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Glamour under Leive
Less sex-me-up, fewer celebs, a friendlier voice
By Jeff Bercovici
"Very Private Sex Advice: Uncensored tips and truths to try out--cancel your plans tonight."
That's a cover line from the November issue of Glamour. By the standards of modern women's magazines, it's not exactly an eyepopper. In fact, it's rather tame.
And that's just the point.
After years of competing with Cosmopolitan to see who could get away with the most pornographic cover copy, Glamour is taking the blush factor down a notch, says editor in chief Cindi Leive.
"Each magazine has to speak with the right voice for itself," says Leive. "For Cosmo to get rid of the sex would be ridiculous. Its role is to be sexually frank, to be explicit.
"With Glamour, our role is to be a friendly, encouraging presence. Our reader expects this to be a magazine she can read sitting on the bus, or that she can leave sitting on her coffee table without being embarrassed."
In other words, expect fewer cover lines like "50 Tricks for Outstanding Orgasms."
"We don't want to lecture the reader about what to do and what not to do. She can figure that stuff out for herself."
Leive was named editor in chief in May after her predecessor, Bonnie Fuller, was fired. Fuller, a former top editor of Hearst's Cosmopolitan, got the boot amid reports that she had offered her services to Hearst President Cathleen Black to take over for Kate Betts at Harper's Bazaar.
At the time, Leive was serving as editor of Self, where she posted solid circulation gains at a time when other mass-market women's titles were suffering from newsstand erosion.
At Self, Leive says her strategy was "making it more specific. The mission of Self is not to cover relationships, sex, work and money. It's to focus very specifically on woman's physical and mental well-being."
For her first issue of Glamour, Leive gave the magazine a front-to-back overhaul, throwing out numerous columns and creating even more new ones and expanding the beauty, health and nutrition coverage.
Practicality is a theme of many of the additions. New departments include "Testing, Testing," a page with user-ratings of new cosmetics; "Body By Glamour," a workout section; and "Fashion Workbook," a "reality-based guide to getting dressed fabulously," with affordably-priced alternatives to trendy designer-label pieces.
Columns that survived the remake include "Jake," a male-perspective column, the back-page fashion "Do’s and Don’ts" and the monthly editorial.
In addition to lowering the hormone level, Leive promises she will also practice restraint in Glamour’s celebrity coverage. The November cover features a model, and Leive says entertainment star covers will likely be limited to every other month.
"Celebrities aren’t going to be the only images she sees," says Leive. "It’s important that when the reader looks at the magazine she realizes that she’s the most important one, not Mariah Carey or Jennifer Lopez."
Glamour’s total paid circulation slipped by 3.1 percent to 2,139,672 in the first half of this year, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. Newsstand sales slid 10.7 percent, to 1,004,167.
The magazine will get a boost from this week’s shuttering of sister title Mademoiselle. The latter’s 800,000-odd subscribers will begin getting Glamour in January, and Glamour’s rate base will increase from 2.1 million to 2.2 million.
Ad pages in Glamour were down 13.8 percent to 962.83 year-to-date through August, according to the Publishers Information Bureau.
October 4, 2001 © 2001 Media Life
-Jeff Bercovici is a staff writer for Media Life.
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