GQ - Audience & Industry

GQ - Audience & Industries blog tasks

Audience

Look through the GQ Media Kit and answer the following questions: 

1) How does the media kit introduction describe GQ?

"As the flagship of men’s fashion and style in Britain, to be GQ is to be forward-looking, progressive and cutting-edge."

2) What does the media kit suggest about masculinity? 

As masculinity evolves and men's fashion has moved to the centre of the global pop-culture conversation, GQ's authority has never been broader or stronger.

3) Pick out three statistics from the data on page 2 and explain what they suggest about the GQ audience.

£138K

AVERAGE HHI

61%

ABC1

£7.7K

AVERAGE ANNUAL

SPEND ON FASHION

These three statistics show that the average GQ reader has disposable income and is most likely in the upper-middle classes of society

4) Look at page 3 - brand highlights. What special editions do GQ run and what do these suggest about the GQ audience?

GQ Heroes - GQ readers are aspirers

GQ Hype - GQ readers are aspirers

GQ Men of the year - GQ readers are aspirers

5) Still on page 3, what does the video and social series section suggest about how magazine audiences are changing?

Magazine audiences are moving online

Media Magazine feature: GQ

Go to our Media Magazine archive and read the article on GQ (MM82 - page 12). Answer the following questions:

1) What are the elements that go into choosing a cover star for GQ? 

They focus on choosing a famous person who is at an interesting stage in their career, and has not shared their story publicly yet

2) How is the magazine constructed to serve the target audience? 

Fundamentally, GQ is a men’s style magazine, and so GQ is always in service to that, both in print and online. Certainly, GQ wouldn’t consider itself just this – at its best, it’s also a brilliant

forum for excellent profile writing and world-class photography and design, along with award-winning longform feature writing and sharp culture writing – but men’s style is the magazine’s core, and, along with high-end watch brands, is where the vast majority of the magazine’s advertising revenue comes from.

3) What does the article suggest about GQ's advertisers and sponsorships - and what in turn does this tell us about the GQ audience?

I suppose the obvious answer, in terms of advertisers, is brands that want to promote themselves in the sphere of male, high-end, luxury lifestyle. So, everything from top-tier tailoring to the latest sports cars. These brands are often heritage brands, so the names wouldn’t change much from month to month, or year to year. Sponsors tend to be a little more fluid. These will often be the brands who, for instance, sponsor individual categories at the Men of the Year awards, or partner with GQ’s live talks event, GQ Heroes. These won’t necessarily be fashion brands, but crucially the goal will be to align their brand with the GQ one – a Chinese mobile phone manufacturer with a new luxury phone, for instance, may want to sponsor a Men of the Year award as GQ readers would be their target market, and the winner of the award will, of course, likely be a famous, aspirational individual. The only problem that potentially arises is if a brand feels that, by sponsoring an award, they have a say in who wins it – they don’t, and GQ could never guarantee any individual winner anyway, as there are so many factors involved.

4) What is GQ Hype - and how does it reflect the impact of digital media on traditional print media?

A weekly, online-only cover. It reflects the adaptation that print magazines have made in order to keep up with digital media.

 

5) Finally, what does the article say about additional revenue streams for print magazines like GQ?

Extra revenue streams are vital to the magazine business these days – it’s almost impossible to survive without them. It’s about deciding the key areas in which the brand is strong and focussing on those, rather than expanding into areas you are not associated with. So, along with the annual Men of the Year awards – using GQ’s unparalleled celebrity contacts – GQ also had an annual car awards, and a food and drink awards. All subjects covered in the magazine, but crucially, focussing on high-end and luxury, as the magazine does. GQ’s most recent innovation was the GQ Heroes event, where revenue is generated by both ticket prices and sponsorship. There is no set process for how these events and awards etc. have been decided, but all staff are invited to contribute ideas, and good ones will simply be explored with GQ’s advertising department, to see if they are economically viable.

Industries

Your industries contexts are divided into three areas - Conde Nast, GQ's website and social media content and the impact of digital media on print industries.

Condé Nast

Read this Guardian news article on editorial changes at Condé Nast and answer the following questions: 

1) Who was previously GQ editor for 22 years? 

Dylan Jones

2) What happened to the 'lads' mag' boom magazines such as Nuts, Maxim and Loaded? 

Nuts & Maxim closed, whereas Loaded went online only

3) What changes have been taking place at Condé Nast in recent years and why? 

Editors have left their jobs in order to streamline operations

Read this Press Gazette article on Conde Nast. Answer the following questions:

1) What does the article suggest about Condé Nast's recent strategy? 

The changes also involved a new focus on digital income streams over print advertising revenue, with about 25% of the company’s revenues over the next four years invested into prioritising the expansion of video and digital content to boost online subscriptions and e-commerce.

2) How does chief executive Roger Lynch describe Condé Nast and why?

Condé Nast was “no longer a magazine company,” saying it has “70 million people who read our magazines, but we have 300 something million that interact with our websites every month and 450 million that interact with us on social media”.

3) What does Adam Baidawi say about Condé Nast, GQ and culture?

