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'Crap is crap, even if it’s corporate crap'
By Jeff Bercovici
These may be times of turmoil for young men’s magazines, but Gear founder Bob Guccione Jr. is pretty full of himself right now.
The March issue of Gear featuring actress Jessica Biel is turning out to be a major publicity coup for the year-and-a-half-old magazine.
Biel, star of the WB’s "7th Heaven," came to Gear seeking to shatter her image as a virginal nice girl.
Guccione and his staff were happy to oblige, putting her on the cover wearing only a bikini bottom and bringing to light her naughty side in the cover story.
The issue arrived on newsstands this week and caused an instant sensation.
"When I went out to lunch today, people were saying, ‘Hey, I saw you on TV last night,’" says Guccione, who gave interviews on tabloid news shows "Entertainment Tonight," "Access Hollywood" and "Inside Edition." The story also got treatment on "The Today Show," "The Howard Stern Show" and "The Tonight Show," as well as in newspapers across the country.
Although she could have taken off her clothes for rivals Details or Maxim, Biel chose Gear for her debut as a vamp because "she wanted to be in a magazine that’s a little more substantive," says Guccione.
"Gear has a little more going on inside than Maxim and Details," but with a younger readership than GQ or Esquire, he says. "She felt Details and Maxim were a bit simple, a bit silly."
Even in the flush of success, it seems Guccione is never too self-absorbed to take a shot at the competition.
You'd think with his magazine riding high--March is expected to be Gear's best issue yet on the newsstand--Guccione would take it easy on his rivals.
They've seen some tough times of late, with P.O.V., Bikini, and Icon folding, and GQ and Details getting manhandled by Alex Kuczinsky in the New York Times.
Kuczinsky accused GQ of following Maxim's lowbrow lead, and hinted that Mark Golin was to blame for Details' struggles at the newsstand.
Guccione has some theories on the latter.
He says Gear is "going after readers who used to find Details interesting." Though Details may have created the market for a thoughtful, edgy young men’s style and culture magazine, it has "statistically lost its readers."
"What it should be, it will never be able to be at Conde Nast—a ballsy, individualistic voice."
Nowadays, he says, "Details is all homogenized, pabulum. They’re in the business of keeping advertisers happy. They wouldn’t risk being politically incorrect."
As for Maxim, Guccione calls it "shallow," saying, "Maxim satisfies people who don’t necessarily want to be challenged."
Guccione says that a reader’s self-image is reflected in his choice of magazine.
"A lot of what we do is to try to make someone feel better about themselves. Someone who reads Maxim might be saying, ‘I don’t really have that much to say.’"
Readers of Gear, GQ and Esquire, however, see themselves as "thoughtful, sophisticated and sexy," he says.
Guccione predicts that as more and more lads’ titles crowd the field, Maxim will be forced to reach into younger and younger demographics to keep growing its readership. The slew of Maxim imitators is likely to hasten the end of the novelty period that lads mags have enjoyed so far, he says.
Though men’s magazines have by and large prospered of late, the recent bow-outs of P.O.V., Bikini and Icon are proof that a rising tide doesn’t necessarily float all boats.
P.O.V.’s Drew Massie complained to Media Life of the mounting difficulty of operating an independent magazine in the increasingly high-stakes men’s market.
While Guccione agrees that you can’t build a good magazine without spending a lot of money, he notes that the backing of a Conde Nast or a Hearst is no guarantee of success.
"Crap is crap, even if it’s corporate crap."
-- Jeff Bercovici is a staff writer for Media Life.