The Belly Off Club page of Men’s Health US’ Malegrams section is probably one of the most inspiring pages in the magazine. Just by looking at the vital statistics on this guy and the before and after pictures, I just realized that if you really want it bad and are willing to make the necessary sacrifices, you can start feeling good about yourself.

This to me was very significant just this past Sunday, when I was able to play through a whole basketball game without getting subbed. I know it doesn’t sound much, but the accomplishment is relative to how I was able to somehow run jog circles around the same guys I played against last year. Ah, you know what I mean.:P

Since I made it a point to make Men’s Health a part of my life, I’ve seen so much difference, and it really is personally rewarding. And why do I keep blogging about it? Because somehow, I feel that if I wasn’t saving up for my future (lol), I would definitely (again) love to be part of the crew that day in and day out churn out probably the most inspiring magazine in the world. It also goes without saying, Women’s Health Magazine Philippines will also turn out to be the same.

Those guys at Summit Media (you know who you are) are really doing the Lord’s work.

But for rumors of the site to halt operations permanently? If there is some truth to this particular news item, I’m sure it’s going to be a huge blow to not only the manpower they currently have, but more importantly and on a wider perspective, makes you ask if there’s currently a viable online content business that will survive these hard times in the Philippines.

Here’s a link to the article Inquirer gobbles its future.

As things are shaping up within the Prieto-Rufino media empire, not only would the dinosaur Inquirer save the money-losing Web operations, the Inquirer.net as a corporate entity would be collapsed and be folded into the Philippine Daily Inquirer, which, despite the similar names, has a different shareholding structure altogether.

If anything, I  think operating independently from the country’s most widely read newspaper was not a good decision. Why? Because the newspaper and website are catering to two entirely different markets. The print version caters to the ordinary Juan who rides the bus or MRT on his way to work. Inquirer.net on the other hand, is targeted towards people abroad (or people like me who don’t need to read about their daily news on paper).

It wouldn’t matter if both mediums contained the same content, don’t you think? What a price to pay for “creative space to innovate”.

If you’re one of the few who keep on returning to this blog for updates and can’t find any it’s because I’ve been trying to put together another blog for the past two months (to my friends who I’ve flaked on in the past few, now you know what I was doing). When I started Justanothergame, I had planned on making this an online resource for everything I learned in the print industry.

After having spent almost two years in the field of Internet marketing, I realized one thing — even if print and online are two entirely different worlds, there’s not much difference between the two. I guess you could say that little button on the right leading to my other blog will be an ongoing project to see if print and online can coexist. While I will still continue to blog on Justanothergame, this blog will focus more on my learnings as an Internet marketer.

I’m not good at online launches, but please pay a visit Printrospective. Here’s an open call for some link love!

• Lisa Gokongwei and Aurora Mangubat, for deciding to bring in a videogame magazine
• Denis del Callar and Neil Palabrica, for giving me the chance to make my own decisions.
• Ed Geronia, Jaykee Evangelista, and the rest of the GM staff. Next to the FHM people, I think we had the most fun at the office
• The Summit Advertising Team. Special mention to Cha Clarino and Ginger Taduran (O wag na masama loob) for literally hitting our monthly quotas by themselves.
• The Production, Circulation, Trade, Web, and Events teams, for making GamesMaster’s presence felt in the three years that it was on the newsstands.
• Of course, my fellow Associate Publishers, for sitting through the long video presentations

If I forgot anyone, again, I’d like to thank you. So this doesn’t end like a goodbye blog post, time to move on….

To everyone who bought an issue, two issues, all issues — my sincerest thanks.

*For our June 2005 issue, we decided to give away a PSP to anyone who can give us the best picture showing how much he loves GamesMaster. Apparently, the winner was a she

*The GamesMaster forums are still active! Just visit Gamebayan.com.ph

If you haven’t read my blog posts about GamesMaster, just click on the following links:

• The Launch
• Trade
• Editorial Setbacks
• The Advertising Uphill Climb
• The Pinoy Gamer

“It’s very gratifying to see gamers around the world continuing to show such enthusiasm and support for World of Warcraft,” said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. “We’re always pleased to welcome new players to the game, and we’re looking forward to sharing the next major content update with the entire community in the months ahead.”

