GQ - Audience & Industry

Audience

Look through the GQ Media Kit and answer the following questions: 

1) How does the media kit introduction describe GQ?

• As the flagship of men’s fashion and style in Britain, to be GQ is to be forward-looking, progressive and cutting-edge.

2) What does the media kit suggest about masculinity? 

• As masculinity evolves and men's fashion has moved to the centre of the global pop-culture conversation, GQ's authority has never been broader or stronger.

3) Pick out three statistics from the data on page 2 and explain what they suggest about the GQ audience.

1. Total reach - 7.3M
2. Social followers - 1.8M
3. Average  HHI - £138K

4) Look at page 3 - brand highlights. What special editions do GQ run and what do these suggest about the GQ audience?

• GQ Heroes: Issues and Events GQ Heroes is a festival of ideas that brings together game changers, creative radicals, deep thinkers and cultural.  icons for three days of panels and live performances.
• GQ Hype: Men of the Year the event will coincide with other GQ markets as Men of the Year creates a truly global moment around the world.

5) Still on page 3, what does the video and social series section suggest about how magazine audiences are changing? 

• British GQ’s video series drew more than 45 million views in 2021 – with viewers watching more than 10 million hours of content. Video programming will also hit all of British GQ’s social channels, where audiences have grown more than 30% in the past year to top 2 million.

Media Magazine feature: GQ

Go to our Media Magazine archive and read the article on GQ (MM82 - page 12). Answer the following questions:

1) What are the elements that go into choosing a cover stars for GQ? 

• The mistake, though, is to simply try to get the most famous person for any given month who has a ‘hook’ – a ‘hook’ being a film/ TV show/ album etc they’re promoting, and hence the reason they would do the cover in the first place – but the reality is this often doesn’t work. It needs to be the right person at the right time – that always matters more than fame.
• A very famous person who’s not in a particularly interesting stage in their career/ life will often not sell.
• Endings are often more popular than beginnings – two of GQ’s best-selling covers during my time were Jon Hamm and Bryan Cranston, just as Mad Men and Breaking Bad, respectively, were ending their runs.

2) How is the magazine constructed to serve the target audience? 

• Just because the standard GQ cover  would be a cool actor in his mid- 30s experiencing a career spike, we  would never only feature that type of cover, as the magazine would become predictable and boring very quickly. At the same time, a huge part of GQ is aspiration, and we often found that if we go too young or too old we would lose that crucial aspiration factor.

3) What does the article suggest about GQ's advertisers and sponsorships - and what in turn does this tell us about the GQ audience? 

• Brands that want to promote themselves in the sphere of male, high-end, luxury lifestyle. So, everything from top-tier tailoring to the latest sports cars. These brands are often heritage brands, so the names wouldn’t change much from month to month, or year to year.
• Sponsors tend to be a little more fluid. These will often be the brands who, for instance, sponsor individual categories at the Men of the Year awards, or partner with GQ’s live talks event, GQ Heroes. 

4) What is GQ Hype - and how does it reflect the impact of digital media on traditional print media?

•  A weekly, online-only cover. So, GQ Hype was launched as a perfect middle-ground. With only one per week it still came with prestige, it was still a GQ cover, designed as one, and so that fact alone meant it would get more attention both on Instagram and Twitter than other online-only stories.

5) Finally, what does the article say about additional revenue streams for print magazines like GQ?  

• Extra revenue streams are vital to the magazine business these days – it’s almost impossible to survive without them. It's about deciding the key areas in which the brand is strong and focusing on those, rather than expanding into areas you are not associated with.

Industries

Your industries contexts are divided into three areas - Conde Nast, GQ's website and social media content and the impact of digital media on print industries.

Condé Nast

Read this Guardian news article on editorial changes at Condé Nast and answer the following questions: 

1) Who was previously GQ editor for 22 years? 

• Dylan Jones

2) What happened to the 'lads' mag' boom magazines such as Nuts, Maxim and Loaded? 

• Jones has distanced himself from the “lads’ mag” boom of the 1990s, saying it “denigrated our culture”, but he continued to argue that a successful magazine needs “a libido, whether you are French Vogue or Vanity Fair”. He also survived criticism in 2008 for his book Cameron on Cameron, a fly-on-the-wall appreciation of the prospective Conservative prime minister, which contained flattering statements such as “I think you acquitted yourself very well on Jonathan Ross,” and “you seem more confident than you’ve ever been”.

3) What changes have been taking place at Condé Nast in recent years and why? 

• Jones will join a growing list of Condé Nast editors to leave the publishing house recently as the company streamlines operations. According to the chief executive officer Roger Lynch, the aim is a stable of magazines that stay “digital-first and globally local with everything we do”. The exodus began last year when Angelica Cheung departed Vogue China after 15 years, Christiane Arp left Vogue Germany and Eugenia de la Torriente left Vogue Spain. Earlier this month both Vogue India editor Priya Tanna and Vogue Japan editor Mitsuko Watanabe left their publications.

