When Alternative becomes Natural…

That is of course Alternative Medicine magazine changing its name to Natural Solutions and its tag line from The Art & Science of Healthy Living to Vibrant Health Balanced Living. Why the change? Well the editor-in-chief goes into great length trying to assure readers that nothing have changed except for the name and design. Linda Sparrowe writes in the first issue of Natural Solutions,”…you’ll be happy to discover most everything about the magazine is still here. It looks different, but all the departments you trust remain intact and all the topics continue to have that “AltMed” spin.” In the January issue (with the old name) Ms. Saprrowe writes about the change, “We’ve talked about this (the name change) for quite a while, and now it’s official. For our New Year’s resolution — one we know we can keep — we vow not to change the content you have come to trust month after month, year upon year.” If that is the case, why then bother and change the name of the magazine after 14 years of publishing it under the name Alternative Medicine. The newsstands are already crowded and some magazines will kill to have a 14-year brand to depend on and continue to promote. Change is the only constant in our business; that is a given. But to change for the sake of change is the worst thing than can happen in our business. Many have tried it before and many have failed. I just hope that the folks at Alternative Medicine, sorry Natural Solutions are not destroying a 14-year branded history in one swift change that they go to length to say it is not a change!

Redbook joins the redesigned women’s magazines crowd…but will it help?

The last magazine from the field of the traditional women’s service magazines (used to be referred to as the Seven Sisters: Better Homes and Gardens, Ladies’ Home Journal, Woman’s Day, Family Circle, Good Housekeeping, Redbook, and the departed McCall’s) just released its “new editorial platform.” Redbook sports a new tagline (love your life), a bigger physical size, and a new design. The re-launch issue comes with two newsstand covers and one subscription cover. All editions have their own flip cover of either Tim or Faith. The famous love/sex exchange is absent from this revamped look. Will all these revamps help the traditional women’s magazines regain some of their newsstand’s momentum? Not really, says a friend who is a magazine publisher of a non-traditional women’s service magazine. She told me in an e-mail responding to my blog about Woman’s Day’s redesign,

“I have to say…much of what was identified in your article about Woman’s Day, is not at all in keeping with what we heard directly from the readers. In my personal opinion, the great failing of magazines is that they don’t listen to the reader, and instead follow the lead of the advertising community that pays the bills!!”

I could not have said it any better…listen to the reader. Thank you.

Simplify and 9 other tips I learned from the new Woman’s Day

I do not believe in redesigns. I tell my clients all the time that magazines are not born for redesigns and face-lifts. Plastic surgery will not help. The best way for a magazine to succeed is to debut a “new editorial platform,” to keep up with the times. Change is the only constant in our business and for us to change it means we have to go beyond a redesign. Woman’s Day, starting with the July 10 issue debuts such a “new editorial platform.” The last of the women’s service magazines to reinvent itself is Woman’s Day. I was able to find 10 good examples to follow in the process of “reinvention.”
1. Simplify. Editor in Chief Jane Chesnutt writes, “If you can count on learning one thing in our pages it’s to simplify, simplify, simplify.”
2. Navigate. In the age of the internet, magazines can be the best vehicle to ease the navigation through the pages. Woman’s Day offers an easy to follow navigation marker: Live Well Every Day.
3. Create a Splash page. In order to make navigation easy, every section of the magazine must have its own opening page. I call that the “Splash Page.” Woman’s Day offers four splash pages: live well, health, solutions, and eat well.
4. Welcome from both ends. Make sure that your readers feel welcomed whether they look at the first page of the magazine or the last page. In Woman’s Day My Daily WD welcomes you on page one and the Last Word help you re.new on the last page.
5. Engage in all pages. From the editor’s letter to the masthead Woman’s Day engages the readers with more than 11 entry and exit points. Pages that a lot of people write off as wasted space, Woman’s Day creates a good hook for readers to stick to those pages.
6. Group. Do not be afraid to gather all the information about the same topic in the same place. Whether it is an article, a department or some tidbits of information put them all together in one area of the magazine. Readers are busy. They like for you to save them time from searching from one side to the other of the magazine in order to find all the health articles. Place them in one place. In Woman’s Day if it is food and eating well, it is all on pages 125 through 152. It is all about food. No flip flops here.
7. Promise and Deliver. A lot of magazines promise and a lot of readers buy the magazine once for the promises, twice for the delivering of those promises. Woman’s Day promises 84 Health Tips, 20 Ways to Save $100, 13 Top Fat Busters, 15 Favorite Summer Recipes and 10 Top Power Foods… Do not be afraid from too many promises. Remember you can never have too many promises if you deliver on them in the magazine.
8. Bonus. Always try to offer your readers a bonus. Something extra. Something for nothing. It make readers feel good and at the same time benefit from the added bonus. Keep the bonus related to the magazine mission and focus. Woman’s Day offers a free Summer First Aid Chart.
9. Personalize. Make the magazine the reader’s magazine and not the editor’s. “my daily WD” is a very good example of such personalization. All what you need is to write your name.
10. Repeat and Repeat. Do not be afraid of repetition. Readers are creatures of habit. It they like something, they want more of the same. Editors get bored faster than the readers. Keep that in mind and let us hope for a repeat with the next issue of Woman’s Day.