“Conde Nast, as much as anything else, is in the business of shaping and reflecting culture. Culture moves, and we have to move with it.

“If you take GQ, for instance, I don’t think we were in a position to shape and reflect culture with 21 siloed businesses around the world centred around print products.”

He added: “I think our previous model worked really well for a very, very long time. I also think it was very romanticised and that over years it became less and less sensical in a globalised world.”

Baidawi went on: “I grew up with Conde Nast magazines. I’m the sucker who paid 22 Australian dollars to buy British GQ in Melbourne, Australia at the newsstand… I still think we’re making comfortably the best print magazines on Earth.”

He said print subscriptions are “actually up” across the Conde Nast portfolio this year but that “print for us is just one focus. It’s one product in a portfolio that we’re really proud of”.

Read this FIPP feature on Condé Nast diversifying into video and streaming content. Answer the following questions: 

1) How is Condé Nast moving away from traditional print products?

Condé Nast has announced 75 returning series and 50 new pilots across 17 brand channels for 2021-2022, capitalising on huge growth in streaming in the past year.

2) What examples are provided of Condé Nast's video and streaming content?

During its annual NewFront presentation today (4 May) which took place online, audiences heard about Vogue’s expansion into wellness, GQ Sports’ 2022 Super Bowl lineup, and Vanity Fair’s expansion into audio. The company also launched Condé Nast Shoppable, a new video capability that provides buyable opportunities for viewers in real time. 

3) What does the end of the article suggest modern media audiences want? 

“Audiences want to be participants, not just passive viewers – and of course, they want content 100 per cent personalised for them,”

GQ website, video and social media content 

Visit the GQ website, Instagram and YouTube channel. Note that some of these may be blocked in school. Once you have looked over GQ's online content, answer the following questions:

1) What similarities do you notice between the website and the print edition of the magazine?

They both contain the GQ logo

They both contain images

2) Analyse the top menu of the GQ website (e.g. Fashion / Grooming / Culture). What do the menu items suggest about GQ's audience?

GQ's audience are interested in fashion & lifestyle

3) What does GQ's Instagram feed suggest about the GQ brand? Is this appealing to a similar audience to the print version of the magazine?

Yes, it is appealing to a similar audience. The feed suggests that the GQ brand promotes hard-working celebrities

4) In your opinion, is GQ's social media content designed to sell the print magazine or build a digital audience? Why?

I believe that it is to build a digital audience as the potential to make money and reach new people is very high

5) Evaluate the success of the GQ brand online. Does it successfully communicate with its target audience? Will the digital platforms eventually replace the print magazine completely?

Yes, it successfully communicates with its target audience. No, the digital platforms won't replace the print magazine completely?

The impact of digital media on the print magazines industry

Read this Guardian feature on the struggled of the UK print magazine industry and answer the following questions:

1) What statistics are provided to demonstrate the decline in the print magazines industry between 2010 and 2017? What about the percentage decline from 2000?

Sales of the top 100 actively purchased print titles in the UK – those that readers buy or subscribe to – fell by 42% from 23.8m to 13.9m between 2010 and 2017. Since the start of the internet era in 2000, the decline is 55% from 30.8m, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

Similarly, advertising in consumer titles will have more than halved from £512m in 2010 to £250m by the end of this year, according to Group M, a media buying agency.

2) What percentage of ad revenue is taken by Google and Facebook?

Google and Facebook account for 65% of the $6.5bn (£4.7bn) UK digital display ad market. They are also strangling attempts by magazine and newspaper publishers to build their digital ad revenues by taking about 90% of all new spend.

3) What strategies can magazine publishers use to remain in business in the digital age?

Wildman says for magazines to survive they must build a brand beyond the core print publication.

“It is overly simplistic to say it is just digital versus print,” he says. “Magazine businesses are much more diverse. We ran 100 events related to our magazines last year – [a] Harper’s Bazaar [event] sold out in hours at £600 a head.

“Endorsement, accreditation and licensing are increasingly lucrative. DFS sell House Beautiful and Country Living [named after titles] range sofas. And the bestselling premium home gym at Argos is branded after our Men’s Health magazine.”

4) What examples from the Guardian article are provided to demonstrate how magazines are finding new revenue streams?

Nevertheless, mounting pressure on the traditional print magazine business, which still drives most revenues, is forcing consolidation as publishers seek scale to survive.

Time Inc in the US, which publishes People, Fortune and Sports Illustrated, has just been sold to rival Meredith for $1.8bn; the UK arm was picked up by Epiris.

Last year, Immediate Media, which publishes 60 titles including Radio Times and Top Gear, was sold to the German publisher Hubert Burda, owner of Your Home and HomeStyle, for £270m. Despite the gloom, magazine publishers, like their newspaper counterparts, sense an opportunity as brand safety and measurement issues have prompted advertisers to closely scrutinise the once unquestionable value of investing in digital media such as YouTube and Facebook.

5) Now think of the work you've done on GQ. How is GQ diversifying beyond print? 

They are building an online presence through their Instagram, YouTube channel, and any other forms of online media