Selling Lines

What is it about a magazine cover that converts a grazer into a buyer? Great images? Compelling exclusives? Clarity of message? Brand loyalty? Tasty gifts? In-your-face multiple newsstand facings? If publishing magazines was an exact science, we’d know the answers by now, and pushing the button on the latest cover would not be the act of faith, the terrifying step into the unknown that it remains today.

About a year ago, IPC Media used sophisticated technology in an effort to find answers to the covers conundrum. Guinea pig readers looked at covers on a computer screen and the technology recorded exactly how their eyes scanned the page, registering how long they stayed with each individual element. Not surprisingly, the first element noted was the main image, but remarkably close behind came the main coverline, followed by the smaller, subsidiary verbal hooks. IPC’s Eye Tracker study added considerable weight to the theory that the words on our covers can make a critical difference between a healthy selling issue and a poor one.

In increasingly competitive markets, coverlines have the power to shout above the racket and noise of the newsstand and sell copies. In the days (not that far distant) when magazine publishing was done by the seat of the pants, editors or chief subs often threw together the coverlines at the last minute before sending the issue to press and lining up the pints at the local; the first time the publisher saw them was when the magazine appeared on the newsstand. In my experience as a trainer, there remain a few magazines where coverlines are still regarded as an irrelevant irritation, or where an autocratic editor commits them to the cover, unchallenged, like tablets of stone. But on the vast majority of titles today coverlines are fine-tuned, rejected, reworked, vetted, argued about, fought over, overruled and changed by publishers – and, rubbing salt in the wound of a poor sales performance, re-scrutinised at issue post mortems.

In the revenue-rich - and notoriously promiscuous weeklies market, coverlines play an undeniably important part in pulling in readers. In the celebrity sector of that market, main coverlines usually swing between big exclusives, when a hot celebrity name grabs the reader: ‘World Exclusive: Jude’s Nanny’ (Now, August 2005) – and the composite feature, where a bunch of celebrities have been lashed together to generate a story: ‘When Surgery Goes Wrong’ (Heat, September 2005). In the first example, where incidentally, the measure of a celeb’s pulling power is that they can always be identified by their Christian names alone, an effective device is to offer the reader some extra tasty morsels to draw them in: ‘How Jude Seduced Me’, ‘It was more than just a fling’. In the second example, multiple images showing celebs with scars / bags under their eyes / love handles / (or worse), the main coverline needs no additional words to communicate the message.

Weeklies

The weeklies sector that regularly demonstrates coverline tour de force is the buoyant easy entertainment sector, where amazing human interest stories are encapsulated into tightly written, creative coverlines that are hard to resist. ‘Non Stop Orgasm Mum’ (Take a Break, August 2005) takes some beating, but I have a soft spot for ‘No Sex After Alsatian Bit Off Hubby’s Bits’ (Love it!, October 2006). Coverlines like these don’t write themselves - the editorial teams go to great lengths to produce the sharpest, most eye-watering lines, often brainstorming, drafting, re-writing them several times before committing them to the cover. If William Shakespeare was alive today, he’d be writing coverlines for Pick Me Up or Chat. The critical sales point is that the coverlines, not the image (usually a non-threatening model in this sector), do the selling, and the best covers combine a heady mix of crime, sex, horror, and weird relationships all laced with an underlying hint of humour. The rationale is that readers in this market feel better about their own lives when they read what a bizarre and painful time everyone else is having.

Monthlies

The once tamer, more demure women’s glossy monthly market has jumped onto the weeklies bandwagon and now provides rich pickings for collectors of creative coverlines. It’s not unusual to find ten or more hooks on a glossy monthly cover, usually involving a careful balance of sex: ‘99 Things to do With a Naked Man’ (Cosmopolitan, March 2006), beauty: ‘7 deadly sins of beauty’ (Marie Claire, October 2005), fashion: ‘687 Sexy New Style Buys’ (NW, February 2007) and celebrity: ‘Scarlett Johansson – Fashion’s Growing Conscience’ (Vogue, October 2006) - plus a good helping of diet, relationship and human interest stories.

Topicality

Coverlines move in cycles, accurately reflecting topical interests, and providing historians of the future with a kind of touchstone of taste. Two of today’s surest-selling coverline subjects are plastic surgery: ‘The Latest No-knife Treatments Put to the Test’ (Red, March 2007) and shopping: ‘High Street Heaven’ (Marie Claire, March 2007).

Ideally, coverlines should reflect the brand personality of the magazine, directly appealing to the target reader. Woman & Home’s recent sales success is built on shamelessly targeting the maturing woman who feels stylish and confident – and is fiercely unwilling to slide into old age. Hence life-changing coverlines like ‘Your Big Moment: gap break, uni, adventure, new direction and marriage. Be inspired by women like you’ (Woman & Home, February 2007). Likewise, Practical Parenting knew it was hitting its toddler-tired target reader right where it mattered with ‘Get Your Baby to Sleep all night – in 15 minutes’ (September 2005). It would be hard to dream up a more compelling hot-spot coverline in that market.

Special interest and leisure magazines still largely concentrate on straight coverlines based on hard information: ‘Why the Rhone Rules’, (Decanter, February 2007), improving your skills or knowledge: ‘What Blade is Right For You?’ (Good Woodworking, May 2006) and product testing: ‘Ultimate Trail Bikes Tested’ (What Mountain Bike, August 2006), but even these markets are regularly sexing up their coverlines. Today’s Golfer’s recent special on the qualities of different golf balls was sold hard on the cover with the huge word ‘Balls!’ (January 2007) and Horse & Hound, once decidedly coverline-conservative, caught the eye on the newsstand with ‘Hunting with the Handbrake off’ (January 2007).