Read this Press Gazette article on Conde Nast. Answer the following questions:

1) What does the article suggest about Condé Nast's recent strategy? 

• The article suggests that Conde Nast's digital-first approach around its magazines has been successful enough to not only increase their online engagements but increase the amount of print orders they have received. 

2) How does chief executive Roger Lynch describe Condé Nast and why? 

• Last month, chief executive Roger Lynch told the New York Times the digital-first changes meant Conde Nast was “no longer a magazine company,” saying it has “70 million people who read our magazines, but we have 300 something million that interact with our websites every month and 450 million that interact with us on social media”.

3) What does Adam Baidawi say about Condé Nast, GQ and culture? 

• Baidawi told Press Gazette: “Conde Nast, as much as anything else, is in the business of shaping and reflecting culture. Culture moves, and we have to move with it. If you take GQ, for instance, I don’t think we were in a position to shape and reflect culture with 21 siloed businesses around the world centred around print products.”

Read this FIPP feature on Condé Nast diversifying into video and streaming content. Answer the following questions: 

1) How is Condé Nast moving away from traditional print products?

• Condé Nast has announced 75 returning series and 50 new pilots across 17 brand channels for 2021-2022, capitalising on huge growth in streaming in the past year. Its brands will focus on shoppable series and reaching incremental viewers via new programmes and “supercharged” relaunches of some of its most exclusive events.

2) What examples are provided of Condé Nast's video and streaming content?

• Vogue’s expansion into wellness, GQ Sports’ 2022 Super Bowl lineup, and Vanity Fair’s expansion into audio. The company also launched Condé Nast Shoppable, a new video capability that provides buyable opportunities for viewers in real time. 

3) What does the end of the article suggest modern media audiences want? 

• “Audiences want to be participants, not just passive viewers – and of course, they want content 100 per cent personalised for them,” said Chu.

GQ website, video and social media content 

Visit the GQ website, Instagram and YouTube channel. Note that some of these may be blocked in school. Once you have looked over GQ's online content, answer the following questions:

1) What similarities do you notice between the website and the print edition of the magazine?

• The website features a lot of the main images and cover lines similar to the print magazine.

2) Analyse the top menu of the GQ website (e.g. Fashion / Grooming / Culture). What do the menu items suggest about GQ's audience?

• The website features a lot of the main images and cover lines similar to the print magazine.

3) What does GQ's Instagram feed suggest about the GQ brand? Is this appealing to a similar audience to the print version of the magazine?

• Their Instagram feed suggests the GQ brand is branching out from its upper-class and refined roots to appeal to a younger audience. This audience want to follow trends in society and see the newest developments in fashion and culture.

4) In your opinion, is GQ's social media content designed to sell the print magazine or build a digital audience? Why?

• GQ's social media content is designed to build a digital audience more than it is meant to sell the print magazine as it focuses on trending topics and celebrities by posting their best photoshoots.

5) Evaluate the success of the GQ brand online. Does it successfully communicate with its target audience? Will the digital platforms eventually replace the print magazine completely?

• GQ successfully engages with its younger and more general target audience through its social media pages, especially through Instagram and YouTube, where its digital content is popular with a wide range of young consumers that would not otherwise engage with GQ content. However, the digital platforms will never completely replace the print magazine as there will always be a genuine niche audience for print.

The impact of digital media on the print magazines industry

Read this Guardian feature on the struggles of the UK print magazine industry and answer the following questions:

1) What statistics are provided to demonstrate the decline in the print magazines industry between 2010 and 2017? What about the percentage decline from 2000?

• Between 2010 and 2017 there was a fall by 42% from 23.8m to 13.9m. In 200 there was a percentage decline of 55% from 30.8m.

2) What percentage of ad revenue is taken by Google and Facebook?

• Google and Facebook account for 65% of the $6.5bn (£4.7bn) UK digital display ad market. Their digital ad revenues is by taking about 90% of all new spend.

3) What strategies can magazine publishers use to remain in business in the digital age?

• Specialist magazines, catering for more niche audiences with interests ranging from shooting to model railways and ponies, are likely to always have a print fanbase.

4) What examples from the Guardian article are provided to demonstrate how magazines are finding new revenue streams?

• Mounting pressure on the traditional print magazine business, which still drives most revenues, is forcing consolidation as publishers seek scale to survive.

5) Now think of the work you've done on GQ. How is GQ diversifying beyond print? 

• social media and video and streaming content is crucial to the GQ brand alongside the GQ Heroes summit held in Oxfordshire each summer. It is described: “GQ Heroes is a premier event for top-tier business and creative minds, bringing together some of the world's most influential figures to discuss the evolving nature of industry and creativity in a world that's changing by the second.”