Wenner Media’s US Weekly will launch a fashion-focused spin-off, US Style, in March, aimed at providing more fashion and style content to the magazine’s young, female, fashion-conscious readers.
The magazine, which will have an initial rate base of 450,000, will be published four times in 2009, corresponding with key retail seasons such as back-to-school and the holidays.
“We think that the way to expand our brand is to expand horizontally rather than vertically,” said Gary Armstrong, CMO of Wenner Media. “Style is an area that a certain portion of our audience responds to positively, so we’re giving them a concentrated version of the style content in US Weekly.
“Monthly fashion magazines are having a hard time because they’re not responding to their audience and the visual vernacular that the audience is responding to,” he added. “More young women respond to the US Weekly communication style. They want to be communicated to in a way that makes them comfortable, and a key point with this messaging is the large selection of price points and the broad specter of style inspirations.”
Armstrong said the idea behind the new magazine was not to target a new or different audience than US Weekly, but rather to provide more specialized content on a subject that a core demographic enjoyed. The US Weekly brand is exploring other spin-offs and extensions in select interest areas, he said.
The first issue of US Style will be sent to about 200,000 US Weekly subscribers. The other 250,000 copies in the first print run will be sold on newsstands.
Ads in US Weekly and in its 500,000-circulation e-newsletter will start promoting US Style around the end of February. US Style also will have an online presence on the US Weekly Web site, www.usmagazine.com, which reports 4 million unique monthly visitors.
If US Style is successful with newsstand owners, consumers and advertisers, it will be rolled out monthly in 2010. Armstrong said he believed the magazine was capable of reaching a rate base of 800,000.
