NatMags launches teen title Cosmo Girl in the UK
The National Magazine Company is to enter the teen market with the launch of Cosmo Girl in the UK. It will be backed by a marketing campaign understood to be worth up to £4m.
Tequila Payne Stracey has been appointed to handle advertising. Media will be bought through Initiative Media.
It follows the disclosure that EMAP is to launch a teenage version of Elle, called Elle Girl, and an announcement from BBC Worldwide that it is to venture into the same market with a celebrity and entertainment title.
But NatMags claims the new UK magazine forms part of holding company The Hearst Corporation’s expansion strategy. It launched Cosmo Girl in the US in 1999 and has already launched it into the Czech Republic and Turkey.
Duncan Edwards, deputy managing director of NatMags, says: “We’ve been working on the project since May and our extensive research has shown that there is a real gap in the teen market that the Cosmopolitan brand is ideally placed to fill.”
Cosmo Girl is expected to launch in the UK during the first quarter of next year.
It is understood that there will be an initial print run of at least 300,000 with a settle-down target of 200,000.
The three entrants to the teenage market will be competing for sales against Attic Futura’s Sugar magazine, which had a circulation of 415,973, according to the latest set of figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations.
