LITTLE BIG MAGAZINE: British Glamour, which has been struggling more than others in the Condé Nast U.K. stable on the circulation front, is switching strategy, super-sizing the magazine format and putting mobile first in digital as it marks its 15-year anniversary.
The new brand strategy will debut with the February 2017 issue, on sale from Jan. 5.
Condé Nast U.K. said the magazine’s format will grow, as the print experience is now regarded “as more luxurious and indulgent, most likely to be consumed at home.” It’s light years away from when the handbag-sized title launched in 2001, “when snacking on the print edition throughout the day was the norm.”
The paper stock will also improve, getting heavier and glossier, with a bigger focus on fashion editorial and photography. The design will also go in a “more sophisticated direction,” overseen by editor in chief Jo Elvin, Condé said.
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According to the U.K.’s Audit Bureau of Circulations, Glamour’s combined digital and print circulation for the first half of the year fell 18.9 percent to 300,063, as the title tries to speak to its Millennial audience. The first half saw circulation fall 13.6 percent to 350,031.
The declines at Glamour come against a backdrop of overall shrinkage in the British women’s fashion magazine sector, although circulation at Cosmopolitan, which relaunched its various formats last year, has seen high double-digit growth this year.
In a bid to capture Millennials’ attention, Glamour.com is migrating to a new, mobile-first platform that Condé said is better suited to serving its “smartphone-dominated audience on the move.” The magazine also plans to launch a Glamour Video channel that will include an archive of Glamour footage and other initiatives “aimed squarely at our video-obsessed Millennial audience.”
Elvin noted that Glamour had embraced digital from day one, and argued the “brand reach has grown. Glamour has never reached more people than it does now, and as the context has changed, now is the moment to recalibrate in response to our readers’ changing lifestyle and needs.”
The title’s social media strategy has also been fine-tuned, “following the principal editorial approach that the content must be created specifically for the individual platform on which it sits,” for Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.
Glamour said it still plans to charge its readers for subscriptions, and is also developing “alternative paid-for distribution channels.”
Jamie Jouning, publishing director of Glamour, said the brand is evolving. “A bigger, brighter canvas in print; a more accessible, agile approach in digital marks the start of an exciting next chapter,” Jouning said.