Wednesday, September 28, 2005
Analyse This
The verdicts are in on Psychologies - well, verdicts from other inhabitants of the magsphere Media Week and myself. More objective stuff like ABC figures will take a little longer.
Industry comment has been surprisingly kind, which either means it is not seen as a threat or everyone has done the quizzes in the mag and decided to live their nice persona. General opinion is that it is a bit different (trans: not a threat to my patch) but also rather old-fashioned looking (trans: lots of type and not so many big pix).
My opinion, for what it's worth, is that it is not quite different enough. There are a lot of very familiar names attached to features and tests, and the material itself is not sufficiently distinct from the kind of thing that can be found in almost every newspaper colour mag - there's just a lot of it bunched togther.
The other feeling I got as I read through the pages was of repetition. I am sure that the many tests are in fact aimed at evoking different outcomes and highlighting different aspects of our fascinating selves but it felt like going over the same ground to me. But then, as with 90% of new magazines, I am not the target reader.
My highly unscientific retail sampling exercise (a quick squizz in Swansea's Sainsburys and Tesco) revealed ample quantities left for latecomers, but perhaps they had been topping them up as they sold out.
And on the subject of target readers - just who will Wonderland appeal to? If it lasts beyond a third issue I will ... well, I will be very surprised.
Industry comment has been surprisingly kind, which either means it is not seen as a threat or everyone has done the quizzes in the mag and decided to live their nice persona. General opinion is that it is a bit different (trans: not a threat to my patch) but also rather old-fashioned looking (trans: lots of type and not so many big pix).
My opinion, for what it's worth, is that it is not quite different enough. There are a lot of very familiar names attached to features and tests, and the material itself is not sufficiently distinct from the kind of thing that can be found in almost every newspaper colour mag - there's just a lot of it bunched togther.
The other feeling I got as I read through the pages was of repetition. I am sure that the many tests are in fact aimed at evoking different outcomes and highlighting different aspects of our fascinating selves but it felt like going over the same ground to me. But then, as with 90% of new magazines, I am not the target reader.
My highly unscientific retail sampling exercise (a quick squizz in Swansea's Sainsburys and Tesco) revealed ample quantities left for latecomers, but perhaps they had been topping them up as they sold out.
And on the subject of target readers - just who will Wonderland appeal to? If it lasts beyond a third issue I will ... well, I will be very surprised.
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