GQ (originally Gentlemen's Quarterly) is a monthly men's magazine focusing upon fashion, style, and culture for men, through articles on food, movies, fitness, sex, music, travel, sports, technology, and books.
This GQ magazine, represented by LeBron James was published quite recently, January 13th 2009 by Condé Nast publications.
Condé Nast is credited with creating the now widely used magazine marketing strategy emphasizing magazines focused on a particular class or interest, sometimes known as lifestyle magazines. Many Condé Nast magazines have their principal focus in fashion, although the company's publications also include travel, food, home, culture, and other interests.
In late September 2009, Condé Nast was forced to cut 25% of their budget, resulting in advertising sales.
The foundation of the GQ magazine, presents fashion, style, and culture for men, through articles on food, movies, fitness, sex, music, travel, sports, technology, and books. This suggests GQ’s motive is to represent these topics to the public and to share interesting stories to do with celebrities, such as LeBron James shown in this GQ magazine.
Since GQ consists of a wide variety of topics like fitness, sex and sport. This seems to represent a male dominated target audience. Furthermore, to emphasis this specific gender audience, a famous well- known basketball player is presented on the front cover, LeBron James. Additionally, this GQ magazine would also target people who are aged mainly between 16 to middle aged adults.
This GQ magazine has been sold around the world to many countries, including the UK. Specifically in the UK, there have been 61,597 News trade and other single coy sales. Also, in other countries 23,359 single copy sales have been sold in 2007 in a two half month period. This shows how well the magazine has been sold, as the GQ brand has been advertised around the world and in wealth and popular countries such as the USA.
The magazine consists of numerous advertisements. The magazine particularly advertises fitness and popular sports individuals, such as LeBron James. It also advertises fashionable clothing worn by celebrities, which emphasis how large the impact of the media is, as it creates a stereotypical mind of what to wear and especially how to look.
The LeBron James GQ magazine proves difficulty online availability. This could create a knock on effect as this may cause a decline in advertisement and publicising the GQ magazine. As a result the GQ magazine has a well thought out method of publicising their magazine. In the UK the magazine is monitored freely distributed which totals up to 9,533. This contributes to the advertisement of GQ’s content.
The GQ website portrays itself as showing several appropriate images to do with the magazines content and indicates clarity. This is because the website’s layout is shown in columns, written down the page. There are also a few adverts amongst the sides of the web page that provide a sophisticated aspect to the website. The GQ page consists of having sub headings at the top of the page, instantly giving the viewer more of a choice of their interest to browse upon, which also contributes of how the website is user friendly by considering the audiences point of view.
The online presence of the magazine is mildly good. The reason for this is that the website does show the magazine front cover and provides a small but relative amount if information. However, some magazines are far more accessible, as their websites allow viewers to browse through the magazine from being able to turn the page.
The website does not really differ in appearance from the magazine. This can be proved as the magazine has a world famous star, LeBron James who will immediately attract readers. Compared to the GQ website, which is so well known and viewed, it also consists of more than one international celebrity such as, Jay Z, Lily Allen and Nicole Kidman. Furthermore, the magazine also reflects the website’s content, as the front cover tells the audience what is the latest fashion, looking at physical looks of attractive people and other American attributes.
The GQ homepage consists of numerous features. This entails, things like downloads, links and other extras. The website has downloads of articles consisting of factors the audience sees and who are interested in, such stories, such as best high street shoes or even Daniel Craig Casino Royal workout. The homepage also obtains downloads of videos, like Jay Z’s music tips or an interview with Sir Michael Canine. Additionally, the website further has internal links, mainly towards the GQ daily comment from the GQ editors. All of these examples also relate to the term convergence as they merge together to back up GQ.
Furthermore, the website does present itself as up to date. It does this by, as previously mentioned has daily news, focusing on celebrity’s lives and shows what the most recent up to date fashionable look is. All these features allow the website to have a sense of verisimilitude.
In addition, the GQ website incorporates advertising, particularly focusing on fashion and accessories. Specifically, the website mainly advertises watches, clothes and technical devices, such as playstation 3 or an Xbox 360. It also presents a Stella advert portraying a more masculine audience.
When the website launched, this had a positive knock on effect. As the GQ name expanded in the world, magazines rose in sales, as more people have come in reading with the GQ website, individuals have been choosing the GQ magazine as the website shows what it has to offer.
Advertisements are different from the adverts in the magazine, compared to the ones on the website. This is a very good way of showing great variety, as the same adverts would bore the reader. Also, this would give GQ more profits as they are advertising more items or clips from different companies on the website.
Additionally, there is no real huge price difference between advertising in the magazine than on the website. On the other hand, if one is selling or viewed more, the price on advertising may change, as more people are looking at specific adverts.
