Interview: Mike Soutar, IPC
By David Rowan
HE is the magazine wunderkind who took FHM's circulation from 50,000 to 500,000 and doubled the US sales of Maxim. And now, just six weeks into the battle of the men's weeklies, Mike Soutar detects early victory signs for IPC's Nuts over its Emap rival, Zoo Weekly.
"We're exceeding our targets and comfortably outselling our competitor," the 37-year-old IPC editorial director says cheerily about his new baby. "So far we believe we'll be able to achieve an audited circulation of 200,000 for our first six months - while Emap says it's not even going to issue its ABC figure. It has to be really worried." It has been a suitably macho fight, with bitter accusations of "spoiler" tactics, condemnation of rivals' content, and the poaching of senior staff before the launch. Yet even as IPC insiders claim that Emap's "downmarket" title is selling little more than 150,000, even at an extended 20p discount (Emap says its sales were closer to 200,000 last week), executives at both publishers are feeling rather upbeat.
"What we're really excited to learn is that there's definitely a market here, which is great for both of us," says Dharmash Mistry, managing director of Emap Consumer Media. Soutar, too, is willing to suspend hostilities for a moment to reflect on the new sector that has been created. "What's remarkable is that people aren't questioning whether men are going to buy weekly magazines or not - they're talking about the fight in the market. Isn't that fantastic?" There are clear similarities between the titles: amid pages of babe-and-sport features, both this week carry the same photographs of a gruesome Nascar crash, as well as equally excitable previews of Channel 4's No Angels. But while Nuts focuses more on gadgets and clever self-mocking presentation (and what it variously calls " gazongas", "baps", "norks" and, with surprising coyness, "t*ts"), Zoo Weekly errs on the side of the unashamedly tasteless and favours gory photographs and puerile jokes ("How do you make a cat go woof ? Cover it in petrol and set fire to it").
"They've had to move away from the really cheap and nasty photography they started with on their cover," Soutar says. "They still use clumsy key lines, cheesy graphics and a far more tabloid colour palette than us. And look at the adverts they carry for porn phone lines, which we refuse - they send out a signal to readers that you're a niche magazine. Nuts, by contrast, is fast and mainstream." This, Soutar explains, is why neither he, nor editor Phil Hilton, has a target reader in mind. "It would be a mistake for us to produce a magazine for one guy. We certainly couldn't be selling 200,000 if it was just adolescent boys buying it." Still, both magazines do tend to portray women in terms of sexual availability, which prompted The Guardian to denounce Nuts for limiting the British male's horizons to "onanism and Footballers' Wives".
Soutar fumes at such "cynicism". "We're a magazine for men who adore women," he says. "Our readers are in turn amazed and baffled by women. The Guardian is put on Earth to dislike anything that looks like men might be kicking back and having fun." Why, women are applying in large numbers to be photographed in the magazine, he points out - not entirely demolishing the lad-mag stereotype. "The pictures are pouring in, and it's really affirming for women spurned by ex-boyfriends, or who had fun poked at them in the playground, to have the opportunity to proclaim to the world that they're in terrific shape." It is a mistake, he says, to assume that any publication is so important that it defines a reader's outlook.
"Here's a magazine that fills in the boring bits in every man's day. It's designed to be quick, satisfying, funny, and ultimately disposable.
What's not to like about it?" Soutar, born in Dundee, has enjoyed a remarkable career, from editing Smash Hits at 23 to being "days away" from editing the Daily Star following an unsuccessful bid led by Matthew Freud and Chris Evans. He became a journalist after failing to get into PE college. He joined DC Thomson, where he wrote horoscopes for the women's magazine Secrets before being promoted to the unlikely role of beauty editor.
NEXT came Jackie magazine, then Just 17, where he met his wife, its editor, Bev Hillier. They have two children, aged 12 and 16.
When editing Maxim, Soutar's mantra was that everything had to be "funny, sexy, useful". Today he says a successful magazine needs to "strike a balance between things you really want and things you really need. If you can use something in a magazine, even if it's just a great fact you can use down the pub, you'll come back again and again," he says.
"That's why reviews of gadgets and cars are so important." Will monthly men's magazines be the losers in the war of the weeklies? It is too early to know, but Emap says that FHM, the market leader, has not lost sales.
"I think there's room for two weeklies," Mistry says. "We suspect that it's people's secondary purchases that will get hit - magazines like Maxim and Loaded." Coincidentally, Maxim's editor resigned yesterday over longer-term circulation falls.
Mike Soutar, meanwhile, is looking forward to new challenges. As the mastermind of all IPC's new launches, he expects "at least one" other title to appear this year. In the meantime, he believes that his team has changed men's reading habits. "I can't help but think," he reflects, "there will always be a place for really well-edited newspapers, monthlies - and now weeklies."
PANEL:
NUTS GOES HEAD-TO-HEAD WITH ZOO WEEKLY
NUTS
Price: £1.20
Aimed at: gadget-obsessed boy racer with breast fetish . . .
Editorial proposition: "The mainstream appeal of a popular daily, combined with the wit and colour of a glossy men's monthly."
Industry sales estimates: 200,000
Breast count: 42 (14 nipples)
Photos of Jordan:
ZOO
Price: £1 ("normal price £1.20")
Aimed at: underage pub drinker who collects gory jpegs . . .
