Magazine Comparison Nuts and Zoo. Discussion of Men's Weekly Magazines

BritMedia Essay2

Magazine Comparison Nuts and Zoo. Discussion of Men’s Weekly Magazines

January saw two publishing giants IPC and EMAP venture into the “no man’s land” of the magazine industry with the publication of two Men’s weekly magazines, intelligently titled Nuts (published by IPC) and Zoo (EMAP). Weekly magazines have traditionally been seen as a women’s arena, they are too “girly” with titles such as Chat and Heat being incredibly successful publications for the above two companies. It was felt that with tabloid newspapers such as The Sun, The Star and The Daily Sport there was no market for a men’s weekly magazine despite the surprise runaway success of the monthlies like FHM, Maxim and Loaded in the 1990s.

IPC and EMAP felt that the risk was worth it and although there has been a war of words over who thought up the concept first; research carried out by the two companies revealed a gap in the market for men who would be happy to purchase a weekly diet of “Beer, breasts and footy” (presumably in that order) according to Paul Merrill, editor of Zoo, and the slightly more altruistic “amazing engineering feats” agenda of Nuts (editor Phil Hilton). In truth although they may have started off with slightly different agendas (Zoo’s was smuttier to put it in a nutshell) just over a year later there is little to differentiate between the two magazines. They even look the same with their red banner titles and pictures of semi clad women on the front cover. Although they initially aimed for a combined circulation of 300 000 the last ABC’s showed Nuts had reached a circulation of 290 000 copies a week and Zoo was trailing it slightly with 210 000. Conventional wisdom now has them neck and neck although we can only be certain when the next ABCs are published in August this year. Perhaps then, despite the initial scepticism of industry insiders, the popularity of these two magazines signify that men really do have a weekly appetite for “beer, breasts and footie”. Or more cynically as Rick Poynor, writing for eyemagazine, put it “If these products then sell, is it because this really is what men want? Or because the evolving conventions of the global market place have engineered public taste to respond to this rubbish?” Whether they are rubbish or not; circulation is rising and although Nuts is winning the circulation game at present both magazines are incredible similar.

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In the 23-31 March issue Nuts promises to tell us why “Jennifer Ellison!!” is “Britain’s hottest footie fan!” (The answer may lie in the fact that she poses topless) as well as a free magazine containing semi naked “50 sexiest footballers wives 2005”. Zoo depicts a bikini clad “Blimey, I say blimey, its Nikki Sanderson!” (who surprisingly does not appear topless) and the “12 Hottest Hollyoaks babes ever!” (Who do). Both magazines are dominated by a mixture of scantily clad women and football stories, of which Zoo has 18 and Nuts has 11. Both include fairly gruesome main features; Nuts discusses Mafia punishments with gory pictures including someone lying in a pool of blood with the caption “A victim of the Mafia’s enforcers”. Zoo runs a story on “Killer Britain” picturing known serial killers and a dead person lying in a pool of blood. Zoo does try and dress up its article asking the pertinent question “Are our streets getting more dangerous” amid a narrative of axe murder and cannibalism. Both have interviews with celebrities with Nuts speaking to Ricky Gervais and Colin Murray as well as having picture dominated page articles on Johnny Vegas and Matt Lucas. Zoo has a main interview with Robin Williams, band Kaiser Chiefs as well as various football interviews. A main feature of both magazines apart from the football pages is their TV guides with listings and highlights of the week, presumably emphasising what men want to watch; both magazines devote 15 pages to TV and reviews. Inevitably both have a double page devoted to semi naked “real girls” who send their photos into the magazines. Nuts pages are entitled “Bedroom babes” and Zoo “Real girls uncensored”.

The consensus amongst columnists discussing the magazines seems to be that Nuts feels classier. John Plunkett writing for The Guardian on the 21st January 2004 just after the launch of the two magazines wrote: “Nuts majors on cars and gadgets, Zoo sticks to girls and gags. If Nuts man likes to get about, it seems Zoo man prefers to stay in his bedroom. It will be interesting to see how long Nuts resists swapping gadgets for girls. It might not but don’t bet on it.” He was right, unfortunately sex does sell. Although Nuts started off less topless women and more gadget orientated there are now no “amazing engineering feats” and far more topless women in sight. Although to be fair there are 2 articles, one is a double page spread, discussing cars. Zoo also has a 4 pages devoted to cars and motorbikes and a further page looking at new gadgets. In this issue, while Nuts has more celebrity interviews and articles, Zoo devotes 4 pages to “52 Best Jacko jokes” the caption “not suitable for children” pretty well signifies what the jokes are about, perhaps you have to be male to find them remotely funny.

The fact that the two magazines overstretched their circulation targets within the first 6 months is a good thing because there is not much advertising in either magazine. Unlike EMAP’s women’s similar women’s magazine Heat which boasts 24 pages of adverts; Zoo has grown from merely 5 pages in its third month of publication to 11 pages of adverts nearly a year later. Nuts however has grown from 6 page adverts to 24, it is the larger magazine having 115 pages while Zoo has 107. Nuts does have a slightly larger page. It is easy in this context to see why people feel that Nuts is classier, although it would be more correct to say that Nuts is slightly less down market than Zoo.