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Will River Publishing Shape up?

Posted in Media, Mel Varley, Latest reporters' blogs March 11th, 2008 by Melinda Varley

River Publishing looks to be breaking away from its traditional customer magazines as it prepares to launch its first paid-for title Shape. But can the traditional customer publisher of more than ten years survive in the cut-throat landscape that is newsstand? 

The launch of Shape will be the second time in a matter of weeks that River has picked up on some growing trends in the magazine industry.

It recently relaunched its Superdrug title Dare as a freesheet, dropping the 50p cover price and increasing its circulation to 750,000 copies across the UK, handing out issues at tube stations, busy streets and café as well as Superdrug stores.

We are yet to see the success of this decision, but the attitude by most media planners and buyers is that it doesn’t offer the quality of other women’s paid for titles and therefore any success will be short-lived, once people realise exactly what the title is trying to achieve.

The same criticisms have already arisen about Shape, a title that will compete in a market where Hachette Filipacchi’s Psychologies is going great guns with year-on-year growth of over 21 per cent.

River has clearly realised that there may be room to compete in a market that only one magazine is serving. But is the publisher up to scratch?

Media planner buyers have questions River’s motives for wanting to launch Shape if it isn’t going to bring anything new to the market.

However, perhaps the market that is Psychologies is in need of competition – after all, a bit of healthy competition will ensure the market stays fresh and exciting.

The struggle for River will be in the marketing. What will a customer publisher do in order to convince people to buy a magazine in a sector that is already served? The worrying fact is that River is handling all marketing and media planning and buying in-house and they’re about to do something they’ve never done before – newsstand.

It is imperative to Shape’s success that they get the marketing spend and communication absolutely spectacular as consumers will have to be convinced to buy this, but what’s the selling point?

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