Editorial proposition: "Sex, sport and wheelbarrows full of stupidity … for young blokes who don't take life too seriously"
Industry sales estimates: 150,000+
Breast count: 25 (five nipples)
Photos of Jordan: 4
(Evening Standard, March 3 2004)
HE is the magazine wunderkind who took FHM's circulation from 50,000 to 500,000 and doubled the US sales of Maxim. And now, just six weeks into the battle of the men's weeklies, Mike Soutar detects early victory signs for IPC's Nuts over its Emap rival, Zoo Weekly.
"We're exceeding our targets and comfortably outselling our competitor," the 37-year-old IPC editorial director says cheerily about his new baby. "So far we believe we'll be able to achieve an audited circulation of 200,000 for our first six months - while Emap says it's not even going to issue its ABC figure. It has to be really worried." It has been a suitably macho fight, with bitter accusations of "spoiler" tactics, condemnation of rivals' content, and the poaching of senior staff before the launch. Yet even as IPC insiders claim that Emap's "downmarket" title is selling little more than 150,000, even at an extended 20p discount (Emap says its sales were closer to 200,000 last week), executives at both publishers are feeling rather upbeat.
"What we're really excited to learn is that there's definitely a market here, which is great for both of us," says Dharmash Mistry, managing director of Emap Consumer Media. Soutar, too, is willing to suspend hostilities for a moment to reflect on the new sector that has been created. "What's remarkable is that people aren't questioning whether men are going to buy weekly magazines or not - they're talking about the fight in the market. Isn't that fantastic?" There are clear similarities between the titles: amid pages of babe-and-sport features, both this week carry the same photographs of a gruesome Nascar crash, as well as equally excitable previews of Channel 4's No Angels. But while Nuts focuses more on gadgets and clever self-mocking presentation (and what it variously calls " gazongas", "baps", "norks" and, with surprising coyness, "t*ts"), Zoo Weekly errs on the side of the unashamedly tasteless and favours gory photographs and puerile jokes ("How do you make a cat go woof ? Cover it in petrol and set fire to it").
"They've had to move away from the really cheap and nasty photography they started with on their cover," Soutar says. "They still use clumsy key lines, cheesy graphics and a far more tabloid colour palette than us. And look at the adverts they carry for porn phone lines, which we refuse - they send out a signal to readers that you're a niche magazine. Nuts, by contrast, is fast and mainstream." This, Soutar explains, is why neither he, nor editor Phil Hilton, has a target reader in mind. "It would be a mistake for us to produce a magazine for one guy. We certainly couldn't be selling 200,000 if it was just adolescent boys buying it." Still, both magazines do tend to portray women in terms of sexual availability, which prompted The Guardian to denounce Nuts for limiting the British male's horizons to "onanism and Footballers' Wives".
Soutar fumes at such "cynicism". "We're a magazine for men who adore women," he says. "Our readers are in turn amazed and baffled by women. The Guardian is put on Earth to dislike anything that looks like men might be kicking back and having fun." Why, women are applying in large numbers to be photographed in the magazine, he points out - not entirely demolishing the lad-mag stereotype. "The pictures are pouring in, and it's really affirming for women spurned by ex-boyfriends, or who had fun poked at them in the playground, to have the opportunity to proclaim to the world that they're in terrific shape." It is a mistake, he says, to assume that any publication is so important that it defines a reader's outlook.
"Here's a magazine that fills in the boring bits in every man's day. It's designed to be quick, satisfying, funny, and ultimately disposable.
What's not to like about it?" Soutar, born in Dundee, has enjoyed a remarkable career, from editing Smash Hits at 23 to being "days away" from editing the Daily Star following an unsuccessful bid led by Matthew Freud and Chris Evans. He became a journalist after failing to get into PE college. He joined DC Thomson, where he wrote horoscopes for the women's magazine Secrets before being promoted to the unlikely role of beauty editor.
NEXT came Jackie magazine, then Just 17, where he met his wife, its editor, Bev Hillier. They have two children, aged 12 and 16.
When editing Maxim, Soutar's mantra was that everything had to be "funny, sexy, useful". Today he says a successful magazine needs to "strike a balance between things you really want and things you really need. If you can use something in a magazine, even if it's just a great fact you can use down the pub, you'll come back again and again," he says.
"That's why reviews of gadgets and cars are so important." Will monthly men's magazines be the losers in the war of the weeklies? It is too early to know, but Emap says that FHM, the market leader, has not lost sales.
"I think there's room for two weeklies," Mistry says. "We suspect that it's people's secondary purchases that will get hit - magazines like Maxim and Loaded." Coincidentally, Maxim's editor resigned yesterday over longer-term circulation falls.
Mike Soutar, meanwhile, is looking forward to new challenges. As the mastermind of all IPC's new launches, he expects "at least one" other title to appear this year. In the meantime, he believes that his team has changed men's reading habits. "I can't help but think," he reflects, "there will always be a place for really well-edited newspapers, monthlies - and now weeklies."
PANEL:
NUTS GOES HEAD-TO-HEAD WITH ZOO WEEKLY
NUTS
Price: £1.20
Aimed at: gadget-obsessed boy racer with breast fetish . . .
Editorial proposition: "The mainstream appeal of a popular daily, combined with the wit and colour of a glossy men's monthly."
Industry sales estimates: 200,000
Breast count: 42 (14 nipples)
Photos of Jordan:
ZOO
Price: £1 ("normal price £1.20")
Aimed at: underage pub drinker who collects gory jpegs . . .
Editorial proposition: "Sex, sport and wheelbarrows full of stupidity … for young blokes who don't take life too seriously"
Industry sales estimates: 150,000+
Breast count: 25 (five nipples)
Photos of Jordan: 4
(Evening Standard, March 3 2004)
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