Good (Make that Better) Housekeeping

Rosemary Ellis has done some good housekeeping on the May issue of Good Housekeeping magazine. The magazine sprouts a new look and a lot of new additional departments, all in time for Mother’s Day. One of my favorite pages is the Index page. The Index page offers you Good Housekeeping’s content for that month by topic. It gives the magazine the fastest search engine available. Check the category you are interested in from Beauty & Skin Care to Food & Nutrition, to Tech and you will find the name of the article and the page number next to it. Even the recipes are divided into Sides and Salads, Main Dishes and Desserts. An easy to use approach with a lot of consideration to today’s busy woman, the magazine provides “good” information in less time and less space. The May issue of Good Housekeeping is dedicated to “all the wonderful mothers” like Rosemary’s own mother who, in Rosemary’s own words, “kept Good Housekeeping on her night table for roughly half a century, and she learned I was coming here as editor only a couple of weeks before she died.” A great Mother’s Day gift and a wonderful tribute to all the moms of the world who make our homes a better place to be.

Goodies under the cover; take 2

Liz Vaccariello, editor-in-chief of Prevention reminded me that since she started working at Prevention (last August), her plan was “to start playing with a new cover strategy right away.” Since November the covers changed, and thus the reason for no major changes between March and April covers…So for the sake of better comparison take a look at an old cover (right below) and at the April cover…you have to agree a job well done!

Goodies under the cover

It used to be said you can judge a book by its cover, well in the case of Prevention, you can’t. The cover of the April issue may look the same like the cover of the March issue, but the insides of the April issue are a completely different story. Prevention’s editor-in-chief Liz Vaccariello has added a surge of energy, color, photography and great content to the guts of the 57-year-old magazine. The new Prevention sports a pleasant, easy to navigate design with splash pages introducing every section of the magazine. Whether it is Health, Real Life, Nutrition, Beauty, Fitness and Mind it is all in there. With an emphasis on the answers for “what is in it for me” questions, Prevention is a must read for every health conscious woman. Prevention maybe 57 years old, but the April issue looks and feels like a strong, healthy and ageless energetic women….

The new Time magazine

Time magazine lost its newsweekly feel and put on a healthy glossy feel. Just received the first issue of the redesigned Time and felt the urge to write this blog before I even finish reading the issue. Hard to put down and lots to read over the weekend. The future of weekly magazines as we know it is here. A job very well done and a giant step toward how the newsweeklies are going to reinvent themselves and bring meaning and relevance to their content. There is no use in focusing on the future if we can not survive the present. Take a look at some sample pages from the redesigned Time…