There have also been numerous claims about bringing over the game to the country. From LUG and Egames, to AMDG, the none of those rumors ever came into fruition. The license may have just proven to be too expensive not just for the aforementioned companies, but for gamers as well.

It put things into even clearer perspective for me, as to why GamesMaster Magazine had to be let go of, even if I felt that it was the right time to have a local videogame mag.

• Male
• 13-21 years old
• Image conscious and puts an emphasis on “coolness”
• Leads an active lifestyle, is outgoing and sociable.

Based on survey information, GamesMaster somehow overlapped with FHM’s market. You can even say that GM could have been the next title of choice if our male magazine buyers could afford to pick up another title. We were after all, second fiddle to a thriving male lifestyle magazine market that was dominated by a sister magazine. We were hitting our gamers with quality content (with free posters to boot!), but just couldn’t get over the 20,000 circulation hump.

We were right there man.

When we shut down GamesMaster, we were just getting ready to purchase an Xbox360. The Playstation 3 and Wii weren’t available yet, but excitement for the new consoles were never higher. Nowadays, those same consoles cost less than half of how much they used to cost.

Nintendo DS sales were trumping the Sony Playstation Portable’s on every front back then because of the innovative gameplay. Fast foward to 2008, and there are just as many PSP vendors as cellphone stalls.

I just can’t help but think about what could have happened had we decided to hang on for another year. I had just finished preparing for an event for another magazine I was handling, and was almost done preparing the packages for a more press friendly Gamer’s Pulse Awards. We had prepared some offline and online voting, and mobile texting initiatives as well.

Me and my immediate boss were given a few hours to decide on the matter, as we were shown some numbers that had to reached in the next few months to continue to stay out of the red. Some things I considered before I came to my decision:

• Level-up-Games had just merged with Netgames (gaming advertising was sure to dip)
• Some of the lifestyle advertisers we had been targeting had cut down on their advertising budget, and saw none of it going to GamesMaster.
• Somehow related to the reason above, GamesMaster reached all its targets because of special executions. It would be impractical to rely on purely these to reach our targets.

And so, sometime in July of 2006, we made the painful decision of not renewing the license for GamesMaster. It was a business decision that had to be made, and it was a choice that made the most sense. Given the chance to do things differently, I probably wouldn’t change anything about how we handled GamesMaster. We didn’t just do a good job, we did a GREAT job.

The one thing I do feel bad about is how we kept silent during those trying times when rumors about the magazine’s closing started circulating. I just could not visit our forums and post that in a few months, the magazine would be gone. Just imagine how difficult that was. If any former buyer of GamesMaster gets to read this, I give you my sincerest apologies.

Can a videogame magazine still exist in the Philippines?

What if we bring GamesMaster back? I don’t know – I think it would take a lot of time to build up the brand from where it left off (advertising wise, it will take longer!). To use the WoW analogy, if the game were to go offline for a year or two, they’ll lose so many subscribers to other existing MMO’s (no matter how good the game is).

Nevertheless, I still believe that a videogame magazine can exist in the country. Go to any Internet cafe and look any gamer in the eye – you know they want more. I don’t have any statistics, but I would think that any broadband Internet subscriber is also a potential reader. The Internet age just has a way of bringing all our controllers and keyboards together.

Just think, if an online fantasy game about orcs and humans is able to bring together 10 million people of different countries, race, and social status, wouldn’t you want to read about that too?

P.S. The old GamesMaster forums still exist — please visit gamebayan.com.ph

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.

]]> http://justanothergame.com/2008/04/10/how-important-is-magazine-cover-identity/feed/ 6 http://justanothergame.com/2008/04/05/the-verdict-on-playboy-philippines-issue-1/ http://justanothergame.com/2008/04/05/the-verdict-on-playboy-philippines-issue-1/#comments Sat, 05 Apr 2008 04:11:34 +0000 Alvin Jimenez http://justanothergame.com/2008/04/03/the-verdict-on-playboy-philippines-issue-1/

I was finally able to browse a copy of Playboy Philippines last night, as one of my former officemates had one. Here’s my personal take.

*Please note that I only skimmed through the issue and did not read any of the articles.

