But just a tad. Why forsake a proven formula?

By Jeff Bercovici

      Editors of men's magazines like to talk about making their products "sophisticated" and "cultural," all the while lining up the next wet t-shirt shoot. 
     But might new Maxim editor Keith Blanchard really be considering tweaking the formula that made Maxim a must-read in frat houses and board rooms across America?
    Though he doesn't officially take over until June, Blanchard has already started taking stock of--and taking shots at--the competition as well as articulating his editorial vision.
    "The time has come for it to mature into becoming the voice of the American male," says Blanchard.
    He has said he will be taking "the high road" and giving it "cultural weight."
    But relax, Maxim fans; the bikini girls and keg stands aren't going anywhere yet.
    Says Blanchard, "It’s not a very different approach," he says. "It isn’t broken, so there’s no need to fix it. We’ll be focusing on the things we already do well."
    Maxim has often been referred to as "Cosmo for men," with its mix of equal parts steamy titillation and practical service.
       It should come as no surprise, then, that Keith Blanchard, the new editor of Maxim, has written for Cosmopolitan and worked for other women’s magazines including Glamour, YM and Marie Claire, the last of which he helped launch.
    Blanchard replaces Mike Soutar, who leaves his post after only a year to return to the UK as managing director of IPC Music & Sport Publishing. His resignation was prompted by personal considerations, chiefly a desire to return to the UK, says a spokesperson for the company.
    Blanchard, who’s been with Maxim since it launched, has watched as numerous competing men’s magazines have attempted, with various degrees of success, to borrow from or copy outright the formula that catapulted Maxim to the forefront of American male consciousness.
     "There’ve been a lot of imitations, some of them paler than others," he says. "Maxim’s tone is hard to replicate, but that’s what struck such a chord with readers."
     Prior to the rise of Maxim, says Blanchard, conventional wisdom held that the market for a general-interest men’s magazine was limited, with a maximum achievable circulation in the GQ-Esquire range of 750,000.
     "We blew through that so fast," he says. Maxim will increase its rate base to 2 million in the second half of this year.
    Blanchard’s predecessor, Soutar, joined the magazine last May to replace Mark Golin, who had defected to Conde Nast to edit Maxim rival Details.
     Golin had launched Maxim, and was considered responsible for much of the magazine’s personality. However, with Soutar at the helm, its weed-like growth continued without a skip.
    Blanchard calls Golin "a very, very talented editor," and he attributes the smooth transition to continuity among the other personnel, including himself. He was previously creative director for Maxim and its spin-off, Stuff.
    Of Details, which closed last month after Golin’s redesign failed to boost circulation, Blanchard says, "That magazine was sort of fated to fail. By the time Mark got a hold of it, it had been through so many editors, so many redesigns. They famously changed the name of the front section about 10 times. It just ran its readers through such a ringer."
     Blanchard believes that Golin could have resuscitated the magazine given enough time, though. He believes Golin had only just hit on the correct editorial voice when Conde Nast pulled the plug.
      "They passed up several opportunities to fold it when they should have, then they folded it at possibly the one time they shouldn’t have."
     He notes the attempts of fellow Conde Nast title GQ to incorporate elements of Maxim’s approach, with more and more babes on the cover, including this month’s nymphette, model Estella Warren.
    Dismissing the effort as "Maxim-Lite," Blanchard says GQ misses the point, referring to a cover line from the January issue as "creepy." (The cover featured model Tyra Banks topless, with her hair covering her breasts. The line read, "Tyra, Please Pull Your Hair Back!")
     More worrisome to Blanchard is FHM, another British "lads’ magazine" which launched an American edition this February.
    He felt the first issue of FHM was rather flawed, with a cover design he considered "a little feminine, very soft" and an editorial voice that "they didn’t bother to translate into American-ese."
       But he is wary of underestimating the resources of publisher EMAP Petersen.
"They are definitely going to be competition for us, and any problems they have I’m sure they’ll fix, or at least throw enough money at them to make them go away."

-Jeff Bercovici is a staff writer for Media Life.-