Interview: Marie O'Riordan, Marie Claire (Evening Standard)
By David Rowan
TO its smirking rivals, it looks like panic. Marie Claire, the women's glossy with the fastest-falling circulation, is slashing its cover price, trimming its format, and saturating its opening pages with celebrity features that could be straight from Heat.
Until now, the self-styled "glossy with brains" has affected to ignore the rise of Glamour, its cheaper, handbag-sized competitor, even as its own sales dropped by 10 per cent in the last circulation round. So does a risky 50p price cut and a new compact size suggest that Marie Claire's publishers are belatedly apeing Glamour in desperation?
"Absolutely not," insists Marie O'Riordan, editor of the 16-yearold title for the past three years. "The format change is simply the climax of all our editorial work, closer to the American size that we've always been attracted to. We've simply given the magazine a modern facelift without compromising our values." The new £2.50 cover price, too, is simply a way of "putting cost savings to the reader's benefit" and cutting the reliance on free gifts.
The pressure has been on O'Riordan, a 44-year-old Dubliner, ever since she took over in 2001 from Liz Jones, whose own resignation followed an 11 per cent circulation drop to just above 400,000. Since then, it has fallen to 361,000 for the six months to last December, 20,000 of which were given away. Cosmopolitan sells 100,000 more, and Glamour's sales have soared to 583,000.
Under such circumstances, isn't O'Riordan - a former editor of Elle and More! - worried about keeping her job?
"My publishers and joint owners [the magazine is a partnership between IPC and the French Marie Claire Group] concluded that it was market forces and not editorial content that caused the last drop," she says. "They felt the formula was right. In this job you always expect to get sacked - but at the moment they're completely behind me."
In fact, she suggests, the new six-monthly circulation, out next month, will show a rise. "I can't yet give you the details, but the growth you'll see is all newsstand rather than bulks. We're reinventingthe magazine while we're on a roll, rather than in a panic."
The new package includes a "Cause Celeb" column, in which celebrities discuss issues close to their hearts. Cover-boy Brad Pitt talks about his and Jennifer Aniston's plans for children ("We're still in rehearsals"), and the "Reportage" section exposes nothing more shocking than attractive female Olympians.
There is little echo of the grainy real-world reporting that once won the magazine media awards.
But much of that "burqa" journalism was formulaic, O'Riordan believes. "The 'circumcision from Africa' feature that we were defined by became a byword for all you'd satirise in a woman's magazine as earnest and worthy," she says. "You had this very serious six-page black-and-white feature that ultimately made you want to slash your wrists."
It would be more "compelling", she decided, to entice readers to read shorter, more attractively presented features that nonetheless touched on social issues. So the new edition covers Aids through the singer Beverley Knight's account of a friend's death. "The British public have gone celebrity crazy, and we can't ignore that," says O'Riordan.
BUT that does not bring in the awards. "I agree," she reflects. "We haven't won a major award for four years, but we have been shortlisted. We do have at least one hard-hitting feature in every issue. But I resent the accusation that they're token serious pieces."
The magazine will continue to campaign to reduce binge-drinking; but she dismisses her predecessor's concern to highlight eating disorders as "misguided".
It can be "a bit difficult" having joint publishers, she admits. At the board meetings she attends she hears their "frank exchange of views". Occasionally, she says, the French publishers "really panic" if they feel that their UK edition, the most profitable one, is "going off the rails".
The group's international president, Evelyne Prouvost-Berry, "is a marvellously clever, strident woman, so when she criticises anything my heart really sinks, as she's never completely wrong."
This last happened with some beach photographs in the August edition to which Prouvost-Berry took exception. "She thought they were vulgar. I said, 'That's the point,' as it was a comparison between US and Iranian beach habits. I can see why she wouldn't like them, and probably I secretly guessed. I just hoped she'd appreciate the juxtaposition."
She accepts that Glamour's arrival has been the magazine's biggest challenge. "It was genuinely a really good, fresh take on the glossies. It's smart, it's funny, and it tapped into the Sex and the City milieu. We're a bit more 'me, me, me' now, we're sassy, and we want to talk about shoes as much as we do about men. I did feel when I inherited Marie Claire it was stale."
But isn't it a huge gamble to use a price cut to compete?
"We've only dropped 50p, so our gamble isn't as big as, say, Company's [which dropped by £1.10 in 2001]," replies O'Riordan. "It's all about whether you want to bribe your reader with a free bag, or whether you actually want them to buy you every month."
A free gift can increase circulation by up to 100,000 in any month - but equally, she points out, a recent Victoria Beckham cover led to a 20,000 circulation boost year on year. Besides, she insists that her readership is older and more upmarket than Glamour's, and that's what matters to advertisers. Luxury-goods advertisers, she insists, have not dropped, and October's issue will be even larger than September's.
The Glamour effect may cause more magazines to fail, she says - "I'd imagine Eve is vulnerable, maybe She" - but Marie Claire's future is assured.
"I confess I was terrified before I came in from the printers with the new edition. I thought, 'Oh no, have I become the woman who's taken this great institution and played around with its brand position?' But I don't think I have."
That depends on how many copies walk off the shelves from tomorrow.
