Magazines: 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 nmoved 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.

7.3M-Total reach

1.8M- Social followers

£138K- Average  HHI

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

• GQ Heroes : Isuees and Events GQ Heroes is a festival of ideas that brings together game changers, creative radicals, deep thinkers and cultural.  icons for three days of panels and live performances.

• GQ Hype
• Men of the Year  the event will coincide with other GQ markets as Men of the Year creates a truly global moment around the world.
• Tentpole Video and Social Series

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

British GQ’s video series drew more than 45 million views in 2021 – with viewers watching more than 10 million hours of content. Video programming will also hit all of British GQ’s social channels, where audiences have grown more than 30% in the past year to top 2 million.

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 stars for GQ? 

• The mistake, though, is to simply try to get the most famous person for any given month who has a ‘hook’ – a ‘hook’ being a film/ TV show/ album etc they’re promoting, and hence the reason they would do the cover in the first place – but the reality is this often doesn’t work. It needs to be the right person at the right time – that always matters more than fame.
• A very famous person who’s not in a particularly interesting stage in their career/ life will often not sell.
• Endings are often more popular than beginnings – two of GQ’s best-selling covers during my time were Jon Hamm and Bryan Cranston, just as Mad Men and Breaking Bad, respectively, were ending their runs.

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

Just because the standard GQ cover  would be a cool actor in his mid- 30s experiencing a career spike, we  would never only feature that type of cover, as the magazine would become predictable and boring very quickly. At the same time, a huge part of GQ is aspiration, and we often found that if we go too young or too old we would lose that crucial aspiration factor.

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

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. 

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

 A weekly, online-only cover.So, GQ Hype was launched as a perfect middle-ground. With only one per week it still came with prestige, it was still a GQ cover, designed as one, and so that fact alone meant it would get more attention both on Instagram and Twitter than other online-only stories.

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.

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, who has presided over men’s style bible GQ for 22 years, is to step down.

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

Jones has distanced himself from the “lads’ mag” boom of the 1990s, saying it “denigrated our culture”, but he continued to argue that a successful magazine needs “a libido, whether you are French Vogue or Vanity Fair”. He also survived criticism in 2008 for his book Cameron on Cameron, a fly-on-the-wall appreciation of the prospective Conservative prime minister, which contained flattering statements such as “I think you acquitted yourself very well on Jonathan Ross,” and “you seem more confident than you’ve ever been”.

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

Jones will join a growing list of Condé Nast editors to leave the publishing house recently as the company streamlines operations. According to the chief executive officer Roger Lynch, the aim is a stable of magazines that stay “digital-first and globally local with everything we do”. The exodus began last year when Angelica Cheung departed Vogue China after 15 years, Christiane Arp left Vogue Germany and Eugenia de la Torriente left Vogue Spain. Earlier this month both Vogue India editor Priya Tanna and Vogue Japan editor Mitsuko Watanabe left their publications.

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

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

Last year Conde Nast merged the global editorial teams at several of its international magazine brands including GQ, Wired, Vogue and Conde Nast Traveller under a new digital-first strategy designed to produce less duplication of content.

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

Last month, chief executive Roger Lynch told the New York Times the digital-first changes meant Conde 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? 

GQ, he said, was “as good as it’s ever been” as he reported a 77% year-on-year increase in its newsstand sales for its March 2022 edition. He added that there was a “romanticised” vision of print-centred magazines that was becoming “less and less sensical” in the age of the internet. 

Baidawi, who also serves as GQ UK’s head of editorial content, highlighted that across its titles, Conde Nast had seen more than 14 billion annual video views in 2021, up 18% from 2020, as well as a 38% overall increase in digital ad revenues.

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?

The company is focusing on reaching those segments of its audience who do not watch traditional broadcast and cable networks. “Last year we announced the launch of the Condé Nast Influence Network, our alternative to traditional broadcast and cable networks, showcasing our unmatched ability to create video content that resonates with consumers and drives the cultural conversation,” said Drucker Mann. 

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

The company’s global video network currently drives an average of one billion monthly views, with an average of over 18 minutes spent per viewer each month. According to Nielsen Media Impact data, Condé Nast has delivered 10.3 million unique incremental individuals (P18+) who were not reached by broadcast or cable, up six per cent year over year. 

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?

There is a lot of images that look similar to the main image on the print magazine and there are cover lines similar to the print magazine.

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

 It suggests the content they are willing to see and read about which can suggest a more wealthier, upper-class feel. They want to follow trends in society and see what is deemed as fashion as well as the standards of life.

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?

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

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?

The impact of digital media on the print magazines industry

Read this Guardian feature on the struggles 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.

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?

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

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