Analysis of Editorial and Advertising Content for Glamour Magazine

I have been asked by my lecturer to analyse the editorial and advertising content of a lifestyle magazine of my choice. The magazine that I have chosen is Glamour; the reason that I chose this magazine, is because it is Britain’s number one women’s magazine and has been in circulation for over seventy years. Glamour is a prestigious fashion magazine first printed in 1939 by Conde Nast Publishing who are responsible for numerous fashion and lifestyle magazines including Vogue, Men’s Vogue, Allure, GQ and many more. Topics addressed by the magazine include: Love, Fashion, Sex, Beauty, Health and lifestyle and Celebrity gossip. Glamour is recognised as a world-class fashion magazine and it is now published in the US, UK and numerous countries across Europe.

The advertising director for Glamour is Grace Dawson, and the fashion Assistant is Kerryn Grady, the products advertised are all premium brands like Dior, Yves Saint Laurent, DKNY, D&G and many more. The number of pages used in the magazine to advertise products greatly exceeds the number of pages with editorial content. The front cover of the magazine is dominated by Danni Minogue, a highly influencing style icon for more than two decades and the main topics addressed in the March 2010 issue.

The magazine is printed on high quality glossy paper sending out a message of being luxurious, some of the advertising companies have attached samples of the products they are advertising and there is also a free gift offer from Benefit make up with every subscription to the magazine. The back cover is a celebrity-endorsed by Charlie Theron for J’adore Dior perfume, a high cost to any marketing department, and on the inside of the back page is Cheryl Cole endorsing L’Oreal Hair products, inside of the front cover is a double spread advertising Lancome.

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These are the most expensive advertising spaces that a company can buy in a magazine as they are the first and last pages the reader looks at making them more memorable. There are a number of advertisements for men’s products such as aftershaves throughout, which are more likely a tactic by marketers to target women to buy these products as gifts as it is solely directed towards a male reader. There is a strong presence of sex in the advertising content; many of the images are provocative images to advertise the clothing ranges mostly, images that would not have been acceptable to print in the editions in the early 1940’s, people of today are becoming desensitised towards these images as they are more familiar with them.

The editorial content starts on page 74, all pages before this are mainly advertisements and some acknowledgements and details of all editors, directors and managers. The editorial content starts with the topic of sex, which is then followed by a conservative political view and an exclusive interview with David Cameron although there is not much depth to the editorial content the writer takes a more light hearted approach researching Cameron’s personal life, his appearance and daily regime than into political views and issues surrounding the conservative party. The front cover has all the main issues addressed in the magazine in a bold red and black font with the largest most important being “723+ styles fixes”. Inside about quarter of the way in is a page devoted to readers letters and how much they have appreciated articles from previous issues and how they have helped the reader in their personal situations, with the winning letter receiving a camera to the value of  150.

Glamour magazine is marketed towards career orientated heterosexual women, who are fashion conscious with targeted reader age of between 19 and 50. The socio economic class of the women that read this magazine would be typically either lower middle class or middle class, professional or junior management, educated and possibly with a political interests and a high level of disposable income as the goods advertised are designer brands such as D &G, Calvin Klein and premium brand make up like Lancome and Dior. In the 70’s VALS Value and lifestyle segmentation was developed for commercial purposes in California in an attempt by SRI International to have a better understanding of consumer lifestyle.

Created to identify and group people accordingly so that they could predict consumer values and motivations to that they could target to the correct customers and make marketing attempts more efficient. 400 Consumer Behaviour, Ray Wright By using the VALS table I would group the target reader of Glamour as achievers. Marketing and promotional content Glamour magazine has been available to buy as a paper copy since 1939 and in more recent years has become available digitally. The cost of buying a paper copy of Glamour is a fixed price of  weekly, and is available in any large supermarket or book store, once a paper copy has been bought the reader can use the promotional certificate inside to get six copies at half price and get a free gift also.

By accessing the Glamour website customers can avail of accounts based marketing, Glamour allow their readers to subscribe online which offers them business to customer savings and free gifts with their subscription, the process is simple, the reader only has to click on the subscription link and follow the direct debit instructions. Glamour is Britain’s No. women’s magazine, with circulatory figures for Glamour year ending 2009 were 515,281 according to Audit Bureau of Circulation Glamour’s promotional presence online is that on all the Conde Nast Publications, there is a footer throughout the websites which gives the user links to all Conde Nast publications and all of their brands, for example the footer is placed on all Conde Nast websites making Glamour Magazine accessible from other websites such as Vogue and GQ. The footer also offers the reader the option of contacting the magazine in numerous languages including Polish, Spanish, French and German.

Product strategy It is crucial that all elements of the product strategy complement each other, by ensuring the right mix of product, pricing strategy, promotion and place, will determine the success of the good/service. Identifying the need for the product is the basis, the pricing strategy must be realistic and meet the needs of the target market, Glamour has a set weekly price of  2 for their magazine, and the average cost of a magazine is between 50p and  4 making Glamour priced at middle of the range.

The promotional element of Glamour’s magazine is done with the use of A list celebrities on the front cover, fashion icons and idols, selling provocative images and the colours that make the magazine stand out amongst others, alongside the online promotion that Conde Nast Publications offer to all their brands using the medium of each brands individual website. The product must be placed where the targeted consumer will be able to access it easily; Glamour is sold through Newsagents, book stores, supermarkets and through pre paid subscriptions.

It is important that a company understands consumer behaviour, it could be the difference between the success or failure of a marketing strategy, if the wrong customers are targeted the efforts will be ineffective and a waste of resources. By appreciating the importance of consumer behaviour marketers will be able to predict better the trends of the consumers and change their products or services to meet the ever changing customer wants and demands. One way of understanding better consumer behaviour is using loyalty cards to track what the consumer is buying and when they buy.

Consumer behaviour theories are crucially important to companies as they help understand Psychology of consumers like Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs of individuals helps outline the basics of psychological need, which therefore helps to market products better and adapt marketing campaigns appropriately. Issues that may influence consumer behaviour may include ethical, or social changes, like the discovery of child labour issues or fur versus fake fur, are consumers as willing to buy if they know issues such as this.

According to Dragon International (1991), and the Cone and Roper study (Simon, 1995) consumers are interested in ethical behaviour beyond those issues that directly impact on them, and would be more discriminating in their purchases if they were given more information about ethically and socially responsible activities. Future trends Future trends that I would predict for the magazine industry is that the decline in circulatory figures will continue, with the presence of the internet becoming stronger and the people trying to become more environmentally friendly.

According to ONS, 70% of homes in the UK now have internet access which is a rise of 28% since 2006. I predict that many of Glamour’s readers will switch from their hard copy and move onto reading their favourite articles online, whilst on the go from mobile devices, although I don’t believe that the digital copy will be the only copy available, hard copies may become fewer and more expensive, as some readers will still enjoy the smell and touch of a paper magazine. Internet Access 0% of households had access in 2009 Office of national statistics .

Conclusion

In conclusion, having analysed Glamour magazine I have found that the reader is being targeted with an enormous amount of advertising content, over half the magazine is adverts for premium products which appear in all Glamour issues only changing moderately, eventually leaving these advertisements unnoticeable. Throughout the magazine there is very little editorial content of which has very little content or depth, the reader is mostly purchasing advertisements. This magazine already has a strong online presence of which I believe will only get stronger following their downturn in psychical sales.

Bibliography

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