EMAP challenges Zest with health and fitness magazine

EMAP Elan is entering the health and fitness market with the test launch of a magazine, codenamed Project Vitality, planned for next spring.

The title will be launched as a 100-page supplement with EMAP’s New Woman magazine.

If the title does well in research, and boosts New Woman’s sales, the company will launch it as a standalone magazine, carrying New Woman branding. A print run of 200,000 is planned.

EMAP is using expertise garnered from its acquisition of health title Top Santé in France last year to prepare the launch.

The new title will be unrelated to Top Santé, published under lic-ence in the UK.

Sue Hawken, managing director of EMAP Elan, says the magazine will be more “true to life” than current health and fitness titles.

“It will look more at the motivations of real women for getting into health and fitness. Basically they may want to lose weight, but they won’t give up eating chocolate and drinking for anybody,” she says.

Project Vitality is the second health and fitness title planned for 1997. Weider Publishing is launching a UK version of its US health and fitness magazine, Shape, in the summer (MW September 20).

The National Magazine Company launched Zest off the back of Cosmopolitan and it now sells 135,000 copies a month. IPC’s Marie Claire also has a health and beauty brand extension.