Number of Coverlines

One of the biggest debates about coverlines is how many should there be, and almost all pre-1950s magazines carried poster-style covers with few or no coverlines. Although design purists will still vote for minimalism, most consumer magazines today will be running between six and ten, many supported (or sometimes explained) by straps and sub-lines. Coverlines have become an essential marketing tool, using their multiple messages to attract the many disparate elements of a title’s readership. Each issue, many editors go through a tick box exercise to ensure that all the basic brand ingredients are embraced on the cover, creating what is in effect a sharply-written contents page that doubles as a newsstand advertising poster.

It’s the coverline writer’s job to pare down the words to make them compelling, instantly understandable and brand savvy and to tease the reader’s tastebuds so that they can’t resist a look inside. It’s the designer’s job to give them clarity (there’s not a lot of point to coverlines that can’t be read from a distance of about two metres) and to give them a sense of priority, so that the major coverline dominates and readers can mop up the remainder in a descending hierarchy of importance.

Those coverlines lower down the food-chain are often used to remind readers of regular brand staples (product tests, price guides, news, advice, listings: ‘Even More Heart-warming Stories’ (People’s Friend, January 2007)), and while these play a reassuring role, no magazine can really compete on today’s newsstands without stories that jump off the cover and say ‘buy me’. An editor’s aim is always to have at least one massive coverline hook per issue.

If multiple coverlines subliminally suggest volume, there is no more popular device than the large, odd number to entice browsers to buy – like March’s Glamour with its ‘1256 Hot New Buys’. As every magazine tries to outdo its competitors with a bigger, odder number, there is no evidence yet that readers are getting numbed by number overkill, although there are signs that some magazines are starting to stress quality, not quantity. For instance, ‘25 Lifesaving Mac Tips’ (Mac Format, August 2006) doesn’t have the astronomical hype of the big number coverline, but the main hit implies that the reader will get strong, meaningful, worthwhile tips. Small can sometimes be beautiful.

In some circumstances, a bold typographical cover, with a single persuasive coverline punching hard, can be more effective than a great image. What Mortgage magazine’s straightforward ‘Best Mortgage Rates’ (December, 2006) is a good example: right on brand message and full of impact. And when What Car’s annual big-selling January issue announces ‘Car of the Year Awards 2007’ in massive type on the cover, it need say no more.

Accentuate the Positive

As with every other publishing discipline, coverlines are not without their classic tripwires. One is the inadvertent use of negative words, like ‘stop’, ‘never’, ‘old’, ‘goodbye’, and in one I saw not so long ago, ‘bereavement’. People don’t buy magazines to feel miserable, which is why positive, upbeat words will always stand a better chance of persuading an uncommitted browser to buy. One magazine in the mature women’s market once put a ban on any number between 50 and 100 – research indicated that it reminded their readers of their impending appointment with the Grim Reaper.

Other classic errors are the use of fatigued coverline phrases like ‘New Year, New You’ (seen on at least two covers at the turn of this year), the lazy phrase ‘One Woman’s Story’ as a generic strap to set up a human interest feature, and lines so tedious that the reader filters them out as they absorb the cover. For example, one now-extinct home magazine enthralled its Christmas issue readers with the immortal line; ‘Brilliant Ideas: Flame Effect Fires, Standard Lamps, Radiators’. And beware coverline writers on ego trips, dazzling readers with cryptic lines only they understand. The first issue of Inside Out gave us the memorable ‘Visionary Special: New Ways of Seeing’ (April 2006). And sometimes the carefully penned coverline is ruined by an inappropriate image. Web User (September 2004) carried the compelling coverline ‘Build Your Own Website in a Weekend’, and illustrated it with a menacing hammer, guaranteed to demolish it in seconds. And how long before writing excruciating puns in a coverline will be a criminal offence: ‘A Zoom for All Reasons’ (Amateur Photographer, September 2005).

The Bagging Effect

The increasing use of bagging has had a significant effect on coverlines, with the contents of the bag – a gift or supplement for instance - commanding massive coverlines at the expense of traditional content ‘hits’. Magazines have been slow to come to grips with the need to combine a strong message about the gift with major content coverlines - and still retain good logo standout. Some, like T3, smartly recognising that it’s coverlines on the bag that do the selling job, have removed all coverlines from the cover. It’s all a question of taste, but I find these coverline-free covers eerily empty and unfinished.

Whatever the market, coverlines start with content and editors trying to carve memorable coverlines from an indifferent set of features only have themselves to blame when they struggle to sell the latest issue on the cover. The best route to great coverlines is to build them into an issue from stage one – when features are being planned. As editor of Good Housekeeping, (she recently became Natmag’s editorial director) Lindsay Nicholson would refuse to listen to any feature idea unless it was accompanied by a decent coverline. It was a policy guaranteed to raise everyone’s game and gave her an embarrassment of potential cover stories.

A well-turned coverline is pure poetry, a delicate, often underrated tool with the power to persuade and convince today’s discerning, spoilt-for-choice magazine consumers. Next time you see a gem like ‘I Had a Bucket Full of Fat Sucked Out in Paradise’ (Love It!, October 2006), stand back, admire and celebrate a consummate editorial art.