Think about it - why do you buy Maxim? Maybe you believe it gives you a little bit of everything - sports, gadgets, clothes, and sex. But maybe you buy Maxim for its pseudo-porn content, which spares you the embarrassment of being seen buying an actual pornographic magazine.
The distinction between that kind of men's magazine and a truly informative men's magazine has been blurred for the foreseeable future. While there remain magazines targeted to men with a specific focus - such as auto magazines - general-interest magazines encompassing areas like fashion and health have seen an influx of "sexier" material that feature scantily-clad women on their covers and disproportionately favor glossy photos.
So what's the message? Is it that men can't handle separating lust from the rest of their interests - or is it that they shouldn't need to?
According to Lance Ford, group publisher of Maxim magazine parent Dennis Publishing, separating the sex from everything else is a disservice to men. "We saw a huge, untapped universe of men that weren't being served," Ford said in an Advertising Age article (3/13/00).
Ford believes that "exclusive" and "snooty" magazines such as GQ and Playboy are too specific in their demographic targeting, which might prevent them from attaining the nationwide circulation Maxim is receiving. Maxim currently has a circulation of about 2.5 million, just three years after its launch in 1997, while GQ's base is about 900,000, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations.
Playboy still has bigger numbers, with a circulation of over 3.2 million. But then again, it's not growing at the same rate as Maxim, which had an overall average circulation jump of 164 percent during 2000.
"We designed Maxim to be irreverent first - to embody the kind of humor you saw in 'Seinfeld.' And it had to be informative in a very entertaining way," Ford said.
Informative? Sure - but don't forget all those pictures. "We're moving from a nation of readers to a nation of viewers," Maxim Editor-in-Chief Mike Souter told Advertising Age. "I'm photograph-obsessed."
Maxim's credo - Sex, Sports, Beer, Gadgets, Clothes, Fitness - might seem like it appeals to college students more than anyone else, but the magazine would have you believe otherwise.
"Maxim readers earn more money than any other magazine in the category, period. Are you saying that men with an average income of $60,000 a year are buying and subscribing by hundreds of thousands a month because it's a flash in the pan?" Maxim owner Felix Dennis said after allegations in Brill's Content (1/01) that Maxim was not a "substantial" magazine.
The notion that Maxim readers are richer and better educated than other male magazine audiences, hyped in a press release late last year by the magazine, would arguably have huge affects on trends in men's magazines. Paul Lopes, director of the Communications and Media Studies program, cites a similar situation when Playboy shook up the men's magazine market and then-stronghold Esquire magazine.
"The thing to keep in mind is that Playboy, when it was initiated, was initiated as a men's magazine," and not simply a trashy publication, Lopes said. Its readers, according to Lopes, fit the general description of "a bachelor, good taste, listens to jazz," reinforcing its image as a quality magazine.
In the end, Esquire was trounced by Playboy, mostly for being 'too stuffy', as Lopes put it - even though many of the magazines' writers wrote for both publications.
Back to modern times. Maxim, while clearly pushing previous limits of separating unclothed women from general men's magazines, claims its readers are no more low-class than the jazz-listening readers of Playboy 50 years ago. "The readers of Maxim are not a bunch of acne-clad idiots," said Lopes of how the magazine wants to be perceived.
"We talk to guys in a language they understand," Stephen Colvin, president of Maxim's publishing company, told Advertising Age. Maybe so, but critics of Maxim's claims to rich, educated readership (generally rival magazines) say the demographic information is being used out of context.
Maxim's numbers are coming from Mediamark Research Inc. [MRI], which does indeed list Maxim readers as having one of the highest median household incomes - $61,907, behind only Men's Journal ($65,318) in the men's magazine category. But the same survey lists the median age of Maxim readers as only 26 years old.
The real point to consider, according to Lopes, is that the median household income does not represent the income of whoever in the household happens to read Maxim. "The data is based on the income and the address of the household the magazine is sent to," Lopes said.
And, in fact, he's right. The survey lists - along with median household income - median individual employment income, which may give a clearer picture of the actual demographics of Maxim's readership.
The median individual employment income of Maxim's readers is just $30,977 - the lowest in the men's magazine category. The reason for the discrepancy probably hinges on the fact that Maxim readers more often than not still live at home, thus making their parents' incomes responsible for Maxim's claims of having some of the wealthiest readers in its class.
Circulation numbers aside, Maxim's explosive success has - for better or for worse - changed the operation of the men's magazine market for the years to come. Or has it?
In just four years, Maxim has exponentially captured the attention of male readers. Boasting the highest rate of circulation in the market, it has its competitors running to play catch up while spawning a number of spin-offs.
Among magazines that dropped everything they were doing to accommodate more sex content and features were Details and Esquire. The floundering Details decided to follow Maxim's formula after witnessing the new magazines rising circulation. Unfortunately, it didn't help the 18-year old magazine, even with the help of former Maxim Editor-in-Chief Mark Golin, and it shut down early last year.
However, Details was reinstated last September with a new publishing company, and a much different plan - not to compete with Maxim's content, but to create a following of its own. The style was toned down; the editorial content broadened and improved, the sexual content virtually extinct.
"The newly redesigned Details is written for real men in the real world, and satisfies their need for advice on anything from fashion to love to careers," reads a subscription ad for the new Details. "Each issue features sections geared toward intelligent men who can process more than a pretty face and fast car."
The question now is if the redesign will work. Can Details manage to pull male readers - including its own former readers - away from a market flooded with (almost) naked women and endless sex tips? According to Fairchild Publications (Details' publisher) president Mary Berner, the answer might just be "maybe."
"I'm optimistic, but you don't know," Berner told the New York Daily News (9/18/00).
Esquire also recently decided to eschew its sexier content, but it may have been trying to save high-paying advertisers that did not want to be associated with a lower-class image, according to Media Guardian (2/15/01). Circulation figures did not respond kindly, though, and have steadily dropped since the makeover. However, Esquire UK editor Peter Howarth believes that the magazine's success will be determined by a more affluent (albeit smaller) reader base that advertisers want.
"We took a hit and shed a whole load of younger, more down-market readers when we went from naked Wonderbra models to Johnny Depp and we have not recovered from it," Howarth told Media Guardian. "The first year after the repositioning was a year of grief and pain, this year we'll see consolidation and next year we'll see growth," he added, predicting a return to a higher circulation.
So are all general interest men's magazines going to become homogenized versions of Maxim or risk losing critical circulation? Probably not. Men's Health, for example, manages to enjoy circulation in Maxim's league with more editorial content and less naked women. But it has taken Men's Health over 12 years to reach the circulation figures that Maxim had after only a few years.
The consensus? Sex sells - and other stuff can sell, too. It's just a lot harder.
