It’s one thing to launch a website to build your offline magazine brand, but launching a print magazine spin-off of your website? Bauer Media’s celebrity weekly Heat magazine is launching Heatworld magazine — based on its Heatworld.com site, started last year. The new mag will come free with copies of Heat and is the latest extension of the Heat brand following the launch of digital-only Heat Radio in 2007.
Perhaps in response to a recent circulation decline for many of the “celeb” mags — Heat‘s circulation of 470,475 in H208 was down 11.7 percent year on year while OK! was down 25.6 percent — Bauer is marketing Heatworld as a non-celeb mag full of “daft and downright hilarious stuff”. But Heatworld.com, which bears the strapline “latest celebrity news, gossip and celeb pictures”, is nothing but celebs. (Is this not confusing the brand ID?) However, Bauer may be ahead of the curve in admitting that the prolonged period of success for celebrity-focused print media is coming to an end. In any case the company means business with the new launch and is paying for an extensive TV, radio and online ad campaign.
Well this is a very courageous move minister. I can't help thinking that it's confusing for readers already to have the magazine with a different brand to the website. Does launching a separate mag brand mean that the website will be aligned with the new brand rather than exploiting the fabulous awareness of heat? My view, expressed in a recent blog: http://www.penmaen-media.co.uk/index.php/2009/01/how-not-to-cannibalise-your-offline-brand-with-your-online-activity/
is that publishers stretching brands online need to think very carefully about their audience and how the brand can be expressed in both media. A magazine like Car (coincidentally published by Bauer) has done this extremely well and grown the overall brand audience dramatically. This move feels more like a panic reaction to newstand decline.