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Great sucking sound
among men's titles

Death to all that are perceived as Maxim clones

By Jeff Bercovici

   Over the past few years, the field of men's magazine publishing has increasingly felt like a contest to see who could be the most like Maxim.
   Some publications, like GQ and Rolling Stone, have contented themselves with co-opting bits and pieces of the lad approach into their own editorial formulas, but quite a few others have aped Maxim's look and attitude down to the smallest detail.
   Now that’s changing.
   Reacting to overcrowding in the beer-and-babes sector of the market, publishers of men's magazines are increasingly trying to define their publications not as the next Maxim but as the anti-Maxim, or at least as offering something more substantial than bar humor and cheesecake.
   These publishers argue that there's room in the market for a magazine that's more sophisticated and intelligent than Maxim, FHM and Stuff but younger and sexier than Esquire, GQ and Men's Journal.
   "I think that the laddie category is oversaturated," says Richard Amann, president and publisher of Ramp Media, which publishes Ramp.
   "You've got the big three and a bunch of 'me too' laddie products."
   Rival publishers might be quick to classify the six-month-old, 240,000-circulation Ramp as one of those "me too" products, but perhaps not for long. The magazine is being repositioned in time for its fifth issue, due on newsstands June 3, says Amann. Covers, which in the past have featured scantily-clad models and innuendo-filled copy, will look different, and content will include longer articles on topics such as careers, sports, finance and politics.
   "We've been talking about reaching a slightly older reader, more affluent and a little more sophisticated," he says. "I think it's imperative that we lead this magazine into what I think is unoccupied space, and it's the space between Maxim and GQ. This has been the premise since the beginning. Now the product is intersecting with the premise."
   Those sentiments will surely sound familiar to Craig Vasiloff, editor in chief of Razor. Though it was never intended to read like a lad magazine, Razor, which launched in November 2000, frequently looked like one from the outside, with cover lines like "Seducing the Bartender" and "Ivy League Hookers: Getting There the Hard Way."
   "When Razor came out, it was hard because all these other Maxim clones came out at the same time," says Vasiloff. "To compete on newsstands with all those publications, we almost had to do those covers."
   Recently, however, it has adopted a new approach, with recent issues featuring tasteful shots of a fully-clothed Alanis Morissette and Salma Hayek.
Both Amann and Vasiloff agree that magazines that are perceived as wannabe lad titles are in a vulnerable position.
   "This whole influx of magazines that jumped onto this Maxim bandwagon -- we're going to see them go away," says Vasiloff.
   "It's a space that we don't want to go anywhere near," says Amann.
    If a shakeout is indeed in the works, then it arguably began last week when Bob Guccione Jr. suspended publication of Gear.
   Guccione says he set out to create a literate, stylish publication -- a younger, hipper answer to Esquire or GQ -- but advertisers persisted in lumping Gear in with the lad titles. He plans to relaunch in the fall after overhauling the magazine to make it look less like Maxim.
     "[Maxim and Stuff owner] Felix Dennis is laughing down his sleeve because he's convinced everyone that they need to be like him, with the result that they all neutralize each other and further accentuate the success of Maxim," says Guccione. "The market is too crowded with similar magazines. What it cries out for is a distinctive and different one. We were producing that, but we were unable to spend enough money to market the difference between Gear and the lads books."
   Jamie Hooper, group publisher of Maxim, agrees that the men's category is headed for a shakeout, but he questions whether becoming less like the lad magazines and more like GQ and Esquire is a smart strategy for survival.
   "That's going to be a real tough road. I don't understand it," says Hooper. "I don't think there are enough men who are really seeking an alternative to Maxim."

-Jeff Bercovici is a staff writer for Media Life.

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