(Evening Standard, July 28 2004)
TO its smirking rivals, it looks like panic. Marie Claire, the women's glossy with the fastest-falling circulation, is slashing its cover price, trimming its format, and saturating its opening pages with celebrity features that could be straight from Heat.
Until now, the self-styled "glossy with brains" has affected to ignore the rise of Glamour, its cheaper, handbag-sized competitor, even as its own sales dropped by 10 per cent in the last circulation round. So does a risky 50p price cut and a new compact size suggest that Marie Claire's publishers are belatedly apeing Glamour in desperation?
"Absolutely not," insists Marie O'Riordan, editor of the 16-yearold title for the past three years. "The format change is simply the climax of all our editorial work, closer to the American size that we've always been attracted to. We've simply given the magazine a modern facelift without compromising our values." The new £2.50 cover price, too, is simply a way of "putting cost savings to the reader's benefit" and cutting the reliance on free gifts.
The pressure has been on O'Riordan, a 44-year-old Dubliner, ever since she took over in 2001 from Liz Jones, whose own resignation followed an 11 per cent circulation drop to just above 400,000. Since then, it has fallen to 361,000 for the six months to last December, 20,000 of which were given away. Cosmopolitan sells 100,000 more, and Glamour's sales have soared to 583,000.
Under such circumstances, isn't O'Riordan - a former editor of Elle and More! - worried about keeping her job?
"My publishers and joint owners [the magazine is a partnership between IPC and the French Marie Claire Group] concluded that it was market forces and not editorial content that caused the last drop," she says. "They felt the formula was right. In this job you always expect to get sacked - but at the moment they're completely behind me."
In fact, she suggests, the new six-monthly circulation, out next month, will show a rise. "I can't yet give you the details, but the growth you'll see is all newsstand rather than bulks. We're reinventingthe magazine while we're on a roll, rather than in a panic."
The new package includes a "Cause Celeb" column, in which celebrities discuss issues close to their hearts. Cover-boy Brad Pitt talks about his and Jennifer Aniston's plans for children ("We're still in rehearsals"), and the "Reportage" section exposes nothing more shocking than attractive female Olympians.
There is little echo of the grainy real-world reporting that once won the magazine media awards.
But much of that "burqa" journalism was formulaic, O'Riordan believes. "The 'circumcision from Africa' feature that we were defined by became a byword for all you'd satirise in a woman's magazine as earnest and worthy," she says. "You had this very serious six-page black-and-white feature that ultimately made you want to slash your wrists."
It would be more "compelling", she decided, to entice readers to read shorter, more attractively presented features that nonetheless touched on social issues. So the new edition covers Aids through the singer Beverley Knight's account of a friend's death. "The British public have gone celebrity crazy, and we can't ignore that," says O'Riordan.
BUT that does not bring in the awards. "I agree," she reflects. "We haven't won a major award for four years, but we have been shortlisted. We do have at least one hard-hitting feature in every issue. But I resent the accusation that they're token serious pieces."
The magazine will continue to campaign to reduce binge-drinking; but she dismisses her predecessor's concern to highlight eating disorders as "misguided".
It can be "a bit difficult" having joint publishers, she admits. At the board meetings she attends she hears their "frank exchange of views". Occasionally, she says, the French publishers "really panic" if they feel that their UK edition, the most profitable one, is "going off the rails".
The group's international president, Evelyne Prouvost-Berry, "is a marvellously clever, strident woman, so when she criticises anything my heart really sinks, as she's never completely wrong."
This last happened with some beach photographs in the August edition to which Prouvost-Berry took exception. "She thought they were vulgar. I said, 'That's the point,' as it was a comparison between US and Iranian beach habits. I can see why she wouldn't like them, and probably I secretly guessed. I just hoped she'd appreciate the juxtaposition."
She accepts that Glamour's arrival has been the magazine's biggest challenge. "It was genuinely a really good, fresh take on the glossies. It's smart, it's funny, and it tapped into the Sex and the City milieu. We're a bit more 'me, me, me' now, we're sassy, and we want to talk about shoes as much as we do about men. I did feel when I inherited Marie Claire it was stale."
But isn't it a huge gamble to use a price cut to compete?
"We've only dropped 50p, so our gamble isn't as big as, say, Company's [which dropped by £1.10 in 2001]," replies O'Riordan. "It's all about whether you want to bribe your reader with a free bag, or whether you actually want them to buy you every month."
A free gift can increase circulation by up to 100,000 in any month - but equally, she points out, a recent Victoria Beckham cover led to a 20,000 circulation boost year on year. Besides, she insists that her readership is older and more upmarket than Glamour's, and that's what matters to advertisers. Luxury-goods advertisers, she insists, have not dropped, and October's issue will be even larger than September's.
The Glamour effect may cause more magazines to fail, she says - "I'd imagine Eve is vulnerable, maybe She" - but Marie Claire's future is assured.
"I confess I was terrified before I came in from the printers with the new edition. I thought, 'Oh no, have I become the woman who's taken this great institution and played around with its brand position?' But I don't think I have."
That depends on how many copies walk off the shelves from tomorrow.
(Evening Standard, July 28 2004)
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