US edition. Kippin had been running Cosmopolitan's business, Elvin had successfully set up Sugar and B and was editing New Woman, and within months of the launch they were winning industry awards - and calls from prospective advertisers.
"We see no sign of a recession," Elvin says, an observation notably absent from many of her publishing rivals over the past year, particularly at Woman's Journal, Nova, Bare and other recent closures.
At 298 pages this month, up from 262 in July, she sees Glamour building even further to its "natural size" - with as little use as possible of cover-mounted gifts. "I want to be one of the fat ones," Elvin says. "Short and fat - now that's a most attractive look for a woman's magazine."
(Evening Standard, August 14 2002)
Already Glamour sells 5,431 more copies than Cosmo in the UK and Ireland, although Cosmo maintained its overall lead last time through higher overseas sales, making a total of 463,010 to Glamour's 436,579. Still, in just 18 months, Glamour has jumped ahead of Marie Claire, Company, New Woman and Good Housekeeping - all once giants, now laid low by a handbag-sized upstart. This format, too, has been imitated by a range of other titles, from Bliss to Jack, and even Hello! has investigated producing an A5 version. The advantages are clear: as well as saving paper costs and distribution bills, the smaller pages - which still cost advertisers up to £43,400 - appeal to women in a way Elvin insists men would not understand.
"There's no way of explaining the intimate relationship women have with their handbags," she says (a Prada handbag, in her case). "I fully expect there to be more imitators, and I've noticed that New Woman's Celebrity Spy section has just gone small. But the content has to be right too - B magazine in Australia went small for six months, but then went back, which made me smile." The £1.80 cover price - compared with £2.90 for Marie Claire and £2.80 for Cosmo - may also have something to do with Glamour's success, although Elvin points out that Company, at the same price, has failed to match its rise. The only downside is that she wishes she had room for an extra four cover lines.
The Glamour formula relies on an unchallenging blend of celebrity, accessible fashion, beauty, plus what Condé Nast's MD, Nicholas Coleridge, calls "an unseedy weave of sex and relationships". The Glamour reader is "15 per cent less grubby than the Cosmo girl, 15 per cent less earnest than Marie Claire", and, on average, is an affluent 26-year-old career woman, more educated than most, who prefers to watch Friends and drink vodka.
"They're very urban thinking, very knowledgeable about everything from L'Oréal's range of shampoos to catwalk fashions, but they'll pick one catwalk item to spend money on and buy the rest at Topshop," Elvin says. So it is her job - "one of the best jobs in the world", as she reminds readers this month - to produce "the glossiest, most stylish mass-appeal product" that somehow manages to be "different".
For Elvin, an unaffected 32-year-old Australian who arrived in London 10 years ago, this difference can be found in its demanding if complimentary celebrity interviews by Chrissy Iley or Emma Forrest, who tend to produce copy for the national press. After early criticism that the magazine lacked substance, Elvin has recently discovered a news sense and stresses that Glamour is "more cerebral" than many of its rivals.
"We were the first women's magazine to go to Afghanistan, and next month we'll carry the only interview in the world with [murdered US intern] Chandra Levy's parents, which not even Oprah could get," she says between sips of Panna mineral water. "That's not to deny we're the magazine that also looks at what Britney's thinking."
It is Britney rather than reportage that defines Glamour. Covers tend to feature the American superstars such as Jennifer Lopez and Halle Berry; the Appleton sisters make it this month, but Elvin finds the British star pool, dominated by the likes of EastEnders actors, not really her sort of people. Kate Beckinsale may one day work, but she "still has a long way to go".
At least the Hollywood stars do not demand copy approval - an ill-advised strategy favoured by a number of "British B-list actors" and invariably refused, even if that means losing the interview. Only once has a model featured on the cover, but that hit the newsstands on 12 September last year, hardly the moment to test its impact. In January, Elvin will risk a non-celebrity for a second time - a cover is the prize in the Channel 4 series Model Behaviour, which Elvin has been helping judge, and believes will boost the profile of her "brand".
Glamour has been published in the US since 1937 - it sells around 2.2 million - and today Condé Nast also owns versions in Germany, Greece and in Italy, where the small format was first tested. But in its Old Bond Street office, surrounded by Gucci and Prada stores, Elvin and her publisher, Simon Kippin, run the show autonomously - only taking the occasional photograph from the US edition. Kippin had been running Cosmopolitan's business, Elvin had successfully set up Sugar and B and was editing New Woman, and within months of the launch they were winning industry awards - and calls from prospective advertisers.
"We see no sign of a recession," Elvin says, an observation notably absent from many of her publishing rivals over the past year, particularly at Woman's Journal, Nova, Bare and other recent closures.
At 298 pages this month, up from 262 in July, she sees Glamour building even further to its "natural size" - with as little use as possible of cover-mounted gifts. "I want to be one of the fat ones," Elvin says. "Short and fat - now that's a most attractive look for a woman's magazine."
(Evening Standard, August 14 2002)
posted by David Rowan at Wednesday, August 14, 2002
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