FROM RUSSIA, WITH STYLE
Byline: Natasha Singer
MOSCOW — The Russian debut next month of Marie Claire is setting the stage for the Moscow magazine wars.
When Marie Claire hits Russian newsstands on March 1, it will be entering a tough field saturated with women’s titles.
Already on Moscow newsstands are international Russian-language titles including Cosmopolitan, Elle, Good Housekeeping, Harper’s Bazaar and TopModel, along with dozens of local glossy magazines and hybrids such as Itogi, a joint venture with Newsweek. Specifically, Marie Claire will be going head-to-head with Elle for the upwardly mobile young women’s market.
The launch of Marie Claire in Russia illustrates the dramatic strides made in the retail market since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Five years ago, there were neither fashion magazines nor advertising for consumer goods, and style-starved women felt themselves lucky to get hold of a sewing pattern. Today, boutiques from Naf-Naf to Nina Ricci and Revlon to Clinique abound in Moscow and St. Petersburg; supermodels like Naomi Campbell and Claudia Schiffer pop in for promotions, and trend-conscious teens on subways and buses pore over magazines that offer the latest beauty tips.
“In 1992, people were saying it would take 10 years before the Russian market was ready for consumer magazines, but we launched Cosmopolitan successfully in 1993 and now it’s time for Marie Claire. The market is maturing so quickly, like the speed of light, it’s incredible,” says Annemarie Van Gaal, general director of Independent Media, the Russia-based Dutch publishing group whose Russian titles also include HB, Good Housekeeping, Cosmopolitan and Playboy, in a joint venture with Hearst Corp. and Marie Claire.
Marie Claire will have an initial circulation of 80,000 and is hoping to distinguish itself from its competitors by focusing on women’s lives as well as their clothes. The inaugural issue includes stories on a Russian Don Juan, birth control, female circumcision and American toddler beauty pageants. The 208-page Marie Claire debut issue has 36 fashion pages and 78 advertising pages, including promotions from such cosmetics companies as L’Oreal, Revlon, and Guerlain, along with Lanvin, Versace, Naf-Naf and Chevignon fashion ads. It will be on newsstands in more than 100 cities in the former Soviet Union.
“We’re trying to create as local a magazine as possible, with lots of first-person testimonials from Russian women,” explains Carrie Doyle, the American editor-in-chief of the Russian edition of Marie Claire. “There is so much curiosity out there about the world, and Russians are such attentive readers. They want a women’s lifestyle magazine that is more informative about news and fashion.”
Doyle, a native New Yorker, worked at Harper’s Bazaar in New York before moving to Moscow in 1996 to help launch the Russian edition of HB.
As for the numbers, Independent Media is the first publishing group in Russia to undergo an in-depth independent audit; November 1996 circulation statistics from auditors Coopers & Lybrand registered Cosmopolitan at 383,400 copies, Good Housekeeping at 195,100, and HB at 77,500.
Independent Media will also be the first magazine publisher to launch a direct-marketing subscription campaign through the erratic Russian mail system: 30,000 Marie Claire promotion postcards will be sent to a target group selected from readers’ surveys of other Independent Media titles.
The Russian edition of Cosmopolitan, the first international women’s magazine launched here, remains the country’s leading glossy title and is the third-best-selling edition of Cosmo in the world. Cosmopolitan has become something of an authority on relationships and lifestyle for Russian women, who circulate it among friends and family, and who would never throw an issue away, no matter how dog-eared it might be. Russian magazine devotees are known for reading editorial and advertising copy with equal relish.
Circulation and advertising costs in U.S. dollars for a single full-page color advertisement in Russian-language glossies are Cosmopolitan, circulation 400,000, ad rate, $12,500; Good Housekeeping, circulation 200,000, ad rate $7,890; Elle, circulation 200,000, ad rate $10,200; Harper’s Bazaar, circulation 80,000, ad rate $6,900; Marie Claire, circulation 80,000, ad page $5,500; TopModel, circulation 50,000, ad page $5,000.
Other Russian titles include Rabotnitsa (Woman Worker), circulation 495,000, ad rate $10,000; Christianka (Woman Farmer), circulation 500,000, ad page $15,000; Stas (a music magazine), circulation 100,000, ad page $8,000, and Matador (a pop culture magazine akin to Interview) circulation 50,000, ad page $5,950.
Some cosmetics executives say they see direct sales results from print ads in several Russian publications, notably Cosmopolitan, but other advertisers are getting more response from billboard and television promotions.
“When a new Guerlain product runs in Cosmopolitan, every second person who walks into our boutique is either carrying the magazine or has ripped out the page with the product on it. They’ve read about it, and they want to buy it,” says Olga Kuznetsova, Guerlain import manager in Russia. Guerlain products sell at counters in 30 locations in Russia.
Revlon, which advertises in Cosmopolitan, mainly relies on other means of promotion, notably television.
“Our main strategy is television and billboards; of the billboard cosmetics ads in Moscow, 52 percent are Revlon,” says Anna Parra of United Campaigns, the advertising manager for Revlon in Russia.
The chief difficulty for advertisers in the Russian magazine market is that “magazines are ahead of the available luxury goods distribution in every city except Moscow and St. Petersburg,” explains Elizabeth Susskind, vice president of Estee Lauder International.
There are no regional department stores that offer goods in major cities and towns across Russia, which forces Western consumer products companies to negotiate separate deals specific to each city. Russia also lacks major suburban shopping malls, which would ease distribution problems.
Estee Lauder, the first Western cosmetics company to enter the Russian market, has two boutiques and a skin-care spa in Moscow, as well as boutiques in other Russian cities including St. Petersburg, Tula, Krasnoyarsk and Tomsk; Clinique has two Moscow boutiques.
Estee Lauder runs cosmetics and fragrance ads in many Russian magazines, including Cosmo, Elle and HB, but is not advertising in the debut issue of Marie Claire.
“We do see customers coming into the store with magazines and asking for specific products, but in general the magazine market seems pretty well saturated right now,” Susskind says. “It’s hard to tell whether there are specifically different readers for each title or whether the same women are buying all the magazines.”
“It is a competitive market,” agrees George Nikides, publisher of Russian Elle, which has enjoyed growing success. When Elle made its debut in 1996, it was a bimonthly with 80 ad pages in a 228-page issue and had a circulation of 100,000. Now Elle is monthly, with 137 ad pages in the 324-page January issue, has a circulation of 200,000 and is on sale in more than 100 cities and towns in the former Soviet Union.
“Two years ago, you could put out a medium or low level publication and the public was hungry enough so it didn’t matter. Now readers are more demanding and you have to put out a really high-quality magazine; the low-quality magazines will not survive,” Nikides says, adding, “Russia is becoming a normal magazine market.”
The increased competition isn’t deterring Elle publisher Hachette-Filipacchi Presse, which also puts out a Russian-language edition of the bi-monthly TopModel. The company will unveil a Russian edition of Premiere, the movie magazine, in this spring, and there are plans to issue a Moscow version of Paris-Match.
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