The prominent display of the woman in the front cover is the first thing one notices at a first glance of the magazine. This, without further inspection suggests to the potential buyer that Bella is a woman’s magazine. The beaming smile of the woman is shown in great prominence portraying the general mood of the magazine as positive. The picture has also been edited to give an airbrushed finish and therefore looks more glamorous. Upon closer inspection one can also see the lack of make-up used; this is essential to the marketing strategy of Bella representing real women with real beauty as opposed to excessive use of cosmetics. The woman also seems to be smiling which clearly portrays the general mood of the magazine as happy and upbeat. The secondary images are relative to their respective articles: i.e. “The love of my life lives on in our baby boy” is next to a picture of a smiling mother and child hugging each other. Three out of the five secondary images all show young children, this reiterates Bella’s target audience as including mothers and aspiring mothers and also portraying the maternal side of the magazine. The “before/after” image of a woman who has lost weight is relative to uphold the claim of “Get a flat tum in 6 weeks” which links with the stereotypical viewpoint that most women are insecure about their weight and looks; referring back to the picture of the smiling woman who is being sold off as perfect and what all women who purchase the magazine will achieve. The airbrushed presentation of clear face, glowing body, attractive smile and teeth is again set as a possible benchmark for buyers. From these connotations we can deduce that the target audience for Bella are women in their mid twenties to mid forties.
The title of the magazine: Bella, which translates to beautiful in Italian, connotes the beauty of women who purchase the magazine being beautiful or becoming beautiful. Plosive words are also used in the taglines increasing emphasis on the meanings themselves; words such as: “shocker”, “monster”, “medical” are used in place of potentially neutral words such as person and mishap. These so-called screamers are used to grab the attention of the reader and amplify the meaning and potential shock caused by the tagline causing the attention of the potential buyer to be concentrated more on the cover and allow words that matter to accentuate effectively. The use of language referring to the articles inside the magazine could be branded as journalistic due to techniques such as alliteration (“diet drama”) and persuasive techniques “Party clothes you’ll love” and “Get a flat tum in 6 weeks” making the reader promises and challenging them.
The advertisements, taglines and article headings are all placed around the woman rather than on top of the image, again reiterating her position as being the centre of attention. We are given a taster of what is inside the magazines with article headings such as “Becoming Slimmer of the Year ruined my life” and “An evil monster wrecked my childhood then married my mum”. The former is a contradiction of the orthodox perception of women as wanting to be slim, losing weight and maintaining the perfect figure however also pertaining to the general acknowledgement that women enjoy gossip and would therefore find this article interesting, this is also true with the latter as it seems the heading is referring to a very controversial article which women would be attracted to. This theme is also evident in “I watched my SUPERMAN fly past my window” and “We let doctors cut off his feet NOW HE CAN WALK” both using controversy and a maternal approach to attract the target audience. Another technique used to attract buyers is the use of competition: “£10,000 M&S lingerie GIVEAWAY”, lingerie being a female item of clothing and £10,000 being a large sum of money, this is vital as it again focuses explicitly on the target audience of females.
As I noted in my introduction, a front cover essential to a magazine’s growth and is more important than the content for first-time buyers. A successful magazine cover would be one which uses all techniques at its disposal to its advantage through use of journalistic techniques, colours, images and linguistic devices to attract its target audience. In this instance the magazine Bella which is aimed at women uses feminine colours, feminine stereotypes, feminine pictures and common aspirations to attract its target audience. It effectively executes these media techniques to attract and maintain the attention and loyalty (through purchase) of its target audience.