Overall Feel

I only had time to scan a few pages, so most of the stuff I’ll be posting are just general comments. I haven’t read any of the articles, but these glaring design flaws and flow problems are enough to make you ask yourself — did I just pay P199 (yep, you read that right) for this magazine?

Cover

The cover itself reeks of blandness, that not even Priscilla could have done anything to save it. No special colors were used, so the title doesn’t seem to “scream” at the reader. Some missing elements include a more prominent Playboy bunny logo.

Cover Lines

I have a question — who decided to make “cars of the year” one of the main cover lines? Reality check, people are looking for the pictu… er… Palanca winners. Since they made “we have 4 or 5 Palanca writers” one of their unique selling points, they should have at least dedicated some real estate on the cover for those people’s names.

Image and Print Quality

Sorry to say, ALL of the images in the first issue of Playboy looked like they were shot with a point and shoot camera. Could it have something to do with the printing? No effort was put into “cleaning” the images. Since we’re dealing with the cover girl here, I expected a lot more oomph for this feature. Even if the same images were to be printed in a newspaper, it would still look rushed.

What I also noticed is the absence of production value. It’s like they asked Priscilla to just wear whatever she wanted and pose for the camera. I did not see anything indicating that they did a shoot in some remote location. Pardon the language, but kulang lang talaga sa libog.

Some other pertinent points:

• Styling leaves a lot to be desired. To the people behind Playboy Philippines — you actually put Priscilla in a one-piece bathing suit? Come on, wake up wake up!
• Her hair is a mess. Her makeup is a mess. The picture doesn’t really invoke any kind of come hither attitude. Her right hand looks a bit stiff.
• Is it just me, or there’s a little bit of flab there? I know everyone would want the images to be completely unretouched, but believe me, even the best of them needs some Photoshop magic. The freckles could have been removed too.

Layout

What layout? I’m not kidding, the page below exists in the magazine. It’s supposed to contain some funny “jokes” for their “slightly more mature” market.

One piece of advice, if you give the reader the impression that you’re churning out one empty page after another, you’re going to end up losing that reader. In one of my previous posts, I mentioned that magazines may be at the short end of the need scale. What you have to realize is you have to give the reader his money’s worth. Better that you have 60 packed, quality pages, than a lot, but with seemingly empty pages. The page to the left looks like it was printed straight our of Microsoft Word.

General Flow and Localization

Just like any book, magazines also have a general structure. International titles have brand bibles that are based on years of historical data as well. One thing you have to remember though, is that while all these formulas are proven, the success of any local edition of any magazine depends largely on how its staff is able to localize the content. Everything has to be relevant to the existing market.

“We will be having 70% local, and 30% foreign content”

As I said in a previous post, I think that ratio is too big, given that the people behind Playboy are still learning. If the ratio above is indeed what they used, then how come their main “Cars of the Year” cover line doesn’t include any cars that are available locally? To a lot of people that may seem strange, but to me that’s just plain idiocy. You’ve got to give me something I won’t find on the Internet.

Some of the things you will find a lot of in the first issue are hella’ long articles. Why are they the kind that you wouldn’t want to read? Block layout is non-existent. This means that once you get to a specific page, there are no multiple entry points for the reader. Though articles are separated by paragraphs, no design elements were incorporated to emphasize these. You have no choice but to read through whole novels articles.

The general flow of the magazine itself is confusing. Rather than go into a short description of what pagination and page planning are, I think a good metaphor for these would have to be a roller coaster ride. You start off slow, build it up a little, go for the big drop, and coast your way back to the starting point. In this manner, the lack of magazine related experience clearly shows.

My Final Comments

First of all, I did not expect the magazine to be priced at P199. I guess they figured that since they are targeting a more mature demographic, this justifies the cost. However, if you think about it, Rogue and Manifesto are priced at P185. In terms of bang for your buck, I would honestly rather pick up one of the latter two (by far).

Search for “Playboy Philippines” and hundreds of news items will come up. Apparently, it’s such a big deal that a local edition of Hugh Hefner’s franchise is being released without any nudity. Is this a good thing? Morally, maybe. But everyone has to remember that the numbers have to go North or any of this won’t make any sense.

Let me put it this way — Bastos ang Pilipino. Even though ideally, we would want the articles to be the main seller, I think it’s safe to say that’s just not how it works. Filipino men will always buy a magazine because of the women primarily. The articles will keep them loyal.