The consumer obtains more of a visual and involved feeling from the magazine. This is because the website does not show all the magazine pages as this prevents the reader from looking at content. However, the magazine lets the reader have a more of a closer and personal view of the GQ magazine. It also allows audience interactivity through blogging, votes, links and downloads, as this creates an interactive experience.
Condé Nast is credited with creating the now widely used magazine marketing strategy emphasising magazines focused on a particular class or interest. Many Condé Nast magazines have their principal focus in fashion, although the company's publications also include travel, food, home, culture, and other interests.
The company's most recent publication, a business monthly called Condé Nast Portfolio, was shuttered after just over a year, in April 2009. One of Condé Nast's oldest titles and one with a paid circulation of nearly 1 million, the 106-year-old US edition of ‘House and Garden’ magazine, ceased publication after the December 2007 issue. In late September 2009, Conde Nast was forced to cut 25% of their budget, citing decrease in advertising sales. The cut comes in the middle of a failing print media industry that is struggling with a transition to a digital business model.On October 5, 2009 Condé Nast announced the closure of four of its publications: Cookie Magazine, Modern Bride and Elegant Bride. Gourmet Magazine will cease monthly publication with its November 2009 issue. The Gourmet brand will continue to focus on television programing and cookbooks.
Condé Nast’s future looks realistically fine. However, the relationship between the institution and the audiences are crucial for social and profitable aspect. Since there are several media platforms in the world today, such as the internet, TV, mobils phones, it will require more of a challenge to engage and find what the specific audience is between a particular magazine. This is because the authentic world is becoming more digital and creates a harder task to pin point particular audiences.
Condé Nast is owned by a large comglomerate intitution that creates a huge impact to the world that is owned and riun by S.I Newhouse Jr. This company affects people’s lives in several ways, such as what they read and what interests of ceratin individuals are. This is because of the process synergy may occur to maximise audience viewing, especially from advertising. This has a huge influence of what the public think and what they do as media has a large impact of what people like and dislike. The is emphaisied by the media or large companies, such as Condé Nast can portray different madia texts in different ways.
Through merges and buyouts the company cuts down its competition. Investors and advertisers may be attracted to Condé Nast. The is because this giant media company has a predicted to produce high profits. As a result investors seem to look at the economic aspect and may see a good opportunity to invest to receive a large share. Additionally, advertisers may also benefit from the institution from yet another profitiable perspective as their products can be promoted from marketing.
Large global media organisations may not really appeal to the audience. This may be because these large crossmedia businesses are only interested purely in profit. This may cause the relationship between the audience and institution to deteriorate as the audience may seem to realise the institution does not take into consideration the demands and views of the audience. Also the quality of journalism is in doubt if a company owns all the the magazine in a particular genre.
Over the years, Condé Nast has maintained its position as one of the media giants of society. To ensure this this giant media institution has created a statergie of cross media ownership. This consists of having institutions owning several media, companies like Condé Nast, Fox news and Sky TV. Furthermore, Condé Nast have also used new technologies which entail developing hardware and software that will promote the consumption of the media. As a result the company receives a large profit which is created from these techniques inorder to maintain their position in reality.
Several magazines consider online and alternative publishing methods. I too, also think it is crucial for different magazines to consider various publishing techniques and which may lead to success.
Many inexperienced publishers lock themselves into a single strategy and they fall apart when their circumstances change. Magazines should always be prepared for change in terms of publishing as some resources that publishers use may run out. Furthermore, I strongly agree that articles should bear in mind numerous substitute strategies. This is because of new competitors who will come challenge magazines, with addition to that readers will change their reading structure. This will then cause an organisation to continually evolve and adapt to the large and unpredictable media industry.
By magazines that are taking into account alternative publishing methods, they are creating a knock on effect that will lead to broadening their target market. For example, if magazines are to consider online publishing this will attract a very large target audience. This will expand the number of viewers and consumers, mainly by people who have access to online equipment, such as a computer or iphones. Therefore magazines are targeting a wide range of audiences in order to receive a beneficial and profitable income.
As some magazines acquire different techniques towards their publishing strategies, this may lead to an issue of narrowing the accessibility. Similarly in the previous example of target audience, considering the publication online may limit the viewers, since not everyone has availability online.
This may prove unbeneficial, as fewer individuals will visit the magazine online, but overall, still a necessity.
However, the changes and improvements I would make if I were a magazine publisher would be making sure that my magazine would be more interactive with the reader. I would also consider pre planning in terms of knowing who are my target audience are to attract them to read my original and interesting content. Furthermore, I would also improve the availability of my magazine I would receive a maximum share of profit. In order for me to accomplish this greater access of my magazine I would act on numerous things. This entails actions, such as online use; the magazine would be attained in local shops or even advertising it on the radio, television or on billboards. I think this will help improve the publicity of my magazine significantly.
