You look at the magazine stand and this mess is what you see. Hundreds of cover lines. So many different covers. Each title only has a few seconds to catch your attention.

Ensuring customer loyalty is an integral part of any magazine’s overall strategy. You have to make sure that you evolve just enough, so your readers are able to experience something new after a year or so. How do you reel in all those first time purchasers?

You put half of Priscilla Merielles’ face — er, you get their attention with the cover.

All editors and publishers will tell you that the cover is their greatest sales pitch of all.

Some general rules when it comes to making a magazine stand out at the newsstands:

1. All main cover lines must be visible from 6 feet away.
2. Put the most important piece of information on the upper left side of the cover. You know how magazines are stacked over one another because of the limited space — well this is done to address that concern.
3. Don’t effin’ cover your masthead, no matter how good your cover image is. This is pretty basic stuff when it comes to branding.
4. The most important story for the month is usually placed at the upper left side of the page. Believe it or not, some people still buy magazines for the articles.

What happens when you change so many elements on your cover in such a short period of time?

• You give your readers the impression that you don’t know what you’re doing.
• You confuse your readers.
• The magazine gives off the impression that it relies to much on the cover in order to sell.

Such is the case of Maxim Philippines, which has been a model of inconsistency when it comes to their covers. Quite recently, they even decided to change their magazine size (for whatever reason it is, I don’t think I want to know). Some noticeable changes they’ve done from issue to issue:

• Cover the middle 3 letters of the masthead in the Francine Prieto issue (Bad move, since they weren’t even an established brand when this was launched)
• Change the fonts from issue to issue
• Change the general layout of the cover lines. In the Andrea del Rosario issue, they’ve even managed to take a lot of the cover lines out
• Er, use the name of their noontime gameshow as a cover line. I said I wouldn’t shoot them down and be as objective as I can, but this is one of the lamest excuses for a cover line ever.
  

I just think that radical changes or inconsistency are obvious signs of panic and lack of faith in editorial content. More so, you’ll never get an idea on what works and what doesn’t. Since Maxim is an international title, shouldn’t it have a brandbook that should always be followed and adapted? It’s just that every cover looks so different from one another.

You rely too much on the cover to sell, and you’re in big trouble.