You see an international title like Playboy and you’ll always have high expectations. If you see that the money you paid for gives you photos and layout that isn’t worthy of the brand name and your hard work, can you still say “Oh, but the articles are written by some of the country’s best writers”?

Every magazine should always be a feast for the senses. Sadly, this is not what the first issue of Playboy Philippines is.

P.S. When the EIC of Playboy Philippines said they were okay with showing a nipple, this is what he meant

and see two different pieces of BS information

Just click on the images to enlarge. Pfft.

In my previous post, I mentioned that Playboy should follow the route of C! and Manifesto, and have the title distributed by Mega Publishing. Apparently, C! publishing is bringing in Playboy! What this bodes for Manifesto, no one knows for sure, but there is a definite overlap in terms of target market.

On to the juicier stuff. Do you want to know who the first cover of Playboy Philippines will be?

Initial reports claim that it was supposed to be Ehra Madrigal people. What became of that shoot, no one knows, but apparently, it was enough for Eric to get the boot. (How can you go wrong with the Tanduay 2008 Calendar Girl?)

After failed efforts with the now defunct Pump, and a short tenure at Maxim, having him as the “default EIC” choice for lad mag start-ups has since then been questionable. No question, the fellah is still and will always be talented, but he should move on to a different genre altogether.

The choice of Ehra Madrigal also gives us a good idea of their editorial direction. It’s safe to say that we’re going to have the only edition of Playboy with no full frontals and “centerfolds”. Unless she takes it all off, there is just no way. Or is there?

Update: No, C! is not bringing in Playboy. Also, Vince Sales is back with T3. Will not say anything until the actual magazine is out.

Why P170-200 bucks? Because they’re trying to position themselves as a magazine for the A market (sure, sure). For the curious ones, FHM is at P125 and Maxim is at P140, while Manifesto and Rogue are at P170 (if I’m not mistaken)

Initial circulation would then be at 40k (a million if they get Anne Curtis), for the simple reason that no magazine in the Philippines can make it to 80,000 in a whim.

The business model? Here is my take.

Advertising

Think about it. You’re going to bring out a “high end” magazine with naked women on the cover. I’m not going to list everything here (in case someone from Playboy Philippines reads this), but mark my words, say goodbye to all Unilever and Nivea brands. It also doesn’t help that they’re launching at a month when all advertising budgets have been approved. They would have to settle for leftovers.

Circulation

Unless they’ve already started talking to local distributors, they won’t sell unless they have a very efficient distribution system. What good is a magazine if it sells out in the first few days of release, but takes more than a week to deliver new stocks to its dealers?

An option for them is to follow in C and Manifesto magazines’ footsteps. They started distributing their magazines through Mega Publishing as a knee-jerk reaction to Top Gear’s entry more than three years ago. You can however cross out this option because the publisher’s family is Opus Dei.

National Bookstore? There’s no way in hell they’re carrying this magazine. They will not allow porn in their magazine racks. For the record dear senators, FHM and Maxim are not porn.

The Women

How can I forget about the women? It’s common practice for Playboy US to pay its cover model, but the same practice is not done by local lad magazines. The artists here need the magazine more than the magazine needs them.

My guess? It won’t matter, because the movie stars here will never agree to a semi/full frontal. They earn more than whatever Playboy Philippines will be capable of paying them.

The Big Question

Will the first issue of Playboy Philippines ever see the light of day? I would have to say the 1st issue yes, but everything else after that is a big question mark. Even if it’s not election season, senators looking for a little PR will jump on this like their life depended on it. The only implication this will have on the local magazine industry is that even non-porn lad magazines like FHM, Maxim, and UNO will get some heat.

Contrary to some rumors (please see comment below), Eric Ramos of FHM, Pump, and Maxim fame, will not be handling the magazine. Interestingly enough, Vince Sales, a former editor of T3 magazine, is said to be on board, but I’m not sure what position he is assuming. A simple blog search will lead you to this page where this unnamed guy was supposedly offered a position in the magazine’s creative team. Oh well, it doesn’t matter since he’s a nobody.

Anyway, it’s just a little over two months before April sets in. It’ll be interesting to see how the magazine wars unfold. I just can’t wait!