Say Hello! to a successful mag

Your Media Analysis “Women’s magazines perform weakly” (MW February 21) illustrated the problems being experienced by the major publishing houses operating in the sector.

Perhaps, inadvertently, your correspondent overlooked a couple of the essential explanations for this magazine sector’s relatively poor performance.

The sector is suffering from a distinct lack of product differentiation and the introduction of pricing strategems which more closely resemble those associated with the potato futures market.

Most Marketing Week readers understand that the process of building a brand is different from that of selling a commodity.

In consequence, they will neither be surprised by Hello!’s 8.5 per cent circulation rise in a year when its cover price was increased to 1.35 nor by the magazine’s responsibility for approximately 20 per cent of the copy sales growth you reported for the sector as a whole.

Jon Humphrey

Advertising sales and development director

Hello!

London SE1

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