What do men want? More variety in their magazines, publishers hope

Publication:
Chicago Sun-Times
Publish date:
August 22, 1990
Author:
Nancy Millman


`If you look at most of the magazines for men, you'd think all men are interested in are sports, naked women and business," said publishing entrepreneur Owen Lipstein.

While he acknowledges that he's interested in all three subjects, the men's magazine his company created isn't dedicated to any of them.

Instead, 18-month-old Smart includes new fiction, a little fashion, and articles about cultural subjects and trends. The current cover carries "Air America's" Mel Gibson to hype a story on the Hollywood-ization of Vietnam by William Broyles Jr., a well-known writer and former Newsweek editor. And although the magazine's subtitle is "for the intelligent man," intelligent women are comfortable perusing its pages as well.

Next week, Smart will be encountering the first of several new competitors, all trying to lure the readers and advertisers that have fattened up Esquire but are becoming more elusive for the mass magazines such as Playboy, Penthouse and Sports Illustrated.

Men's Life, which is coming from Murdoch Magazines around Labor Day, will be comparable to what Family Circle or McCall's is to women. In the publishing business, they're called "women's service" magazines, and up until now, there hasn't been one for men.

Gentleman's Quarterly offers lots of fashion and grooming advice, and Esquire's expanded "Man At His Best" section this month gives tips on everything to the perfect shave to the best kind of firewood. But all of this style-conscious living advice is for the decidedly upscale man.

The prospective reader of Men's Life is more of a regular guy. He's 30 to 49 years old, has average household income of $48,000 and has been to college. Instead of learning which French Bordeaux wines will last until his son is ready to drink them, this guy's more interested in the right way to change the oil in his car. There are 12.5 million regular guys in America, and Men's Life publisher Leo Scullin doesn't believe any magazine really is talking to them.

He describes the difference between his new magazine and the established publications as one of "editorial tonality." The editorial product is being headed by Barry Golson, 44, who spent 17 years at Playboy, leaving a few months ago from the post of executive editor. Golson was in charge of the "journalism" side of Playboy, notably the magazine's popular interview feature, Scullin said.

So what do men with wives and families and homes and mortgages want to read about? Men's Life will be a combination of investigative journalism, humor, cooking features and parenting stories.

The first issue, which is being kept under wraps until next week, has a major article on the videogame sensation Nintendo. It's written to appeal to men as business people, fathers and gameplayers, said Scullin, who came to the magazine business following a 17-year career at ad agency Young & Rubicam.

If a new magazine is a winner, it can mean big bucks to its parent company. Esquire, for example, a property of Hearst Corp., pulled in $18.7 million in advertising during the first half of 1990. Playboy, which saw sales of ad pages decline by 7 percent in the first half of the year, still had more than $23 million in ad revenue for the period.

The people in ad agencies who make the decisions about placing ads in magazines are taking a wait-and-see attitude toward the new Murdoch entry.

"We live in a country of 90 million households," said Jack Hanrahan, vice president and media director at Leo Burnett Co., Chicago. "If they can't sell 300,000 or 400,000 of this magazine, that's really bad marketing."

He believes that Men's Life might be "a little too broad," in its concept, but that there is a need for practical information. "In my family, I'm the one who plans the trips, makes the hotel reservations. I'd like to read articles on family travel, to learn about good motel deals on the road."

While Men's Life is ready to hit the newsstand, a men's magazine from the publisher of Rolling Stone is in the formative stages.

John Rasmus, who is in his first week of work in New York on the upcoming magazine from Straight Arrow Publishers, is conceptualizing the still-unnamed magazine to debut in late 1991.

Formerly the editor of Chicago-based Outside, Rasmus said he and Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner are not looking for "a niche to be exploited" by advertisers, Rasmus said.

Instead, they want to create "a unique and different magazine that will pique the interest of men.

"If you provide men with an interesting magazine, they will sit still and read and be very loyal."

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