Brand Failures

Tired brands 285
helm of a magazine aimed at women, gender wasn’t the real problem. After
all, Elle magazine had a male editor for many years without disastrous
consequences.
Tim Brooks, the managing director of IPC, declared that the first three
issues of Nova had been ‘too edgy’. But the publishers had done little to calm
wary consumers by shrink-wrapping the magazine in plastic. After all, most
people who purchase a new, unfamiliar magazine want to flick through it first
to check that the content is relevant to them.
The new editor was quick to make changes. The novelist, India Knight,
was given her own column, and more mainstream features, such as an exercise
page, soon appeared. Although the magazine gathered a loyal readership, the
numbers weren’t enough.
In May 2001, a year after its launch, IPC pulled the plug on Nova. ‘It is
with great reluctance that we have had to make this decision,’ Tim Brooks
said at the time. ‘Nova was ground-breaking in its style and delivery, but
commercially has not reached its targets. IPC has an aggressive launch
strategy, and an important part of this strategy is the strength to take decisive
action and close unviable titles.’ IPC also said that it wanted to concentrate
on the bigger-selling Marie Claire.
For many, the failure of Nova’s second attempt was not a surprise. ‘It was
exactly like all the other magazines and failed to capture the British public’s
imagination,’ said Caroline Baker, the fashion director at You magazine, and
a journalist on the original Nova. ‘They should have left the old one alone,
not tried to bring it back.’
Whereas the original Nova had little competition when it launched, the
updated version had entered a saturated market place. 2000 had seen a whole
batch of new women’s magazines enter the British market such as the pocketsized
and hugely successful Glamour magazine (the first edition sold 500,000
copies). Unlike Nova, Glamour had spent masses on making sure the magazine
was moulded around the market. ‘We travelled up and down the country
and spoke to thousands of young women to ensure not just the right editorial,
but the scale and size of the magazine,’ said Simon Kippin, Glamour’s
publisher.
The Guardian reported on the highly competitive nature of the women’s
magazine market where new titles are launched and extinguished with
increasing speed: