Mike Soutar, Sky News Online

Thursday, April 03, 2008

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Free Lads' Mag That's Boxing Clever By James Silver

As the circulations of once-trailblazing men's magazines like Loaded and Maxim nosedive, one title in the sector is bucking the trend.

In its first set of ABC circulation figures, free men's weekly ShortList magazine achieved an average weekly distribution of 462, 731, making it the bestseller in an ailing market.

Launched last September, the title is handed out in city centres across Britain on Thursday mornings.

It is also distributed via airports, Eurostar trains and terminals, financial institutions, retail outlets, gyms and cafes.

The 'free' business model - which depends solely on advertising revenue - has already been used with extraordinary success by publishers of free newspapers such as Metro, London Lite and thelondonpaper, as well by another men's weekly, Sport magazine.

It is also the only way a new men's consumer title was commercially viable, says ShortList's chief executive Mike Soutar, the former FHM, Nuts and Maxim USA editor, who founded the magazine with business partner Tim Ewington.

"We were not conflicted at all about the business model. Making it free was the only way it could work" he says, speaking to Sky News Online at ShortList's Holborn HQ.

When Soutar, 41, approached potential investors, his pitch centred on "the growing power and influence of 'free' within media and especially among younger consumers".

He says: "Young people now expect media to be free. They expect to get high quality, engaging information and entertainment without having to pay for it."

Moreover, focus group research, undertaken prior to the launch, had showed that a generation of potential readers were not buying men's magazines at all.

"You've got this generation of young men who weren't engaging with paid-for media, who never had the habit of buying newspapers and certainly weren't buying men's magazines.

"Those are the readers we've tapped into with ShortList."

And with a young, upmarket, hard-to-reach male audience, no wonder advertisers are being charged £18,175 for a full page advert in the title.

But when asked about the prospects for the sector as a whole, Soutar, a men's magazine veteran, is rather more gloomy.

Lads' magazines are, he thinks, in slow but terminal decline.

"Products like Maxim and Loaded made a strategic decision to chase the weekly titles like Nuts and Zoo downmarket in a bid for increased sales," he says.

"But adolescent and young men in this country are incredibly well served by magazines and the internet. Although there are lots of sales to be got there, it's an overcrowded sector.

"And once a magazine has made a decision to compete in the 'tit-pit', it's very difficult to clamber out again afterwards."

Born in Dundee, Soutar was the youngest-ever editor of Smash Hits magazine, at the age of 24.

Of becoming an editor at such a youthful age, he now says: "I never had a choice but to become an editor. I was a rotten writer and if I wanted to work in magazines it had to be as an editor."

He went on to take Emap's FHM magazine from a circulation of 50,000 to over half a million in just two years.

Later, he ran Dennis Publishing's American edition of Maxim, doubling sales.

Then, as group editorial director of IPC, he oversaw the launches of groundbreaking men's weekly Nuts, as well as 'real life' magazine Pick Me Up.

Shortly after the launch of his latest venture, an excruciatingly embarrassing training video - which features Soutar giving instructions to the merchandisers who hand out ShortList on the streets - was leaked and posted on YouTube.

It also found its way onto gossip site Holy Moly.

In the video, he speaks slowly, enunciating every word as if speaking to morons, coming across as Alan Partridge in a pale blue ShortList- branded anorak.

"Of course it made me look stupid and I'm fine with that," he laughs, cringing slightly at the memory.

"And if ShortList turns out to be a disaster then that [video] is the one thing people will remember about the magazine.

"But if it's a success, then everyone will look back and think what a smart piece of viral marketing it was."

If the magazine's first set of ABCs are anything to go by, then the latter view is likely to prevail.

Posted by James Silver - On Thursday, April 03, 2008

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